Dec. 30, 2009
Chicago, Illinois
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- Three Important Things To Know About Establishing Foreign Residency...
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Dear Live and Invest Overseas Reader,
"When is the right time for you to retire and move abroad?" asks Retirement Planning Correspondent Paul Terhorst.
"Right now.
"Okay, I don't know you personally, but I know some things about you. You've likely traveled overseas, and you've got good reasons for thinking you'd like to relocate beyond your own borders. You've likely even already created a short list of places where you think you might want to spend time.
"So what are you waiting for? I figure you should go for it, sooner rather than later. Why? Because odds are, your retirement will work out fine. In the past 25 years, I've heard from literally hundreds of people who've moved overseas, many in their 40s and 50s. I wrote 'Cashing In on the American Dream: How to Retire at 35,' a hard-cover business bestseller in 1988. I got hundreds of letters then and still get e-mails today. I hear the stories, the investments, the choices these people made.
"With only a few exceptions, those who retired even very early retired successfully. Only one couple I know and a single man said they had to go back to work because they invested unwisely. The money ran out. When they did go back to work, the couple quickly made the money they needed. They re-retired after just a few years. The single man decided to live on Social Security in a cheap country (Uruguay). In two other cases, people told me they went back to work because they missed the job.
"But for the vast majority of us, our relocation overseas plans work out fine, no matter when we choose to settle. We just have to step up to the decision, make the move, and start enjoying our new lives.
"Things might seem bad in the States right now, with uncertainty over the economy, concern, even outrage over Obamacare, and heightened worry over the 'terrorist threat.' But we've all been through tough and uncertain times before.
"Think about the poor guy who retired in 2001, only to see the twin towers blow up, the tech bubble burst, and the stock market collapse. Or the poor guy who retired when Jimmy Carter was president, with out-of-control inflation. Yet those 'poor guys' have done well; retirees and others I know who've relocated overseas have sailed through both boom and bust.
"I figure overseas 'retirees' generally sail through better than most. Living overseas makes you resourceful and builds self-confidence. You've been around more, dealt with more, and moved more. Once installed overseas, you can more easily buy foreign real estate, trade foreign currencies, and take advantage of local opportunities.
"You'll most likely get a lot of peer pressure, from friends and family, bosses and employees, urging you to stay on. I didn't have that peer pressure because I retired in Argentina where I had been working for KPMG in the Buenos Aires office. When I told my secretary I was going to retire she said, 'Oh, Paul, that's just right for you.' When I asked her what made her so certain, she said, 'You're on a different bus. You're not like the other guys around here.'
"I was kind of surprised but encouraged. If I were on the wrong bus, maybe making a life overseas would put me on the right one.
"And maybe it will put you on the right bus, too. Welcome aboard."
Kathleen Peddicord
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"Kathleen, I enjoy reading your dispatches from Panama, although I've not yet taken the plunge and actually bought anything. Now I see you are writing from Chicago. Rats! That's where I live, downtown, on the beach. Except that I've left town with my wife to spend the holidays in our weekend home atop a sand dune on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Only someone who 'needs' to live on the water would have two homes on Lake Michigan. So I will chalk this up as a near miss. Maybe we'll connect next time you're in town.
"Keep doing what you're doing. Your passion shows, and your enthusiasm is catching."
-- Patrick D., United States
"I did a search and found that what I have been reading from you is not as you represent it to be.
"For example, I have been to Colombia a couple of times. They limit the amount of time you can stay there. So an extended stay beyond five or six months is not possible.
"I noticed when I went to many of the other countries you mention and researched that the same applies. You cannot go for a year. If you want to live in another country, you have to return to the United States half the year. That makes no sense to me. Yet many of your ads recommend retiring and staying permanently in the countries you write about. From what I can see, it is very difficult, and you have to do this back and forth for several years before you could even apply for a citizenship there."
-- Dennis L., United States
First, you're confusing
citizenship with
residency. One has nothing to do with the other. "Residency" is the right to be physically present for a particular amount of time (to "reside") in a country. Being a resident of a country does not make you a citizen of that country, and, indeed, it is not possible to become a citizen of most countries short of extraordinary circumstances. The requirements for obtaining citizenship as a foreign national in a country that makes that an option vary dramatically and can be financial as well as to do with how much time you've spent within that country's borders.
Next, your idea that it is possible to reside only up to six months in any given country before having to return to your home country is also confused. Perhaps you're looking at tourist visa information. Yes, a tourist can't stay on anywhere indefinitely (typically, a tourist visa limits your stay to 90 or maybe as many as 180 days with extensions). However, a legal foreign resident can reside in a country for as long as his residency status allows--that is, in some cases, for the rest of his life, if that's what he'd like to do.
It is possible, in fact, to obtain residency as a foreigner for most countries we recommend in these dispatches, and we point out the exceptions. It's difficult, for example, to obtain full-time residency as a foreigner in Croatia, so we recommend that country for part-time retirement, which allows you to avoid the issue altogether.
However, it's important to note that choosing to spend only part of each year in a particular country (Croatia, for example) does not mean you must return to the United States for the rest of the year. On this point, again, dear reader, you are confused. You could choose to spend six months in Croatia and six months in Mexico...or four months each in Argentina, Thailand, and France...etc. In fact, returning to the States for an extended stay each year would be especially difficult if you were, say, a U.K. national, as Brits are eligible for only 90-day tourist visas in that country.
All the particulars related to establishing foreign residency in our top havens are detailed in full in our "
Next Step Kit--How To Realize Your Dreams Of A New Life Overseas,"
available here.
