The Best Places To Retire or Live Abroad (and How To Decide)

Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests.

Kristin Wilson, Host:    00:00:22    Good morning, afternoon, or evening, wherever you are in the world, Kristin, from Traveling with Kristin here, and welcome to episode 123 of Badass Digital Nomads. If you're listening to this episode in particular, then chances are that you have struggled in the past with deciding on what could be the best place for you to live or work abroad or travel or retire. And this is a question that is very common. It's a completely natural and understandable thing to happen because when you are so fortunate to be in the position to be able to voluntarily move to another country for fun or for quality of life or for any other reason, it can be overwhelming, and there's a lot of good places to go. And how do you pick the best one for you? And then how do you know that you picked the right one? It can be a stressful thing to decide, and um, you know, it's a good problem to have, but it is still a problem nonetheless.  

Kristin:    00:01:39    And it's a problem because, like many life skills and soft skills, and quote unquote, adulting skills that we weren't taught in traditional schooling, there's really no roadmap for what to do or where to live once you retire. And it's kind of ironic that this is the case because with so much focus and effort and attention in society around the concept of retirement and why you have to work your ass off your entire life to get there, it seems like once you do get there, there should be a little bit more tips or guidance or support on how to make the most of that time, even if you're retiring early, like if you're retiring on fire, or especially if you're retiring early. But whether or not you are retiring soon, this episode is going to give you some very practical tips and tools for how to decide on a country to live in, even if you're just going for traveling or as a digital nomad, or to live as an expat for a few years.  

Kristin:    00:02:58    So you don't have to be retiring to listen to this episode, but these will be applicable strategies whether you are retiring or moving somewhere. And really, they go for not even if you're moving to another country, but maybe if you're moving to another city or state within your country and you are trying to make a decision there. But before we get into the tips on how you can choose the right place to relocate to or to retire to, I would like to thank Isaac and Nico for literally fueling the podcast this week with the 10 coffees that they bought me through the buy me a coffee link on badassdigitalnomads.com. Isaac is also one of my longtime patrons, and I would like to thank Maurice from San Francisco for his PayPal donation, as well as my newest Patreon patrons from the month of August.  

Kristin:    00:03:58    Mike, David, Cj, Christopher, Brian, and Dave. But I wanted to let you all know that your contributions, whether they are on PayPal or Buy me a coffee or through Patreon, these really don't just go towards my caffeine habit. <laugh>. In all seriousness, they actually do go to help fund the production of this podcast because behind my microphone, there is a whole team of people working to bring you the podcast every week. And I don't know if I have actually mentioned them before. So I would just like to introduce you to Kayla who helps with the podcast show notes. She also keeps our website updated, and she hand selects or ear selects if it were the audio highlights that you have likely seen on my Instagram feed, in the Badass Digital Nomads Facebook group and maybe in other places on social media, but she's always working hard behind the scenes.  

Kristin:    00:05:05    And then there's also our editing team guest, Dawn, James, Tom Rusty, Russell Romulus, and our project manager Penny. And we also have Tryxsy or TJ who some of you might have emailed with, as well as Maria and Victoria who help behind the scenes with email and administration and Facebook group management. And then of course, I would also, while we're at it, let's express our appreciation to our Facebook group moderators, Maria, Jonah and RJ. So there's a whole team who's helping to produce Badass Digital Nomads every week, and you can support the show by simply leaving a review spreading the word, or you can find more ways to support at badassdigitalnomads.com. So thank you to everyone who's out there listening, reviewing, and contributing to this community-sourced podcast by us and for us anyway. Moving on to the topic of today's show, the question of where to retire, where to move, while you're going to hear in this podcast my reaction and opinion to a list of number one, places to live or retire abroad according to 10 different top 10 lists.  

