Best Places In The World To Retire

Just like anywhere else, the cost to build a house depends on how nice you want it. For instance, do you want a pre-fab home, or do you want something that you’re going to last in the rest of your life? Do you want something you’re going to sell? Or do you want something that you’re going to call home for a little while? 

 

Building a house in Mexico starts at about $60 to $80 a square foot for a home with a nice granite countertop in...

Just like anywhere else, the cost to build a house depends on how nice you want it. For instance, do you want a pre-fab home, or do you want something that you’re going to last in the rest of your life? Do you want something you’re going to sell? Or do you want something that you’re going to call home for a little while? 

 

Building a house in Mexico starts at about $60 to $80 a square foot for a home with a nice granite countertop in the kitchen, nice top floors, decent fixtures, and plumbing and electric to US standards. In Mexico, you can have grounded electricals, plastic pipe plumbing, and good quality fixtures for less than $80 a square foot from the ground up. That includes paint and contractors. The standard here in Mexico is you get a 2-year guarantee on workmanship on the structure, so if you get a crack in your foundation a year after you moved in, by Mexican law, you can legally go back and find that builder, and he has to fix it. 

 

The cost to build a house in Mexico also depends on where you build the house: whether on the hillside or on flat ground. The costs are different if you start with a clean lot, or if you have to prepare your lot, which I’ve seen some people do. 

 

Permits are very affordable in Mexico. There are no building inspectors in Mexico, and we don’t have that process north of the border where you have to have 5 or 6 different building inspectors sign off on each phase of your project before you can continue. In Mexico, we only have a permit that we obtain from the city hall, and it doesn’t cost a lot of money. Once you get your permit, they post that on the site that’s being constructed.

 

 

It takes about a year to build a house, so I would say that between $60 and $80 a square foot, you’re going to have a pretty nice home.  

 

(Pictured: Pool home, Ajijic, Mexico.)

If you live in town like in Orange Walk, Corozal Town, or San Pedro, you can get cable TV because they are connected. They pay around US $50 a month for cable service. Here in Orchid Bay, where we live, we use satellite – Direct TV and we pay about US $90 a month and we have a huge channel package. There is a woman here in Belize who is able to get Direct TV.

 

(New luxury condos with a satellite dish, Cerros Sands, Belize,pictured. )

If you live in town like in Orange Walk, Corozal Town, or San Pedro, you can get cable TV because they are connected. They pay around US $50 a month for cable service. Here in Orchid Bay, where we live, we use satellite – Direct TV and we pay about US $90 a month and we have a huge channel package. There is a woman here in Belize who is able to get Direct TV.

 

(New luxury condos with a satellite dish, Cerros Sands, Belize,pictured. )

Spanish is the main language most often spoken all over Panama, including in Fort Clayton, but you can also meet a lot of people who can speak English. The only thing is that some of the Panamanians still don’t know how to speak English that well. For me, that’s not really a major problem. I am confident that the locals who don’t speak Spanish know someone who can be their interpreter. Also, a lot of the locals have been studying how to speak English for the past...

Spanish is the main language most often spoken all over Panama, including in Fort Clayton, but you can also meet a lot of people who can speak English. The only thing is that some of the Panamanians still don’t know how to speak English that well. For me, that’s not really a major problem. I am confident that the locals who don’t speak Spanish know someone who can be their interpreter. Also, a lot of the locals have been studying how to speak English for the past years due to the fact that the economy is booming and they know that they’re going to need that skill to secure a job in the future.

 

 At the end of the day, English is our second language. So if you only speak English and you want to move to Fort Clayton, generally, you’ll be able to get by.

In order to have a gun in Portugal, you have to have a license.  Foreigners can own guns in Portugal.  

 

Most of the people who have guns in Portugal, and how gun ownership started is that the guns were for hunters for the hunting season, but there are very strict rules for that. 

 

The actual details of what would be required to get a license to have a gun and what it would cost, I don’t know. The reason...

In order to have a gun in Portugal, you have to have a license.  Foreigners can own guns in Portugal.  

 

Most of the people who have guns in Portugal, and how gun ownership started is that the guns were for hunters for the hunting season, but there are very strict rules for that. 

 

The actual details of what would be required to get a license to have a gun and what it would cost, I don’t know. The reason is we don’t really discuss guns very much apart from if you see on television that they’ve arrested people because of drugs or something similar.  Apart from that, fortunately, at this point in time, I think when you see what’s going on in the world, we feel reasonably safe without guns. 

 

(1934 photo of a  hunter in Peralcovo, Portugal, pictured.)