Moving to Panama With Kids: What I'd Do Again After 4 Years

It's our 4-year Panamaversary, and here's the honest version of what we got right and wrong moving our family here.

It's our 4-year Panamaversary. Four years ago, at the end of the pandemic and after a particularly hard winter, I turned to my husband and said: let's go.

To my surprise, he agreed easily. He isn't Panamanian. He didn't speak the language. But the idea of living abroad had been sitting with us for years, we just hadn't known where. Panama was where I was born. It was already home to me.

I left Panama when I was three, to Canada, as my mom pursued a better life in North America. And a better life we got. We were educated. We had our careers. I got married there. I had my children there. But something after the pandemic felt hollow. It felt like we needed to change.

After every pregnancy, we'd spent three to six months back in Panama, taking advantage of our long Canadian maternity leave, and each time it planted the idea a little deeper. By the time our third child came and the pandemic was ending, the door was already halfway open: my husband could get citizenship easily through our marriage and our three kids, a lot of the comforts we were used to in North America existed here too, and we already had a family support network waiting for us.

We told ourselves and everyone else we were only going for a year. But in our heart of hearts, I think we knew we weren't coming back to Canada.

So we planned it that way. We didn't quit our jobs, we went on leave. We kept the car. We left just enough in place that if we truly had to go back, we could. But we made the decision to stay hard on purpose, because we wanted to actually give it a real shot, not have an easy exit waiting the moment things got difficult.

That's the part nobody tells you about a move like this. It's not the paperwork or the packing that's hard. It's deciding how badly you want it to work, and then building your whole plan around that answer.

At the Pearson International Airport, getting ready to move to Panama

Four years later, here's what that answer actually taught me.

What I'd Do Again Moving to Panama

Put the kids in a Spanish-immersion school. We did this from day one and it worked. Within the first year they were building the language and building community through it. I would not be scared of immersing them.

Use the move to purge your old life. We spent 5-6 months before we moved really meditating on what we actually needed to bring with us. We had decided early that we were going to rent furnished, so we sold everything besides the essentials and used it as an opportunity to purge.

Rent furnished. Don't bring your furniture, and don't buy new furniture when you get here. Just rent furnished and save yourself the headache. You can use family photos and decorations to make it your home. But we found that renting furnished has given us freedom and flexibility over our first few years.

Treat the first year like a pilot. There was something liberating about saying our first year was a test run. It allowed us to settle on the need-to-haves first, and spend the year defining the nice-to-haves throughout.

What I Wouldn't Do When Relocating to Panama

Invest in a business or property in year one. We bought a fonda, a small restaurant, and it took a lot out of our family in time and finances. We sold it and didn't lose much, but it pulled us away from what we actually came here for. Get to know a place before you put your money into it. If you're working through the immigration side of things, our trusted legal partners can walk you through what's actually required before you commit to anything.

Arrive without a plan for year two and beyond. We had the savings and income to cover our first year. But once that year mark hit and we had to actually decide-

leave stops, jobs, everything- we didn't really have a plan after. It's meant real financial instability, and some of the tension that comes with immigration in general. Have a plan for what remote work looks like before you need one. If you want a starting point for the numbers, our budget calculator breaks down real monthly costs for a family our size.

Wait to learn Spanish. If you don't already speak it, prioritize learning before you arrive, not after. Being the only Spanish speaker in our home for years, doing all the translating myself, was harder than it needed to be, and putting it off made it that much harder for my husband to actually start. You can get by with English, but learning Spanish builds community and culture a lot faster.

Four Years Later

We're not the same family that landed here four years ago. Each of us struggled with something different, and each of us gained something different too. The kids picked up a new language and a new culture, almost without noticing. Bernard and I worked through real uncertainty, and found more freedom and joy on the other side of it than we expected.

If you're thinking about a move like this, the fear makes sense. There's a long list of what ifs. But the one worth sitting with is: what if it works. What if you get to build family and home differently than you thought you could. What if you make friends and find a community you don't have yet.

For us, staying where we were started to feel riskier than leaving. Maybe you're feeling the same way too. A little planning and the willingness to actually go got us here. What feels impossible from where you're standing is closer than you think.

www.casitastropical.com

Join our Facebook Community!