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    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
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  • 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
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    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

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    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
  • 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

THE BEST PLACES TO RETIRE IN 2025

The Best Places To Retire In 2025 Report

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Home Lifestyle

How Moving Overseas Looks Better Than Ever

sunset on the beach

Adobe Stock/poco_bw

Move overseas and you join a distinguished clan.

Think Marco Polo, Rousseau, Einstein, Hemmingway, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the Dalai Lama…

Think businessmen, colonial administrators, agricultural workers, missionaries, mercenaries, pirates…

 


Think retirees.

Today I’d like to share a personal review of expat retirement over the past 70 years or so.

Not to spoil the story, but I conclude, and I think you’ll agree, that overseas retirement looks better today than ever.

These days, expats move easily and seamlessly to Panama, Ecuador, and Belize… to Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam… to Portugal, France, and Ireland.

Large numbers of Americans and Canadians first began retiring abroad in the 1950s. Most went to Mexico, most often to San Miguel de Allende and Ajijic/Chapala.

These folks were pioneers.

Friends Paul and Vicki Terhorst, called the “George and Martha Washington of retiring overseas” by SmartMoney magazine, got to know some of those pioneers.

Those old-timers, often in their late 80s by the time Paul and Vicki met them, remembered a Mexico where no one spoke English. English-language newspapers and magazines showed up in the mail weeks and months after publication. Only governments and big businesses had phones. Moving money from one country to another was a big deal and required a major effort.

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Perhaps as a result of those challenges, expats in Ajijic/Chapala, for example, tended to hang out together at the café on the lake. Every afternoon at cocktail hour the bar would fill up. Later in the evening others arrived for dinner, music, dancing, maybe a show. They received mail at the café, and, by the 1970s, those who recently returned from the United States, brought movies on VHS.

Many of those pioneers in the 1950s and ’60s built modest houses, often on large, landscaped grounds in or near the city. Some of those compounds were later donated to churches, charities, and the American Society.

My friends Paul and Vicki became expats in 1981, not in Mexico, but in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Argentina had introduced color television three years before, as part of hosting the soccer World Cup. The four television stations offered programming in Spanish, never any other languages. In all Buenos Aires, an urban conglomerate of maybe 10 million people in those days, you could make international phone calls in only one tiny office downtown.

People waited in line for hours, even days, for access to one of the few international lines. Private, direct-dial phones had recently been introduced in downtown businesses, but, if you could get one at all, it cost you upwards of US$20,000. Fewer than 5% of Argentines had bank accounts, and cashing a check required about the same effort as getting gold out of Fort Knox.

Paul and Vicki and other expats in Buenos Aires in those days got their English-language news from the Buenos Aires Herald, still published today, and via shortwave, usually the BBC.

During the 1982 war between Argentina and Britain over the Falkland Islands (Argentina calls them the Malvinas Islands), Paul and Vicki hosted a cocktail party every day after work at their Recoleta apartment.

They and their fellow expat friends would listen to the day’s war news on BBC shortwave. Argentina broadcast the war news, too, on Argentine TV. But local censors delayed the news for so long that the Argentine TV reports were out of date.

By this time, international air travel was well established. By the time Paul and Vicki retired in 1984, Ronald Reagan had deregulated airlines in the United States. Unfortunately for the airlines, that was about the last time anyone made any money in that industry. Paul, Vicki, and the rest of the American expat community, on the other hand, now were able to travel more often and enjoyed lower fares.

Paul and Vicki eventually became PTs, perpetual travelers, along with a handful of other expats, moving from place to place from time to time.

Along with lower airfares, a second game changer in those days was the introduction of money market accounts and the debit cards (now called cash cards or ATM cards) that went with them. With a money market account, savers could get 15% interest on cash savings, instead of the old 3% or so when the Fed capped deposit interest rates.

Debit cards meant expats and retirees overseas could travel without traveler’s cheques and without large amounts of cash.

At first, they had to go into banks to get money, slapping down the debit card and passport to get the local currency they were after. Later, with the introduction of ATMs, they could access their cash even more efficiently.

Then came the biggest game changer of all—personal computers and the internet.

With the internet, a few years later, came email, Skype telephone calls, online airplane tickets, online bank accounts, internet hotel reservations, and online tax return filing.

 

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Suddenly communication was so much easier.

Paul Terhorst tells a story about when his father died in California in 1992. At that time, he and Vicki were running around Thailand.

To notify Paul, his brother in Los Angeles called a nearby friend who had traveled with Paul and Vicki in Thailand. The friend said that, if in fact Paul and Vicki were in Bangkok (they were, as it turned out), they would probably be at such-and-such hotel. Paul’s brother called the hotel but couldn’t understand anyone there. So he jumped in his car, drove to a Thai restaurant nearby, and asked if the cook spoke Thai. The cook did. Paul’s brother arranged for the cook to make the call for him and eventually got Paul on the line.

What a thing.

Today, Paul’s brother would simply send an email. Or he’d call, using Skype or a cell phone. What in 1992 required luck, persistence, and a Thai cook, these days takes only a click.

We expats and retirees overseas have come a long way since the cozy, café society of Ajijic in the 1950s.

We may miss some of the community camaraderie. I imagine it was great fun to wander down to the café and see friends every evening.

Then again we can see friends today, too, anywhere in the world.

And for sure we can be in touch much more easily, with all cyberspace at our disposal.

Lief and I divide our time between Paris and Panama. In Panama, we live sometimes in Panama City and much of the time at Los Islotes on the country’s remote Veraguas coast.

We travel regularly beyond those points. Next month we’ll be in New York then Nova Scotia. This summer we’ll return to Colombia and Nicaragua. In the fall, we’ll reposition to the Old World, where we plan time in Ireland and Croatia.

All the while we’re running two businesses (Live And Invest Overseas and Los Islotes) and staying in daily contact with our son in Manhattan and our daughter and her family in Paris.

Both business partners and our dearest friends are far-flung. But no one’s ever more than a WhatsApp away.

What a world.

How fortunate we are—every one of us—to call it home.

Until next time,

 

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord
Founding Publisher, Overseas Opportunity Letter

 

Tags: expat abroadmove overseas
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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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Top Countries

  • Spain
  • Portugal
  • Panama
  • Belize
  • Colombia
  • Cyprus
  • Mexico
  • France
  • Montenegro

Best For:

  • Health Care Abroad
  • Retirement Living
  • Cost Of Living
  • Investing in Real Estate
  • Establishing Residency
  • Gun Ownership
  • English Speakers
  • Safety
BROWSE ALL COUNTRIES

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

Resources

Global Living

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

Making Money

  • International Real Estate
  • Banking
  • Employment
  • Investing
Meet Our Experts

Real Estate

Overseas Property Alert 

 

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

VISIT SITE

Buying Real Estate For Cashflow

 

Discover tips and strategies used by global property investing veterans

READ MORE

Explore Our Latest Posts

 

Learn how to invest and purchase property abroad…

EXPLORE

Conferences

Live and Invest In Spain Conference

VALENCIA, SPAIN Sep. 17-19, 2025
Learn More About This Event

Offshore Wealth Summit

PANAMA CITY, PANAMA Oct. 15-17, 2025
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:

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

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

Services

  • Overseas Living Letter: Affordable Retirement Guidance
  • The Simon Letter: Wealth Protection Insights
  • Global Property Advisor: Global Investment Opportunitites
VISIT OUR STORE

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THE 10 BEST PLACES TO RETIRE IN 2025

FREE REPORT: The 10 Best Places To retire in 2025

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