Irn-Bru turns hair ginger (false). It glows in the dark (false). It dissolves haggis (possibly). The maker, AG Barr, once used the slogan “Made in Scotland from girders” (true).

We survey 194 countries in our annual Quality of Life Index. How do we decide which of them should be on your radar screen for retirement? With an eye firmly on places where your dollars are likely to stretch, we send a scout to take a look.

In Panama, the lifestyle is more convenient and comfortable than ever. Nowadays, because of a new coastal road, I need not sit in traffic for an hour to visit a bank in the busy financial sector.

The data have been collected, the numbers crunched, and France has topped IL’s annual Quality of Life Index. Nine important criteria are considered. However, one really important criterion was ignored: the best places in the world to play golf.

Every January, we rank and rate 194 countries to come up with our list of the places that offer you the best quality of life. This isn’t about best value, necessarily. It’s about the places in the world where the living is, simply put, great.

In July 2006, after searching for five years, we found a property in Vilcabamba, Ecuador. In that community, we found everything we wanted, including a low cost of living: We manage quite comfortably on $500 a month.

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In the bastide village of Larressingle, in the Midi-Pyrenees region, the Auberge de Larressingle belongs to the Logis de France association. With more than 3,000 independent hotels (mostly small and family owned) under its wing, the association represents “hotels with a human face.”

The U.S. government is projecting a budget deficit of $1.84 trillion—more than four times 2008’s record-high. To put that number in context, that amount had never been spent by the federal government in a single year until 2000, let alone borrowed.