The World’s Best Value Seaside Retirement?
Friend Bill Bonner wrote last week to say he’s on his way to Buenos Aires “to grow cabbages.”
“That’s just a figure of speech,” he explained. “Back in 305, Emperor Diocletian showed how smart he was. He gave his Roman Empire to a group of successors and resigned. He left Rome for his house on the Dalmatian Coast, where he grew cabbages.
“I’m not really ready to resign, but I thought I ought to check on the cabbages…just in case.”
Where might you think about growing cabbages of your own? Here are top options right now…for escape…for starting over…for realizing the retirement you’ve been dreaming of your entire life, current world and market events notwithstanding:
1. The best-value seaside retirement in the world: La Barra, Uruguay. In the inaugural issue of our just-launched Overseas Retirement Letter, hot off the virtual presses, Correspondent Christian MacDonald files a comprehensive report on retirement living in what he has identified as the top choice in the Americas and one of the top choices in the world for seaside retirement on a budget.
You’re likely getting your retirement advice from many sources right now. But I guarantee you: You’re not getting retirement advice like we’re delivering in the Overseas Retirement Letter anyplace else. As Retirement Planning Guru Paul Terhorst explains, when it comes to how and where to retire, there’s no shortage of “average advice.”
“By all means,” he continues, “get your average retirement advice from Yahoo and Fidelity. But for the full and firsthand specifics of planning your retirement abroad, you need to look beyond average resources. You need to stay tuned right here.”
2. Tax-free living in an English-speaking paradise in the Caribbean: Belize. Ten years ago, this country enacted legislation to allow Qualified Retired Persons (QRP’s) to obtain permanent residency in this country. In many ways, this program is the most efficient route to foreign residency anywhere in the world…and it carries with it two big-time benefits:
First, as a QRP, you enjoy a permanent exemption from Belize taxes, including income tax, capital gains tax, estate tax, and import tax on household goods, automobiles, boast, even airplanes.
Plus, if you are a U.S. citizen, this Belize QRP program is an opportunity to qualify as non-resident in the States for tax purposes. You could spend a few months a year in the U.S…maybe winter in Central or South America…then do a little traveling in Europe or Asia…remembering to spare a couple of weeks from your globetrotting to visit Belize…
In the process, you could create a zero-tax situation for yourself…to go along with your new life in the sunny, sandy Caribbean.
3. India. Yes, India. Perpetually traveling correspondent Paul Terhorst is hot on the trail of the other India. He’s looking beyond the crowds, the dirt, the noise, the rickety buses, the delays, the detours, the ever-present hucksters, the hawkers, the peddlers, the movies, the music, and beyond the festivals… He’s running around India, not as a tourist, but to check out this country as a place to live.
4. Nicaragua, where you could:
- Retire to the most romantic city in the Americas, colonial Granada, where Jay Snyder and his wife have built a small and private collection of lock-’em-and-leave-’em condos just like you’d build for yourself. The attention to detail is extraordinary, and the end product is special. And affordable.
- Take advantage of the best beachfront buy in the “New Retirement Paradise” (as Forbes is calling Nicaragua this month). Market events, global and local, have conspired to create a limited and irresistible opportunity on this country’s beautiful Pacific coast for Live and Invest Overseas readers only.
Kathleen Peddicord
