Best Country to Retire To

[Retch The Grate]

I’ve been to enough countries to know the good ol’ USA is the best place to live. We love Pennsylvania as home, visits to the Jersey Shore and winters in Florida,

Yeah, if I ever had to leave the Bay Area due to cost of living not working out, I'd strongly look at selling our house here and buying in Pittsburgh. I've still got high school friends there, and the city is relatively affordable, pretty fun, and reasonable travel distance to friends and family on the east coast and europe.

 

[Retch The Grate]

We have made our money and are now figuring out how to occupy our available time. I had enough of the US and chose to live in Thailand. It is just the next phase in my life. I still visit the US but I no longer want to live there.

My uncle retired to Thailand from England and loved it (though he had spent lots of time there during his career so it wasn't a culture shock to go to), it's pretty high on my list for international locations since we have so many family friends in Bangkok now (my parents essentially provided a home away from home for holidays and whatnot for several of our Thai friends kids while they were going to college in Boston and that carries lots of cultural value).

 

[Retch The Grate]

Yes I totally agree with you. If I was really poor I’d move to Wichita Kansas as it’s a big city that’s really cheap. I have lived there twice and still have family there. My 45 year old small condo in Reno is worth more than my relative’s much younger, bigger, nicer house. Gas and groceries are also much cheaper. I’m sure there’s many places like this.

Yup, plenty of nice cities in the middle of the country that have reasonable amenities and are very affordable for housing, can definitely turn west/east coast housing into much bigger places by selling and moving. I'd absolutely look into building a giant party barn/workshop for instance if I moved to the midwest and had the room. You give up amenities and the culture you are surrounded by changes obviously, but you get benefits for that too.

 

[oiseux]

snip
But smaller towns and cities in France have been no issues and we've managed on basic French language skills. We stay in the communities as gated expat communities are not our thing.

end snip

Are "gated expat communities" a thing in France? I know they exist in SEA and Latin America. I know there are gated estates but I don't feel like they are exclusively expat.

I agree that a choice of moving overseas or even anywhere in the US is a personal choice and depends on many factors. Everyone's perspective, needs, wants and desires are different, and that's great.

I have to say, though, that the world is a big place and the amount of terrific things you can see or do or experience (and yes, even fish) doesn't start and end in the US. But that is also a travel oriented comment, not where someone decides to lay down their hat.

In fact, that was one of our criteria when searching -- a well connected airport and a location that was not too remote as a launching pad to really explore another side of the world.

 

[Trailwalker]

I could retire to many countries that I've visited in my travels. The problem is there is no best one for us, so I'm likely to continue using the U.S. as the home base.

 

[Luvtoride]

My answer is USA, but that's not very adventuresome.

Exactly my thoughts without reading the article or most of the posts.

 

[Koolau]

I have several fond memories of this site back when I was a lurker (I didn't own a computer, so I clandestinely checked in from my w*rk computer.) I was fascinated by several poster's adventures around the world and thought often of expat life. The other issue that struck me was that in that time frame (ca 2002 or 2003) was how inexpensively one could live in some of these "exotic" places. I also read several blogs that were sited here on FIRE Forums back in those days.

I did not realize that I was FI back then. It took some time on this site to realize I didn't actually need to look for a "cheap" place to live. My original idea to live in Hawaii finally made financial sense and I dropped the idea of expat life. But I've never forgotten the joy of living vicariously through other expat's adventures. Thanks to all the expats for your stories and adventures.

 

[F.I.R.E User]

Americans love to say this. However, this is a thread about countries to retire to. Financially secure foreigners are not clamoring to retire in the US. Plenty of desperately poor people are trying to come to the US. Plenty of people that want to get a top notch education, start a good job/career, and make good money and save for retirement want to come to the US. But once retired, the US is nothing special for retirees. There are many other retirement destinations that are attractive for Americans to retire to. Sadly, there is a cohort of Americans, with limited income, for which the US is just way too expensive to live a good life.

USA is a big place. It’s not about all the big cities. LCOL is out there especially in the South.

 

[EdL3]

In retirement, where to live is determined largely by how much money you have, then what you want for a place.

For me, no single place is good enough. If I had 10 times of the money that I have, I would live in many places once in a few months.

Same here!

 

[bada bing]

I'm not moving out of the USA, but part of the reason is that I can leave for 3-6 months at a time. If I was the prototypical, retired on $2000/month, without much of a nest egg, single divorced guy, I would almost certainly relocate to Panama, Columbia or Thailand.