Kristin:    00:06:36    When I was thinking about how to approach this topic and I could just give you my opinion, which I might do in another episode, because some people in the YouTube video comments requested that they're like, we don't care about what these other people say, we just wanna know what you think. So I might do another episode on that. But um, I also thought it would be interesting to look at these different worldwide top 10 lists from companies that have been crunching all of this data, see what they came up with, and then give you my opinion and reaction to that. And if I felt like I agreed with them or if I thought that there were some more pros and cons that maybe they were leaving out. So as you're listening to this, to use this episode as a tool for you to decide where you're going to live someday, I want you to answer three questions to yourself.  

Kristin:    00:07:36    You don't have to write them down or anything, just make a mental note as you're listening. And the first thing, and the most important thing is to think about what is important to you in a retirement destination. And if you're not retiring, just substitute living a abroad destination. What is most important to you? What is the number one thing that you're going to make this decision based on? I had some ideas. So I ran a poll in the Facebook group and included things like safety, cost of living, quality of life, healthcare visas, residency taxes, people, community, the cost of real estate, and a few other things. People also wrote down what they thought was most important. So everyone voted in that poll, they added more things. For example, one person or a few people actually in the the YouTube video on where to retire commented that climate change should be a consideration in choosing where to live long-term.  

Kristin:    00:08:43    So these are just some examples. So your first assignment here is to just take a moment to think about what is the top priority for you in choosing a destination? What is the most important thing to you in choosing a place to live? Is it something budget-oriented? Is it safety? Is it healthcare? Just quickly think of one thing. And then the second thing is to then define in your own words what that means to you. Because we like to throw around these terms like quality of life, yes, that's the most important, but like what does that mean to you? Quality of life was actually the number one priority that people voted for in the poll. But what does quality of life mean? Does that mean that you have access to certain types of foods, maybe organic markets, things like that. Maybe it means that you can do certain activities or whether you can get a certain type of housing that you can afford for your budget.  

Kristin:    00:09:51    Does quality of life mean that you live in a place with a good climate or in a country with a stable government? Does it mean that you get to open your window every morning and see a beach or a mountains or a city? Does it mean that you can walk to everything that you need in your neighborhood? What does quality of life mean to you? Just think about that for a second and let's do another example. So let's say climate is the most important thing to you. That can be anything, right? For some of you, that might mean you want like hot tropical weather, <laugh>. So my grandma rest in peace, grandma, she loved Miami. She loved hot weather. My grandpa too, they always dreamt about retiring in Costa Rica. They never did 'cause they didn't wanna be too far away from my mom in Florida, so they always stayed in Florida.  

Kristin:    00:10:50    But for some of you that might mean really hot and tropical weather, like my grandparents were from Ohio, and there's no way they would've survived there beyond their like early twenties. They just loved hot weather too much. So you might wanna go somewhere like Florida, like Panama, like Mexico, or you might be like, I don't wanna sweat. Like, no, thank you. And you might want a cooler or a more moderate climate, like somewhere in Costa Rica, Central Valley, which is known for having one of the best climates in the world, or Medellín in Columbia, the city of eternal springtime. Perhaps you're interested in a Mediterranean climate—you know, somewhere in the middle. And then for others like me, you might wanna do both. For many, many years I lived what I like to call the endless summer because I avoided winter for like seven or eight years, but in recent years, I've become more of a reverse snowbird who searches out ski destinations to live in because I love snowboarding.  

Kristin:    00:11:54    So you might wanna go live in somewhere where it's cold so that you're not hot. So whatever you choose as the most important thing for you, maybe it's healthcare. What does that mean? Define it. Does that mean that you have certain prescriptions available? Does that mean that you can get certain procedures for a certain price tag? Does that mean that a particular doctor is in the area? So just take a moment, think of your number one thing, and then define what does that even mean. And then the third step in choosing where you want to live is to listen to the destinations on this list. I think I mentioned 12 to 15 places total, even though it's a top 10 list, because there were a few others where I talked about the top three places on the list. So as you're listening to this, think of it through your filter, through your perspective of which of these, if any, would align the best with your top priority, and then what that priority looks like to you.  

