What if the country where you’d like to retire uses a currency other than the U.S. dollar?
That is, how big a worry is currency risk when retiring overseas?
Concern over currency exchange fluctuations can be valid. A retiree living in a foreign country on a fixed income could see his local spending power eroded by a depreciating U.S. dollar. You should be aware of this concern, but you shouldn’t let it keep you from making a move to a country where you want to live. You can mitigate currency risk.
One strategy to protect yourself would be to buy a place of your own to live in the country where you want to be, paying in full up front, when you make the move or even in advance of a planned move, to take advantage of a favorable rate of exchange.
Home Ownership
Housing cost—a mortgage or rent—is generally the single biggest expense in any budget. If you own your own home (house, apartment, what have you), you eliminate the risk of unfavorable currency fluctuations for that part of your monthly expenses.
Taking this approach, you could buy your retirement home in Portugal (our 2020 pick for the best place in the world to retire), for example, today, while the U.S. dollar is still relatively strong versus the euro. Do this, and you’re locking in your housing cost at today’s historically favorable exchange rate. A 200,000-euro condo on the beach in the Algarve would cost you around US$240,000 at the current rate of exchange (plus closing costs).
Housing covered, your monthly expenses are insulated against negative currency fluctuations. Any currency moving against you would affect only your day-to-day living costs, costs you can control at least to some extent.
The dollar could continue strong against the euro for another 12 to 24 months or longer. On one hand, this means it could be better to wait to buy in Europe. On the other hand, while you’re waiting, property prices could appreciate (as they did in Portugal this year during the pandemic, for example).
With a European pied-à-terre of your own, you know what your retirement housing cost will be today, tomorrow, and forever—zero. If the euro continues to depreciate, great. Your day-to-day costs of living continue to depreciate. When the euro turns up against the dollar again (or disappears altogether, leaving you with a new currency to contend with), you could likely ride things out. Over the course of a 20-plus-year retirement, you should expect to experience a slow roller coaster of exchange rates.
Local Currency
Here’s another strategy for reducing your currency risk in retirement—invest locally to earn income in the same currency as your expenses. This could be as simple as buying a local CD or more complicated—buying a rental property, for example, or starting a small business. Whatever you do to earn local currency, don’t move all of your assets to your new country. Hedge things by keeping some of your investments in your home currency… or in another currency in addition to your new one.
A colleague who lived in Uruguay while the U.S. dollar-Uruguayan peso exchange rate was favorable did well on his monthly pension. When the U.S. dollar fell versus the Uruguayan peso, he used local peso income from CDs he had bought to pay local expenses. Having the local investments allowed him to supplement his pension check when he needed to.
Perpetual Travel
Here’s one more option for hedging your pension check against currency fluctuations: Don’t put down permanent roots anywhere. Rent your residence wherever you decide to live, then pack up and head to a lower-cost-of-living country that appeals when the local currency turns against you.
This kind of perpetual traveling can be done short- or long-term. You could make that move to Portugal today and stick around until the euro gets too expensive for you (if that happens again in our lifetime). Then you could shift your retirement to another country with a more attractive exchange rate.
The bottom line is that you can take steps to take control of your cost of living in another currency. Don’t let exchange rate fears keep you from acting on opportunities for spending time, retiring, or taking investment positions overseas.
Sincerely,
Kathleen Peddicord
Founding Publisher, Overseas Opportunity Letter
