14 Steps To Finding The Retire Overseas Paradise With Your Name On It
Sept. 8, 2010, Panama City, Panama: How can you choose among the many good retire-overseas options? Here's a checklist, 14 points for comparing and contrasting every potential retirement paradise on your list.
How To Retire Part-Time In Paradise--Kathleen's latest posting on U.S. News & World Report's "On Retirement" blog. Read it here now!
Dear Live and Invest Overseas Reader,
Economies collapse and then recover...values--of real estate, of stocks--fall and then rise again...financial meltdowns come and go...
When the living becomes intolerably difficult in one place...move to another!
I'm not being flippant. I'm giving you the secret to realizing the retirement of your dreams, current global troubles notwithstanding.
The first move is the hardest, I understand. You need help. And you need options. We're here to deliver both.
Let's start with this: The situation is far less desperate than you may fear. You do not have to resign yourself to reducing your standard of living during this important phase of your life. You do not have to plan for two or three decades of scraping by and making do.
But you've already figured this out. By signing on as a reader of these daily dispatches, you've opened your mind to the possibilities. You've allowed yourself to begin to think outside the box and beyond your own borders. As you read this, because you're reading this, you are launching a new phase of your life...maybe the best phase.
For, in places like Leon, Nicaragua...Montevideo, Uruguay...and Languedoc, France, the concerns and struggles in the States and elsewhere about the cost of living, the cost of housing, and the cost of health care seem far away. These and the many other beautiful, safe, sometimes sunny, and often super-affordable places I introduce you to in these dispatches offer alternatives, viable, appealing options if you're at or nearing retirement age and trying to figure out how in the world you're going to make it.
Where could your explorations and considerations lead you? This is where things get interesting.
Panama or Uruguay? Argentina or Mexico? Croatia or Malaysia? Nicaragua or Ireland? France or Belize? The sunny coast of Spain...or maybe the sandy beaches of the Dominican Republic? The good choices are many.
As are the considerations necessary to making your decision. Once your interest has been piqued by colorful descriptions of the shorelines and the mountainscapes...once your attention has been grabbed by anecdotes about just how sweet the local living can be...then the real work begins.
To choose the retirement haven that makes most sense for you, you need current and complete details on everything from foreign residency requirements to how to open a local bank account...from how much to expect to spend on groceries each week to how to get a telephone line installed.
Specifically, here's a checklist, 14 points for comparing and contrasting every potential retirement paradise on your list:
- The cost of living...including a fully detailed budget of monthly expenses you'd incur...
- The cost of real estate (for both sales and rentals)...and reliable advice on how to navigate the local purchase process...
- The climate...which can vary greatly from one region of a country to another...
- The standard of in-country medical care and local options for health insurance...
- The infrastructure...how reliable is the electricity and the Internet...
- Accessibility to your home country...could you return home quick if you wanted to...
- The language...would you have to learn a new one...
- Culture, recreation, and entertainment options...how would you spend your Friday nights...what would you do on a Sunday afternoon...
- Taxes...what local ones would you be liable for...
- Special benefits for foreign residents...are there any...how would you qualify...
- Options for establishing foreign residency...what's required to qualify...
- Safety...perhaps most important if you're a single woman making the move on your own...
- Already-established expatriate communities...you may see them as a plus or a minus (maybe you want gringo neighbors or you don't)...either way, you want to understand the level to which they exist or don't...
- The Third World Factor...also known as the Manana Factor...also known as the Hassle Factor...
Most of the countries I recommend to you day by day qualify as "developing," but some are more Third World than others. What's your tolerance for Third World living? Mine has fallen considerably over time, and I know that now I couldn't make it in a truly Third World country like Ecuador.
As I said, this is where the real work begins. Here's the good news. You don't have to do it. We're already carrying it out on your behalf. We're researching and reporting on every one of these important issues for the world's top retirement havens in each issue of our Overseas Retirement Letter. Full details here.
Kathleen Peddicord
P.S. I also address these issues and many others for each of the 14 countries I feature in my "How To Retire Overseas" book, published by Penguin earlier this year and available in bookstores throughout the United States and also here.
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Kathleen Peddicord
Kathleen Peddicord is the founder of the Live and Invest Overseas publishing group. With more than 25 years experience covering this beat, Kathleen reports daily on current opportunities for living, retiring, and investing overseas in her free e-letter.
Her book, How To Retire Overseas—Everything You Need To Know To Live Well Abroad For Less, was recently released by Penguin Books.
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