Kristin:    00:13:04    So in choosing a place to retire or live abroad, or even within your same country, my goal in creating this podcast topic and the YouTube video wasn't to give everybody one answer, right? Because the right place for you is going to be very different from someone else who's listening. And it could even be different at the beginning of your journey versus at the middle or the end. So it could change, but we don't wanna make this decision based on what's going to happen. Many years from now. I've had plenty of retirement clients postpone their relocations because they were concerned about legislation that was going to happen according to the internet in this certain country. And then it never happened. It just fell off the map. They never got to move, they just waited around for five years, and now they're coming back like, oh, I guess I should have moved when I could back then.  

Kristin:    00:14:04    And then there's also people who commented a lot about the risk of living in Taiwan. That is obviously there is a risk of something happening with China, and we do need to take these larger, let's say, more broader macro-external risks into consideration. But that doesn't necessarily mean that what we think is going to happen or what people say is going to happen is going to happen. And certainly the past couple years living during the Coronavirus pandemic have shown us that anything can happen <laugh>, and that really no one can tell the future. So we wanna take everything into consideration. You wanna also take your lower priorities into consideration. But the point of this was not to say these are the 10 best places to retire. You should pick one of these. It's to give you some insight into how I look at these destinations, how I perceive them, and how you can score them according to your individual needs.  

Kristin:    00:15:13    It could even be part logical and part intuitive. Like, how does your brain react when you hear the name of a certain place? How does your body physiology react? Do you get excited? Do you get bored, <laugh>? Are you like yawning or do you ignore that place? And you're like, well, what about this place? Pay attention to those little cues because those are all hints of where you should go. Uh, so to put it more bluntly, if it seems to you that everyone on the internet wants to move to Portugal, but you're not really interested in going to Portugal, then don't go to Portugal. Or you know, if everyone says you should go to Costa Rica or Philippines, but those countries don't really pique your interest, then just ignore them and move on because life is too short to compromise on a destination where you're going to live for potentially years and the expenses that you're going to incur when you do that.  

Kristin:    00:16:13    So it should definitely be influenced more by your wants and your desires and your needs rather than what other people say, what people on the internet say. And even what I say <laugh>. So my goal is to give you the information and the resources and the tools to make that best decision for you. And um, these are just some segments of the types of processes and strategies that I use when I work with my relocation clients one-on-one. So it seems like people were liking this topic. One of my YouTube subscribers named Hector said that this may be your very best video yet, Kristin, this is a real question on the minds of real people. And then he said that his partner and him take a different take on retirement. They don't think in terms of a place to retire. He said, we think in terms of places to retire, as in two or three or four, he said, few places have great weather year-round, for example, but many have seasons of two to five months that are absolutely delightful.  

Kristin:    00:17:25    So why not take advantage of that rather than compromising half the year or more with bad weather. So he said to take maximum advantage of where we live in the Pacific Northwest, we spend two to three months in the summer cruising around British Columbia in Canada, and then in non-Covid times we live in New Zealand for three months during the year during their summers. He also said it's a mistake to tie yourself to living in one place because seasonal rentals are available around the world, and it's less hassle than owning a property. And he really loves that mobility that he gets from going to different places for three to six months. He said, if you're retired, take advantage of every advantage that life offers. Be free. And so thank you, Hector, for your comment. I agree that choosing multiple places could be a good option for some people, but others might want more stability and others might want to live in one place for a few years before moving on.  

Kristin:    00:18:28    So these are just some ideas, but I do agree in renting before buying because I've seen way too many people invest in real estate in a country that they haven't been to or that they haven't lived in for very long. Maybe they've only gone there to visit or to just look at the properties. And then after the first year or two or three years, they decide that that's not the best fit for them. They wanna go somewhere else. So to avoid that and then being tied to real estate in a foreign country, it's always best to rent first and make sure that you are in the right place. So just to summarize, so far in choosing a place to retire or live, you've already taken the three hardest steps. So you've acknowledged what's most important to you, you've defined what that means to you. And then in the third step, you're gonna be listening in this episode and looking out for places that are gonna be a good fit based on your number one and number two items.  

