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My Biggest Someday
Would you give up your job, your friends and family, and move alone to a country where you knew no one and didn’t speak the language?
I was in my early 50s, divorced and living in Phoenix, Arizona — a place I’d called home for 17 years. On the outside, everything looked perfect: a great job, a nice apartment, kids grown and thriving. But on the inside, I felt like I was moving along the assembly line of life and all that was left was to quietly finish my career and slide into cozy retirement. It just seemed so….predictable.
And I started thinking: What if I took a year off and lived somewhere completely new? At first, it was just a Someday dream - the kind you file away for “later” and don’t dare say out loud. But it was an idea that just wouldn’t go away – could I really do this? Could I spin my life in a completely new direction and create a new chapter in a brand‑new place.
It took years of deflecting, delaying and dithering, but in 2018 at the age of 54, I arrived alone in the beautiful city of Budapest in Hungary to start my Someday adventure.
And what started as a one-year plan unfolded into 9 extraordinary years.
Ok, I know what you’re thinking……..You don’t just decide to move from the USA to Hungary, buy a ticket, hop on a plane, and simply rock up in Budapest. A move like that takes reflection, planning, and (let’s be honest) a whole lot of stalling…And you’re right - I had lots of challenges to navigate before I could make it happen. Could I afford to take a career break? What would I do with all my stuff? Where would I live? What about the language?The following sections will walk you through my challenges, my scary moments, and the steps I took to turn my Someday into Today.
The first question that most people ask is “Why Hungary?” And indeed Hungary was never part of the plan. For my Someday adventure, I had in mind somewhere more predictable like France or Spain. But all that changed after a random conversation in an Irish hotel…….In 2016, during a business trip to Ireland, I happened to mention my Someday dream to one of the staff in the hotel where I was staying. He listened, smiled, and said, “Have you ever considered taking a year off in Budapest?”Budapest? I could barely pick it out on a map.It turned out he was studying at university there and absolutely loved the city. He encouraged me to check it out so I thought why not? I booked a short ‘test’ trip, landed in Budapest, and within just a few days, something just felt right, so I returned to the USA to pack up my life and start planning the next chapter.
I didn’t have a lot of savings or an elderly aunt who had left me a huge inheritance. And coming from a finance background, as well as being burnt by losing my house in the 2008 financial crash, had made me very risk-averse, so the concept of giving up a steady income was terrifying.So how did I fund my Someday adventure? It was a mix of aggressive saving, taking a side hustle as an Uber driver to stash some cash, and trimming my costs. In Budapest, I had a very small financial footprint - no car (public transport was cheap, reliable, and part of the adventure), a tiny 31‑square‑meter apartment with a mini fridge, no oven, and a two‑ring stove. I also cut out anything non‑essential - Netflix gone, alcohol gone, and fancy meals gone.And even though for years, I had been swept up in the American Dream, living in Hungary made me realize that scaling back my lifestyle was worth it to achieve my Someday. Of course, when I realized I wanted to stay in Hungary for more than a year, I had to start earning again, so I went back to working online as a freelance Project Manager and Trainer.
When I talk to people about my Someday adventure, the most common response I hear is, “I could never do that, I have too much stuff.” Stuff is stuff — and it’s what holds so many of us back. All those material things need storing, cleaning, maintaining, replacing. They hold us hostage to our comfort zones and stop us embracing what’s important in life – memories and experiences. I got rid of all of it. When I arrived in Budapest, I had two suitcases and my violin — that was everything I owned in the world. Nothing in storage back in the USA. No safety net of belongings waiting for me.Just two suitcases and a violin – radical but incredibly liberating.
My kids were completely supportive — they were my biggest cheerleaders. And I hope my story inspires them to take bold steps in their own lives. But my friends……that was another story. Everyone was against the idea and thought I had lost my mind. You’re giving up your job? You’re moving to Budapest? Where the heck is that?Some even laughed at me and shook their heads, and I knew what they were thinking “That’s never going to work out”.No one’s laughing now.
Our biggest obstacle holding us back from our Someday is ourselves and I was no exception. I dithered for years because I was terrified - I kept circling the idea, talking about it, dreaming about it, but never actually believing it could happen. And then one day my daughter, tired of hearing me repeat the same “someday” story - looked at me and said, “Mom! Either do it or stop talking about it.”It was like a giant neon GO!!! sign lit up in the sky. This was finally going to happen
The hardest part was making a life‑changing decision entirely on my own. For years, I’d been a ‘trailing spouse’, and my husband — the major breadwinner — had made most of our big ‘life’ decisions. And now, divorced and single, it was all down to me. No one to check in with, no one to do this with — just me, myself, and I.Pretty damn terrifying!
There were a lot of challenges and scary moments - especially at the beginning. First there’s the fear of failure. What if it doesn’t work out? What if I hate it? That fear was with me constantly especially in the run-up to my arrival in Budapest and for the first 6 months. But eventually I realized that even if it didn’t work out, at least I had tried. And that was better than living a life with regrets.Next there is having to orient and navigate a brand new life on your own – and here is where my FIO skills came into play - the ability to Figure It Out. Because suddenly you’re in a brand new city and you have to figure out how to get around, apply for residency, communicate without the language, sign up with a doctor and dentist, rent an apartment, buy groceries, navigate public transport, and build a life from zero. There’s no handbook – you just have to figure it out, one day at a time.Next there is the sheer loneliness - I’d uprooted myself from everything familiar and now I was on my own in a foreign country with no friends or family. The first Easter I was here, I was so lonely that I fostered a dog – Choccy – to help me through the long weekend. Eventually I found an English-speaking Toastmasters Club and since Toastmasters had been a big part of my life in the USA, I jumped in and that became my anchor, my family and my community, the place where I found connection and belonging.And then, of course, there is the question of what do you do if you get sick in a foreign country? And actually, I did. In 2024, I had a mini-stroke (TIA), and it was a grim reminder of how vulnerable we are when our family is thousands of miles away. But my Hungarian friends came to my aid immediately - they got me to the ER, and stayed with me through the night, until I was safely treated. That was the moment I realized that my Hungarian friends had become my family too. Making your Someday happen is not easy but if you don’t try, you will forever wonder “What if?
When I decided that Hungary was the place I wanted to be, there was the ‘small’ matter of the language. I never mastered the language even though I had fully intended to. Hungarian is not easy, and in the end it turned out not to be essential because most people in the capital speak excellent English. And I got lazy. I get zero for effort. But I do have regrets about that - because you can never truly embrace a culture if you don’t speak the language.But on the other hand, I was there 9 years with only an understanding of a few words – think about that for a moment. We create blockers between our Someday and our Today – everyone asked me about the language. It turned out that it wasn’t essential
At the end of the first year, I wasn’t ready to return home. After my second year, I did return to the USA for a short time — but I missed Budapest so much that I came straight back. And before long, one year became two, two became five, and eventually the years turned into nine.In the end, it was family, and especially the arrival of my grandson, that pulled me back to the USA. But Budapest will always be part of me. It’s the city that holds my courage, my reinvention, and my Someday.
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