Starting in a new country is a mix of the familiar, the new, and the weird. When I settled in Chiang Mai, Thailand, I discovered all three. And, as I wandered through the country’s cultural thickets,I kept track of my mistakes.

When it’s time to retire, you won’t find Ann Roess sitting on the porch with a pair of knitting needles, or her husband Mike puttering around the yard with pruning shears.

I go to enjoy the capital’s great quality of life. You can walk, run, or socialize on the rambla, the wide coastal promenade that runs the full length of the city.

When you ask folks who live on an island what drew them to life on a curio of clay, they tend to respond by saying things like, “I can live simply without much interference.”

There’s a way you can buy real estate in some of world’s most stunning locales and pay a fraction of what your neighbor paid. I’m not talking about buying in a depressed backwater.

I was about 11 or 12 years old, listening to my mom—a travel agent at the time—talking to a co-worker about finding a way to get a client to Minneapolis.

It was early afternoon, and I was on a chartered bus about 50 miles outside Vienna. The cellphones of my traveling companions starting buzzing…and one of the Austrian bankers began to translate the breaking news coming over the radio.

Dedicating your life to the service of others can open up a world of possibilities. You could become an activist to save small family farms. Maybe live in Nicaragua for a year. When you can bake to-die-for pies, you might even open a restaurant in Cuenca, Ecuador

Years ago I decided that before I ever settled down I wanted to live in five new cities around the world. But when I originally imagined this “jet-setter” lifestyle I believed I would need to sell a company or save hundreds of thousands of dollars to make it a reality.

You’ll find alpine idylls, upland meadows, and trout-filled mountain lakes. Hiking and horseback riding through the pine forests are popular pastimes, and if you like climbing, some of the peaks are 10,000 feet high.