Kristin:    00:19:32    So the next step, we're not gonna do too many steps in this podcast, but once you have a handful of places in mind, the next step is to make sure that these destinations on your wishlist fit your budget, and then to also factor in the other lower priorities on your list to make sure that everything has some weighting and going into this decision. So maybe cost of living is most important to you, but also healthcare and also safety, or maybe it's safety, climate and quality of life, or maybe it's food and climate and budget, like you might have all different um, priorities there. So with the finances, that is a whole topic in and of its own. So we'll talk finances in detail in a different episode. I think I mentioned that on another recent episode that we would have that coming up. But if you don't wanna wait, you can take action now on planning by downloading a free copy of my moving abroad and digital nomad budget template that I've linked in the show notes.  

Kristin:    00:20:39    So it's actually three different spreadsheets in one. One for planning your move, one for your cost of living abroad and even one for your, um, business expenses if you're doing an online business. So you can download that for free in the show notes. And then another opportunity that I have for any of you who are planning on moving to another country in the next one to two years, if you would like some help with your relocation strategy and planning, I'm gonna be opening up a few spaces in the beta version of my brand-new program that I've been working on for the past few months. It's called Ready to Relocate. And this is going to be the first time that I am ever teaching my signature process for how to relocate to another country step-by-step. I have never shared any of this in a podcast.

Kristin:    00:21:42    I've never shared it in a video, I've never shared it in a blog post. It's the exact process that I have designed myself over the years, and I've used it to help more than a thousand people relocate to 40 countries, and even my one-on-one relocation. Clients don't know what's in my process because this is a done for you service. Typically, this is all what my team and I do behind the scenes to help them. So even though they hire me for a full relocation and they get the result of being relocated successfully to another country, they don't know all of the steps that are going into it behind the scenes. So this is gonna be the first time that I'm ever leading a group of people through the process of an international relocation. I should probably trademark this process. I trademark, I think so, and I'll be teaching you step by step what you need to do at each phase before you move, during the move and after the move.  

Kristin:    00:22:47    So this is everything that you need to know to ensure that you can relocate anywhere in the world as quickly and seamlessly as possible and just saving a ton of time, potentially years Googling things. And then of course, a lot of money saved in the most common mistakes that people make when they retire to another country. So I'm gonna take a limited number of people because it's gonna be the first time that I'm opening this program, but if you want to be a part of the first group that gets access to the relocation roadmap here and get a chance for a special introductory rate, then send me an email to my relocation email that is info@orbisrelocation.com with the subject line Ready to Telocate, and we will take it from there. So just send an email info@O R B like Belgium, I like Iceland, S like Spain relocation.com, subject line, Ready to Relocate, and tell me why you want to relocate and uh, why you want to be a part of this first group.  

Kristin:    00:24:09    So this will be a limited-time offer. Just send that email if you wanna be part of the first group. And this will be for anyone who wants to relocate in the next one to two years. So I hope that you enjoy my reaction here to the top 10 best places to retire in the world. And in this case, you can catch the video version of this podcast on YouTube. You can also vote in our retirement poll over on my YouTube community page. And of course, join the conversation over in the comments. I think there's about 500 comments on this video in just a week. Taki Brewer, for example, was disappointed that Greece didn't make the list. We had Blair Helsing commenting, suggesting some cities to retire in Finland, Norway, New Zealand, and the Baltics. And then UnfetteredFootsteps said, thank you for this, Kristin, love getting your take on this, as I've seen some of these ratings and lists before.  

Kristin:    00:25:11    So it's good to have multiple perspectives and data points for me. This video is also helpful food for thought as I look to spend more time abroad and want to have a nice balance of good quality of life and low cost of living. Much appreciated. You are welcome, Mr. Footsteps, and I hope that this podcast provided even more context and tips for you in making your decision on where to retire. Enjoy.

Kristin: Your retiring. Congratulations. The only question now is what do you do with all of your new-found free time? How do you spend it? Where do you spend it? And with so many amazing places to visit or live in the world, how do you narrow them all down to just one? Well, you could spend the next 40 years googling it or you can just watch this video settle in my friend, because we are about to go on a journey of the best places to retire in the world.  

