I’ve seen it happen time and again with people who sell and leave California, only to realize a few years later that they miss certain thing about their former home. The problem is that when you do that you are often locked out of ever coming back due to real estate inflation in HCOL areas with respect to everywhere else. We have thrown around the idea of moving to a cheaper location, but that plan always includes renting our current house out and renting on the other end for a while. I don’t want to make any moves that would be difficult to reverse, just in case.
I like that plan Ysette9. If you rent your house out, you can always come back. Keep your foot in the door. We also live in a HCOL area, and I'm from the beach area, so I've seen the one way move to a lower COL area many times over the years.
Last year DH and I were in a tiny town near Munich, and an American couple about our age pulled in on bicycles with pack gear. Now, that's not the norm. We started chatting, with the usual "Where are you from? (oh, I know someone from there...)" and "What are you doing here?". They were quite interesting. They were on a 2 week bicycle ride. They lived in France. They had sold everything they owned in the Midwest, to live their dream of retiring in France. They'd been in France about 2 years, and the panache and excitement had worn off. The cultural differences were exhausting to them. They wanted to go home, and there was nothing to go back to. They sold their house and all belongings, thinking that the France dream was their forever choice. They were very unhappy. I imagine that by now, they've gone home and figured out something, but we caught them just about the time that the reality was staring them straight on. I hope they found a way to be happy.
Sometime I fantasize about buying a vacation home and moving to Europe, I've even talked to real estate companies in 3 EU countries. Just to suss it out, mind you. For a 250K Euro buy in, you can get EU citizenship in Greece. I could easily get that for one of my rentals and keep everything else I own/other rental income intact. But then reality sinks in... I ALREADY live in paradise. I ALREADY have a fantastically amazing life. I ALREADY travel as much as I want to. A home like that would complicate my life beyond imagination. I don't need to be worrying about pipes or roof leaks or burglaries in a home that's half way around the world. What am I thinking? It's just such a fun fantasy, that's all...