The International Living Guide to Retiring Overseas on a Budget

How to Live Well on $25,000 a Year

Suzan Haskins, Dan Prescher

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781118758595
• eBook ISBN: 9781118863152
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Finance

Achieve your dream of retiring abroad while on a budget

The International Living Guide to Retiring Overseas on a Budget provides a detailed guide to one of the least-known but most effective retirement strategies in today's chaotic economic environment: retiring abroad. The premise is simple: Enjoy a happier, healthier, more fulfilling retirement than you could possibly afford in the U.S. or Canada by finding the right overseas retirement haven. The book reveals those affordable havens and the strategies for successfully making the move that could save your retirement. Aimed at retirees and near-retirees in the U.S. and Canada, this book's strategies apply just as well to younger people and people with families who are looking for ways to improve their quality of life while at the same time lowering their cost of living. It includes solutions for the challenges of continuing to work and earn money abroad, too.

As long-time contributors to the acknowledged leader in the field, International Living, authors Suzan Haskins and DanPrescher have at their disposal more than thirty years of International Living experience and expertise in the topic. They've been writing about living overseas for more than 12 years and have created their own broad and deep body of work, including regular blogs on the topic for Huffington Post and AARP. The authors include information and strategies that can be successfully applied by anyone regardless of their political or economic opinions. For anyone who wants a happier, healthier, more affordable life, The International Living Guide to Retiring Overseas on a Budget shows you how to enjoy the romance and excitement of living abroad on an affordable budget.

Part One
Contemplating an Exciting Move . . .

FOR YEARS, WE’D KNOWN IT WAS COMING: More than 10,000 of us—in the United States alone—are turning 65 every day. That’s 79 million people drawing Social Security benefits and at the mercy of Medicare. And, by the way, we’re now living longer than ever.

We have a lot of time left . . . but not so much that we don’t want to enjoy every minute of it. So just like we did way back when, in the 1960s and 1970s, some members of our generation are challenging conventional ideas and seeking alternatives. We’re taking matters into our own hands and carving out a revolutionary retirement experience.

If you think about it, people have long sought greener pastures for their retirement years. Our grandparents retired from the farm to town. Our parents retired to Florida and Arizona. And us . . . well, we’re rebels at heart. Dreamers. Adventurers. Inclined to march to the beat of a different drummer—no matter how exotic or offbeat.

As the late John Lennon said about our generation in the 1960s, “We were all on this ship . . . going to discover a New World.” While it’s not the ‘60s any longer, the journey never ended. Now, with so many of us in our fifties, sixties, and seventies, we look a little different, for sure, but we’re still all about seeking new experiences and exploring New Worlds.

And why should retirement be any different?

Chapter 1
Can You Afford to Retire Where You Live?

WE EXITED THE TERMINAL with our 90-pound chocolate Lab trotting at our side. He was delighted to have been liberated from his travel crate after the short four-hour flight from Miami. A smiling porter followed along, carting our two large suitcases and four huge cardboard boxes. (This was back when airlines allowed three pieces of luggage each—and a dog—at no extra charge.)

It was November 1, 2001, and we had jettisoned our previous lives to begin anew in Quito, Ecuador. Just as the thick fog that wrapped its arms around us that night, the future felt fresh and full of possibility.

The Ecuadorian friends we had met on a previous visit greeted us with cheers and hugs and loaded us up for the short ride to the home we’d rented for the coming year. Located in one of the city’s most charming neighborhoods, it had four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a guesthouse, and a gorgeous walled garden. The rent was just $600 a month.

As we walked into the house, the fireplace was roaring . . . more for ambience than anything else. November evenings in Quito are warm compared to our home state of Nebraska. The comforting fire and the kindness of new friends melted any hesitations we’d had about reversing the course of our lives in our mid-forties.

Why had we sold everything and run away from our lucrative marketing business? We were tired of the rat race. Tired of chasing the almighty dollar. Plain and simple, we were tired. And this was “our time.” With kids grown and parents still in great health, this was our chance to strike out on our much-anticipated adventure.

Why Ecuador? If you’ve ever been there, you know the answer to that. It has miles of unspoiled beaches. Rich rainforest. The amazing Galápagos Islands. Historic colonial cities, and clean and healthy rural villages. . .

