The Bougie Expats
Welcome to The Bougie Expat Podcast, a show for Black women over 40 who are ready to imagine a different kind of life abroad.
Hosted by Sable, your bougie girlfriend, this podcast speaks to the woman who has spent years showing up for everyone else — family, friends, work, and responsibilities — and is now asking, “What do I want my next season to look like?”
Through honest conversations and lived experience, Sable shares what it really takes to relocate abroad with clarity, confidence, and intention. Having lived and worked in more than seven countries across four continents, she brings real insight into the emotional, financial, and practical side of building a life overseas.
Each episode will cover topics like relocating abroad, planning your money, managing fear, leaving behind familiar routines, building a clear vision, and creating a life where you are thriving instead of simply getting by.
If you have been quietly thinking about moving abroad, starting fresh, or choosing yourself in this next chapter, this podcast is for you.
Subscribe to The Bougie Expat Podcast and join Sable for conversations about freedom, relocation, reinvention, and living abroad with purpose.
The Bougie Expats
Ep 18: Turn Your Home Into Your Expat Paycheck
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Before you put a "For Sale" sign in your front yard to fund your move abroad, stop and watch this first. One of the biggest financial missteps established women make when relocating internationally is selling off the primary asset that could actually fund and sustain their new lifestyle overseas.
What if your home didn't have to be something you left behind, but instead became your monthly expat paycheck?
In this episode of The Bougie Expat Podcast, Sable shares why she chose to hold on to her home when relocating to Panama, transforming it into a cash-flowing mid-term rental rather than liquidating an appreciating asset for temporary peace of mind. She reveals how retaining property in the U.S. can generate recurring income, continue building long-term wealth, and provide a secure foundation for international freedom.
This conversation goes beyond simple property management. Sable breaks down the exact mindset shift required to turn your real estate into a passive income machine, why she chose mid-term rentals over short-term vacation rentals, and the essential systems that make long-distance property management seamless and stress-free.
Moving abroad shouldn't mean walking away from the assets you have spent decades building. It’s about leveraging what you already own to design a life of ease, peace, and abundance where your money works for you—no matter where in the world you choose to live.
This episode is for Black women over 40 who want to use relocation as a strategic tool for wealth creation, keep their financial options open, and turn their existing home into their greatest source of freedom abroad.
In This Episode
- Why selling your primary residence isn't always the smartest financial move
- How to transform your home into a reliable, income-producing expat asset
- Why Sable chose mid-term rentals over traditional short-term Airbnb hosting
- Managing a U.S. property efficiently while living full-time in Panama
- The exact systems and team needed to make long-distance ownership possible
- Shift your mindset: Wealth is about creating options, not just cutting expenses
- Key financial questions to answer before deciding to sell, rent, or hold
- Protecting and leveraging the wealth you've built as you transition overseas
Where are you on your relocation journey? Take the free Bougie Relocation Readiness Assessment to identify your relocation profile, uncover your main roadblocks, and gain clarity on your next steps.
Ready for personalized support? Book an Elevated Exit Call with Sable to map out your custom transition strategy.
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If this episode spoke to you, subscribe to the podcast and share it with another Black woman over 40 who has been thinking about relocating abroad, retiring overseas, or designing a new chapter with more freedom, peace, and intention.
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Don't just give it away, just so easily. And I want you to think about that. You are about to move into a new chapter of your life that has so many possibilities. Wouldn't you want the finances to be there to fund it? She's done waiting. She's done shrinking. And she's done building empires in rooms that were never designed for her. This is the Bougie Expat, the podcast for black women over 40 who are ready to reinvent their lives, rebuild their income, and relocate with intention. If you're done settling in corporate, tired of environments that no longer feel aligned, or quietly planning your next move, you are in the right place. Hosted by Sable, live from Panama City, Panama. Seven countries, four continents, one move she made in five months flat. Income strategies, exit plans, a life designed to actually fit you without starting over broke. Let's get into it. One of the biggest mistakes I see women making when they're moving abroad is selling the very asset that could fund their freedom. The very thing that could give them financial stability, that can upgrade their lifestyle, that could give them peace, is the thing that they sell, that they get rid of, that they dump. And I'm talking about your home, your house. And so for me, I still own my house, but it's just not sitting there with getting cobwebs all over it while I'm here. That house is paying for part of my life that I get to enjoy here. It's part of my financial freedom by having this home there. And I'm not just talking about um, oh, that I'm a landlord. I'm talking about I have options. But I didn't just come up with this idea because I was moving to Panama. So before that, I was an international consultant. And so I was going from country to country and I was staying in corporate housing. In doing that, I started to learn about what it felt like to live somewhere for a short-term or midterm that really wasn't your home, but it was the place that you had to come to every single day. And what it felt like when it was sterile and cold, and what it felt like when it was warm and welcoming, and the difference it made to my own psyche of being in that country alone and being in that country where perhaps I had to go to work and be productive and be really brilliant, and having a place to come back that felt absolutely good. So I took all of that experience and I wanted to use it to start my own real estate portfolio and how I was going to use my home. And that's exactly what I did during the pandemic. Um, right before the pandemic, I don't know if I just had perfect timing, but I opened up my home to midterm and short-term rentals, and since then it has been flourishing. It I probably would say in that time I maybe had maybe one or two weeks of when it was not actually full, and that's because maybe I was doing renovations. But I want to say to you that providing housing like that for me is not just a transaction, it's about me making someone's life better as they are moving through this next transition in their life, and it could be anywhere from is a temporary housing as they are moving to a new job, it could be the fact that they're fixing up their home, it could be that their home was destroyed in a fire, and so therefore they have to be here for a little while. Whatever it is, it gives me great joy that I can provide a comfortable place for them. So I don't