Best Places In The World To Retire

Los Cabos is an expensive area and I have 2800 sq feet and pay 500 pesos for 5-6 hours, 3 times a week.  I change up her schedule every week trying to avoid having her on a fixed schedule to avoid labor issues.. 

     There is a new law now regarding domestic workers whereby we shall be required to pay into a government account so our domestic workers will have medical care. I’m not sure how much that will be but most people agree that it...

Los Cabos is an expensive area and I have 2800 sq feet and pay 500 pesos for 5-6 hours, 3 times a week.  I change up her schedule every week trying to avoid having her on a fixed schedule to avoid labor issues.. 

     There is a new law now regarding domestic workers whereby we shall be required to pay into a government account so our domestic workers will have medical care. I’m not sure how much that will be but most people agree that it is fair as they should have access to the hospital benefits that other workers have. But of aware of that.  There are pay companies that are called “Pagadoras”  where a worker can register as working for that company, and we pay their salary plus an administrative fee, and they take care of all of the taxes. I’m looking into that as it can be very favorable to us, as the employee cannot sue us in a labor suit, as they ar empl d by the Pagadora, not us. You may have heard of people ending up having to pay a whole lot of money if they fire someone!  So keep your eyes open on what’s being said about that all over the Internet.

The best reason to retire abroad is to save money and be able to live within your means. Most of our retirees are maybe not on a livable income if they stayed in the US because of the various problems in the American system and Social Security or it could be the economic collapse affecting people's investments or 401K’s. There are a lot of different factors that can result in people not having as much money as they planned when they were saving for retirement.
 
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The best reason to retire abroad is to save money and be able to live within your means. Most of our retirees are maybe not on a livable income if they stayed in the US because of the various problems in the American system and Social Security or it could be the economic collapse affecting people's investments or 401K’s. There are a lot of different factors that can result in people not having as much money as they planned when they were saving for retirement.
 
You can live on a much lower income while maintaining the same quality of life if you move abroad, especially if you're going to a developing country like those in Latin America. You can maintain your lifestyle with less money. You can still have access to quality healthcare, food and properties and everything you need to live, but just at a lower cost. I would say that's a very simple and basic math, but that's what it is.
 
The second best reason to move abroad would be to have a new adventure.  I was very fortunate to be able to this, but I didn't plan to go abroad at the beginning. I just turned 33 recently, so I have spent almost half of my life abroad now.
 
I didn't ever plan it that way. I was just a normal girl in America with a brother and a sister. My parents are still together. I went to high school, I went to college, and then I went to graduate school. I did everything that I was supposed to do in America. Then I started studying abroad in college. The reason I went abroad was because I got a scholarship through the Rotary Foundation in 2002. I didn't even pick where I went. They sent me to Costa Rica. They said, “You're going to Costa Rica and you're going to learn Spanish." I was terrified. I thought, “How am I going to survive these 3 months?”  Those 3 months have turned in to the rest of my life; just falling in love with travel and living in different countries, learning languages and having adventure that nobody ever told me I could do or should do.
 
Before I moved abroad full time in 2005, I asked everybody for their opinion as to if I should do it. I asked my parents. I asked my friends. I asked my peers. I asked my MBA class. Everybody who was my age told me I was crazy. I should take a job in Lockheed Martin or one of the big corporations that were in Orlando, where I was living at the time. They said moving abroad would ruin my resume. Everybody my age was kind of fear mongering. 
 
On the contrary, all of my parent's friends, my grandparents, and any of the elders in my life told me that they wished that they had done something like moving abroad when they were my age. So I decided to take the advice of everybody who was older than me because they probably know more about what life is about than the 20 something year olds in my classes.  So I went, and thank God I did.
 
I now notice that my clients who are retirees did everything right, according to the rules.  They got a job, they got a house, they had kids, they had a dog, and didn’t have time to do anything outside of that. So they were really just starting their adventures at the time of their retirement, as opposed to me.  I kind of eschewed and skipped the normal life I was supposed to have early. 
 
So the second best reason to live abroad is to get out of your comfort zone and have an adventure, to do something different.  I think a lot of people regretted not doing that sooner. I was able to see both perspectives. Now, all of my friends are still working at Procter & Gamble and all of these big companies, and my life is completely different than theirs.  I'm definitely glad that I took this tac. I get a lot of support from my clients and people who are older, who agree with me. Maybe my friends will change their perspective once they get older. They're still pretty young. They're in their thirties and they haven't gotten the larger perspective.  Maybe they will become my clients, 20-30 years from now, once they go abroad to do something different.

It is very safe to drink the water in Casco Viejo, a community in Panama City? It is one of those pleasures we all take for granted. In Panama, we joke that it is our "champagne." Enjoy!

It is very safe to drink the water in Casco Viejo, a community in Panama City? It is one of those pleasures we all take for granted. In Panama, we joke that it is our "champagne." Enjoy!

We have several supermarkets in San Ignacio and Santa Elena area, in the Cayo District of Belize. You could get mostly what you need but you won't get a huge variety of the products. For example, if you wanted cereal, there may only be twenty types of cereal. There won't be a hundred or a hundred fifty like a neighborhood store or Wal-Mart in the US. You can get the items you want but there will not be the huge selection you would find in a large supermarket in the US.  You can...

We have several supermarkets in San Ignacio and Santa Elena area, in the Cayo District of Belize. You could get mostly what you need but you won't get a huge variety of the products. For example, if you wanted cereal, there may only be twenty types of cereal. There won't be a hundred or a hundred fifty like a neighborhood store or Wal-Mart in the US. You can get the items you want but there will not be the huge selection you would find in a large supermarket in the US.  You can buy foods, drinks, nuts, cereals, and meats, etc. at the supermarkets.
 
The supermarkets here are not huge, nowhere like Giant or Kroger. They're smaller, perhaps one third the size.  They don’t have the huge variety, but they do have the basic items you need. You could walk into a Chinese (what the stores are called) here and you could pick up ingredients to do pizza, for example. Or you could walk-in there and buy the ingredients to do a pasta meal or something similar.
 
I buy my basic food in these supermarkets and then I buy vegetables and fruits at the farmers' market.  The farmer’s market has outdoor stalls and is open every day, even on Sundays.  You can buy fruits and vegetables at the supermarkets, but we choose not to buy because it's a little bit more expensive and if you go to the farmers' market it's fresh, mostly, it's fresh.  The big market day is Friday and Saturday, with Saturday being the bigger day. That’s when you get the freshest and best items.
 
For the most part, the fruits and vegetables you get at the farmers’ market were grown within Belize, but we do get some imported stuff like peaches, apples, and pears.

 

(Farmers' market Santa Elena, Cayo District, Belize, pictured.)