My journey to overseas retirement started about 10 years prior to actually retiring. Although I have traveled a fair amount both domestically and internationally for work and pleasure over the years, I never thought much about retiring abroad.
“Why would you move to Ecuador?” I get this question a lot. In fact, I asked the same question myself when, three years ago, my husband suggested we move to Cuenca. But now, I know exactly why you should move there…
In 2013, Mary Wingo started looking for a new way to earn an income. Working as a scientific researcher, she was growing frustrated by the dwindling government funding being allocated to her field.
With a pastor father who used music to inspire, an actress mother who was a stand-in for Joanne Woodward and sang in the theater, and a brother who founded folk-punk favorite Violent Femmes, Glenn Gano’s DNA has music running through it. “My brother and I loved to sit around and listen to my father play,” says Glenn. And now, after moving to Cuenca, Ecuador, Glenn has the time to reclaim his dormant talents.
B.J. McNally knew it was time for big changes in her life when John, her husband of 48 years, nearly fell face-first into a plate of food after they had gone hiking in a state park in Wisconsin. That was the day they both knew John had to stop working 13-hour days at his hospital facilities management job and concentrate on his health. “He was working himself to death,” B.J. says. It was time to retire.
My wife Rita and I have always enjoyed travel, and we both had jobs that could be done from the road. We had visited several places around the globe, idly speculating on whether we could live there. But it was International Living that really got us thinking about retirement abroad and ultimately real estate in Ecuador.
Cynthia Collette moved to Ecuador in 2012 from Minneapolis, Minnesota with five duffle bags and $700. Her monthly income at that time was just $600 a month. Today, she says, “My base income has gone up a bit…to about $725 a month. In the U.S., there’s no way I know of to live on that amount, even extremely frugally.”
Before you shout “No, it’s Everest”, let me explain a little geology here so you can impress at dinner parties.
“What do you DO in Ecuador?” That’s a question that expats get asked all of the time. For the most part, the simple truth is that we do pretty much the same things that retirees do anywhere in our day-to-day life. We read, watch some TV, get together with friends, indulge in hobbies, and so on.
Laura and I are in our early 60s, and we are neither athletes nor daredevils. But we used to be. We come from an era where parents pushed you out the door at dawn and shouted, “don’t come back till dark.”