feel like I'm a landlord, I feel like I'm like this hospitality host or something, and I love doing that. But I want to say this I didn't build another job for myself, I gave myself an asset that is actually paying for itself. I have had that home for several years, and I'm telling you, I have never on my own had to pay the mortgage. So just think about that. Having an asset that someone else is paying for you to grow, it is growing. You know, homes appreciate. And as you're appreciating, someone else is making the deposit, unlike you know, investment counts, it's our money that goes in there and then it grows. Someone else's money is going in there and you're watching it grow. So I just want to think about that. I want you to ask yourself a different question. People keep asking, should I sell my house? Should I rent my house? I want you to ask, how can my house serve me in this next chapter? How can my house be beneficial to me in this new life that I'm creating for myself? How does this home fit into my financial future, into my income strategy? That's the question I want you to ask yourself. Because assets can serve you if we let them. My home serves me in four different ways. It's income, yes, that's the most obvious. It's a rental income, it serves me, and therefore it helps to pay not for every single thing, but I'm telling you, it pays for a big chunk of my life. And so for that, it gives me a lot of financial peace. And then it also allows me to build wealth because I have this asset that is continuously growing. That's another way, and that's huge. So think about it. And five, ten years from now, how much could your home appreciate? How much more could your house be worth? And look, let's be honest, the market right now is not friendly for sellers. And so this is not even a buyer's market. This is not 2020 where people were competing and fighting and giving you $20,000, $30,000 more than what your house is worth. You are now on the other side of the table of the negotiating table. So think about how this asset could look so totally different for you. And I get to be a hospitality host. I love creating beautiful places for people to land in. I love going to all the stores and buying more furnishings, and I love to hear the comments and the feedback, how people talk about how they enjoyed my space, how my space had fed them, how my space really gave them such a great place to be during this transition in their life. That fills my soul. But you know, also, it gives me choices. It gives me choices how I want to use that home. I can use it in so many different ways. And even when I go back, I can use that as a place to stay. When I visit, right? I can block off the weeks that when I'm gonna be in the US and block it off and not make it available. And so, therefore, I don't have to worry about staying with family or friends. I can stay in my own home and enjoy the same experience that I'm giving to everyone else. So I want you to think about this. I want you to think about your home in a totally different perspective. I want you to think about it as a wealth builder. It's a play, a way that you could build wealth. Now I know I've heard it, I've heard it, I've heard it. I don't want to be a landlord. I don't want to try to manage a property from abroad. When I leave, I want to forget about everything in the U.S. I know you may want to forget about everything in the U.S. I am here to tell you, you will not, you will not, you will not. Your passport is still blue, so you won't. But I want you to think about how you could use that asset and still be free from it, right? So just think about it. I don't want phones ringing off your the hook every day worrying you about it, but you can get a great property manager, you can put a great repair team in place, have trusted vendors, and have a system on how this place is operating. There are so many platforms now that are out there for free and pay that you can put your home on and it can be automated. So people are not going to be bugging you on the phone, sending you texts in the middle of the night. There are so many different things that you can do. These property managers are out there, some of them are even guaranteeing your rent. So I'm just saying there are options where you can still enjoy and have your best life and still build wealth. I'm all about you building wealth, but I want you to also think about it. How many emergencies have you really had in that home in the last three years? How many roofs have fallen, caven in, how many of your plumbing has blown up, how many furnaces, how many, I mean, honestly, you know your home. You know the aging of your home, you know how well you've maintained your home. And so with that, you also know that perhaps, depending on how the age of your house is, how much you had to invest to get it to run smoothly, and you know how many emergencies you've had. Now, I've had a couple of emergencies since I've been here, right? Just yesterday they told me the AC broke down. Well, you know what? I have something in place to take care of that. I'm definitely not flying back home. I'm not an HVAC person, but I have something in place of people who are going to go there and fix it. How much time did that take for me? Did it steal my peace? No, it sure didn't. But what it did, I'm still gonna get my check. So I want you to think about that. I want you to think about how you can delegate some of the responsibilities that would you feel that would be a distraction to you. I want you to think about how ownership is a long-term opportunity. Don't just give it away just so easily. And I want you to think about that. You are about to move into a new chapter of your life that has so many possibilities. Wouldn't you want the finances to be there to fund it? Something that's growing. Inflation is growing. You want your finances to grow as well, you want your assets to grow as well. And we all know pensions and social security is not enough to give you the bougie lifestyle. And I know you want it. So think about how you can hold on to the very thing that you have to build the very life that you want. I'm not telling everybody to keep your house, it is not for everybody. Everybody's house is not going to produce the kind of income that they need. So I'm not telling them that. But I don't want you to be afraid to hold on to it. I don't want you to think that the only way that you can fund your life abroad is by selling it. There's so many different things that you can do, there's so many different ways that you can experience freedom. My house doesn't tie me to the United States where I have to run back and constantly check on it, but it does allow me to have the freedom that I chose to have. So for you, whether you create a house, whether you um sell your house or keep your house, I want you to have a clear way of deciding what to do. I want to hear what you decide, and I want you to tell me why you decided to do what you're doing. Whatever way you do, this decision is yours. I'm Sable, your bougie girlfriend. I'm here to help you live an elevated life abroad. But whatever you do, the final decision is absolutely yours. That's a wrap. And if this episode resonated with you, go ahead and follow the podcast and share it with another woman who's ready for her next chapter. And if you're ready to move beyond thinking and start building your exit strategy, I invite you to join me inside my live experience, the Elevated Exit Masterclass. You'll find the link in the show notes. Until next time, make your next move a bougie one.