Thinking about retirement, we usually focus on money. Are we saving enough? With the cost of living ticking up and interest rates near zero, it’s a reasonable question.
But preoccupied with funds, we often forget to reflect on why we save to begin with. What we’re really after, I’d venture, is an enjoyable, meaningful, comfortable lifestyle. We save, ultimately, so we have greater control over how we live. But at home today, it often feels like we have less control…and fewer options.
That’s why, this month, we consider “quality of life” overseas. We point you to places where not only will your savings stretch—sometimes doubling, or even tripling your nest egg’s spending power…
See below for all the articles in your May 2012 issue. If you’d prefer to read your issue in PDF format, click here.
For most people, the idea of dinner in Paris likely conjures one of two images: an elegant restaurant where white-jacketed waiters glide about with silver- domed dishes, or a cozy bistro where a platter of steak frites is plunked down before you and the house red is as good as any you’ve tasted.
Not needed: coat, scarf or sweater. But some sun-block would be welcome. Early December and the afternoon temperature is nudging 70 F. Sunbathers are on Isla Plana’s beach, and children are building sand-castles. I can even see swimmers.
Sipping a cappuccino at a small table in a shady plaza outside my hotel, I’m reminded of days and evenings spent in similar sidewalk cafés in Europe. Stately 19th-century neo-classical and baroque-style buildings with wrought-iron balconies line the square. Curtains wave gaily through massive wood-framed windows.
Squashed into the back of a Buenos Aires taxi between the two women, I hadn’t been paying much attention. But once they mentioned MercadoLibre, it sounded like a conversation that I overheard several times during my three-week investment-scouting trip to Argentina and Uruguay.
Since my first visit to Panama in the 1970s I’ve returned countless times and visited every part of the isthmus except one—the Darién Gap, a large swath of swamp, jungle and forest, 99 miles long and 31 miles wide, that separates Panama’s Darién Province from the Republic of Colombia.
The clouds are sliding off the mountaintops and the sun is warming the pine-scented air. I’m in tropical latitudes but the locals here go about their daily routines swaddled in multi-colored, locally-loomed woolens, just as they have for centuries. It can get chilly at night. Though during the day it’s usually mild enough to relax outdoors.
I’ve always loved to dance. I studied ballet as a child. I’ve directed my own belly-dance troupe. In 1997, I finally discovered tango—and I was hooked. When I dance, I feel most like myself. And these days I get to do it all the time as a dance teacher in Buenos Aires, Argentina, passing on one of the most beautiful dances of all—the tango—in the place where it was born and is still at its best.
Winner of the 2012 Global Retirement Index, Ecuador offers sophisticated historical cities…miles of unspoiled, sun-kissed beaches…fertile farmland…and temperate mountain hideaways…and all of it for pennies on the dollar. You can live well for a fraction of the cost of living back in the U.S.
To see what makes Panama unique, explore its rich and fascinating indigenous cultures. Bocas del Toro is the best place to start—by dint of sheer beauty. The province is partly made up of an archipelago of Caribbean islands ringed by white-sand beaches and waters the color of a summer sky. To get to Bocas del Toro from Panama City, catch a one-hour flight on domestic carrier Air Panama.
Despite the early hour, Kurdish villagers are laughing merrily in the tea rooms around the city’s cattle market. The morning is cool and scented with rain. As I lift our bags onto the train I see that a family of Yörük nomads has pitched its tent opposite the station. The women are out front picking through wool shorn from their small flock. They’ll use this to weave the carpets sold in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul…which is where we’re headed.