Best Places In The World To Retire

The best place to retire depends on the person, and what they’re looking for.  In order to do this, you need to establish the reason you’re moving before you pick a place.  The best place for another person may not be the best place for you.  You need to get clarity on why you’re moving, what you want to accomplish, and what you want your daily life to be like.
 
Write out your ideal day.  When you wake up, who do you see around you? ...

The best place to retire depends on the person, and what they’re looking for.  In order to do this, you need to establish the reason you’re moving before you pick a place.  The best place for another person may not be the best place for you.  You need to get clarity on why you’re moving, what you want to accomplish, and what you want your daily life to be like.
 
Write out your ideal day.  When you wake up, who do you see around you?  What do you see around you?  Is it mountains?  Is it a beach?  Is it farmland?  A valley?  Skyscrapers?  Then, go from there.  What do you eat for breakfast?  Would you want some tropical fruit?  That tropical fruit could be falling off the trees in Nicaragua, where there could be mangoes in the road, pineapples and watermelons growing on the side of the road.  Or, perhaps you would prefer a baguette and an espresso.  There are no espresso machines in a lot of places in Nicaragua and Ecuador, for example, unless you have it at your house.  There’s no cappuccino.

 

(Pictured to the right and above: Corn Islands, in Nicaragua.)
 
What would you like to do in your normal day?  This is something that, otherwise, we don’t generally get to choose.  All the way from being a five year old in kindergarten through school and then work, most of us don’t get to define our day.  What would you do if you could do whatever you wanted?  Would you like to go whitewater rafting, would you like to go hiking, would you want to sit at a café in a city and sip your coffee and read a book?  What is your ideal day?  Maybe you don’t want to see any people.  Maybe you want to live on the top of a mountain only surrounded by nature.  
 
Once you have a clear idea of what your day would be like, then move to the finances.  How much money do you have to live on each month?  Most of us aren’t going to be living in a chateau in Switzerland, which is one of the most expensive countries in the world.  Of course, the more you have to live on each month, the more flexibility you’ll have in choosing your best place to live.
 
After you’ve defined what you want your typical day to be like and you’ve come to terms with your budget, you need to do your research.  This is the point where it’s really good to have someone to help you, even for an hour or so to get a real perspective from someone who’s worked in the place you’re considering or lived there.
 
We have lists of countries and areas that are the best and the worst, based on very specific criteria.

 

(Pictured to the right: France)

In my opinion, one of the best places to live and retire is in Portugal is Cascais. Cascais is just half an hour away from Lisbon, which is the capital of Portugal. Within a radius of 50 kilometers (about 31 miles) from Cascais, you will find beaches, golf courses, castles, top class clinics, international schools, etc. You have everything that you need and want within a radius of 50 kilometers.
 
The Algarve is a little more spread out over a 100-kilometer (a little over 60...

In my opinion, one of the best places to live and retire is in Portugal is Cascais. Cascais is just half an hour away from Lisbon, which is the capital of Portugal. Within a radius of 50 kilometers (about 31 miles) from Cascais, you will find beaches, golf courses, castles, top class clinics, international schools, etc. You have everything that you need and want within a radius of 50 kilometers.
 
The Algarve is a little more spread out over a 100-kilometer (a little over 60 miles) coastline. From the Spanish border all the way to the western tip of Portugal, you will find that Algarve is divided into four centers. One of the best places to live in Algarve is Quinta do Lago, which is probably the most affluent place in the Algarve. It is for the really wealthy people, a bit like Monaco in Spain except that it is not a tax haven. Quinta do Lago has some enormous properties and so the wealthiest of the wealthy that want to retire in the Algarve would typically go to Quinta do Lago. 
 
As you move further east, the prices come down. Vilamoura is also a very nice upmarket place to live in the Algarve. It has world-class golf courses and an excellent marina for sailors. Moving westward from Vilamoura, you will find Alvor and then Lagos, which is the last of the really nice places to live in Portugal before you get to the western tip of the country.

 

(House in  Vilamoura, Portugal, pictured.)

There are several places in El Valle de Anton to shop for food. There is a newly built shopping complex here in El Valle that is anchored by a supermarket chain that carries most of the stuff you need. So grocery-wise you can go to this shopping complex or to the Chinese stores. On the other hand, fresh produce is available at the open-air market.  Hardware and building materials are also available in El Valle through three Chinese stores, one of which is just recently built.

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There are several places in El Valle de Anton to shop for food. There is a newly built shopping complex here in El Valle that is anchored by a supermarket chain that carries most of the stuff you need. So grocery-wise you can go to this shopping complex or to the Chinese stores. On the other hand, fresh produce is available at the open-air market.  Hardware and building materials are also available in El Valle through three Chinese stores, one of which is just recently built.

 

Now having said that, everything appears more expensive in El Valle than it is in Coronado (the closest larger town, less than an hour away by car), so if you are buying lots of items, you’re better of going to Coronado, where there are four hardware stores. Another option is to go to Panama City (about two hours away by car), if you are going to buy building materials of any quantity.

 

Clothing, furniture, decor and others things are available in Coronado in a wide variety of stores… but not in El Valle. You are not going to find any boutique stores in El Valle yet, although, there are a number of empty spaces in that newly built shopping complex, and maybe somebody will put one in there in the future.

We are a bank, we’re not builders and we are not the developers; we do money. So if we are going to lend on a property, we are very strict with our criteria. If we are going to lend on something, we need to know the developer, we need to know the land, and we need to know that everything is good. We need to see the designs because we know what works here. The directors and shareholders of the bank have been here in Belize for about 23 years in real estate and all sorts of other activities. They have a wealth of knowledge and they are the decision makers when we give out the loans. We do not want to work with developers that are renowned for finishing the job halfway because we then have to pay for it to be finished before we can get back our money on the loan. It is prudent, I suppose, to consider working with a bank on financing or making sure that you seek correct legal advice and work with good people, with good reputations.