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    Super Cheap

    • Chitré, Panama
    • Santa Marta, Colombia
    • Phuket, Thailand
    • Dumaguete, The Philippines

    Cheap

    • Medellin, Colombia
    • Boquete, Panama
    • Kyrenia, Cyprus
    • Hua Hin, Thailand
    • The Algarve, Portugal

    Affordable

    • Valencia, Spain
    • Cascais, Portugal
    • Las Terrenas, The DR
    • Pisa, Italy
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    • Mazatlán, Mexico

    Luxury

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    • Kotor, Montenegro
    • The Panama City Beaches
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  • Home
  • Countries

    Top Destinations:

    Whether you’re looking for fun and sun, a peaceful retirement, or the chance to earn some extra income, you’ve got a real world of opportunity open to you… In short, we’ve done our best to narrow down your best options, but only you can decide the right country for you.

    • Spain
    • Portugal
    • Panama
    • Belize
    • Colombia
    • Cyprus
    • Mexico
    • France
    • Montenegro
    • Browse All Countries

    Best For:

    • The Best Places To Retire
    • Health Care Abroad
    • Cost Of Living
    • Investing in Real Estate
    • Establishing Residency
    • Gun Laws In The World
    • English-Speaking Countries
    • Safest Places For Retirement
    • Best Places In Latin America
  • Budgets

    How Much Will It Cost You To Live Overseas?

    The only honest answer is, we have no idea. And neither does anyone else. The only one who can answer that question is you. Here’s the most important thing to understand about budgeting your new life overseas…

    Super Cheap

    • Chitré, Panama
    • Santa Marta, Colombia
    • Phuket, Thailand
    • Dumaguete, The Philippines

    Cheap

    • Medellin, Colombia
    • Boquete, Panama
    • Kyrenia, Cyprus
    • Hua Hin, Thailand
    • The Algarve, Portugal

    Affordable

    • Valencia, Spain
    • Cascais, Portugal
    • Las Terrenas, The DR
    • Pisa, Italy
    • La Rochelle, France
    • Mazatlán, Mexico

    Luxury

    • Ambergris Caye, Belize
    • Kotor, Montenegro
    • The Panama City Beaches
    • Paris, France
  • Resources

    Global Living

    • Living & Retiring Overseas
    • Raising A Family Abroad
    • Foreign Residency & Citizenship
    • Offshore & Diversification

    Making Money

    • International Real Estate
    • Banking
    • Employment
    • Investing

    Follow Us:

    • Meet Our Experts
  • Real Estate

    Buying Real Estate For Cashflow

    • Discover tips and strategies used by global property investing veterans

    Explore Our Latest Posts

    • Learn how to invest and purchase property abroad…

    Go To The Overseas Property Alert Site

    • How To Become Independently Wealthy And Fund The Lifestyle Of Your Dreams
  • Conferences

    Upcoming Events

    • Explore Our Events Site

    Live and Invest In Spain Conference

    Offshore Wealth Summit

    Argentina Workshop

    VALENCIA, SPAIN

    Sep. 17-19, 2025

    PANAMA CITY, PANAMA

    Oct. 15-17, 2025

    VIRTUAL

    Nov. 13, 2025

    Learn More About This Event
    Learn More About This Event
    PRE-REGISTER
    Learn More About This Event
    PRE-REGISTER
    • MORE EVENTS

    Contact Our Events Team

    Toll-Free U.S. and Canada:
    1 (888) 627 8834
    From Outside North America:
    1 (443) 599 1221
    Working Hours
    Monday – Friday 08:00 am – 17:00 pm EST.

