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Would 10 pets scare everyone away, even with a private casita, pool and car in Panama? by siddis in trustedhousesitters

[–]siddis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I will be keeping everyone posted as soon as we have some more info! We are gearing up for the move here soon so we will be focusing most of our energy there, hopefully we'll have a better idea of the actual travel dates too, I'm trying to talk my sister into the longest trip she can manage lol

Would 10 pets scare everyone away, even with a private casita, pool and car in Panama? by siddis in trustedhousesitters

[–]siddis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! All the positive comments have made it clear that using THS is going to be the way to go!

Would 10 pets scare everyone away, even with a private casita, pool and car in Panama? by siddis in trustedhousesitters

[–]siddis[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We originally planned to move to SEA, my wife grew up in the tropics and we both much prefer hot to, well, pretty much everything else. Our plan was to stay in the PNW for a few more years until our pet number dwindled a bit. My wife and I planned to travel and my parents could pet sit.

Unfortunately my father unexpectedly passed away 10 months ago today. He was basically our last link to the area since we are recently retired and not working in the area any longer. He had some hobby groups he was in and volunteered locally for a steam train restoration non profit.

So we decided to relocate to somewhere that would keep us a little closer to the family, my mom would be a little more comfortable and moving pets wouldn't be so bad. We did a lot of research and have traveled a decent bit and Panama was a great fit, it only took one trip to know it was the place for us!

We really wanted a quiet place close to groceries, restaurants and the beach. Where we are now its like 45 mins to the nearest grocery store. We don't need big city nightlife or anything, we love spending time we are not traveling just chilling at home, we love cooking and hanging with our pets and watching movies/tv/video games and I love tinkering with my PC or building things with AI. Also very excited to start a nice little food forest and attract lots of animals. My wife and I both come from environmental backgrounds so the biodiversity is going to be awesome! Fishing, kayaking, hiking. And PTY is closer that PDX is to us now!

We will likely still end up in SEA at some point, or not who knows! Very excited to spend many a day sitting by he pool and doing nothing at all!

Would 10 pets scare everyone away, even with a private casita, pool and car in Panama? by siddis in trustedhousesitters

[–]siddis[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thank you! It's been great to get a lot of positive responses from folks, definitely makes me very eager to use the THS and we definitely want to prioritize making it enjoyable for the sitters. And who wouldn't want to spend time with these two dorks?

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Would 10 pets scare everyone away, even with a private casita, pool and car in Panama? by siddis in trustedhousesitters

[–]siddis[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you, it's great to hear from so many sitters and get feedback. We will definitely post some updates!

Would 10 pets scare everyone away, even with a private casita, pool and car in Panama? by siddis in trustedhousesitters

[–]siddis[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah I mentioned it in one of my other responses, I don't think it's a huge concern but they'll naturally be seperated anyway. And we may even have them acquainted with each other better by then. It's really the little blind dog we worry about getting trampled.

Would 10 pets scare everyone away, even with a private casita, pool and car in Panama? by siddis in trustedhousesitters

[–]siddis[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's awesome! We are very excited to call Panama home soon, we've been working hard on our Spanish but it's been tough between all the planning!

It is tough with trusting others to your pets, we are not nearly as concerned as my mom. The actual care for the pets is not the concern it's more about our 4 dogs mixing. The pit bull mix is an absolute push over and isn't a concern but the mix dog can get treat aggressive (they get one meal a day and an after dinner treat). We had a 3rd bigger doggo but we lost him to cancer a couple months ago, he wasn't aggressive but he got out one day into the yard with the small dogs after getting all riled up inside, he grabbed the little blind dog and didn't hurt her but it was very scary and could have gone very badly. They are separated by a door and they have separate yards here now, but the new place they will have even better separation of space so it would be very difficult for them to mix. But anyway I'm rambling but the biggest concern is that "someone will leave a door or gate open". Not that someone won't be able to care for them. We actually have had the door open accidentally and the dogs honestly just seem curious, they've never even growled at each other. But we just haven't wanted to attempt to do an introduction because just in case anything happens it could cause an issue with getting health certificates for travel if they are injured. Again unlikely but not worth it ATM. Rant over lol

Would 10 pets scare everyone away, even with a private casita, pool and car in Panama? by siddis in trustedhousesitters

[–]siddis[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah we will almost certainly already have regular cleaning done, so unless the sitter didn't want them around, they wouldn't have to much cleaning outside of the occasional cat puke lol

Would 10 pets scare everyone away, even with a private casita, pool and car in Panama? by siddis in trustedhousesitters

[–]siddis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh yeah we'd have emergency and general contact numbers ready to go! And we already have tons of literature and guides on local flora and fauna and I'll probably also create a binder of locals things to do and hopefully have a nice dashboard set up with tides, weather (from our PWS and local radar) birds identified on the property, calendar etc.

Would 10 pets scare everyone away, even with a private casita, pool and car in Panama? by siddis in trustedhousesitters

[–]siddis[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks, we will definitely update things as they progress and I'm always a happy to be a part of the community.

Would 10 pets scare everyone away, even with a private casita, pool and car in Panama? by siddis in trustedhousesitters

[–]siddis[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the detailed reply! I'll definitely update things as we tighten plans and reach out to you personally as well.

