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Home Lifestyle

How You Can Discover The Top Places To Retire In 2021

Extra! Extra! Get It Here First—Our 2021 Overseas Retirement Index Is Now Available

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
Dec 20, 2020
in Lifestyle, Retirement/Living
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Happy senior couple outside in spring nature, hugging at sunset.

iStock/Halfpoint

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Eventually, COVID-19 will be contained, and global markets and economies will recover.

But the experience of having lived through this challenging period will leave us with a reinforced and maybe a reinvented understanding of what matters most in life.

Considered from a post-crisis perspective, where in the world will offer the best options for repositioning yourself overseas?

Diversifying your lifestyle and your investment portfolio to embrace the many opportunities our world continues to offer is a more important agenda than it’s ever been. The way to make sure you’re prepared for whatever tomorrow brings is to expand where you spend your time and your money so you’re not at the mercy of any single government, economy, marketplace, or currency.

Imagine living in a place where you aren’t compelled to turn on the news the minute you roll out of bed because you have better things to do and because you’ve organized your life so that you’re able to ride out any storm safely and comfortably.

We have a moment now, while we sit on collective pause, to regroup on what we’d like our lives to look like and to connect the dots between our ideal lifestyle and the top choices for the best places to think about spending time and money overseas.

You may not want or be able to hop on a plane to explore these destinations in person today, but, again, our current circumstances are temporary. Where should you think about taking a firsthand look after the lockdowns have been lifted?

The answers are found in our 2021 Overseas Retirement Index… released this month.

This is the 12th such survey in our history.

Each year, we compile an Overseas Retirement Index, grading each of our favorite destinations to see how they stack up against one another in the categories we feel are most important for expats.

These include ease of residency and real estate purchase, quality of health care, English spoken and expat community, things to do, cost of living and affordability of real estate, infrastructure, taxes, environment, climate, and crime.

We are harsh graders, not holding punches when a place doesn’t make the cut, and we’re not willing to compromise on that front.

This year’s index is no exception and includes the detailed report cards and budgets that loyal readers have come to expect of this report each year.

Specifically, our 2021 Overseas Retirement Index identifies the “best ofs” for each hemisphere in five contexts:

1. Beaches and Islands

Beautiful beach.
iStock/IreneCorti

Places where the beach is easily accessed…

2. Cities

Plaza Botero square and downtown Medellin, Colombia.
iStock/R.M. Nunes

Places with a population of more than 1 million…

3. Historical Destinations

Budapest, Hungary.
iStock/ZoltanGabor

Places with more than 1,000 years of continuous settlement…

4. Mountains and Highlands

Da Laat, Vietnam.
iStock/HuyThoai

Places with little seasonal variation in temperature (it’s between 15°C to 30°C or 60°F to 85°F year-round) and/or places situated at 500 meters (1,640 feet) above sea level and higher…

5. Small Towns

Nadur town center with its church, Gozo, Malta.
iStock/Stephen Barnes

Places with a population less than 100,000.

Within each of these categories, we’ve picked the top options the world has to offer.

How The Grading Works

Having made those determinations, our team—led byOverseas Living LetterEditor Sophia Titley—sets to work to prepare report cards for each destination, giving each place grades in 13 categories that are the most important considerations for potential expats, including:

Cost Of Living

Personal expense calculation concept.
iStock/Nuthawut Somsuk

“How much money do I need to retire?” This is probably the most frequently asked question to our mailbag and from attendees at our conferences. But thinking about your retirement from this perspective is backwards. Here’s what we’d recommend, instead… Imagine your ideal lifestyle. Then look at the numbers in that context. Where will the budget you’ve got buy you the lifestyle you’re looking for? You can also think about your pension and other sources of income that will help you live day to day. Of course, there are places all over the world where you could live a better life than you do now—and at a very affordable price. But how you manage to do this successfully comes down to your own definition of a good lifestyle—and matching that with the right location. Our 2021 index is your guide.

Climate

Variety weather conditions.
iStock/Ig0rZh

What’s your perfect climate? Do you like a change in seasons? Would you love to never see snow again, basking in the sun of the tropics? Or would you prefer to live in a fresh mountain climate? Everyone’s idea of perfect weather is different, which makes it difficult to give a location a grade for its climate. So we don’t try. Instead, we offer you our handy chart for guidance.

Health Care

Nurse doing blood pressure monitoring for senior woman.
iStock/dragana991

In some places around the world, it is possible to arrange good, comprehensive health insurance for less than US$100 per month. In some countries, the cost of medical care can be so low that it can make more sense to pay for it as you need it rather than insuring against it. And, under certain circumstances, health care can even be free. Have misgivings about getting treatment outside of the United States, period? You shouldn’t. The United States is only 37th in the WHO’s ranking of health care— and several of our recommended havens for this Index are in the top 25.

Entertainment

Overhead view of busy museum interior with visitors.
iStock/monkeybusinessimages

How do you picture spending your time in retirement overseas? Do you crave museums and café culture…? Taking dance classes or doing yoga on the beach…? Would you feel lost without a weekly trip to the movies or to the opera every now and then? In this Entertainment section, we’re looking at things like museums, opera, theater, classes (university courses, dance, art, etc.), festivals and fairs, historical sites, restaurants, shopping, lectures, libraries, and movie theaters.

Recreation

Senior Couple climbing hill on hike.
iStock/monkeybusinessimages

Is your idea of keeping busy more outdoorsy? For many, retirement is a long-awaited chance to escape the confines of the indoors. Imagine having the time and the freedom to wake up and take a long hike and a fitness class on the beach every morning… spend the afternoon catching some fresh fish and grilling them up for dinner… biking to and from the local market to shop every day… It sounds idyllic, but it’s a perfectly realistic lifestyle for many who have found their perfect overseas haven. In Recreation, we’re talking about natural amenities and things that keep you outdoors. Hiking, biking, swimming and water sports, rock climbing, boating, fishing, golfing, birding, dolphin and whale watching, and horse riding are all included in the grade for this section.

English Spoken

English word on wooden background.
iStock/Svitlana Unuchko

One of the biggest challenges of retiring overseas can be overcoming a potential language barrier. Simple tasks such as applying for a driver license or buying groceries become much more difficult and already stressful objectives like buying property or negotiating with a bank manager can be overwhelming. It’s possible to live in an English bubble in pretty much every destination on this list—Netflix and gated communities make this easy in much of today’s world—but, presumably, you are looking to move overseas to experience something new in life. Your life will be richer, more rewarding, and more enjoyable (and significantly less stressful) on a practical level if you feel comfortable communicating in the local language. That said, we understand that everyone wants something different out of their move overseas and maybe a new language isn’t on your list. If that’s the case, consider places where people speak English, including two important ones in our 2021 Overseas Retirement Index.

Sincerely,
Kathleen Peddicord
Kathleen Peddicord
Founding Publisher,Overseas Opportunity Letter

Tags: 'best places to retire''how to retire overseas''retirement''where to retire'live overseasmove overseasOverseas Retirement IndexRetire in 2021retire overseas
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Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.

Her newest book, "How to Retire Overseas: Everything You Need to Know to Live Well (for Less) Abroad," published by Penguin Random House, is the culmination of decades of personal experience living and investing around the world.

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