A lot of the desire for going ex-pat is from just that segment; Retired divorced guys on a fixed income. I almost fit that description myself. My take is that a bigger percentage here on ER is married than the general population, and we skew higher in finances. I think if an attempt is made to walk a mile in someone else's shoes, the draw of going ex-pat might be more obvious.

 

[brett]

We have always traveled.

We started retirement with seven months on the road...Europe, Africa, Central America.

Since then it has been 2 months of independent travel twice per year. All over. Anything from a home stay in the Mekong Delta to six star resorts.

Travel and where one chooses to live has little to do, IMHO, with the beauty or your own country or how patriotic one feels.

It is about the urge to travel, or relocate, and experience different lands, different cultures, different experiences. It is about keeping an open mind to how others live and how their world outlook and customs may differ from yours.

Or...it can be simply about going back to your roots. We stayed in an apt in Chania, Crete owned by a lady and her deceased husband who had spent 40 years in the LA area operating a successful restaurant.

They returned to Crete, their birthplace, because her husband had terminal cancer and simply wanted to die in the place of his birth. Nothing more complicated than that.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

We are fortunate to have the ability to live legally in one of 4 countries and all of the EU. America has been very good to us; we would not be where we are today without her. But all the USA is not created equal, having travelled a lot for a living, in the US and abroad, and having been to many US states, all are not created equal. There are some states no amount of incentive would get us to live out our later years there.

The America we moved to some 37 years ago is NOT the America of today. Unfortunately, it has been steadily going downhill, especially in the last few years. Depending on how things go in the future, we may choose to leave. But being fairly affluent we are fortunate enough to be insulated from to lot of negatives, most of the negatives are just noise, we can and do choose to ignore them. A lot of the things that affect others do not directly affect us.

But not for the moment, we are lucky to be able to live in a state that has multiple options from LCOL right up to HCOL areas and we live in a an upper MCOL - HCOL part of our county that we like. The healthcare is top notch, and the crime is for the most part insignificant both of which are very important to us.

So, we will just wait and see what happens in the next few years. There is a chance that we could get priced out just as a lot of other folks have.

 

[PokeNTexas]

It's fun traveling outside the US but wouldn't live anywhere else. Family, friends, culture. Have lived in WI, OK, IN, OR, WA, and TX. We have friends in CO, ID, AZ, CT, MT. Also lots of time in MI, NM and NC. Could live in any of those states.

USA for us!

 

[pletal]

We love Costa Rica enough that we are starting to build our retirement home there this year. It's not for everyone and it has significant downsides. Most people that fall in love with the Pura Vida hype, with intentions of permanent relocation, leave after two years.

There's excessive bureaucracy, high import taxes, rampant property crime. The violent crime rate per capita is higher than the US, but like the US it's very variable. There's drug traffic, desperate migrants, and occasional social unrest. It's better than Panama or Mexico IMO, but like those countries falls well within the sphere of influence of the US. If things really go downhill here you won't be much better off there.

If we could hack the distance, could afford it, and could get in, we'd be looking at New Zealand. That seems to be where all the billionaires are building their bunkers. The southern hemisphere will be the place to be if something results in a limited nuclear engagement.

In Costa Rica right now looking at homes in Playas Del Coco area right now. There is a place Pacifico we looked at yesterday. Crazy nice houses, $800k to about 3M. Wife and I are going to talk about it when we get back. Looks great here but I could see costs and crime going up in near future

 

[NoEZmoney]

Are "gated expat communities" a thing in France? I know they exist in SEA and Latin America. I know there are gated estates but I don't feel like they are exclusively expat.

There are a number of "golf communities" in France that offer rental or small chalets for sale. The ones I'm familiar with have a mix of Americans, Brits, Germans, etc. There are some French owners as well as these are also holiday homes. They come with country-club amenities like pools, tennis courts, recreation / congregation - dining centers. Some have reasonable rents and prices and the onsite property management will handle things if you want to rent your place when away.

But this really isn't our thing.

 

[oiseux]

There are a number of "golf communities" in France that offer rental or small chalets for sale. The ones I'm familiar with have a mix of Americans, Brits, Germans, etc. There are some French owners as well as these are also holiday homes. They come with country-club amenities like pools, tennis courts, recreation / congregation - dining centers. Some have reasonable rents and prices and the onsite property management will handle things if you want to rent your place when away.

But this really isn't our thing.

Yeah, that is what I thought. There are expat heavy developments but not exclusively expat in the context of some of these other countries. But I guess they may qualify if they are 80% expat. There are a number of these near Cannes-Mougins, with a private course and membership similar to planned developments in the US. The villas are much larger, however, 1M euros+