For most of the civilized countries, Portugal is really, really cheap. The minimum wage salary in Portugal by law is €450 (US $669) so that’s what you get paid if you work at McDonald’s or in a toll shop in the motorway or in a restaurant or something like that. So therefore, properties to rent have to be within budget for people like these; they have to afford an apartment for €200 (US $223). But this is normally in the worst areas a long way out from the city center or the main area.
The place where I live, in Cascais (a suburb of Lisbon) is one of the most expensive in Portugal. Cascais is the Beverly Hills of Portugal. To rent a 3-bedroom apartment in a condominium here with a swimming pool and garden and gym and all these infrastructures, will be about €2,000 (US $2,233).
The Portuguese have a few bad habits. One of them is coffee. During the day they go 4 or 5 times for coffee; they interrupt their work to have coffee 6 times. They go to the coffee shop to have an espresso.
In Portugal we don’t drink the coffee with milk. You know those big buckets you drink in America? Here, it’s espresso. The Portuguese are addicted to espresso coffee. Most of them interrupt their work during the day 4 or 5 times or more just to have an espresso, which affects their productivity.
And not only that. Companies normally give you an hour or an hour and a half for lunch, but if you own your business or you have a high position in your company, your lunch will take 2 and a half hours. That is a must. And some Portuguese might even do the siesta after the lunch, which is sleeping for half and hour in the couch. But then, they don’t really leave the office at 5 o’clock. We leave the office at 7, 8 or 9 in the evening. To justify the times you went for coffee and a long lunch meal you had and then after you finish working and you leave at 9 o’clock, you go for a beer and you go for some Portuguese tapas (small plates).
And then you go to the restaurant at 10:30 PM and that’s when you start having your dinner at 10:30. If you’re young, you go out at night, and the nightlife starts very late in Portugal. That’s another bad habit we have. It starts very late. The club or the disco opens at midnight or 1 o’clock and may not close until 7 in the morning the following day. So you actually see a lot of youngsters leaving the clubs at 7 in the morning, putting on a tie, and going straight in the office. Maybe that’s why they need 2 coffees or 5 or 10.
As a culture, we spend a lot of time out of the house, in the outdoors, in the open air places. We love open-air places. All the coffee shops and all the restaurants have tables and chairs to sit outside because the weather is always good. We like to talk, we like to drink, and we like to eat.
Patients from the United States, Canada, or Europe often come to Mexico just to get medical and dental procedures done here. The dental services in Mexico could cost 20% of what they would cost in the United States. For example, a big dental procedure may cost US $1,000 in the United States, but in Mexico, it’s going to cost you not more than 3,000 pesos, which is equivalent to US $150. .png)
My experiences with doctors in Corozal is somewhat limited. I’ve been twice to visit to a doctor. One I saw at the hospital and the other I saw at a private clinic. 
The United States has a highly stringent policy when it comes to the taxation of its citizens and permanent residents (i.e., those with a green card). The US government taxes all of its citizens based on worldwide income, which means it does not matter where the money is earned. 
My wife and I bought our first home in Chelem, Yucatan, Mexico in 2002. Our plans when we bought our house were to use it for our retirement, which at that time, was still years down the road. The more we visited our home, however, the more we fell in love with the Yucatan, so by the end of 2003 we moved to Mexico full-time. We worked and traveled throughout the Yucatan Peninsula, including Playa Del Carmen, Cozumel and Mahahual (in the state of Quintana Roo), and while they...
On Saturday February 15, 2014 I visited the new Butterfly Haven located in El Valle. Yes I am truly lucky & blessed - I visited a wonderful butterfly haven while many North Americans suffered thru extreme February cold & snow. 
It was the extra toilet paper holder, a lace and chintz contraption hanging on the wall, that made us laugh. The room in which we stayed was called Limonera, named for the lime tree in its private terrace, which was a separate studio around the back of the main house of Park Eden in El Valle de Anton, Panama. If I were a detective, I would say it was originally the residence of someone who loved to read, for there were many books along the wall, and who loved Panama for the...