That's my boat behind the ship, next to the tug.
Posted on 11/08/2012 1:34:19 PM PST by Javeth
Just curious especially to hear from anyone else who’s planning to do this, about the best countries overseas to retire and work in. My wife and I have done pretty well with our import/export business, worked hard and saved up, and are starting to make retirement plans. We’re not much enthused about giving out our hard-earned and saved money, to support the spendthrift socialist incompetence and excesses of Obama and his successors. So we’re looking to retire abroad, and if possible to even continue some of the business overseas in a lower key, part time context.
Our trading is mostly Mediterranean-based, so we were naturally thinking of a retirement home in a place like Italy, Greece, south of France, Spain or Portugal. (Don’t pay attention to all the overwrought headlines out of the liberal MSM in the US about Greece, as long as you work hard and save up, and make yourself reasonably self-sufficient, even Greece is a fine place to work and retire.) One of our sons is established in Holland right now anyway, married to a Dutch lady and speaks very good Dutch and German himself, so we’d have that family connection. (Holland, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Denmark all have surprisingly active evangelical communities in which many Americans have gotten set up to work, learn the language and raise families, maybe even retire in though don’t know much about that- seems like the fjords in Norway for ex. would be a beautiful place for a retirement home.)
OTOH I've been hearing a lot of good things from old friends about working/retiring in places like Argentina, Panama, Chile, Nicaragua, Brazil, Costa Rica and Uruguay. I've been to Buenos Aires and other parts of Argentina as well as Chile and was pleasantly surprised. Despite the financial issues from the 90’s they’re both very pleasant places, have that welcoming “Old European” feel that you can’t find in the US anymore, plus they tend to leave you alone to do as you will there. Also the cost of living is very low, even on the beaches and seaside locations. I had a brief stopover in Uruguay and seems to have that character, too, same with Itacare and Porta de Galinhas in Brazil IIRC, though not as well-known compared to Argentina and Chile. That’s also why I guess places like Panama, Nicaragua and traditional destinations like Acapulco have been attractive, though so far haven’t visited there personally. My wife and I just haven’t really investigated the retirement or work angle itself yet, so were wondering what others have experienced.
Obviously the standard caveats apply, we’re not looking for perfect paradises and other countries have their own issues and whatever. But almost anywhere would be far better than the PC socialist, grasping incompetence of the Obama and Clinton-led US and whatever comes after. We've already been moving toward renouncing our US passports anyway because of the damage done by the outrageous global taxation scheme in the US, the only one in the world that does that to it's own citizens- the banks in our overseas trading locations want to close our accounts because they can’t deal with the intrusive US paperwork requirements. We’re not about to give another dime to this wasteful, corrupt regime.
So for us and I’m sure millions in our boat, retiring abroad or just working in a lower key environment makes sense. A bonus if the new country really is a pleasant and welcoming land to stay in, as it seems that Argentina, Chile, Panama, Nicaragua and the Mediterranean would without doubt be for us. So we’d be glad to hear from any of you making a similar move.
That’s an idea I have been promoting for along time. American-trained physicians and nurses will set up practices for things like knee and hips replacements, cardiac bypass and catheterization services and do a CASH ONLY business. It could be promoted as resort vacation/ healthcare enterprise. It is a way around less expensive procedures and the medical practitioners will not have to tell the US government what they are doing (because they will be greasing the palm of government officials).
These folks will need peons with skills not generally available in the host countries. That’s one of the things I’m looking at closely.
Put me down for Panama. High % of folks speak English, the $USD is the currency. Very good infrastructure by latin American standards. Panama City is almost on par with San Diego or Miami. Flights to the USA are just a couple hours.
Yep, there are already “medical tourism clinics” in the Bahamas.
Wow, you weren’t kidding about San Miguel de Allende.
http://blog.exploreandgomexico.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/San-Miguel-de-Allende.jpg
http://www.gtoexperience.mx/images/stories/destinos/san-miguel-allende/loop/loop01-sanmiguel.jpg
http://www.gtoexperience.mx/images/stories/destinos/san-miguel-allende/loop/loop01-sanmiguel.jpg
The place is gorgeous, we’ll be putting that one on our list. Thanks for the tip.
Oops, that third picture from San Miguel:
http://www.hoteleseconomicosmexico.com/fotos/san-miguel-allende/galeria/big/san-miguel-allende-01.jpg
and another
http://www.cozumelparks.com.mx/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/san-miguel-allende.jpg
Yeah that seemed to be common consensus about Panama when I heard about some years ago. I was surprised to hear it at first, but the infrastructure and surroundings seem to be surprisingly high-quality, plus friendly people and great beaches. Are most people going to Panama City or some of the smaller coastal towns?
Yes, you can always renounce your citizenship and live somewhere else, but (like everything) there are some crucial caveats you should consider.
