Best Places In The World To Retire

Today, we visited a dental clinic in Managua, Nicaragua run by a mother/daughter team, educated in the US. They of course speak very good English. What is amazing is the office set and interaction with their patients. It was a pleasure meeting them and getting our teeth cleaned for a total of US$25 per person. In the US, our was dental cleaning was US$400. I made the appointment on Monday and was able to get in on a Friday. Everything was pretty much on time - 10 minutes delay is not...

Today, we visited a dental clinic in Managua, Nicaragua run by a mother/daughter team, educated in the US. They of course speak very good English. What is amazing is the office set and interaction with their patients. It was a pleasure meeting them and getting our teeth cleaned for a total of US$25 per person. In the US, our was dental cleaning was US$400. I made the appointment on Monday and was able to get in on a Friday. Everything was pretty much on time - 10 minutes delay is not bad at all.

 

You can follow this team Jireh Dental Care on Facebook and Marissa Lolk (the daughter in the mother/daughter team) contributes frequently to Best Places in the World to Retire.

 

On a side note the office decor was very nice and the equipment seems to be 5-10 years old, and well maintained. The daughter also told me they are moving to a bigger location around the corner from the present location. At this new location they will be installing more computerized systems to become more patient-centric

 

We are aware that Granada has dental clinics but we like going to Managua since we can also go shopping and do some errands. So we combine our trips to accomplish a multitude of activities.

 

There is no need for you to renounce or relinquish you US citizenship if you move abroad. The same is true for Canadians and citizens from anywhere else in the world. You can live in Costa Rica either as a perpetual tourist or a permanent resident.

 

Being a perpetual tourist means that you need to leave the country every ninety days, which should not be an inconvenience for someone who is a traveler anyways.

 

For someone who...

There is no need for you to renounce or relinquish you US citizenship if you move abroad. The same is true for Canadians and citizens from anywhere else in the world. You can live in Costa Rica either as a perpetual tourist or a permanent resident.

 

Being a perpetual tourist means that you need to leave the country every ninety days, which should not be an inconvenience for someone who is a traveler anyways.

 

For someone who lives where I do, however, in Tamarindo, Costa Rica, which is about 2.5 hours from the Nicaraguan border, being a perpetual tourist means a simple drive up to the border once every three months, where he can simply walk across the border, get your papers stamped, walk back across the border, get your paper stamped, and be home again on the same day.

 

The process a perpetual tourist has to endure every 90 days takes about 6 hours – 2 ½ hours up, 2 ½ hours back and hour across the border. You can stay in Costa Rica as a perpetual tourist because by doing so, you are fundamentally invisible to the Costa Rican government, except for the fact that you get your passport stamped. A lot of people do that.

 

Permanent residency in Costa Rica is extremely simple. You can apply for permanent residency in Costa Rica on the basis of being a recipient of a pension of around US $1,500 a month. You can also apply for permanent residency on the basis of being an investor with an investment amount of $200,000.

 

If you marry a Costa Rican, then you can get a residency on the basis of family. The bureaucracy in Costa Rica is slow moving and inefficient, but one of the big advantages you’ll get from that is you don’t have to actually get the residency to enjoy the benefits of it; you simply have to apply for it. Once you’ve applied for your residency, you get a piece of paper saying that you’ve applied for it. While your residency application is pending, which may take about a year, the government of Costa Rica treats you as if you are already a resident, so you don’t have to leave the country.

 

There is also an option to apply for a citizenship after a few years, or sooner if you marry a Costa Rican. You do not have to renounce your US citizenship; I’ve never heard of that as being an issue. 

 

(Map showing the location of The Oaks Tamarindo Condominiums, Costa Rica, pictured.)

The food in the markets in Cayo has its ups and downs. They get their deliveries twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays. If you go to the market on Tuesday morning or on Friday afternoon, you will get some very good quality foods. There would be some nice cauliflower, broccoli, etc. But if you go there on a Thursday, everything seems to be spoiled. The cauliflower would be somewhat grayish and they would cut out the spoiled pieces. You would get some old carrots because most of the stalls...