Kristin:    00:26:14    But this is not your ordinary top 10 list. Oh no, I have scoured the internet for the best of the best of the best. The number one places to retire on all of the top lists. We've got the best place for quality of life, the best place for cost of living, for zero taxes, and the best place to retire from the retirement gurus themselves, InternationalLiving. My role here is to be your guide. I'm going to take you through each place, give you my reaction and opinion to each one and let you know the pros and cons and if I agree with their number one choices. And at the end of the video, we're gonna save the best for last of course. And I'm going to tell you my recommendation for where he should retire. But first, what makes a place a good place to retire?  

Kristin:    00:27:02    Well, I went over to ask the 5,000 people in my Facebook group what they thought, and they overwhelmingly told me that a high quality of life with a low cost of living are the two main things that they're looking for. So that's what we're gonna look for on this list. Let's get started kicking things off in 10th place. We have the best place to retire early and cheap. This is a top 15 list by a gentleman named Vagabond Awake. You may have seen some of his videos before on YouTube. Let's see what he has to say. Okay, so he's going with Bali. That is a pretty interesting choice out of everywhere in the world, but I like it. I don't hate it. Bali is a great place to live. It's a very tropical and beautiful, it's very affordable and there are a lot of foreigners living there for that reason.  

Kristin:    00:27:52    In fact, Indonesia made it on my top 10 list of places to live in the world. But when it comes to retiring, there's a couple issues with Bali. I mean, the big thing is that it's just very far away. It's an island in an island chain. So if you are coming from North America or Europe, and you're going to be retiring to Bali, it's just really far away like going to the Philippines. So if you really want to settle on that side of the world, I think it's great. Of course, right now it is a difficult time as we're filming this during the pandemic, but there are a lot of plans for Bali to reopen their borders for travel and tourism. And also they're developing some new remote work and digital nomad visas. So if you have a retirement income, that can make it really affordable for you to live in Bali for up to five years if their visa goes through without having to apply for any sort of permanent residency status. 

Kristin:    00:28:48    So that could be a good option for you. Next step, we have the best places to retire under $1,500 per month according to another fellow YouTuber. Skerry Harry. So Harry chose Tulum, Mexico as his number one spot, which surprises me to see on a list of the best places under $1,500 per month because Tulum is actually the most expensive town in that region in the Maya Riviera of Mexico. So if you're considering that area for your retirement, then you're gonna wanna look at places like Playa del Carmen just to the north, or even Puerto Aventuras, which is between Tulum and Playa del Carmen. You'll get a lower cost of living and a lot fewer digital nomads dancing around on your beach. Another place to look at this area is actually between Cancun and Playa del Carmen. There are a lot of golf course communities.  

Kristin:    00:29:43    There's a lot of really nice neighborhoods that are kind of out of the downtown core of Playa Central, and you can get more affordable housing there and still have the same access to amenities, the same great climate, and the same nice quality of life. So I do like the Yucatan area of Mexico as a retirement destination. I'm just not sure I would choose Tulum. But what if you're from the US and you don't wanna head south of the border? What is the best US city for you to retire to? Well, US News and World Report does an annual report on this. And so let's see who won in 2021, Sarasota, Florida. Number one, best place to retire with a score of 7.6 out of 10. And it looks like they chose Sarasota because of the art scene and also the beautiful beaches and the foodie culture.  

Kristin:    00:30:37    I really like Sarasota as a US retirement destination. I actually used to live around that area on the Gulf Coast over in St. Pete, Florida. And my sister used to always joke with me whenever we were FaceTiming and she would ask like, oh, how are you enjoying your retirement? Because in the screen she could just see all of the beaches and the palm trees and everything around me. And she just said, it always looked like I was retired. And you know, I maybe I was living my digital nomad retirement life. If you're looking for a beach town in the United States, then it's really hard to beat Sarasota because it has that beautiful water, the sailing, the boating, a really nice arts and cultural scene, lots of live music, you've got lots of breweries over there, and it's just a nice place to enjoy a nice beverage at sunset.  

