Best Places In The World To Retire

I have typically priced the cost to build a house in the Chapala / Ajijic area in US dollars.   In the last couple of years, the US dollar has gone crazy compared to the Mexican peso, which throws everything off.  A very fundamental and cheaply built house could be built for about US $30 a square foot. You need to get up to $50 per square foot to get a quality house and $60 per square foot would be the cost for a superior house, which would have granite countertops,...

I have typically priced the cost to build a house in the Chapala / Ajijic area in US dollars.   In the last couple of years, the US dollar has gone crazy compared to the Mexican peso, which throws everything off.  A very fundamental and cheaply built house could be built for about US $30 a square foot. You need to get up to $50 per square foot to get a quality house and $60 per square foot would be the cost for a superior house, which would have granite countertops, nice fixtures in the bathrooms, and so on. Above that price, you would go into luxury homes and spend whatever you want to spend. This is with a UDS exchange of $1.00 USD to 19.5 pesos.

 

A $1,500 square foot home with three bedrooms and two or three bathrooms, with double carport would cost around $100,000 to $110,000, only for the house. If you buy a lot to go with that house, the price for the lots varies tremendously. If you buy in town, lots could cost $10 to $15 per square foot and if you buy in the prime areas, it would be $200 per square meter or around $44 per square foot. Right now, in Riberas, which is an area between Chapala and Ajijic that has pretty flat land and where lots are fairly small at 300 meters or 3,300 square feet, you can buy completed houses from $120,000 to $150,000 with varying quality but that is a pretty standard house and a pretty good price. 

 

Since the US dollar has become so strong relative to the Mexican peso, if you go to a Mexican builder, you could probably get the same house for $90,000 because when they do the exchange rate, we are back to $80,000 or $90,000 and he still has a profit margin because he gets paid ultimately in pesos. For years, I have been saying that a superior home costs $70 per square foot but now that the dollar is so strong, I am shifting it down to $50 per square foot. There is such confusion between pesos and dollars because the rates are floating all the time. Historically, the cost to build was $70 per square foot but right now, given the exchange rate and other things, it could easily be $50 or even $45 per square foot.

 

The price of some building materials is inflated because they come from the United States. Most of the brick and other materials are local and the labor is local so most of the costs for these are in pesos.

 

(Home in Riberas del Pilar, lake Chapala ,Mexico, pictured.)

Let me start with food. The traditional food of Belize is rice and beans. Stew chicken and potato salad is our staple dish. We eat a lot of rice and beans. Some of the other traditions that Belize has is relative to celebrating holidays. We celebrate Independence Day and Baron Bliss Day.

 

Some of the traditions of Belize are not written in stone but they are understood traditions amongst the people of Belize such as "Cook Saturdays." Everybody...

Let me start with food. The traditional food of Belize is rice and beans. Stew chicken and potato salad is our staple dish. We eat a lot of rice and beans. Some of the other traditions that Belize has is relative to celebrating holidays. We celebrate Independence Day and Baron Bliss Day.

 

Some of the traditions of Belize are not written in stone but they are understood traditions amongst the people of Belize such as "Cook Saturdays." Everybody eats barbecue on Saturdays. On Sundays, everybody dines with the family. There are other indirect traditions of Belize.

 

The people of Belize are into building close ties with their families. In terms of religion, majority of the people here are Catholics.

 

Belizeans love to dance. We have a very sensual way of dancing.  The two main types of music that we dance to are the Punta, and the Punta Rock (which is little faster). These dances are unique to Belize. I am proud to be Belizean because everywhere I go, the way we dance really stands out; its unique to Belize so nobody else dances the way we do. One of the traditions that I like is the dancing, and the way it projects our culture and our history.

Your neighbors in the Algarve would be a mix depending on where you live. If you live in a town they would more likely be Portuguese. The bigger the town the more likely it would be to have Portuguese neighbors. Further out it is more likely there would be a mixed bag of people. There are certainly municipalities where six or seven nationalities could surround you, a little bit like Florida.

 

When I lived just north of Miami, I had neighbors from three or...

Your neighbors in the Algarve would be a mix depending on where you live. If you live in a town they would more likely be Portuguese. The bigger the town the more likely it would be to have Portuguese neighbors. Further out it is more likely there would be a mixed bag of people. There are certainly municipalities where six or seven nationalities could surround you, a little bit like Florida.

 

When I lived just north of Miami, I had neighbors from three or four nationalities who were very transient. The Algarve doesn’t have quite the same transient society that I felt in Southern Florida, but certainly from a heterogeneous perspective, there are a variety of nationalities that reside in the Algarve. It’s fairly likely that your neighbors will be Portuguese, English, Dutch, or German because of the number of people from those countries who have settled in the Algarve. 

 

Most of the people who move to the Algarve would tend to be wealthy by Portuguese standards and comfortably middle class or wealthy by international standards. Most people who have made the decision to come here so they do so because they are financially able to afford to do so. This is a pensioner’s paradise.  These are people who have their pensions intact and can afford a good living in the Algarve, where you could easily live on a lot less than you would if you were living in London, New York, Stockholm, Helsinki or Paris. And so, what we find is that people here who come from abroad and in particular the pensioners have a much higher quality of life and spending power, than the average across Portugal and from whence they came.  

 

(Jose Mourinho, Portuguese football manager, pictured.)