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  • 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

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    • International Real Estate
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    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

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    • Explore Our Events Site

    Live and Invest In Spain Conference

    Offshore Wealth Summit

    Greece Workshop

    VALENCIA, SPAIN

    Sep. 17-19, 2025

    PANAMA CITY, PANAMA

    Oct. 15-17, 2025

    VIRTUAL

    Nov. 13, 2025

    LEARN MORE
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    LEARN MORE
    PRE-REGISTER
    LEARN MORE
    PRE-REGISTER
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    Toll-Free U.S. and Canada:
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    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

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Home Countries Mexico

How To Find Your Ideal Retire Overseas Destination

From Budapest To Amsterdam To Guanajuato... Third Time's A Charm

by Louisa Rogers
Jul 31, 2024
in Mexico, Retirement/Living
0 0
Street alley in Guanajuato Mexico. expat life Ideal Retire Overseas Destination

AdobeStock/Emmanuel

As a reader of Live and Invest Overseas, you probably have dreams of living in another country, as I did for much of my adult life…

Based on my experience, it may take more than one try to land on your ideal destination.

My husband Barry and I considered two beautiful, iconic cities before finding our home in a third country…

We’ve lived in Northern California for most of our married life, but both of us have always daydreamed about a base in Europe. Originally British, Barry has a great fondness for the Continent.

As for me, my family had lived in Hungary during the heady 1950s when my diplomat father was assigned to Budapest. During our stay there, the short-lived, dramatic Hungarian Revolution bleakly transformed the country’s future. This had a huge emotional impact on my parents, which filtered down to their children.

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Our First Try: Budapest

budapest hungary view from the air
iStock/ZoltanGabor

In 2003, after helping to downsize my mother-in-law’s home in England, I decided to visit a friend living in Budapest. Barry and I didn’t plan to move there, but I hoped to find professional contacts who would hire me to lead management and leadership trainings three or four times a year.

After spending 10 days networking and attending business functions, I generated several encouraging results: the Budapest Business Journal decided to publish my business column; I was invited to be a guest speaker at the monthly “Budapest Power Lunch”; and the Central European University, a broker to companies requesting trainings, agreed to refer me when they needed an English-speaking trainer.

On the flight home, I ordered champagne to celebrate. But by the time I got back to California, the fantasy had already begun to fade. It’s a long commute, after all, from a rural town on the misty Northern California coast to Eastern Europe.

As the weeks passed, my inertia increased, and the fantasy gradually drifted away into the coastal fog…

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Our Second Try: Amsterdam

Bikes on the bridge in Amsterdam, Netherlands
Alamy/devi

Our next international daydream was Amsterdam, the fabled city we hoped would be our base in Europe. Barry and I house-sat for friends on vacation during the month of May.

Springtime… the perfect season, right?

May turned out to be wet and piercingly cold, much less forgiving than January in California. The first several days we huddled together on our friends’ sofa, wrapped in blankets, drinking tea, and watching “The Office.”

I had pictured myself cycling to client appointments along the city’s storied canals. While I did ride my bicycle along those canals, it wasn’t quite how I envisioned…

The Dutch are alarmingly fast on their bikes and stop for no one. I once watched a woman in a business suit speeding down the bike lane, balancing two small kids and a grocery bag, while chatting away blithely on her cell.

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Even though I’m a lifelong cyclist, I was intimidated. And maybe for good reason… One morning as I rode my friend’s bike, I collided with a two-year-old waddling across the bike lane, scaring the kid, her mom, and me all at once. Happily no serious injuries (or subsequent lawsuits) occurred.

While in Amsterdam, I attended professional events and made a few connections, but it turned out there were a lot of other people just like me—English-language wannabees from places like Britain, Australia, South Africa, and Canada who also wanted to set up coaching and business consulting practices.

The meetings didn’t happen that often anyway, especially not during “cucumber season” (summer). “Wait until the fall,” I was told. But I’m an American. I didn’t want to wait! I wanted results right away.

Not only was I impatient, I was lonely. The Dutch, we found out, weren’t that different from Americans, in some ways… busy, goal-oriented, focused. And they didn’t seem very easy to get to know.

At first, I thought it might be because we were American, but I met a Danish woman who’d had the same experience. Pieter, our Dutch friend, explained that most people in the Netherlands stay within the same circle of friends from childhood.

The final straw was experiencing firsthand the bike thefts that are common in Amsterdam. When the second bike I had bought was stolen, I thought: enough!

I didn’t have the patience to wait around for possible business contracts that might not materialize anyway, let alone buy a third bike. And Barry was much more interested in a smaller town, with easier access to nature.

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Our Third Try: Guanajuato, Mexico

Magical Town Guanajuato.
Alamy/AI NISHINO

Throughout these adventures in Europe, we already knew of Guanajuato, a UNESCO World Heritage city in the colonial highlands of Mexico, but had never considered it because we were set on the fantasy of Europe.

But in 2005, we were invited to house-sit in Guanajuato, our first visit in four years, and we were newly entranced by the beauty and charm of the city. While house-sitting, we met several expats who regaled us with their stories of buying and remodeling homes.

Suddenly it made sense.

Guanajuato was not only much nearer to California, it was also closer to many of our family members—and considerably less expensive than a base in much of Europe. We both spoke manageable Spanish. As for the weather… need I say more?

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The year after we bought our home, I saw an announcement in the local newspaper about a conference for human resource professionals at the University of Guanajuato. HR people tend to be the folks who hire me, so I showed up to make connections.

As it turned out, I met a professor who was looking for someone to teach his class on leadership while he was away for two weeks. So my business fantasy came true, just not exactly as I had pictured it.

All these years later, we haven’t returned to either Budapest or Amsterdam. But the time we spent in each city was by no means wasted. It helped us to crystallize what we wanted, and more importantly, perhaps, where.

If you’re like us—wondering which country or community among different international destinations to choose—my takeaway is that it might take one or two tries before you find your perfect base.

Don’t give up. As the saying goes, “third time’s a charm.”

Louisa Rogers
Contributor, Overseas Living Letter

Tags: BudapestChoose A Country To Move ToexpatsGuanajuatoHungaryLive abroadlive overseasMexico'Move abroadmove overseas
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Louisa Rogers

Louisa Rogers

Louisa Rogers grew up living in Hungary, Argentina, Ecuador, and Pakistan. The daughter of a diplomat, she considers the Washington, D.C. suburbs her most difficult "posting." Today, she and her husband divide their lives between Eureka, CA, and Guanajuato, Mexico. Louisa writes articles and essays on travel, expat life, physical and psychological wellness, spirituality, and the arts. When not writing, she enjoys watercolor and her inflatable paddleboard.

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Super Cheap

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Cheap

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