The food in the markets in Cayo has its ups and downs. They get their deliveries twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays. If you go to the market on Tuesday morning or on Friday afternoon, you will get some very good quality foods. There would be some nice cauliflower, broccoli, etc. But if you go there on a Thursday, everything seems to be spoiled. The cauliflower would be somewhat grayish and they would cut out the spoiled pieces. You would get some old carrots because most of the stalls at the market do not have refrigerators. Just imagine the produce sitting in the high temperature for two days. Saturday is the main market day and when you go early in the morning you will get some very good quality food for a very reasonable price. 

 

There is not a lot of overall variety of food in the markets in Cayo. The common produce you would be able to get is cauliflower, broccoli, eggplant, zucchini, and potatoes. The markets in Cayo have a good variety of tropical fruits like pineapple, and papaya all the time. They only sell avocado or mango when they are in season. It is not like in the developed world where you could buy any kind of fruit even if they are out of season.

You get a lot of spices here in Cayo, too. There are three or four stalls in the open-air market where they sell only spices. You can get most spices that you need for cooking your favorite dishes. 

 

There are no Wal-Mart-type stores here in Cayo that cover pretty much everything. Instead we have small supermarkets. Taiwanese owners run 95% of them. They have the same products as most supermarkets. There may be a handful of stores that also sell different merchandise to please the expat community. We have only one real supermarket in the whole country, which is located in Belize City. The supermarkets here in Cayo are referred to as “the Chinese Store” even if Taiwanese people run them.

 

What I dislike about the stores here is that you’ll find that most things are dusty.  The reason is that they have the doors open all day long and many roads in Cayo are not paved. So even if things have just been on the shelves for two days, they can be dusty, which is something I don’t like. When I was in Austria, I liked doing the groceries because I like going through all the isles to see what they have new in stock, but here in Cayo, most of the time, I let my husband do the shopping. 

 

I like the open-air markets here in Cayo to some extent. What I like most is the interaction with the vendors. The Austrian markets have the lowest prices in Europe so I am used to very low prices for good quality. When you compare the prices in Belize with the prices in Austria, it seems to be even more expensive here in Belize for me than it is in Austria. Things like flour, rice, and sugar would be cheaper here in Belize but one liter of milk here is roughly $3 Belize (US $1.50), while in Austria you pay 80 euro cents, which is not even US $1 or less than $2 Belize.

 

(Incredible dishes prepared with local produce available at Vanilla Hills Lodge, Cayo, Belize, pictured.)

Most of the expat communities in Portugal are in Cascais, just west of Lisbon proper.

 

Cascais is a well-known retirement destination for the English people because of the connection that we have with England in the last century. Portugal is the oldest ally of England. We had a Portuguese Queen who married and English King. It is also popular for expats because of the golf courses. There are quite a lot of English clubs in Cascais such as the Rotary Club,...

Most of the expat communities in Portugal are in Cascais, just west of Lisbon proper.

 

Cascais is a well-known retirement destination for the English people because of the connection that we have with England in the last century. Portugal is the oldest ally of England. We had a Portuguese Queen who married and English King. It is also popular for expats because of the golf courses. There are quite a lot of English clubs in Cascais such as the Rotary Club, the Women’s Institute Club, etc. They even have a daily newspaper that is in English. There is also one in the Algarve as well, which is called The Portuguese News. 

 

We have three English high schools in Cascais: Saint Julian’s, Saint Dominic’s, and the international school. These are all big schools so you would see that there is really a big expat community here. My daughter went to St. Dominic’s. The schools here start from primary and finish up and then they leave for the universities. 

 

Another reason Cascais is a top choice for expat communities because it is very near to the airport and it has always catered to expats very well. Cascais has a beautiful landscape and a very nice weather. It’s a beautiful town by the coast. It used to be a fishing village, which has now turned into a tourist town. It’s a very appealing and very nice. It is also about 20 kilometers directly west of Lisbon, which is the capital of Portugal.

 

There are also lots of expats in the Algarve, the majority of whom are also English. The reasons include the golf courses, the beaches, the weather, etc.

 

The main expat communities of Portugal are Cascais, Sintra, and the Algarve.  

 

(Shops with English signs, Sintra, Portugal, pictured.)