For us, the mountains beckoned. There’s something about the Andes that steadies the soul. Llamas grazing the green slopes of snow-capped volcanoes . . . open-air markets overflowing with the biggest, brightest fruits and vegetables you’ve ever seen . . . the quick smiles and gentle nature of the people. . .

It doesn’t hurt that Ecuador boasts extraordinary weather. No down parkas or snow shovels needed here. In its cities, you’ll find great restaurants and shopping—a truly first-class infrastructure (and yes, high-speed Internet and excellent hospitals).

And then, of course, there’s Ecuador’s famous affordability. Although some prices have risen since our initial touchdown in 2001, you can still take a taxi just about anywhere in Quito for $1 to $5 and find a menu del día—usually a full-course meal of soup, salad, meat/rice/vegetables, dessert, and beverage—for $3 or less.

But back to our story. We left Ecuador at the end of 2002 because we wanted to experience more of Latin America. And since then, we’ve certainly done that. We’ve lived in seven different towns and cities in four countries—Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, and Nicaragua—researching and reporting about each of them as well as traveling extensively elsewhere in the world on behalf of International Living, which was founded in 1979 expressly to provide information to retirees looking for more satisfying and more affordable overseas lifestyles.

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The Five Most Common Questions Asked about Moving Overseas

1. Q. Must I give up my citizenship if I move overseas?
2. A. No way! You can if you want, of course, but most expats don’t. Instead, they get a residence visa in the country they move to. In some countries you can even live indefinitely on a tourist visa.
3. Q. Can I still collect my Social Security if I move overseas?
4. A. Yes, absolutely! In most cases, you can even have it direct-deposited into your new foreign bank account.
5. Q. What about Medicare? Will it cover me overseas?
6. A. Unfortunately not. But in many countries, you’ll find better, lower-cost options for health care. We know expats paying as little as $50 a month for a full-coverage health plan.
7. Q. Must I still pay U.S. or Canadian income taxes if I move overseas?
8. A. Maybe and maybe not. You certainly have to continue to file your annual tax return, but moving overseas can reduce your tax burden to the point where you may not owe much.
9. Q. Is it safe to live overseas?
10. A. We wouldn’t suggest countries that aren’t politically stable or don’t have good public safety records. That said, you should exercise caution everywhere these days . . . including in the United States and Canada.

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We’ve uprooted and moved so often that we joke that we’ve become “serial relocators.” There’s something about the romance of exploring new places and the honeymoon of making them your home. You could say that “Love the One You’re With” has become our motto.

Four years ago, though, we came back to the Andes for a visit and now here we are, living in Ecuador once again—this time in the small mountain village of Cotacachi in the northern province of Imbabura. That doesn’t mean, of course, that we’ll be here forever. But when we add up all that Ecuador has to offer, right now and at this point in time for us, no other place matches up.

From the terrace of our condo (which we bought for $52,000 in 2010) we can watch the sun and clouds play across the mountains, the cows and horses grazing in the fields below. We can walk to the local mercado and purchase a tote bag full of fresh-from-the-farm fruits and veggies for $10 or less that will last us the entire week. (If the bag is too heavy, a taxi home costs just $1.)

For $5 we can select four dozen long-stemmed roses so fresh they last the entire month. For $10, we can hire someone to clean our home once a week. We don’t pay rent or have a mortgage. We can easily live in Ecuador on a budget of $1,500 a month.

So how did we get so lucky? How did we manage to get out from under the plague of bad weather, bad debt, and rampant consumerism that so many Americans succumb to?

It was actually pretty easy. We thought about the direction our lives would go if we didn’t take this opportunity. We had a lot of tedious “work years” ahead of us. A lot of snowstorms to dig out from. We did the math and figured that, on our savings (and we’re not by any means wealthy), we could live very well on very little money. Anything we could earn to supplement that would be icing on the cake.

More and more of our fellow baby boomers, it appears, are calculating similar equations and looking for a way to rescue their retirement dreams. Today, interest in retiring overseas is growing by leaps and bounds. Every week we get more and more requests for interviews from the mainstream media and more inquiries from people who are in the same shoes we were in more than a decade ago.

Fortunately, the baby boomer generation is one that has always embraced change and new experiences. Typically, they’re not afraid to take chances and they understa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part One: Contemplating an Exciting Move . . .
• Part Two: Making the Move
• Part Three: Once You Get There
• Epilogue
• Index
• End User License Agreement