Inexpensive living draws American retirees to Central America

Also, when she is kidnapped, guess whose husband will be pounding on the U.S. Embassy's door?

You might want to read up on CA, specifically Panama and Honduras. Panama is becoming more and more cosmopolitan every year and their northern coast both on the Atlantic and Pacific sides is wide open for purchasing property and very, very American and European friendly!

My cousin just bought 50 acres on an island in the archipelagos on the Eastern side of northern Panama and I am looking at property in Honduras. While there is problems in Honduras, it is mainly internal but nothing in the realm of political uprisings. At least in Honduras you can get a permit to carry a firearm and if you are a foreigner, its unlikely it will be held against you if you dont have the permit. Washington DC on the other hand is more dangerous than Honduras......

Don't believe everything you read in the U.S. papers..........

Sorry to be late getting back. I bought furniture slides for our bed and you wouldn't believe what was under it...

She had a traumatic brain injury in the hinterlands of Bolivia but was with her Peace Corp boyfriend and that group had had two horrible accidents that year and knew what to do. They had her transported to Santa Cruz by air.

Thankfully there was an American Army doctor at the village for the day giving immunizations so he was able to give her immediate care and stabilize her. The surgeon who owned the clinica (his wife's home) but really a hospital was a resident in the US army and board certified. The care was quite excellent but unbelievable by our standards. Actual oxygen tanks, no MRI in the country and she had to be transported across town for cat scans. Not easy for a coma patient. This hospital catered to the elite (drug money, etc.).
Her bill for 17 days, plane transport with medical personnel, transport 4-5 times, ICU etc. was in the $12,000 range. I would say dirt cheap. To get her home was $40,000. Many, many stories and miracles.

Really, it's pretty logical.

They want to move here because they are poor over there, and there are jobs here.

Retirees want to move there because they want a low cost of living, which they can get because most people are poor there.

It can work out well for everyone because more desperately needed jobs wind up down there, and so fewer people will want to come up here, which is what many of you seem to want.

I plan to move to the Philippines for exactly the reasons cited above. I have a community web site that I'd like to make my primary source of income. I can't stand to live in Pittsburgh, where I am. If I can earn $2k a month I can live like a king in the Philippines, instead of just getting by (and suffering through frigid winters) here.

It's the same logic: If your income doesn't depend on geography, and you can tough out cultural adjustments like unique food and different cultures, then you're probably better off in the third world than in the US, because life is so expensive here.

Leveraging a first world income with a third-world lifestyle gives me a live-in maid ($30-40 a month) who will do my laundry, take out my trash and generally do everything domestic that I hate to do in the US. I could also afford a waterfront house in a tropical climate, which would cost over half a million in the cheapest warm-water parts of the US, and $3,500,000 plus in the nice parts.

As a special bonus, the supply and demand equation between single men and women is, well, different. There is a major shortage of responsible, affluent men over there. You are talking about a ratio of around 100 women seeking an affluent man for every affluent man seeking a woman. So someone like me, who is basically thrown out with the trash in the romantic stakes here, is suddenly solid gold.

My saying is simple: Go where you're wanted. I'd say I'm more wanted and likely to have a far better life in the third than the first.

Sure, the United States is a great country and it does many great things. But that doesn't mean that it's in everyone's interest to stay, when it has a high cost of living, and comfortable climates like Florida or California are outrageously expensive.

D

I visited Nicaragua in May of this year. Drop dead gorgeous country.

I believe I was the first Freeper to make a post from there. It won't be my last.

You can live like a king in Central America off of Social Security alone.

I'm not sure I'd retire in Nicaragua. The infrastructure still needs some improvement in order to compare to the US. But Costa Rica is close. It's much more like America than, say, Laredo.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.