Quote from: Monster ManuelIt's sounding pretty damn good. I don't know how I'd feel about having a maid though. It might be too exploitative for me.

You get used to it. I make up for any sense of class-guilt by making sure she was the best paid maid in the country.

Anyways, what exactly would you do for work if you moved here?

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I'm a writer, although my career has been in limbo for a while. I've fallen into the stay-at-home dad role here in the US, but I could easily change that if I knuckled down and didn't let myself get so comfortable. When I was doing d20 work, I wote a 96 page book in 2 weeks for about $850, so I can write fast. I've also never had any finished work rejected once I submitted it. I'm not bragging, just saying I'm a solid writer. My problem is  that I expect perfection from myself, and I've been paralyzed  by it for a while. My d20 work had mediocre sales and I let it screw with my head.

Not all of my work has been game related, I've also written some articles and done some reporting. I plan to write RPG stuff only as a hobby, and focus on fiction.

I have a few ideas for businesses that I can run online. I have a huge collection of old books that could start me off as a book dealer via the internet. For example, I have the first edition of Origin of the Species and some really cool Victorian books on Occultism. And that's just one possibility.

I also have a close friend who does the databases for NASDAQ, and he, my wife, and I been talking about a new kind of media site that we want to develop. We just need funding to get it set up-there would be a lot of streaming rich media. He does well enough to kick in a good amount, but maybe not good enough. We're still looking into it.

My wife's job, however, might not be worth doing down there for the pay. She gets about $24 an hour as an Optometric Technician whereas I know doctors probably don't even make that much down there. An Argentinian doctor came to work at her office, and none of his skills were legally transferable, so he ended up doing what she did and said he made more.

If I had a maid, I'd also make sure she was very well paid. I'd thought about that. One blogger said he paid his maid about $2 an hour and she was happy with it. I was just thinking about what it might mean to someone used to that kind of pay to make $4-6 with hefty Christmas bonuses.  I doubt I could afford more, but if I could do more I would.

Yes, as far as I can see that would be your biggest complication. You should think through very carefully what you would do for a living when you were here. Its great that everything is totally cheap here, but its only totally cheap if you're actually earning a "1st world" wage level.

That's pretty easy to do if you have a telecommuting kind of job, working online for a company, or freelancing; but you have to be sure you'll be able to earn regular paychecks.

as for your wife's job, I doubt very much that her job here would earn her enough to make it worthwhile unless she does it out of some sense of vocation. She could work in the tourism industry, perhaps, or for the embassy, if she was lucky.

Let me put it to you this way: to live in Uruguay in a comfortable lifestyle with all the 1st world amenities you are accustomed to, you have to earn $1000US a month here, roughly.  It  can be a bit less if you're not too materialistic, a bit more if you are; way less if you're a total hippie and don't want things like a TV or going regularly to restaurants.
But you have to find a way to earn that. The average Uruguayan job, if you can find one, will earn you $200-400US a month. You see where the problem is there? So you need to have a first world job that "pays in dollars" as they say here.

If you know you can earn about $1000US a month freelancing, then you're set. You'll be living a lifestyle that's equivalent to what you'd need a $40K a year (or more) after-tax income in North America to enjoy.

RPGPundit

I pay my maid $4 an hour. She's very happy with that.

RPGPundit

We're definitely going to be very careful to make sure we have solid income streams before moving. I realize that ending up down there with no income could turn a great experience into Hell; if we had to rely on earning money down there, we wouldn't be able to afford a way out, and our standard of living would much be lower than it is here.

Because of that, and assuming I like it when I visit, I won't make the actual move unless I either get my career going full bore and have royalties coming in, or have another steady business going.

At worst, I might just have to delay a move like this until later in life; it sounds morbid, but there are three properties that are willed to me on Martha's Vineyard. Eventually I'll be able to rent them out, which would set me up nicely even in the States. Of course I'm in no rush to get those properties- the great aunt and uncle (my grandmother's sister and her husband) who own them are the closest things to parents I have. They raised me in one of the houses.

You mentioned freelancing. Do you have a list of credits? (just curious)

As far as game stuff goes I've written the Morningstar d20 Campaign Setting and The Complete Guide to Fey along with some articles for various magazines including the defunct EN World Player's Journal, Knights of the Dinner Table, and websites. For non-game stuff it's mainly been reporting, including some science reporting.

Morningstar's an uncut diamond wrapped in a turd, while The Complete Guide to Fey actually makes me proud. It's ironic that Morningstar took me over a year and Fey only took me two weeks to write. Morningstar was my first book ,and I missed a lot of opportunities and screwed up the game mechanics. I wouldn't recommend picking it up at this point, unless you just wanted some novel ideas.  

Lately I've been working on a new version of Morningstar and two major works of fiction- one a Judeo-Christian horror/dark fantasy story, and the other a pure dark fantasy set in a world where all magic is demonic in nature. I have high hopes for all three.

Oh, and note that while I'm using western religion in one of my fantasy stories, I'm at best an agnostic, and sometimes an atheist. The story is actually an indictment of western religion, using the mythology.

Here's another question that I've been wondering about:

8: Uruguayn gamers. RPGPundit has said elsewhere that Uruguayan gamers are more mainstream and usually "normal" (my word), but what is the culture like? How would you describe the playstyle of the average Uruguayan gamer? For example, in my area, most people tend to be very distant from their characters, treating them like playing tokens in a board game, whereas where I grew up, most people who played RPGs were into theater, and tended to see RPGs as an extension of that. I'm not saying one's better, but I prefer a 40/60 blend of the two.  Would I be able to fidn a group with my tastes?

Edit: I'm very much into the immersion aspect of RPGs, are Uruguayan gamers? I realize it's impossible to stereotype a whole community, but I'm just wondering about trends.

People vary of course, but most Uruguayans are definitely of the school of "getting into their character's heads" (ie. immersive) at least most I've gamed with.

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