It’s the time of year when folks start glaring at their snow shovels. I get it. When we lived in Chicago, I used to think: Why on earth did people ever settle here? It’s when you’re most sick of long johns and scraping car windows that a warm-weather escape takes on a nirvana-like quality. But for lots of folks, it remains a dream.
In C.S Lewis’ The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, the children find—behind the winter coats—the entrance to a wondrous world. Now Narnia may not be real, but discovering and exploring your possibilities overseas can prove just as magical.
The world we cover at International Living isn’t the same one you hear about on the nightly news. We seek out opportunity—not ratings. This frees us, mercifully, from the “if it bleeds, it leads” mandate. So we can seek out the fortuitous instead of the unfortunate.
It doesn’t matter where they came from or what they did back home—teacher, entrepreneur, dentist, secretary, taxi driver, journalist—the happiest expats we meet overseas have one thing in common: They brought their sense of adventure with them.
In exotic, welcoming, warm-weather destinations all over the world—from Colombia to Korea—you can live better for less. But, alas, you can’t live for free. Many retirees fund their lives overseas through savings, Social Security, and pensions. But those aren’t your only options. In this golden age of the portable career, we know readers cashing in with freelance work from every corner of the planet.
There are good (and not-so-good) reasons for heading abroad. Find out if you’re well-suited to the expat life and the 10 steps to take to get from where you are now to where you want to be.
There are good (and not-so-good) reasons for heading abroad. Find out if you’re well-suited to the expat life and the 10 steps to take to get from where you are now to where you want to be.
There are good (and not-so-good) reasons for heading abroad. Find out if you’re well-suited to the expat life and the 10 steps to take to get from where you are now to where you want to be.
Americans knew little of Cambodia until, in 1924, a stalwart Titanic survivor, Helen Churchill Candee, published her adventures there in a book called, Angkor the Magnificent. “We think we have exposed and investigated the secret places of the whole round globe,” she says, “when there comes word of a new one, and not only a secret place but a place full of secrets.”
It’s like a grab bag at a candy store—coastal drama, rainforests, spring-weather valleys…this place costs less than Cleveland…and things just work here.” That was my assessment of Costa Rica in 1998. That trip felt like a reward. I’d been nosing out “new” destinations in places like Nicaragua and Panama—“early-in finds” that would be attractive to pioneering retirees.