From Broke to Mortgage Free in 3 years, why we moved to Bulgaria part 1.

Dear Steemit Colleagues,

I wanted to share with you about, why I chose to move to Bulgaria from the UK three months ago. I want share my story about how I came to discover this wonderful country, and why I love it so much. The story is quite long so I have had to split it down into parts, to tell you how we came from living month to month, pay check to pay check, to being mortgage free in three years.

It all started about three years ago in the winter time in England, on a cold February evening. You know the time, when you think about places with better weather. At the time I was self employed and had a shop selling electronic cigarettes, the shop was looking after its self but producing no profit to earn a wage from. Which meant that we were living on one income, and I was commuting 1 hour each way to the shop six days a week.

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I remember looking out of the window looking at how cold and dreary it was, and that day no matter how much the heating was up, I could not seem to get warm. After making a coffee I returned to the sofa, and picked up my Ipad, and opened a Google page. There was nothing worth watching on TV and social media was boring me, so I randomly typed into google. "Cheap countries to live in that have nice weather."
I looked through the search results and saw a post about Spain, but having fat fingers, I pressed the wrong link and opened a blog called "The Good Life Bulgaria." When it comes to reading materials, one of the things that interests me most is the layout, and also the colours included in the background. But what stood out for me most of all was one of the most fantastic scenery pictures I have ever seen.

So I though wow that was enough to grab my attention, so I started to read from the beginning. I was reading about a couple who also had lived in the UK, and decided they wanted to start another life somewhere else. And that they had found this country called Bulgaria, in eastern Europe. They were living in the south of England, and like us when they paid their rent and all their bills they did not have enough money left. I started to become interested in the reading, because I felt that I could relate exactly to what they were saying. As I read on I read that they had bought a property on ebay for under £2000, they had never been to Bulgaria before and decided to take a chance and bought a property in a country they knew nothing about.

But it didn't just stop there, after buying the property they gave notice to their landlord packed their things and moved from the UK to their new house. By this time I could not stop reading the blog, I followed how they drove through Europe with a van and a caravan with all their belongings (including dogs) to their new house, and they had not even seen it for real.
I read about what the house was like and all the work they had to do to it. I read about their friendly neighbours, who gave them large amounts of Fruit and Vegetables from their Gardens, I read about how the summers were long and hot, and the winters were cold and how they kept warm and cosy through log burning stoves.

So when I came to the end of it and two bottles of wine later, I told my partner all about how these two people basically gave up everything they had in the UK, to take a chance on a new life in a new country. He was sitting watching some game show on TV, so I was not really sure if he was listening but gave the occasional grunt and nod when I was explaining. At the end of the conversation, I did not feel that he was very interested and went back to the living room to see just how much you could buy houses for in Bulgaria. I found a site called "Bulgarian Properties" and I was amazed at how little you could buy property for there. Many of the properties needed major renovations and were deeply run down, but that did not seem to phase me I just could not get over the prices. Some of these properties were no more than £1000.

So I decided that I would do some research on Bulgaria and unlike the people in the Blog maybe we would go to Bulgaria to see what the place was like and whether we could find something that would suit us and our budget. So I headed off to bed feeling blissfully aware that I had no work the next day at the shop and having to battle the winter to get there.

The next morning, I woke up and went down stairs and put the kettle on, when my partner walked in holding his eye pad looking very shocked. "What's wrong?" I asked him. He stood there motionless just looking at me. I frowned and turned to face him. "Is everything ok, has something happened?" I asked. He walked over to the chair and sat down and checked his Ipad page again, and said "You know how you were telling me about Bulgaria?" I nodded with a brief "Aha." "Well I went on ebay last night, and saw a house, it was not on for much money, so I threw a bid in...... and er well we own a house in Bulgaria now."
I dropped the cup of coffee on the tiled floor, with the news that had just been broken to me.

"You did what?" I asked. Alan just sat there and then a big smile spread across his face. "Go see if you can get a flight for next month so we can go and take a look at it."

After cleaning up and making a second cup of coffee, I walked over to my laptop and started searching for flights. I come from the North East of England, and there was no direct flights to get us close to the area we were looking for, so the closest I found was Luton, so by lunchtime, we had bought a house in Bulgaria and paid for flights to get to our destination in March.

I hope you enjoyed my first episode of the blog about how we came to live in Bulgaria.

If you did please follow and give an up vote. Part 2 when we arrived to see the house will be coming soon.

Have a blessed day.

Darren