Best Places In The World To Retire

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...

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.  

 

(Coffee house in Portugal, pictured.)

We were mostly surprised by the amount of discounts afforded to the people who retire in Panama. Almost anywhere you go, there is a special line for jubilado pensionados (retirees). My husband went to the bank the other day and the line was a mile long. He went to the guard and mentioned that he was a jubilado. The guard asked him to go inside right up on the jubilado line. There was no one in front of him, so he got assisted right away.

We were mostly surprised by the amount of discounts afforded to the people who retire in Panama. Almost anywhere you go, there is a special line for jubilado pensionados (retirees). My husband went to the bank the other day and the line was a mile long. He went to the guard and mentioned that he was a jubilado. The guard asked him to go inside right up on the jubilado line. There was no one in front of him, so he got assisted right away.

The minimum wage in Nicaragua is generally around US $230 a month. So if you were, for example, to hire a full-time gardener, or a different full-time household employee, you would have to pay that amount or more, if your employee works 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, even though you have the option to make him work on Saturdays because the actual work week is 44 ½ hours. 
 
If the task is not full time, and it’s very small and very simple, then it’s very...

The minimum wage in Nicaragua is generally around US $230 a month. So if you were, for example, to hire a full-time gardener, or a different full-time household employee, you would have to pay that amount or more, if your employee works 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, even though you have the option to make him work on Saturdays because the actual work week is 44 ½ hours. 
 
If the task is not full time, and it’s very small and very simple, then it’s very important to speak openly with the person that you’re going to hire, because if what you need is less than full time, the price you pay could be $8 to $10 a day depending on what you’re going to have them do. Generally, in this case, you wouldn’t need to pay for social security for hiring them. But if you were to employ them more than that, they’re going to be regularly going to your house working for you, well then, it would be very important for you to do a contract so that the person understands why and what they’re going to be doing for you.  Also, if for any reason that person maybe doesn’t end on good terms with you, the contract that you signed with them is a protection for you as their employer, whether it was part-time or full-time.

 

(Walled garden in Granada, Nicaragua, pictured.)