Day: September 14, 2025

• Daniel Dulebohn moved to Mexico after uncertainty about his NIH contract renewal.
• He told his wife they should take a career break and relocate for a year.
• The family leveraged passive income from rental properties to support their move.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Daniel Dulebohn, a 45-year-old former National Institute of Health scientist from Montana who is based in Mexico. It’s been edited for length and clarity.

Last winter was probably the most stressful period of my life. I had been a scientist at a National Institute of Health satellite branch for 16 years, and then it became unclear whether my contract would be renewed in the spring — renewals were moving more slowly with the changes in the administration.

I lived in the middle of nowhere in Montana, and I have three small kids. There aren’t a lot of science jobs out there, so it became very stressful to consider our next steps. My wife and I had good savings, so I said we should take a career break if I didn’t get renewed.

We spent all spring looking into where to move, where to put the kids in school, and what we wanted to get out of a break. Within six months of having the idea, we packed up our family of five and moved to Mexico, where we plan to live for the next year.

A year ago, would I have thought I’d be leaving my job and moving to a foreign country? No, I’m not that person. But it’s been great, and I feel like if we can do it, then it’s possible for other people to do it, too.

I thought I was going to lose my job

I worked at the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases satellite campus in Montana. My job was amazing. I did research with a phenomenal group of interesting and exciting people. However, morale had significantly decreased in my last eight months.

I was on a four-year contract, and after I filled out the paperwork for my renewal, my supervisors told me they were working hard on it. But everything was moving much slower and it was unclear whether they could renew many of us working on these contracts.

We started looking at where we could relocate as expats for a year

We started looking into relocating in February. We were debating between Costa Rica and Mexico, and settled on Mexico because we felt it was going to be a stronger cultural experience. We wanted somewhere with a friendly beach for kids where we could surf, and a bilingual school. We settled on a town called Sayulita.

In March, we spent a few days there during spring break, met the principal and teachers of a school we liked, and checked out the town.

My wife found a Sayulita housing Facebook page and looked on Airbnb for long-term rentals. She would find something on Facebook, message them, and then find them on Airbnb and message them there to make sure that it was the same person.

We looked at the cost of rent, school, transportation, and food, and added 25% to each cost because we would rather be under budget than over. I hadn’t heard back about my contract renewal yet, but we realized we could financially make it work.

Our passive income made it possible for us to take a break

We bought our first rental property and started flipping homes in 2021 to start building our passive income, and it allowed us to build up a bigger nest egg to afford this.

Right now, we’re renting out four properties while we’re gone. One has had a long-term renter, and one is an apartment building run by a property management company. We are also renting out our house and my wife’s commercial space for her physical therapy clinic.

I had two properties with a business partner that had to sell before we could afford to do this. Both went under contract and sold at basically the same time. It seemed like everything was falling into place.

My job was saved, but we realized life is too short and moved to Mexico

My father died in April, and nothing makes you think more about how short life is than that. A few days later, I found out my contract was renewed.

I was happy, but at the same time, we had looked into where to move, where to put the kids in school, and what we wanted to get out of a break. We decided to go anyway. It had been a really hard time in my life, and we could afford to take the year off.

For a couple of months, as my last day approached, I was unsure and a little sad, too. I worked in the same facility for a long time with really extraordinary and caring individuals, so it was challenging to leave them, but I’m looking forward to taking a deep breath and thinking about what life is about and what my purpose is.

We applied for temporary residency instead of going on tourist visas

Tourists have to leave after 180 days. We have three kids, so traveling anywhere is a challenge. Temporary residency allows us to stay for up to 10 years.

I recommend starting early. We emailed the Mexican consulate office in Phoenix and got our appointment scheduled about two and a half months before we were leaving.

Then I flew there at the beginning of August. We had an interview, and they gave a yes or no. I think my appointment took about 30 to 45 minutes. The process in Phoenix was fast and easy. Then, we got instructions for when we arrived in Mexico to go to the National Institute of Migration.

We hired a facilitator that we found on a Facebook page for that appointment since our conversational Spanish has a long way to go. The process was a little more complicated. We waited for a long time and were late picking our kids up from school that day because it took so long. It was all very stressful, but in the end, we got our status granted.

Taking a break and relocating made the world open up

I’m looking forward to watching my kids learn Spanish, experience a different culture, meet a variety of people, and live in a different way. Also spending more time with my wife and kids, slowing down, thinking about what I want next, and what matters most. Neither of us is working during our year here.

The biggest challenge has been mentally admitting I needed to take a break and not knowing what the future holds. Am I going to be able to come back and be a scientist, or am I going to do something else? But without sounding obnoxious, I’m a smart guy, and I can stitch DNA together; I can figure out a way to provide for my family. I will certainly contact my old boss and find out what the environment is like, but maybe I’ll try real estate full-time.

Before this move, my life felt like a snow globe that just got shaken up. I’m glad we’re deciding to have an adventure and see where it can lead.

Do you have a story to share about a career break? Contact this reporter, Agnes Applegate, at aapplegate@businessinsider.com.

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• For Love & Money is a column from Business Insider answering your relationship and money questions.
• This week, a reader struggles with whether to sell their apartment, in which their father lives.
• Our columnist recommends communicating transparently and focusing on their relationship with their father.
• Have a question for our columnist? Write to For Love & Money using this Google form.

Dear For Love & Money,

Around four years ago, I upgraded to a larger apartment. Upon his choosing and against my advice, my father sold his apartment. We agreed that he could move into my old one, and he has been paying the mortgage on it ever since.

Meanwhile, the loan amount increased, and to reduce the monthly payments, he gave me some money, which I used to pay down the debt. Nowadays, he pays around ⅓ of the market price for renting a similar apartment in the same area.

