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Read about and learn from real-life experiences our expats have had in their new home countries, from health care to taxes, earning an income overseas to buying real estate…and much more.
Back in 2005, Deby Hogue says, she was working at a Montessori school and her husband, Chuck, had been working in construction for 30 years. As Chuck used to say back then, “I am beat up from the feet up.” It was a natural time in their lives to retire and make some more memories.
When my wife, Suzan, and I first became serious about moving abroad, one of the first things we did to prepare was take some basic Spanish lessons at the local community college.
The Lot is one of the most beautiful and wild areas of France. It’s a land of warm springs, hot dry summers (figure 75 F to 90 F), extensive woodland, imposing limestone cliffs, and attractive medieval villages. History is all around you in the Lot. Eighteenth-century stone shepherd huts still dot many fields here. You’ll find Les Châteaux des Anglais (the castles of the English) carved into the limestone cliffs of this region. These fort-refuges were built during the Hundred Years’ War (1337 to 1453) between France and England.
“What I really dig about my life now is that I am no longer stuck in a crowded and expensive city. I can enjoy retirement hanging out at the beach, with all the worries of overpriced healthcare far behind me,” says expat Roger Carter of his new life in Cambodia.
“The best part of living here is that it is just a five-minute walk to the beach. We walk to the beach every day,” says Erin Scholnick-Lee, who lives in Da Nang, Vietnam. “Who doesn’t want to live five minutes from the beach?”
“The last time I went exploring by motorbike through the jungle, I saw an elephant just walking down the road. An elephant! Now that doesn’t happen in Canada,” says Michael Brown, who now makes his home in the Thai resort city of Hua Hin. “I have the time to enjoy my life, and there is truly so much to enjoy here.”
For my husband Mike and me, our new lives in Medellín, Colombia’s “City of Flowers,” could scarcely be more different from our old lives back in the U.S. Our cost of living is less than half of what it was in Maine.
"I used to watch the sunset on the Empire State Building. Now I watch the sunrise over the Caribbean, on the bay of Corozal,” says Nancy Naftchi-Medoro, 46. For Nancy and her husband Tony, 68, the move has changed their lives for the better.
The road was bone-shaking in places: unpaved, rocky, and pitted with potholes. I was driving along the Baja California Peninsula…in search of the next big thing to hit this coast. As I looked at the dramatic sea views in front of me, the waves crashing against the shore, I knew I’d found it.
Tired of bad weather, high costs, and a lack of respect for older people in the U.S., Paul and Gloria Yeatman moved from Baltimore to a cozy home on a tropical mountainside in Costa Rica’s Central Valley…but still just 45 minutes from the beach. They wanted fun and adven-ture in their retirement. “And no more snow.”