Why Retire Overseas

A Tale Of Two Retirees

May 9, 2010, Azuero Sunset Coast, Panama: Two British professionals retired overseas early and haven't looked back since.

Dear Overseas Opportunity Letter Reader, 

Friends David Stubbs and Lucy Culpepper retired overseas early and haven't looked back since... 

"I retired to Costa Rica in 2004," explains David, "at the age of 48. I was late. My goal from my teenage years was to be in a position to retire by the age of 35. As I approached that milestone, I was having too much fun to quit. Even at 40, I was not ready, but, by 45, I knew my time in the workforce was up. It took me a couple of years to extricate myself from corporate life, after 21 years with Hewlett-Packard.

"I am not a typical retiree either," continues Lucy, "for I have not retired at all. But I have traveled extensively and have lived away from home (also the UK) for many years. 

"When I was 23, I left the United Kingdom to work and travel in South America. I did return home but had caught the bug. For the next seven years, I traveled and worked all over the world, including in India, Iceland, Kenya, Borneo, and the United States.

"In 1995 I moved from the UK to the U.S. to work as editor of a triathlon magazine in California. There I met my man, an Irish American. His idea of an exciting move was away from the United States to Europe, so I packed up again and spent two years in the UK with him. 

"After two miserable wet summers, we looked for 'a place in the sun' not far from my family. We literally got out a map of Europe, but, no, we didn't throw a dart. We searched for a place with a California-like climate and good cheap flight connections to the UK. 

"Spain!

"My husband resigned from his sales engineering career and re-trained to become a business coach. I stopped editing to have a baby.

"After one year in southern Spain, we moved north to Catalonia, to a town near Barcelona. A far better option for launching our new business, a coaching/training school (in Spanish). We spent the next six years building and developing the business and our family (baby number two was born in Barcelona).

"In 2007, we sold our business and decided that it was a good time to go traveling with the children (ages 6 and 10). We took them out of school, sold everything, and set off for a grand tour of Mexico, Panama, and Costa Rica. 

"Our intention was to move permanently to one of those countries, but that didn't work out. For family reasons, we had to leave the region sooner than we had planned, and, after a two-month stay in the United States, we returned to Europe. Again, our choice of country was determined by climate and family, but this time family had the upper hand.

"We are now in southern France, within a few hours of my parents but on the Atlantic side where it's green and fresh. Not very Californian but very beautiful.

"The pros for me of living overseas are the challenge of dealing with new languages, learning about new cultures, raising multi-lingual, open-minded children, and always being surprised by the new. 

"The cons...having to deal with new cultures when not fluent in the local language, overcoming bureaucracy and endless paperwork, not having the support of an immediate family, and leaving behind close friends.

"Despite the cons, I doubt that I will ever return to the UK. Life away from there for me has been so much richer and more fulfilling.

"My parents are what you might describe as 'classic overseas retirees.' They are both British and made the decision in their early 70s to leave the UK. They were tired of the 'yob' culture and felt France was the place for them. They have embraced their new life with great bravado." 

Kathleen Peddicord 

Editor's Note: Lucy will join us for our Live & Invest in France Conference in Paris July 22-23 to delight and entertain attendees with further tales of her travels and her current adventures in southern France. She'll offer lots of practical, how-to advice, too. Full details of the program we've put together are here.

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P.S. What else this week?

• Here's perhaps the most important thing to understand about France: It can be a far more affordable place to spend time than you might imagine. 
  
  Paris is the best place on earth to seek out a luxury lifestyle on a budget. Whatever your idea of the high life, you can find it in the City of Light, and the best part about this city is that some of the best it has to offer comes free. 
  
  Life's sweetest pleasures are here for the taking. Picnics in the Luxembourg Gardens, long walks along the Seine, afternoons lost among the cobblestones of the Latin Quarter. These things cost not a sous. 
  
  Look beyond Paris, and France becomes yet more affordable, for this country hides country and coastal towns where the cost of living can qualify as budget...

• Panama is an extreme example of why thin-slicing your live and retire overseas options is important. 
  
  First, there's Panama City, which isn't one good choice but at least a half-dozen, including El Cangrejo, Paitilla, Costa del Este, the banking center, and Casco Viejo. These are markedly different options for city living. 
  
  Beyond Panama City, the options are beach, both Pacific and Caribbean, and mountain...

• Clear turquoise waters lapping gently against soft white sand. Palm trees rustling in the warm breeze. Fishing boats bobbing on the horizon. Birdsong and island tunes all around... 
  
  Ambergris Caye, Belize, is unadulterated, unpretentious Caribbean...the sea, sand, and sunshine of the Caymans or the Virgin Islands without the price tag. 
  
  Life on Ambergris is relaxed and friendly, carefree and sunny. Adopt this island as your home, and you'd enjoy most all services and comforts of home. And you'd certainly never want for like-minded company. 
  
  That's one face of Belize. Back on the mainland, life is very different. 
  
  Mainland Belize can be broken down into four zones: Belize City; the northern coast around Corozal; the southern coast around Placencia; and the interior Cayo. 
  
  Forget Belize City. This isn't a place you'd want to live. The city has a reputation for being poor, dirty, and unsafe...and that reputation isn't for nothing...

• Croatia is my other top pick (alongside France) for spending time in Europe. This is a country of impossibly beautiful blue-green waters that, unfortunately, is better known for its tumultuous history. The fighting, though, in this part of the world is nearly two decades in the past, and the cultured, educated people of Croatia have been working hard ever since to rebuild their 1,000-year-old country.How would I thin-slice this enchanting land?...

PLUS: From Global Real Estate Investing Guru Lief Simon: A developer friend is launching a new project in Belize. 

I've written about early-in investment opportunities with this project once before, when the developer, Phil Hahn, made his initial Founder's Guild package offer earlier this year. 

Phil sold the three packages he had available within 24 hours of my alert. That's how compelling the offer was. What Phil has put together for this next round of early-in opportunity is no less interesting. 

These additional Founder's Guild packages that Phil is making available now come with the potential to return 24% annualized over three years. Before I go into further details of the investment opportunity, however, let's regroup on the developer and the development...

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