Kristin:    00:31:26    There are also no state taxes in Florida, and the cost of living is pretty moderate as well. So good choice. Now let's see what another one of my favorite YouTubers Briggs has to say about that, because I know he does a lot of top 10 lists. Mesquite, Nevada did not see that coming. <laugh>, what the heck? I need more information. Okay, so he says that he chose this place because you can get your real estate under 150,000, but there are a ton of places around the world where you can get a condo for less than 150 grand. And according to my Facebook poll, the cost of real estate was at the bottom of people's priorities when it comes to where they wanna retire abroad. So I think out of all of the places in the world like sorry, Briggs, but I'm probably not going to pick a desert.  

Kristin:    00:32:14    There are probably a lot of similar places in Nevada with a similar cost of living. So for me, that doesn't necessarily stand out as one of the best places in the US to retire, but it could be for you to each their own. I've never heard of it personally, but if you've ever been to Mesquite, Nevada, let us know in the comments what we're missing now in sixth place. What about the best tax-free destination to live? Well, to answer that question, we're gonna have to go over to none other than our friend, the Nomad Capitalist. Let's see what he has to say. So Andrew's recommending the United Arab Emirates, which is really interesting choice, but I can definitely see why I just did a lot of research on Dubai specifically for their new remote work visa. And so I was reading about all of the reasons that foreigners go to live there, but I'm not sure that I would recommend it as a retirement destination specifically.  

Kristin:    00:33:08    And I don't think that's what Andrew's doing here. I think he's just saying the best tax-free country, but for retirement, I mean, first of all, it's really hot, so it's not a place that you would wanna live year round. And it is pretty far removed from Europe and from North and South America, from Southeast Asia and Australia. It's kind of isolated. It's a different time zone, it's a different culture. You might be far away from your friends and family from home. And so it has quite a few pros and cons. But if you're looking for a tax-free destination with a high quality of life, English-speaking population, very modern, lots of amenities, UAE could be the place. In fifth place. Let's see what else Andrew has for us because he has a bazillion videos on his channel. I really like the title of this one, Where To Retire With a Million Dollars and Live Like a King.  

Kristin:    00:33:59    Sounds good. Let's see. Now, I know that Southeast Asia might be the first assumption when you think of the best places to live with a low cost of living. But as Andrew mentions, Eastern Europe is a great place for that. You can definitely live there for a thousand or $2,000 per month really well, and the real estate is also very affordable there. So Serbia, Albania, Bulgaria, I have a lot of videos, especially about Serbia and Bulgaria on my channel because they do offer so much. They're modern countries with good infrastructure and amenities, really good food. You've got the four seasons, you can go skiing in the winter, you've got hiking in the summer, you have city life, you have the beaches. There's a lot of variety in Eastern Europe, and it's a really underrated region. I even have a video on the most underrated places to live in Eastern Europe.  

Kristin:    00:34:51    I think he's including Georgia in this list as well. Okay, we are getting into the end of the list with some heavy hitters now. And in fourth place, we have the Inter Nations Expat Insider Survey from 2020. So these are ranking the best cities and countries for expats to live in in the world. Valencia, Spain, first out of 66 countries on healthcare and climate. And another city in Spain. A Laconte came in second. So we've got their top two best cities in the world for expats, both in Spain with Lisbon, Portugal coming in in third. I really like Spain as a retirement destination in general, regardless of which city you choose. I actually actually have a video on the cost of living in Spain where we go through Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville. So check that video out too. But Spain is great. You've got a really low cost of living, a really great climate that's very mild year round, amazing food of course, and a really high quality of life overall.  