    Reach us with your questions by email at: events@liveandinvestoverseas.com

  • Store

    Unlock The World

    • Access Your Library

    Overseas Havens Reports

    • Expats' comprehensive destination guides

    Conference Kits

    • Hours of coverage  from our latests conferences

    Lahardan Books

    • Titles on living and investing around the world
    • Explore Our Store
    Your passport to a life well-lived abroad

    Services

    overseas living letter offers affordable retirement guidance
    The Simon Letter Wealth Protection Insights
    Global Property Advisor Global Investment Opportunities

    Our Customer Service team is here to assist with any questions or concerns CustomerService@LiveandInvestOverseas.com

  • My Library
Live and Invest Overseas
 Free Panama Guide

LIVE AND INVEST IN PANAMA

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Home Lifestyle

8 Reasons I Don’t Like Panama

by Kathleen Peddicord
Oct 13, 2024
in Lifestyle
0 0
Aerial view of Avenida Balboa, a main road in Panama City. retire in Panama

Adobe Stock/Rodrigo

I’ve been recommending people spend time and money in Panama for more than 25 years.

That recommendation has been based, from the start, on my personal experiences.

I visited the country for the first time in 1998… and made my first property investment here (a vintage building in Casco Viejo called Casa Ramon that Lief and I renovated into three apartments and space for our office) in 2000.

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Lief and I went on to purchase a condo on Avenida Balboa… and a commercial building in El Cangrejo.

Today we own riverfront, land planted with teak, and 300 acres on the Veraguas coast called Los Islotes. Here we’ve built a family home and have master planned a private beachfront community. It’s a legacy undertaking that Lief and I will spend the rest of our lives turning from vision into reality.

We lived in Panama full-time for a dozen years… based the Live And Invest Overseas business here… raised our son here… and now call the country our part-time home.

All that to say, Lief and I are all in on Panama.

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But no place is perfect. Some things about Panama drive me crazy.

For example…

The Rain

After six months away, we’re returning to Panama next week… just in time for the climax of what is euphemistically referred to as the green season.

Indeed, this time of year Panama’s landscape is as lush as the Emerald Isle… thanks to all the rain.

December through March in this country are clear and dry. April through July, brief showers punctuate every afternoon. By August, the rain falls hard and heavy… and come October, rivers break their banks and the streets of Panama City flood daily.

Here are my top tips for navigating high rainy season in Panama…

  • Never leave home without an umbrella. Don’t be fooled by a clear morning sky…
  • Don’t wear expensive shoes. They won’t survive a height of the rainy season cloudburst. This time of year, rain-proof footwear is your friend…
  • Panama City isn’t super walkable under the best of circumstances (more on this in a moment), but, when the skies open, nobody walks anywhere. Expect even greater than usual traffic delays.

This leads to the next item on my list of things I don’t like about Panama…

The Drivers

When we moved full-time to Panama in 2008, we bought two cars—one for Lief and one for me. A year later, I told Lief to sell mine. Twelve months on the mean streets of Panama City were enough for me.

A few years ago, the country began requiring a test before issuing a driver’s license. Before that, you simply asked for a license and got one. No training necessary.

Your fellow drivers on the road, therefore, didn’t use turn signals because, I figure, they didn’t know they were supposed to. They didn’t stop at Stop signs or even, often, at red lights. They turned right from the far left lane across three lanes of traffic, again without signaling. They drove on the shoulder, across the median, on the sidewalks. They ran into each other all the time.

Despite the new requirements that would-be drivers take a class and pass a test, little has changed. The difference is that there are significantly more vehicles on the road than in 2008.

The country’s exploding middle class means more people can afford a car. The streets, meantime, remain as narrow, the parking as limited. Traffic jams are epic.

I have no tips for navigating the streets of Panama City from behind the wheel of a car. If you dare to try, good luck.

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The Sidewalks

My favorite daily pastime is walking. In Paris, I break up my day with walks to the bakery, the wine shop, or the bank, and, as often as possible, I sneak off for a wander along the river.

In Panama City, I avoid walking altogether. The city has made an effort in recent years to expand the areas with sidewalks. Still, much of the city lacks them. Where you find them, they’re uneven and cracked.

Manholes lack covers. Electrical wires hang low. Enormous tree roots interrupt the way. Etc.

Fortunately, Uber is cheap.

The Manana Attitude

It’s cliché, but cliches become cliches for a reason.