Now the apartment value has doubled, and I’m considering selling it and buying another similar one for him, just in a different area, no more than 10 kilometers from the current one. I’d then use the remaining amount to reduce my mortgage.

However, I have mixed feelings about this, as our relationship has never been open, and he lacks empathy. What should I do?

Sincerely,

Stay or Sell

Dear Stay or Sell,

From the sound of your letter, you have a sense of what would be best for you financially, but have mixed feelings about how to proceed. However, it’s unclear whether your mixed feelings stem from uncertainty over your father’s reaction to your proposed transition, or if you’re reconsidering the arrangement altogether due to his personality and your closed-off relationship.

Depending on the situation, your options sound like they’re to either buy a new apartment and allow your father to live in it while paying for the mortgage — keeping things as they presently stand — or to sell the apartment he’s currently living in and discontinue the arrangement altogether.

Let’s look at this last option first. You’ve mentioned not having the most open relationship with your father, and your emphasis on him getting a great financial deal makes me wonder if the money you’re missing out on is part of your concern. Discontinuing the arrangement with your father would solve these issues. If you choose this course of action, you’ll have two outcomes: You’ll need to make your own monthly payments, and you’ll essentially be putting your father on the street.

There already seems to be a strain between you and your father, but kicking him out of his home without an open conversation and an action plan for next steps would be something your relationship would likely never recover from. I say “his home” because while it’s your property, the apartment has been his home for the past four years. You mentioned that he sold his old place against your advice, and you could point to that as justification for taking his current home from him, but that was several years ago and has little bearing on the current circumstances.

This isn’t to say that selling your apartment and discontinuing your arrangement with your father isn’t an option. It is one you must handle carefully, however, if you hope to maintain your relationship. You’ll need to give your father plenty of notice and help him find a new place to stay. Have patience, be supportive, and take an active interest in maintaining your relationship, even without an apartment keeping you close.

However, perhaps it’s less about your dissatisfaction about the arrangement and more about how your father will feel about the change. If the alternative you have in mind is to buy a new place and continue allowing him to live there in exchange for the mortgage payment, your best option is complete transparency.

If your father’s empathetic limits will make him less receptive to an emotional plea, lead with the financial advantages of your plan. Even though you’ll be the primary beneficiary, as your father, he likely values your interests for your future. Beyond that, talk the whole thing over with him.

Remember that your father’s propensity toward cageyness is unlikely to change. But neither will the resentment you feel every time you get a Zillow notification reminding you how much of a goldmine you’re allowing him to sit on. If you don’t like how things feel right now, imagine the state of your emotions in a year.

Talk to him about your financial goals and your misgivings. Explain your feelings about continuing the arrangement, and give him clear objectives for assuaging your concerns. Ask him how he feels about things, which option seems the best to him, and whether he’d like to collaborate with you on making his preference more doable.

Despite all the uneasiness you described in your letter, the logistics of your arrangement seem mutually respected; he pays the mortgage on time, and you provide him with an affordable place to stay. Build on that respect.

You’ll work things out financially. Either you’ll help your father find a new place that doesn’t involve your assets, or you’ll continue your arrangement with a less expensive apartment and use the difference to lower your mortgage. But your relationship with your father won’t be as simple to solve.

You said that your “relationship has never been open.” Perhaps this is due to your father’s empathy issues, but the lack of communication between the two of you undoubtedly deserves part of the blame. The fact that you two have shared responsibility for a mortgage and spent the last four years working together shows the strength of your bond. So, start talking, and kick that closed door between you wide open. You might find yourself in a better position, not only financially, but as a family as well.

Rooting for you,

For Love & Money

Looking for advice on how your savings, debt, or another financial challenge is affecting your relationships? Write to For Love & Money using this Google form.

• Yulie Kwon Kim is VP of product at Google Workspace, and a former eBay and Facebook employee.
• Kim says she always considered this one question before making a career move.
• “I was always very much focused on ‘What do I want to learn next?'” she said. “Careers are really a long game.”

What factors do you weigh when mulling a job change? A better salary? Greater work-life balance? A fancier title or more direct reports?

Google’s Yulie Kwon Kim always had one other key consideration before making any job switches.

“Every change that I made was not about ‘what is the next big job?’, but ‘what is the next thing I want to learn?'” Kim told Business Insider. “It’s kind of funny because in many ways I have this big job, but I never was looking for how do I get a bigger role or a title.”

Today, Kim is the VP of Product at Google Workspace, the office-software suite that includes products like Gmail, Meet, Drive, Docs. She’s also previously worked at companies like eBay and Facebook.

Her tenure at eBay concluded in 2010, around the time of the mobile app boom in Silicon Valley. It was a period when VCs were investing heavily in apps like Uber and Airbnb and when everyone in tech wanted to learn about building mobile apps, she said. So, she decided to take a leap and follow suit.

Kim says, after a few years working at scrappy startups, she decided she wanted the chance to gain work experience a bigger company. “What I wanted to learn next as a product leader was: How do you build for very large-scale businesses and products? Because it’s a different muscle.”

That led her to product management at Facebook, and ultimately her current role at Google.

At the end of the day, “careers are really a long game,” she said. That means it’s important to not just take the opportunity that looks the most “shiny” or high-profile, said Kim.

“A lot of times careers are built on lateral moves,” said Kim. “Often the way that you grow is by gaining a lot of really rich experience and that arms you with more skills, more relationships, more things that help you in the long run.”

Focusing on learning is “probably more relevant than ever” today as AI transforms many industries, she added.

“That is probably the most powerful thing you can do for yourself, especially in this era where there’s so much change and new technology, and the pace of progress is so fast,” she said. “To keep up with it, you need to really be a learner.”