How To Retire Overseas

The Most Important Thing I've Learned In My Dozen Years As An American Abroad

Aug. 9, 2009
Panama City, Panama

PLUS: The Best Place In The World To Have Cosmetic Surgery...

AND: Panama's New Pro-business, Anti-corruption President Is Making Waves And Taking Action...

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Abundance Of Upside In The World's Top Overseas Haven

Panama is a little country in a very fortunate geographic position working hard to make sure the economic prosperity it has enjoyed this past decade continues into the next. With a new anti-corruption, pro-business president who is making waves and taking action and the Panama Canal Expansion Project fully under way, there's every reason to believe the good times will continue to roll down here at the Hub of the Americas.

The world's top retirement, investment, and offshore haven? That'd be Panama. Here's your passport to everything this beautiful country with two long coasts has to offer...

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Dear Overseas Opportunity Letter Reader,

Here is perhaps the most valuable thing I've learned in my past dozen years as an American abroad: You can't spreadsheet a new life in paradise.

Yes, as you consider your options, you want to review detailed budgets for the countries that interest you. You want to understand the local tax rates and the average temperatures by season. This is important information that certainly you want to reference as part of your research.

Then, though, you want to put all the research, thinking, and plotting aside and let your heart take over.

We met a longtime friend from Nicaragua, Jeff Cassell, for drinks last night. "People ask why I prefer Nicaragua over Costa Rica," he remarked. "There are quantifiable explanations, of course. The cost of living in Nicaragua is lower, for example. And Nicaragua has just put a new retiree program in place that's very competitive.

"But those aren't the reasons I recommend Nicaragua over its neighbor to the south to anyone who asks or why I chose to focus my time and attention in Nicaragua years ago, when I could as easily have based myself in Costa Rica. Nicaragua simply appealed to me more, for reasons that I have trouble explaining."

I knew exactly what Jeff meant. I visited Costa Rica for the first time about 25 years ago. I've returned probably 25 times since. Its Pacific coast is beautiful, as is its mountainous interior. Great surfing, great bird-watching, great boating, great fishing...Costa Rica has all these things. When I began spending time in this country, it was also very affordable and boasted the world's premier program of special benefits for foreign retirees.

Still, I didn't get it. I could list out the advantages and appeals of living in Costa Rica, but I couldn't make myself want to live there.

Then, a few years later, I traveled to Nicaragua. I knew within a few hours of wandering around colonial Granada that this was a place I wanted to return to. This was a place I could call home, for visiting it for the first time felt like coming home.

The two countries share many similarities, and Nicaragua has the specter of the Sandinistas hanging over it.

Still, it was Nicaragua, not Costa Rica, that captured my heart. I was completely infatuated by this little country with such a troubled past. And remain so. Every visit, I'm won over again. Everywhere I travel in Nicaragua, I find something that pleases me--the red tile roofs and blue and white church steeples of colonial Granada...the glass-still surface of crater lake Apoyo as it appears from the deck of my little house on the mountainside...the barefoot children playing and laughing in Granada's central plaza...the sounds of the horses' hoofs as they pull their carriages along Granada's cobblestoned streets...

These things can't be quantified. You can't plug "classic colonial architecture" into a formula in a spreadsheet.

But these are the things that matter.

How will you know where in the world you should think about spending your time and your money?

You'll just know.

Kathleen Peddicord

P.S. What else this week?

• Panama's new President Ricardo Martinelli is stepping up, taking action, and making a name for himself, not only regionally, but in the international arena, as well. Enjoying wide support among his countrymen, he's moving quick to pursue his pro-business, anti-corruption agendas...

• "We never imagined we'd be able to afford an island retreat, let alone one right on a secluded beach," says Judy Ahern. "The truth is, we'd never be able to afford this lifestyle back in the States..."

• Best place in the world to have cosmetic surgery, with prices less than one-fifth the costs in the United States. Return home from your vacation in paradise a whole new, much younger-looking you...and your friends need never know...

• "If Panama is so good and the #1 place in the world to retire, Kathleen, why are there so many empty condos in Panama that are not selling or renting?..."