Best Places In The World To Retire

There are many areas in the general Puerto Vallarta area.  The first one I’ll discuss is the Sayulita area, which is a small town about an hour north of Puerto Vallarta, which draws a very different, unique type of clientele with not as many retired people as Puerto Vallarta.   

 

The cost of living can be quite high in Sayulita here because of rental costs. Long-term rentals are really hard to find in this area, so they may cost...

There are many areas in the general Puerto Vallarta area.  The first one I’ll discuss is the Sayulita area, which is a small town about an hour north of Puerto Vallarta, which draws a very different, unique type of clientele with not as many retired people as Puerto Vallarta.   

 

The cost of living can be quite high in Sayulita here because of rental costs. Long-term rentals are really hard to find in this area, so they may cost about $1,000 a month. If you lived in another town or purchased some property, you would not have the relatively high monthly expense of a rental.

 

In Sayulita a 2-bedroom condo will rent for about US $1,300, while a house with a swimming pool would probably rent for US $2,000 a month in town, but not on the beach. There are some petty theft crimes but generally it’s a very safe town. 

 

Sayulita is a tourist town and we’re small, so people who own properties for rent can get a lot more income with short-term rentals, which drives up the price for longer term rentals.  Often times, people who want to live long-term in this area will live in the next town up, which the locals call San Pancho (San Francisco), or they buy real estate here, which just ends up making more sense for them. 

 

In San Pancho, the US $1,300 per month you would pay in Sayulita would rent for between US $800 to US $900 a month.  Both of these towns are quite nice. You have a great diversity and a great mixture in the population here. You can have a million dollar house right next door to a low-income property. And so, there are certain areas that you can say that the neighborhood is distinguished as a low income or a high income area but we see a lot of mixture in these towns, which I think is really appealing for people who are looking to be part of a community and integrate into Mexico.

 

The food here is a lot healthier, fresher, and cheaper than the States. As a couple, you can go out to a nice dinner here in Sayulita and you will pay about 500 including an alcoholic drink or a beverage, which at the current exchange rate is about US $28.

 

In Mexico in general, clothing is mostly imported, so it can be more expensive than in the US, and also electronic goods are usually imported and more expensive as well. Other living expenses such as your utilities are far cheaper. Property tax is also very inexpensive. For example, here in Sayulita, a nice large property near the ocean will pay about US $500 a year in property taxes.

 

A lot of clients come from California or Seattle or the Vancouver area, and they think Vancouver is one of the most expensive places to live. So living here is a really great alternative for people who want to live in a small town next to the beach.

 

(Rental property with two units for sale in Sayulita, Mexico, pictured.)

One of the best things to buy in Portugal is the Portuguese wine.  Portuguese wine is not exported as much as in other places, which is a great shame because the wines here are really prize-winning and they are excellent.

 

Pastries are excellent as well. If you like codfish, that’s good here, but most foreigners don’t seem to like codfish. There’s a huge variety of things that you can buy. There’s silver Portugal, which is very...

One of the best things to buy in Portugal is the Portuguese wine.  Portuguese wine is not exported as much as in other places, which is a great shame because the wines here are really prize-winning and they are excellent.

 

Pastries are excellent as well. If you like codfish, that’s good here, but most foreigners don’t seem to like codfish. There’s a huge variety of things that you can buy. There’s silver Portugal, which is very good. The porcelain is very good, as is the crystal, and there’s very good antiques.

 

If you want the “cheap and cheerful” things, there’s plenty of that as well.

 

And then you have what they call “custard tarts” which are in the Pastéis de Belém area (about half way between Lisbon Cascais, which is on the coast), and which is almost like a religion here. These are very good little custard tarts.

 

You really can get everything here in Portugal now and there are many countries that have what they call a “one-shop” where they’ve got mainly South African and British products from England. You’ve got a shop that is a Russian shop. There is an Ikea so the Swedes can get what they are missing from home.  

 

It’s amazing that as small as Portugal is, when you’re down in the Alenteijo, which is an area that is just before the Algarve or even in the Algarve, the food is completely different. The area is different; it’s much more farm land. You have a lot of cork plantations there. As you start going up north, there as well, the food is different. Like any country, the pronunciations are different in the north of Portugal, but you have the same sort of things. You would have perhaps more lamb to eat down in Alenteijo than you would here. But Portugal is a bit of melting pot of everything. So at Christmas time, here they have the codfish on the 24th and then they’ll have turkey or lamb for the 25th and that’s pretty well all over now. 

 

In addition to food, Portugal has arts and crafts. There’s a lot of very, very good pottery and china and porcelain. And, of course, what Portugal is very known for the hand painted tiles, a lot of which are antiques that are extremely expensive.

 

(Portuguese cookbook and tableware made and bought in Portugal, pictured.)

When considering the worst places in the world to retire, I would definitely not include Panama in whatever list I come up with.

 

For me, I would not want to retire in the Middle East and some formerly communist bloc countries. Certainly, you don’t want to live in a place that has a lot of unrest, whether it’s top-down unrest where you have an overreaching government that’s trying to corrupt everyone, make them like everybody else and...

When considering the worst places in the world to retire, I would definitely not include Panama in whatever list I come up with.

 

For me, I would not want to retire in the Middle East and some formerly communist bloc countries. Certainly, you don’t want to live in a place that has a lot of unrest, whether it’s top-down unrest where you have an overreaching government that’s trying to corrupt everyone, make them like everybody else and prevent them from doing things that they wish to do, or the other type of unrest which is bottom-up. The latter is just as bad. At some point, you have that proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back and people say, “Okay, I’ve had enough of this” and they rebel. You certainly don’t want to get in the way of that sort of thing either, because we want to retire in a place that is peaceful.

 

I am a product of a family whose history started in Prussia, in area of Europe where there was a lot of unrest, death and misery in the family. Personally, I don’t want to repeat that experience. I want to go somewhere where I can live in peace and where I can do more or less what I want to do.  I think the direction would be towards Central America primarily because I know more about it than any other places in the world. Of course, Panama would be at the top of the list.

Let me answer the question about birds in Corozal with a brief story. Here at the Copper Bank Inn, which essentially is in the jungle amidst a Spanish fishing village, we had two hardcore bird watchers from Belgium who visited recently. The Inn was originally setup by the Audubon Society as a bird watching hub - a place for people to come and stay and watch birds. 

 

These two men walked in the door and logged all their time and their plan. They were already...

Let me answer the question about birds in Corozal with a brief story. Here at the Copper Bank Inn, which essentially is in the jungle amidst a Spanish fishing village, we had two hardcore bird watchers from Belgium who visited recently. The Inn was originally setup by the Audubon Society as a bird watching hub - a place for people to come and stay and watch birds. 

 

These two men walked in the door and logged all their time and their plan. They were already completely prepared for what they were going to do while they were here. One morning they got up at 6 o’clock and after their coffee and breakfast they went to a place called , which is about a 45-minute drive from the Inn along the coast where some expats live. They had high tech telescopes. They don’t really take pictures too much although with their telescope they could take photos. That’s not really what it’s about for them. These guys were good. They could see the birds but before they see them they hear them and then they wait for them because they can identify the sounds.

 

They came back about 6 o’clock that day and I was chatting with them because I was interested in what they were doing. They logged every bird that they saw, any usual things or comments and then would uploaded their findings to a database. So I said to them, “How many birds did you see today?”  My guess would have been about maybe 25 at the most. I don’t know much about bird watching but that would be pretty big thing to see 25 birds. They told me that they saw 98 different species on that short trip to Sarteneja, which I thought was amazing.