Best Places In The World To Retire

The cost of living in Yucatan depends on the lifestyle. For example, if you own your home outright, and you want to have 1 car and a reasonable lifestyle- maybe eating out once or twice a week, you can live in Yucatan for US $2,000 a month. 

 

You can also live less expensively in Yucatan, and a lot of people do. I know people in Yucatan who live on $1,000 a month, but the things that they do are affected. They will eat very inexpensive food, not have a...

The cost of living in Yucatan depends on the lifestyle. For example, if you own your home outright, and you want to have 1 car and a reasonable lifestyle- maybe eating out once or twice a week, you can live in Yucatan for US $2,000 a month. 

 

You can also live less expensively in Yucatan, and a lot of people do. I know people in Yucatan who live on $1,000 a month, but the things that they do are affected. They will eat very inexpensive food, not have a car, their home would probably be smaller, and they won’t be able to travel, or see as much. They may be perfectly happy walking along the beach with their dog, which doesn’t cost anything. 

 

My electricity bill here in Yucatan is $350 a month. I know people with significantly higher electricity bills. If you use air conditioning, electricity can cost more. There are people here in Yucatan with $500- $600 electricity bills, who live in regular houses, and not necessarily in a mansion. That’s a very high cost of living. 

 

The things that you buy here in Yucatan as an expat are the same things you would buy at home, so if you shop at Wal-Mart, you’re going to spend the same amount of money on your groceries and cleaning supplies that you do in the US because it’s the same product. 

 

If you spend $150 a week at home in buying your food, your cleaning supplies and whatnot, then you’re going to spend that here in Yucatan. If you want to shop very locally and live on far more local food such as tortillas, beans, pork, etc., you can definitely spend a lot less. 

 

For the majority of people getting a car is not cheap. You’re basically driving using gas with the same price as in the US. Lastly, there are items that we shop for here in Yucatan that cost the same as in the US, which means a lot of the things here in Yucatan don’t necessarily cost less. It just depends on how you want to live. For example, if you want to eat at the $10-restaurant, that’s great. On the other hand, if you want to eat at the $50-restaurant, that’s also okay. It all goes to the same thing. 

 

Here in Yucatan, we have quite a few pets. Having a pet is not inexpensive, and vet bills are nothing like the US but they can add up. If you’re on health insurance here, you’re going to spend about $1,000 per person a year. Car insurance costs $600-$700 per year. There are also house expenses such as constant repairs, such as when air conditioner breaks, which would cost about $400. All of these things add up. However, there aren’t not many places in the US where you can live on $2,000 a month. 

 

Healthcare in Yucatan will cost about 20% of what it would cost in the US, depending on where you go. Food can cost less if you buy it at a local store and not at a US store. Restaurants can cost way less. Having said that, I can get a $2.99 breakfast in the US, whereas I don’t see that around here. You’ve got to look at apples and apples. I can get fed in the US for $2.50 just as I can get fed here for $2.50.

 

(Pictured: Hennessey's Irish Pub, in downtown Merida, a popular expat hangout.)

The people of Belize speak the same English as we do in North America. If English is not the person’s first language, he or she will have an accent when they speak English. Some of our Spanish neighbors and their descendants may have a bit of a Latin accent to the English they speak, but you will still understand them.

 

The Spanish that is spoken here, from my understanding (because I'm not a Spanish speaker), is not the Spanish from Spain by any...

The people of Belize speak the same English as we do in North America. If English is not the person’s first language, he or she will have an accent when they speak English. Some of our Spanish neighbors and their descendants may have a bit of a Latin accent to the English they speak, but you will still understand them.

 

The Spanish that is spoken here, from my understanding (because I'm not a Spanish speaker), is not the Spanish from Spain by any means. We get a few Spanish speakers coming through from Spain and some of my team do not want to speak Spanish to them because the Spanish from Spain is so different from the Mexican, Guatemalan, Honduran, and the overall Central American Spanish. However, they can of course, communicate.  We have two families combined who are guests here from Guatemala. My team and the families were exclusively speaking Spanish yesterday when they checked in.

 

English is easy here in Belize. Their English is North American English, but do not expect it without an accent. The Belizeans have either a Spanish accent or a Creole accent, which is just a little more colorful. The accents that you will hear people speak here in Belize are very manageable. I guess for some people who have never traveled before, when they come to a different country and they experience speaking to someone with an accent, they feel like it is some kind of impediment from enjoying the area, when it is not. The accent is just a little bit different, so you just have to adapt.

 

If you go from region to region in the US, there is often a considerable difference in the way they speak English, too. Likewise, I find it very difficult to understand southerners because my ears aren’t tuned to the way they speak English. I think those comments from people who first get here and say that the English here in Belize is difficult to understand are those who do not hear the exact same accent that they are used to, so they find it difficult. It is really just a matter of getting out of your comfort zone. You are trying to understand and interpret another person. They are speaking the same language as you, but they just have a different intonation.

 

Portugal has an agreement with the US under the Visa Waiver Program. Each stay of less than 3 months does not require a visa for American citizens. Americans can stay and visit the country of Portugal up to 3 months without having to request a visa. They can simply arrive, stay, and depart again. For stays longer than 3 months or if the objective is not come and visit but to actually come and live here permanently, Americans have to apply for a separate type of visa that has to be...