To renounce your citizenship, you must find a country which will grant you either permanent status visa or citizenship itself. Also, you will lose all US protections if you are in a place which later destabilizes for some reason (you can’t go to the US embassy if some revolution breaks out, for example).
The Exit Tax itself can be considerable. Basically, think of everything you own right this instant. Then imagine selling it all as of the day before you expatriate. The tax is calculated on that Market to Market sum, above around $600,000 in value. This could significantly impact your retirement accounts, for example.
When it was proposed, it was called the Billionaire’s Amendment, but it applies to FAR more than just billionaires. The tax rate is calculated according to which tax bracket you fall into with that sum added to your existing ordinary income.
It’s great. I got there on March 17th and they had a huge Feliz San Patricio sign in the city square.
I thought no way. That’s when I started walking around.
i saw a guy with a Michigan ball cap on so I said in Spanish that I received my degree there. He answered in perfect Mid-western English that he went there too.
My jaw dropped.
Very pretty place.
Thanks for the tips, yeah the global taxation is in fact one of the reasons we’re moving in this direction, because all the earnings we acquire from our import-export work in the Mediterranean and elsewhere still gets taxed at outrageous levels in the US. The US is the only country that does this, and the system is so burdensome and punishment-oriented that even the most honest taxpayers get shafted by it. The banks overseas have to comply with the reporting demands and pestering from the US, and it’s so costly to them that some will close the accounts of Americans based there. We’d also heard of the exit tax and have no illusions about it, it’s just that in light of the outrages from the US worldwide taxation system, we’re starting to think it’s worth it to renounce our passports and be done with it.
It’s interesting that even the liberal Democrats we work with overseas absolutely hate the US global taxation scheme, and it’s one of the things that Romney stupidly ignored in his campaign- he would’ve gotten 90% or more of the vote from returning expats, exporters and anyone else working in international trade, if he’d bothered to put more emphasis on improving this universally hated, unfair and preposterous global taxation. That (along with the legal thievery of US divorce laws) is one of those rare things when you can really find almost universal consensus across ideology lines, since it’s so plainly ignorant of the working realities of American expats, so atrociously disproportionate and so damaging to otherwise well-meaning, hard-working and productive people. We’re not even using services in the US when we work aboard, not using any of the roads, foodstuff inspection, libraries, police or fire services, we’re working in a different country. And most of us aren’t billionaires with Swiss bank accounts, we’re hard-working and prosperous but still usually upper-middle class or so. What justification is there then, to tax us so viciously, take such a punishing stance and all but force us to lose our foreign accounts in overseas banks? It’s obvious common sense that global taxation of US citizens is an outrage, which is why no other country does it.
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Panama City is more advanced (and safer) than Colon. Lots of ex-pats buy land by elevation/temperature and build on it, but that gets very sticky. (Panama has 10,000’ high mountains!)
As in many Central American countries, you can buy a fantastic property, but getting the contruction materials and crew out to it is the hard part. The easiest and safest way to go is to buy an existing condo in a secure suburban area. There is a high wall around the entire block, with security at the entry point from the street. This allows you to leave the country without worrying (much) about your home being robbed or looted while you are gone.
The cost of living is cheap and the quality of life is high in Panama. Panama got a big “head start” on the rest of Central America due to the canal and canal zone.
Ha, that sort of thing also happened to me once when I was in Santiago, Chile. The Chileans look very European and even very northern European in some of the cites- many Germans, Dutch, British and Irish there if I recall correctly. So it’s difficult to distinguish them from American or European expats. I ran into a fellow with a Tampa Bay Bucs T-shirt on and proceeded to address him in my own broken Spanish, presuming that he was a Chilean who’d made a trip there and picked up some tourist gear. But he turned out to be a born-and-bred US American from the heart of Texas who worked 20 years in West Florida, had just moved with his family to Chile and was loving it. I suspect that happens a lot down there.
Great points, thanks for the advice, yeah it makes sense the Canal Zone woulda had something to do with it. It really sounds like Panama is in a nice cushion right now, great quality cities and conditions but the costs haven’t yet caught up to it. Worth looking into.
That's my boat behind the ship, next to the tug.
Well i know it snowed there once because the locals told me it happen on Dec 12th Our Lady of Guadalupe day.
So records aside it usually stays between 62 and 82.
I made an unscheduled pit stop in Huatulco on my way from San Diego to Panama. Fueled up at the Shell dock after paying a small mordida at the Capitania’s office. Before I left, they explained that I was never there. Beautiful little port, with a long cruise ship dock and a few pretty resorts. At least, it looked that way from my POV for a few hours one Sunday morning.
That boat looks pretty sweet, gotta get me one of these.
While on the surface it is aimed at the Robert Vesco/Marc Rich types, there seems to be a constituency that considers expats to be economic traitors to the USA, and this has no problem passing laws like FATCA and expanding the powers of the IRS.
And this constituency does not consist of liberal Democrats.
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