9 Countries You Can Retire To On A Small Pension Or Social Security

hey guys welcome back to the channel today we are talking about nine countries you can retire to on a small pension or Social Security yeah and these nine countries that we're going to talk about are countries that we kind of got interested in from watching travel shows which we've always enjoyed watching you know like Lonely Planet and that kind of stuff but then we got curious and we're like well like you know what is it like living in those places and then we watch started watching stuff like House Hunters International and see how much these places were and we were like are those numbers right that doesn't make any sense let's do a little bit more research and then it just kind of snowballed from there we went down the rabbit hole of research as we usually do and just got a lot of information before we we tried these out and eventually we just said we're just going to have to go and and see but so we're talking about countries now that you can pretty easily live on for $2,000 a month and when we say that you know there's always a a range of things you can do in a country you can live on 4,000 you can live on 1,000 but this is something place place that you can pretty comfortably live on 2,000 and then you can add to it or subtract to it from there so uh the first country is going to be probably our favorite country uh and that's going to be Thailand and there is so much that you can do in Thailand we have seen really inexpensive accommodations and then lately when we've been going we've been spending about $1,500 a month on our accommodations or actually $1,200 a month and living on 2500 to 3,000 so you have a whole wide range here but basically you don't need to spend as much as we have been because there's amazing accommodations for pretty inexpensive yeah I think that's one of the big things for Thailand especially in the big city like Bangkok uh you've got so many options from housing you could stay in a night nice uh you know furnished apartment that you get electricity and your WiFi and maybe even access to a pool and a gym possibly for as little as $2 $300 a month and go up to what we're paying you know 12 to 1500 or even more depending on if you want you know a bigger apartment like two three bedrooms but you could get a really nice place for just $200 or $300 a month which seems mind-boggling and you think to yourself well how nice could that possibly be we're talking about some nice places so just kind of be open to those possibilities and then on top of that uh the cost of food there is is insanely low it's depends again on where you go so it's a wide range just like housing you could get street food for as little as 25 cents or you can get you know order Western food like get Domino's pizza or something or you know Pizza or whatever um or eat at a high-end restaurant for $100 so it just really depends on what you want and there's all kinds of great food from not just the local food but there's also uh Western food and food from other Asian countries which gives you a wide variety of things so you don't feel like you're eating the same thing all the time either exactly and what's really pretty awesome is just the price of things if you start to live like a local we've done a lot lot of price comparisons over the years and kind of figured up like a lot of the stuff ends up being about 10 times cheaper in Thailand than in the United States so for instance if you were to pay 50 or $60 for a massage in the United States it's five or six6 dollars in Thailand if you would pay you know uh$ three to four dollars for a boat ride in the United States like a ferry it's actually like 30 cents in Thailand so a lot of these things are going to come in at about a tenth of the price and then food you know the same kind of thing depending on what you're getting you can go down as far as tenth of the price and even housing so it can be pretty cheap but the really cool thing about it is even though you're paying that little you still have access to all these amazing places it's not just inexpensive stuff there there's state-of-the-art movies and malls and places to go shopping experiences uh places that we could never imagine even having in the United States it's so cool when you've paid 30 cents and you're pulling up to one of the nicest malls you've ever seen on a on a know River taxi and you're just like whoa this is like you kind of feel like you're you're a high roller but it's like I only paid 30 cents for this so it's pretty cool yeah it's pretty interesting how much is available there and like you said there's the full gamut but just because you're not spending a lot doesn't mean that you're not doing luxurious things you can still do like you said you could still be living on that lower budget and still be doing a massage a week even because they're only five or6 dollar so that kind of stuff that you kind of need to be uh thinking about those things are available in these other countries the next country is is similar but actually less even than Thailand which is really hard to imagine yeah the next country is Vietnam and when we were in Thailand the first time we talked to some of the locals we were like well this it's very inexpensive here in Thailand and we were like well we're going to Vietnam Next they're like oh it's very cheap there they were telling us it's very cheap there the locals the Thai people were telling us it's cheap so they were like oh it's very cheap in Vietnam so you're going to find it extremely cheap and they were right uh it is very inexpensive you could easily live in Vietnam on $1,000 a month many people do uh we don't do that just because we're we're doing some other things and we'd like to have a nice really nice apartment and a pool and some of those Comforts that we had back home but it would be super easy to live on $1,000 a month and the housing again in Vietnam is pretty phenomenal Local transportation very inexpensive to get anywhere to go anywhere you just call up a it's kind of like uber call up it's a grab app you call that up and anywhere you want to go for two three dollars in the city and and you're there yeah I think that's a big key to also to a lot