10 Countries to Retire Under $200K (relocate, retiree, benefits, security)
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You move to a different country with a different language & foreign traditions & no family or old friends around & unable to get a good (fill in the blank) & once the novelty wears off several months later & it becomes day to day living... one experiences a form of culture shock, or if you prefer buyers' remorse & isolation that one has to work through at some point. Like the questioning many have about 6-7 years into a marriage, "did I make the right choice" kind of existential crisis. It's extremely common & doesn't involve any tribal living.
My point is that you’re generalizing, stereotyping, and cherry picking negative aspects of ex-pat retirees.
You’re assuming the place that an ex-pat moves to is 100% totally foreign and that they’ve never took countless extended trips there. You’re assuming they won’t be there with a spouse or know anyone already there from former trips. There is no “culture shock” for a culture you are already accustomed to. No one with sense just moves to a random country they’ve never visited before.
“Did I make the right decision” is called a midlife crisis and I’m certain there’s plenty of broke retirees in America asking that exact same question. Luckily, there’s this thing called the internet and you can actively connect with ex-pats who already live there to ask them “if they made the right decision” and look up countless rankings of the most desirable ex-pat retiree destinations. And you move there for cost, not novelty.
Breaking news, you can even return to America if you don’t like it. I know, crazy stuff. You act like the ex-pat posters here have renounced their citizenship and moved to Afghanistan.
A two hour ambulance ride? And some people here won't move anywhere unless a world class hospital is 5 minutes away.
LOL. I know. We have a trauma center 15 min. away that I was taken to first; but they wanted to send me to an ortho specialist and that was an hour away. Dislocated hip. If it's an emergency, they'll do whatever it takes. I was on some fine morphine, so it was not an emergency.
Oh, and we were 3X further away from care when we lived in Utah, so....
How is the healthcare though? Do they have high tech equipment for testing like they do here? Are the doctors knowledgeable? Those are the things we are worried about and would probably stop us from moving from the U.S. However, the cost of healthcare in this country is getting completely out of hand. I'm not retired yet, but will be in about 12 years (give or take). I just got $6k work of bills due to deductibles. How can I save for retirement when I have to pay that every year! It's terrible!
So far, we've been in 3 different hospitals and they seem to have everything. For more details, see my Retirement post on "Fallen, can't get up" where I dislocated my artificial hip.
An expat here is on dialysis, and they come and pick him up, treat him and bring him back---3 days a week. All included.
I hear you on the deductibles. I had my own nightmare of extra expenses (had insurance) when I got my hip replacement in Texas. Cut into my retirement!
All I can say is visit the country first, at least once, but best to visit twice at least before you move, and stay in an apartment/home (not a nice hotel) and try and picture your everyday life in that country.
Good looking women (or men), walkability, street markets and a brand new culture and city to explore are all awesome things, but once the dust settles, you need to make friends. Its not as easy to make English speaking friends in many or all of these countries. It takes a lot of time, persistance and great effort, esp if your middle age or older.
The article said there are many English speaking tourists there. Do you really want to make friends with tourists or very transient groups of English speaking expats? You want English speaking friends who are committed to that city/country and who will be there long term, like you. Its tough. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes it takes years to make a good social circle in a foreign country.
Most expats move to where there is already an established group of expats. That's what we did. Built-in friends, social circle, activities.
Dow grew ~140% from 10,500 around same time in 2001 to current 25,000, or a multiple of 2.4.
So, $100K * 2.4 = $240K.
An interesting proposition if military pensions and SS were tied to the Dow. Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, they or not.
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