Kristin:    00:35:58    It's a really friendly place and you can get by without speaking Spanish, although it's best to learn the local language. But there's a lot to explore in Spain. And then of course, you're just right over the border from Portugal, France, and close to other countries if you wanna travel throughout Europe. So in third place, let's see what InterNations chose for their number one destination for expats in 2021, Taiwan followed closely behind by Mexico and Costa Rica to extremely popular retirement destinations. So it says here that Taiwan ranked first out of 59 destinations for the third year in a row in their survey, and it also came in first in quality of life. And 96% of foreigners living there rated their healthcare system highly, and they chose Taiwan because not a single expat feels personally unsafe. That's very promising. And although I haven't been to Taiwan, yet, I did interview an expat family that was living there.  

Kristin:    00:36:58    Then you can listen to their story in my podcast in second place, we have International Living's number one choice for the best place to retire in the world in 2021. Let's see what they say. Costa Rica couldn't have a best places to retire list without Costa Rica. Am I right? And it seems that the universe does have a sense of humor because if you know me, it's quite possible that you found my channel through a little video called Why Expats Leave Costa Rica. So I'll let you watch that video to balance out this opinion with International Living, ranking it as the number one destination in the world so that you can get both sides of the story. But it is true that Costa Rica has a lot to offer for retirees. I mean, the weather is good. There are some areas like Atenas, but a lot of places in the Central Valley that have some of the best climates in the world, you've got the beaches, the fresh food, lots of organic markets, the slow pace of life.  

Kristin:    00:38:01    And it's a beautiful place. I mean, I lived in Costa Rica for eight years. If you've never been there, it can be a great place to live for a while. They've got this new Costa Rica digital nomad visa coming out that perhaps retirees can qualify for with your social security or retirement income. And then you can stay in Costa Rica for up to one or two years with just a passport without applying for a permanent residency there. And so it says here, you can live in Costa Rica on $2,000 a month. That would be tight, but there's certainly rental properties that go for $2,000 a month. So locals can live in Costa Rica for 2000 a month. But for retirees, um, you're gonna have to live a pretty modest lifestyle to make it there. Costa Rica is one of the more expensive countries in Latin America. So if you're looking to save money, then Mexico is much cheaper.  

Kristin:    00:38:58    Panama is a good alternative as well. So in 2020, they chose Portugal, which to be honest should also be on any best places in the world to retire list because Portugal is one of those places that just checks all the boxes. You've got the sunny climate, you've got a moderate cost of living. Uh, you're right next door to Spain. You've got amazing food you can choose from the cities or the beaches. There's a lot of different places to live, there's a lot of variety, and it's also really safe. Congratulations, you've made it to the end of our journey. And the number one place that I recommend for you to retire in the world is drum roll, please, wherever the heck you want. That's right. If you have worked your entire life to enjoy retirement, you should be able to live wherever is the best place for you.  

Kristin:    00:39:52    Yes, of course you should do your research. Of course, you should look at the data, look at the cost of living in all of these different places. But at the end of the day, even if there's a place that looks perfect on paper, once you get there, if you don't feel comfortable, if you don't feel at home there, and if you don't love it, then you shouldn't have to stay. Choosing a place to retire is really similar to choosing a life partner. Sometimes it doesn't make sense to anyone else except you. You should go to the place that appeals to you the most, that fits your budget and that you're going to enjoy, and that's going to be different for every one of you. But where do you dream of retiring? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. Remember to vote in our retirement poll and give this video a thumbs up either way. And if you are planning on moving to a foreign country in the next couple years and you'd like some guidance and support, then feel free to reach out at orbisrelocation.com.  

Kristin:    00:40:53    I hope you enjoyed this summary and my reaction to the best places to retire in the world, and more importantly, how to choose one of them. And remember, if you'd like to be one of the first people ever to get access to my brand-new relocation program with step-by-step exactly how to relocate to another country, so you'll have my location roadmap plus lots of bonuses and extra support from me, then send me an email with the subject line Ready to Relocate to info@orbisrelocation.com. That is O R B, like Belgium, I like Iceland. S like Spain relocation.com with the subject line ready to relocate. And for 122 more episodes of the podcast that you might've missed, head on over to badassdigitalnomads.com.