Nobody in Panama is in a hurry to do anything… except cut you off in traffic, but we’ve already covered that.

Over the two-and-a-half decades I’ve spent time in this country, my attitude toward their attitude toward life and business has cycled. I’ve sometimes found it charming. Other times I’ve had to walk away from encounters because I feared if I didn’t I might start shouting or maybe even punching.

When a banker we’re meeting with for a fourth time tells us to go away and come back with yet another document he’d failed to mention in any of the previous three meetings only that fifth meeting can’t be scheduled for a month because the banker is going on vacation, I start to lose my cool. Rum helps.

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It’s Always Summer

This is a con and a pro. Summertime is great… but I also enjoy spring, autumn, and even, briefly, winter. We balance constant summer in Panama with four seasons in Paris.

The Sun Sets At The Same Time Every Day

The day grows dark by 6:30 p.m. all year long. I enjoy the consistency until I don’t.

Litter

Litter is perhaps the toughest thing for me to handle about day-to-day life in Panama. It’s everywhere… on the sidewalks of Panama City and along highways across the country.

The country is beginning to make an effort to help people understand the negative impacts of such disregard for their environment. It will take another generation, though, at least, before real change is affected.

Poverty

As anywhere in the developing world, the have-nots are very present across Panama. This can be hard to take day to day.

The best response is to make an effort to give back. You bring valuable experience, skills, and talents with you from your old life to your new one in Panama. Find a way to put them to good use.Until next time,

Kathleen Peddicord signature

Kathleen Peddicord

Founding Publisher, Overseas Opportunity Letter

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Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has reported on opportunities for Americans to live, retire, and do business overseas for 40 years. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 24, established businesses in 7, renovated and built properties in 6, and educated her children in 5.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets from the east coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland, then to Paris, France, and finally to Panama City, Panama, where she has based her Live And Invest Overseas business. Peddicord and her husband, Lief Simon, now divide their time between Panama and Paris.

Peddicord was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. She opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Waterford, Ireland; Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France. Peddicord launched Live And Invest Overseas group in 2008 and has built it into a successful multimillion-dollar business. Today, she shares her firsthand experience of expat life with more than 500,000 readers of her publications, including Overseas Opportunity Letter and Overseas Living Letter.

Kathleen has been featured often in The New York Times, MSNBC, AARP, CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, and more and writes monthly about expat matters, international real estate, and offshore diversification for Forbes and U.S. News.

Kathleen has written several books including the memoirs “At Home In Ireland” and “At Home At Los Islotes” and her latest title “At Home Abroad,” all published by Lahardan Books. Her best-selling "How To Retire Overseas: Everything You Need To Know To Live Well (For Less) Abroad” was published by Penguin Random House in 2018 and her “Buying Real Estate Overseas For Cash Flow (And A Better Life)” was published by Wiley in August 2020.

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Budgets

How Much Will It Cost
To Live Overseas?

Super Cheap

  • Chitré, Panama
  • Santa Marta, Colombia
  • Phuket, Thailand
  • Dumaguete, The Philippines

Cheap

  • Medellin, Colombia
  • Boquete, Panama
  • Kyrenia, Cyprus
  • Hua Hin, Thailand
  • The Algarve, Portugal

Affordable

  • Valencia, Spain
  • Cascais, Portugal
  • Las Terrenas, The DR
  • Pisa, Italy
  • La Rochelle, France
  • Mazatlán, Mexico

Luxury

  • Ambergris Caye, Belize
  • Kotor, Montenegro
  • The Panama City Beaches
  • Paris, France

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Learn More About This Event

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Learn More About This Event
PRE-REGISTER

Argentina Workshop

VIRTUAL Nov. 13, 2025
Learn More About This Event
PRE-REGISTER
MORE EVENTS

Contact Our Events Team:

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From Outside North America:
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Working Hours
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Reach us with your questions by email at: events@liveandinvestoverseas.com

Store

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Conference Kits

  • Hours of coverage  from our latests conferences

Lahardan Books

  • Titles on living and investing around the world

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