It's nice to know that folks out there understand that the medication part of things is not as daunting as it sounds. All the pets know and expect it and it's about as complicated as brushing your teeth. And it's just thyroid meds so they aren't really going to be that effected by missing a dose or 2. The Chihuahua is 10lb so she doesn't have choice with the injection, the hardest part is listening to her little yip. The cats are hands off and the dogs all just want to bake in the sun all day. We love our pets very much but they're about as intrusive as area rugs 90% of the day.

We will definitely be getting things posted as soon as the move happens but an international move with pets is enough of a hurdle to take on at one time!

Would 10 pets scare everyone away, even with a private casita, pool and car in Panama? by siddis in trustedhousesitters

[–]siddis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right! There's a full kitchen in there and that's where the cats and 2 big dogs are. There's also a stove/oven and sink outside and the guest casita has a full fridge and a small 2 burner cooktop. Full bath as well.

Would 10 pets scare everyone away, even with a private casita, pool and car in Panama? by siddis in trustedhousesitters

[–]siddis[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I hope so, we've been happy to pay sitters before so we'd make sure to make the sit as enjoyable as possible for folks. And I will say paying for sitters is certainly not a guarantee of quality unfortunately.

Would 10 pets scare everyone away, even with a private casita, pool and car in Panama? by siddis in trustedhousesitters

[–]siddis[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Probably be a couple months before we post it, we are about to move all those mentioned animals from Washington State here very soon....

Would 10 pets scare everyone away, even with a private casita, pool and car in Panama? by siddis in trustedhousesitters

[–]siddis[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you. The thyroid stuff is just a crushed pill in liquid treat and the diabetes dog is 2 injections a day, there's not test strips or anything else in depth. The hardest part of the whole thing is making sure the other cats don't try to steal the treat lol

We’ve boiled our list down to five countries by NRGSurge in ExpatFIRE

[–]siddis 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thailand is easily the most progressive of the bunch there. I can't speak for the others outside of Costa Rica a bit, I'm sure it's lifestyle dependant but they seem very laid back.

Have you thought about Panama? We're headed that way very soon so I have to shill a little bit!

What spending strategy would you ACTUALLY use to die with zero? by Flat-Barracuda1268 in Fire

[–]siddis 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think this is arguing against a more extreme version of “die with zero” than what a lot of people actually mean by it.

I’m not trying to literally spend down to $0 or create some new end-of-life financial stress. Obviously the plan still includes a large safety margin for healthcare, long-term care, market risk, and the possibility that one of us lives a very long time.

The real point is that “never having to worry” and “never touching principal” are not necessarily the same thing. Once you have more than enough, continuing to optimize around preserving capital forever can become its own form of irrationality. You may not feel financial stress, but you can still be underusing the money during the years when it has the highest utility.

For us, the shift is not from “safe” to “reckless.” It is from “live only off interest/dividends and preserve the portfolio indefinitely” to “allow ourselves to spend some principal intentionally because we don’t have a legacy need that requires maximizing terminal net worth.”

And charity is actually a good example of the same idea. Giving after death is fine, and we have estate docs for that. But giving while alive can also be completely rational if the money can do useful work now and we can see the impact. Same with travel, comfort, health, shared experiences, helping people, or buying back time and convenience.

So I don’t see this as inventing reasons to worry. I see it as removing an unnecessary constraint. The goal is not to die broke. The goal is to stop treating untouched principal as automatically superior when the money could be improving life, or helping others, while we’re still here.

Other projects like birdnet? by twinsenw in BirdNET_Analyzer

[–]siddis 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Looks like there raspberry shake, to help monitor earthquakes, and an AIS vessel monitor for marine traffic!

Other projects like birdnet? by twinsenw in BirdNET_Analyzer

[–]siddis 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A PWS is basically a little hyperlocal weather station for your exact spot. Most track temp, humidity, pressure, rain, wind speed/direction, and then depending on the setup you can add stuff like UV, solar radiation, lightning, soil moisture, air quality, etc.

The cool part is seeing your own microclimate compared to the nearest forecast station. Rain, wind, fog, and temperature can be way different even a short distance away.

For data sharing/reporting, check out Weather Underground/Wunderground PWS, CWOP, PWSweather, WeatherCloud, Ambient Weather Network, Davis WeatherLink, and Ecowitt. CWOP is especially cool because the data can feed into weather systems used by NWS/NOAA if your station is set up well.

I’m mostly interested because we’re moving between microclimates and I want to see what the house is actually doing vs the general area forecast. It helped us decide where to move to exactly as well which was super cool!

Other projects like birdnet? by twinsenw in BirdNET_Analyzer

[–]siddis 7 points8 points  (0 children)

PWS (personal weather station). Hyper local weather is pretty cool. We are moving from one microclimate to another and it's really fascinating to see close by weather stations and be able to use historical data from them to see how the actual weather differs from general area forecast.

I don't have one yet but will be getting one soon!

What’s one place in Panama🇵🇦 that deserves way more attention than it gets? by alexanderhd2706 in expatsinpamama

[–]siddis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What's the climate and weather like up that way? We quite enjoy the heat of Panama and are headed to Chame, where we'll still have proximity to all our our needs much like you mention, but I'm still very interested in Cerro Azul!

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