of these countries is not have it be in someplace where you don't really have to have a car it's actually better if you don't because the traffic can be a little bit uh you know challenging in some of these uh big cities abroad it's better to just you know rely on taxis and Metro or just being close enough to things that you can walk and in Vietnam whether you're uh you know in the North in Hanoi or if you're down in the south in uh hoian City Saigon uh you know you've got a ton of options again just like in in Thailand you have the you know the whole gamut of options for housing where you could be paying just a few hundred for something really nice to you know $1,500 or more depending on how big or small you want to go but the accommodations are all going to be pretty nice for the most part and then the food is going to be even cheaper than in Thailand yeah now when we're in Vietnam we generally live on 2,000 to 2500 which to a lot of people seems like a lot here but just to show you that you you can do it like you can really get your housing $300 a month that would be pretty easy to do we pay $240 a month for insurance so you got to add that on our cell phones are $13 each and then the food you know that's kind of the big differentiator between what people spend outside of the housing you can go out to eat at Western Restaurants but you do have to remember that the minimum wage in a lot of countries is less than a dollar an hour and so if that's the case it has to be that you're able to eat on two to three to four dollars a day and you totally can once you get out of going to uh you know McDonald's and Pizza Hut and places like that and you start eating where the locals eat you'll find that your food bill is drastically reduced and that's how you keep it under $1,000 a month yeah and quite honestly we do it a lot because the food is so good yeah so for the most part we just kind of lean into eating a lot of local stuff because it's so good and every once in a while especially if you're traveling longterm like this you're like oh I would really like a burger from McDonald's or a pizza from Pizza Hut then do that that's more of you know a Splurge type thing but for the most most part you you're not going to pay a ton uh for food especially in Thailand or in Vietnam all right third country is kind of a surprising one to a lot of people but you can retire to Romania for pretty inexpensively we had uh a great time in Romania now we're not talking about $1,000 dollar a month here that would be pretty hard to do talking more in the $2,000 range and you could probably pretty easily do that depending on where you wanted to live we're talking about buest which is the most expensive uh but you could still get it done fairly inexpensively there and a really nice high quality of life absolutely and I think what was most surprising to us uh was the food there um it's actually quite fantastic it was very tasty uh we ate out a lot actually there and they have a a a range they don't have as big a range as some of the other places do as far as food from around the world but their food is so good that you're just going to forget about any other food um and the other great thing too is the grocery stores the food you purchase in the grocery stores to make your o on your own um is also going to be fairly inexpensive in Romania especially in Bucharest yeah and the internet connections there if you're doing some work pretty fast really good place to do that from fourth place is going to be Malaysia and Malaysia really stunned us with the super high quality housing that's available ailable and so it's again one of those places where we tend to splurge you wouldn't have to splurge but you know we get a place that's got the pool got the view got everything you want to do great part of town wable area and you're just not spending that much you don't have to go that high though and the great part of M Malaysia is I think the food is even cheaper than Thailand in Malaysia especially delivered food yeah I think that's really quite mindboggling we over this last year have been to several of these on the list so far and we have been kind of compar comparing them like within a small time frame so not like oh this is how much it was last year this is how much it was last month and now this is how much it's this month at this place and you're right the delivered food um in Malaysia was actually considerably less than they were in other places and it's really quite uh amazing what you can get um there too and they also have not just the same chains as you would find in some of the other countries like your Thailand and Vietnam and a little bit in Romania but Malaysia also has some Brands like you know us brands that you wouldn't think uh you would see or that you would have in that you would find in Malaysia so it's kind of interesting to see some of that too yeah they do and other things that are really inexpensive is uh the gas is really inexpensive and that makes getting around in like a uber lift type situation which is grab there again very inexpensive now we do have some Malaysians that had watched some of our videos and they commented that there's very good reasons for that and it was really helpful for them to say that that the the gas price is kind of capped and a lot of things in Malaysia the price is capped for instance our doctor told us that if you go to the doctor in the big city qual Lumpur it's the same price as anywhere else in the country because the rates are Capp they can't raise them above a certain level so you'll find things that are really unusually cheap in Malaysia uh we had uh food delivered from American restaurants $6 for uh fish tacos for uh chicken wings it's it's just amazing that's including delivery fee because it's just so incredibly cheap uh so let's move on to the next one which is going to be Colombia now this one opened up our eyes in a different way because it was a beautiful place and the food again food was kind of like Romania actually just amazing oh my goodness the food in Colombia is wow I can't even think of words to describe it it's so good so over the top um that you just won't even think about eating anything but Colombian food when you're there uh