Portugal has an agreement with the US under the Visa Waiver Program. Each stay of less than 3 months does not require a visa for American citizens. Americans can stay and visit the country of Portugal up to 3 months without having to request a visa. They can simply arrive, stay, and depart again. For stays longer than 3 months or if the objective is not come and visit but to actually come and live here permanently, Americans have to apply for a separate type of visa that has to be done at a Portuguese consulate in your area, which on the West Coast would be San Francisco, and on the East Coast would be Washington, DC. If you are applying for a resident visa, you need to apply at a local consulate and you may then be requested to attend an interview in Washington before you are granted your permanent visa, which then entitles you to come and move into Portugal.  In summary, you don’t need a visa if you are staying in Portugal for less than 3 months. If it is more than 3 months or if you intend to come and live here permanently, then you need to apply for a visa at your local consulate. 

 

If you are coming to Portugal to work, you have to apply for a working visa, which is very much like when you are going to work in the US. We also have a special type of visa called the Golden Visa, which allows you to buy permanent residence in Portugal by buying or spending € 500,000 (US $ 550,000 or £ 370,000) on real estate or € 350,000 (US $ 385,000 or £ 260,000) on real estate if it is in a rehabilitation zone of a main city. The Golden Visa is like an EB-5 Visa in the US, in that it allows you to get residence in Portugal automatically through an investment route. 

 

As far as your initial application is concerned, my understanding is that you can do the initial application via email and sending the initial documents to your regional consulate. They can deal with your application via electronic means, but for the interview, you have to be physically present. The interview is always conducted in Washington, DC, so you will need to go there in person. I am not aware of any exceptions for the interviews to be held elsewhere but I could be wrong as I am not an expert on specific immigration issues. Once you are done with the interview, you fly back home, and wait to see whether they will grant your application for permanent residency in Portugal.

 

If you just want to stay in Portugal for more than 3 months but do not need to be a permanent resident, there are many other ways to do it, such as by getting an extension once your 3-month visa is expired, which is sometimes possible depending on your motivation. You can also apply for a slightly longer visa in advance if you explain your situation to your local consulate. They may have the discretion to approve that. Overall, you don’t need to go to an interview if you just need a visa that is longer than 3 months but you do need to go to an interview if you are getting a permanent residency visa.

 

If you are coming to Portugal because you want to know if you would like the country or not, you still have to make your intention clear to the consulate. They will ask you for your intention, whether you are going to work, how you will support yourself, and so on. It is no different in any other country. If your intention is to come to Portugal for 6 months, for example, to see how it is, and you have a possibility of staying here, my suggestion is that you declare your intention well in advance because just as it is in the US, if you land in Portugal on a tourist visa, and then suddenly you decided that you are want to live here, and in some cases you wanted to get a job, you will be illegal because you haven’t declared your situation and intention truly. So it is very important to actually express your interest to the consulate more than just stating the length of your intended stay in the country of Portugal.

 

The other reason that I say this is because your tax situation may be affected by the number of days that you actually remain in the country. The general global rule is that when you stay in a country for more than 183 days, that country typically (though not always) has the right to claim that you are a resident there for tax reasons unless you say otherwise. So people who come to Portugal need to be aware of the impact of the length of their stay.

 

If you are going to Portugal for 6 months with a view of seeing what the country is like, the first thing you need to do is apply for a visa that is longer than 3 months. You can do that in one of two ways. The first is you can either come for 3 months and then while you’re in Portugal, go to the local immigration department and tell them that you want to extend your visa. You have to do this well in advance of 3 months. They will ask you for the reasons why you wanted to do so. They will either approve or decline your application to stay for another 3 months. If you are staying beyond 6 months, it becomes more complex because for the consular authorities and to the immigration department, it feels that you are perpetually extending your stay and they will start to ask more questions about why you are not going back home and applying for a resident visa or why you didn’t apply for a resident visa in the first place. Any stay that is beyond 6 months starts to feel like you are going to permanently stay and hence the consulate would find it questionable if you do not apply for a permanent resident visa upon coming here. Once you are already here in Portugal for 6 months and then you decide that you want to stay for good, you have to go back home first and then apply for a permanent residency from there. It is no different than applying a permanent residency in the US.

 

Since Portugal still manages to require interviews if you want to apply for permanent residency that tells you that there are not a lot of people coming from the US to Portugal, so this is a huge and untapped market and one of the reasons why our business is increasingly focused on the US.  Most Americans and Canadians who visit Portugal love it. I know it is a very broad generalization but this is the reaction that we get from most Americans and Canadians. Seeing is believing in this case. Most North Americans can’t figure out why they haven’t come here before. That is the kind of reaction that most people have. At the moment, there are very few people from the US and Canada who are actually coming to Portugal to live permanently.  It is my view that the Portuguese government should be doing more to make Portugal more generally known to North Americans. 

 

If you are from the UK or from any other European country, you can come and live in Portugal with no questions asked. If you are part of the EU, there is a permanent and total right of migration of nationalities within the European Union and because of that you can come and live freely in Portugal. You don’t even need a visa to come to Portugal if you are from any European country. As long as you an EU national with a passport or an identity card issued by any state within the European Union or the European Economic Community, you are entitled to travel freely within the zone and to settle in any EU member country.

 

(The Palace of Queluz., Portugal, pictured.)