kind of like in Romania like you said you just want to eat Romanian food when you're there because it is so good um and the other thing I I really liked about Colombia is just um just some of the traditional types of things that they do like some of the housing even includes you know like a housekeeper and they would come and also cook meals for you throughout the day which was absolutely insane um and the pricing on the housing there has a pretty good range too which I think is really important yeah that was kind of the one thing that threw threw us for a loop when we got to Columbia we we got our housing through Airbnb and we were getting ready to check in and the the host messaged us oh well the house comes with a housekeeper what what time do you want them to show up every day and we were like every day we weren't we weren't even expecting there to be a housekeeper and it was just kind of like this thing and we realized at the condo we were at all the condos had a housekeeper that came as just a cultural thing and so we said you know well they could maybe we have them come Mondays and Fridays or something from this time to this time and they're like sure they'll be right there and so as we got to know uh the woman who was kind of in charge of our apartment she would go to the store for us and get whatever we needed she cooked us lunch every day made us snacks for later in the evening made sure we were to even like I was like well I couldn't find razors at the store the next day she came she had a pack full of razors for me and at first we were worried like this is going to be this is going to blow our budget but it really was extremely inexpensive uh to have that for the month so pretty unique interesting experience in Colombia and the next one is going to be Mexico and Mexico is just a great place because first of all you're so close to the US you don't have to make compromises on time zone distance and uh travel to get to destination yeah I think that one uh is is one that a lot of people do consider and a lot of people do this one but I think it's important to look through all the different places that you have as options to go to because that's depending on your budget that's what that's what's going to be the key thing here there are some cities where the price is very high because there are a lot more expats and so that does kind of change a little bit the pricing but if you go to places where there are a lot less um you know expats or foreigners staying longterm you're going to have a better opportunity um for more authentic experience and also the pricing is going to be uh more reasonable and we stayed long term in Merida Mexico there and we did really enjoy it a lot of people go to other parts of Mexico but we did we did enjoy the Merida area and thought it was a great place to try we did yeah and that's actually the safest city in the entire country is Merida so if you want to start somewhere and you're not really sure that's a really great spot to start yeah that was one that we had seen on House Hunters uh next country is going to be Panama and Panama has several different pockets of xats and then you can also do Panama City which is what we did we do tend to want to go to the big cities we are big city kids and so I think that's where we feel at home when we hear you know the street sounds and the honking and the people and the movement I think we like that the most we feel more at home in the big cities although we obviously like you know going to beach towns or to the mountains we like everything but the big cities definitely have a special place in our heart and Panama City we enjoyed because you could live lean in more towards like a local depending on the kind of grocery store that you went to or you could lean more into an expad depending on the type of activities that you did you had easy access to whatever you wanted to there the eighth country is the Philippines and another great country with so many options so many different places you can go I think most people start out with Manila and there are some great housing options there we are actually doing uh a long-term stay in some IHG hotels in Manila and that's going to be very interesting for us absolutely and I think that's that's actually that you mentioned that a key thing in some of these locations is not just the Airbnb but also leaning into you know using Hotel status and things like that and points to get uh some housing for a much better uh cost as well kind of working that into your budget ninth country is Portugal now Portugal is one that we visited and loved I know you love it and it is kind of become in the last few years expat hotspot it has become an an expat hotspot they did have a Visa which they've now actually pulled they did have a Visa for a long time that a lot of people uh you know were able to take advantage of but it it still is drawing attention because you know it's so rich culturally the food is incredible um and there's just so much to do there and the weather's really good so I think it there's a lot there attract in people to uh Portugal so it's definitely one that could be done on any size budget you know from a small pension to something like Social Security yeah so if you are going to be retiring or thinking about retiring and you know you're going to have a budget of $2,000 something in that range these are the places that you need to be looking at because uh they are pretty much by far the best the the cheapest and the best bang for your buck value for your money return reement locations absolutely guys hopefully this was helpful to you if you have any questions about these leave those down in the comment section we do have videos on all of these or most of these here on the channel where we discuss these uh subscribe to the channel for more like this and we'll see you guys next time

Channel: Grounded Life Finances

Views: 116,580

Keywords: early retirement, full time travel, thailand, Italy, usa, vietnam, colombia, budget, retirement budget, retirement tips, 10 budget friendly cities for full time travel, 2024 budget friendly cities for full time travel

Id: zxW7D0LwP3A

Length: 19min 46sec (1186 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2024