Finally... A comparison of retirement life in Argentina, Panama, & Uruguay

hi welcome back to laptop seniors today Pat and I are going to do an adlib comparison of the similarities differences between Uruguay Mont Vio in particular yes Argentina buos areus in particular and Panama all of it all of it but I'd say mainly Panama City and maybe bouquete like the larger centers basically yeah so we we really appreciate going through the comments that come in every day you guys ask us questions about some of the different places and this question of doing a comparison came in from one of our subscribers very early on and every now and then it pops up we had one last just this last week it it popped up same question can you do that because you've lived in all three yeah so we've spent extended lengths of time in all three places so we're hoping that you're interested in seeing our thoughts hearing our thoughts and seeing us jab each other a little bit about what our thoughts are and they're often different about the same places yeah so we've not talked about what each of us are going to say so I don't know what exactly she's going to say and what her high points low points are of each country or city and she doesn't know mine too so it could be it could be interesting I a little sparring session yeah maybe maybe not yeah hopefully not um I want to be like study and share here going at it but uh you know I I think a lot of it we're going to sort of agree on so let's start with the first country which is Uruguay urua we lived down there for basically you know almost two years and we had a wonderful time there it was a wonderful country the people were great they were friendly they were open they were nice it was a nice nice country loved mono we were living there in positos which is right on the river although the river looks like an ocean when you're standing on the beach huge beach that went on for Miles you look out and you think you know it's the Atlantic Ocean in front of yeah so if you look at a map you'll see the ocean sort of Narrows down a little bit between Uruguay and Argentina and then the mouth closes into a river even though you're in a city of a million it was kind of like a Beach town in that area so we loved it there we rented a house there and uh it was great the restaurants were nice there was really good food it was a safe country one of the things that we found there was there were Pockets where you didn't need any Spanish but generally speaking you kind of needed a little bit of Spanish we were just learning Spanish then I'd say we were talking like three year olds maybe four year olds at best and that was enough but you know you'd run into people who did not have any English including in restaurants so you know there was that um they had really good health care depending on the hospital that you went to some even though we didn't go to them but hearing from people there um they were like okay but then there was other hospitals that had to do with kind of like the country where the doctors were from like the British hospital that was superb that was like walking into a A W Hotel and you go like wow this is a hospital holy moly all British doctors it was the Italian Hospital other country's hospital um so the hospital was uh care was really good and you could actually buy a hospital plan for the hospital that you choose so whenever you needed any Services you would just go to that hospital where you have the care plan and it was pretty reasonable at the time as I recall it was something like four or 500 bucks for the year for both of us unlimited care in that hospital and if you needed to you had a $500,000 flight plan that if they would fly you back to the US or Canada if it was something they couldn't handle if you wanted to do that that was sort of part of it I mean it was it was but you had to be under 65 at the time I was um because you know it was a while ago so uh anyway healthc care really really good the climate was pretty good I I thought I mean for the most part it was it was warm year round or M you're forgetting no I was just going to say except for some months where it was like kind of like a cold fall weather and places don't have heat for a lot of the a lot our house didn't have any heat well oray is about as far south of the Equator as Central us is above so they do have seasons there uh there's there's a winter that's for sure but from North America going to Uruguay or buar you're actually going opposite Seasons so if you want to be a snowbird for example and stay in the US in the summer and travel and get out of it in the winter in the winter down there it's their summer so you could be in summer all year round yeah and it's true when you look at the water in the drains it actually does go the opposite way um one of the things about it too being on the opposite side of the world it's a long flight um so that's not really a positive it's sort of one of the negatives to a degree it depends how far up in the US or Canada you are as to how long it is yeah and you could stop over you could stop over in Panama and hang out there for a week and then go down yeah a lot of the planes go to Panama they bounce there they bounce through El Salvador Santiago and Chile and uh you know and some well probably not anymore a couple of them at the time would go direct they one non-stop flight long long flight now one of the other good things to me about Uruguay was that you're really close to Argentina if you go to one of the coastal towns called Colonia they have high-speed um boats you know like Terry's cars the whole thing the bou boot called The Cat I think they call the fast one the cat yeah that's the name of the ship the actual company is the Buie boo which looks like bouqu bus bu boo yeah and they're fairly lavish inside and it's fun just to say it yeah and you know one hour one hour from from you know Coast to Coast boom you're in downtown buy assar you know getting off the boat from the other country a lot of people do that about residences they'll go as a tourist and then they have to get out of the country and they'll go you know they'll take a weekend or a day trip to Buenos and for immigration you basically you're punching out you know in Uruguay you go the other side and then you come back some of them come back four or five hours later and they punch back in again all new tourist visa good to go and that's how they live they don't go through the residency process The Residency process itself and did you have something you want to add in oh I was just going to say it works vice versa as well so somebody who is not a resident in Argentina could just get out of town going over to Mont Vio or Colonia for the day or two or for a visit and then come back and it renews their visa MH one of the things that we found it was easy went we went through a lawyer I think the company name the lawyer's name was Fisher and shika Dan something like that chicken dance yeah yeah no shik like kind of like their Shavers chicken dance anyway we went through them and they were really good and they got us a temporary residence visa like really quickly from that point on it was a chore you know um and it really aggravated the crap out of me which is one of the reasons why we left it was actually the main reason we never never got the permanent residence even with the lawyer and we also ran into a bunch of expats there again that goes along with you know the people being so nice there were a lot of expats from all over the world a lot of North American ones easy to make friends and we made a lot of friends there and I'll go into that in a second but because of so many friends you get to know of people who have been living there for a while and we encountered a bunch of people who they also could not get it just wouldn't happen they wouldn't get their permanent resident status or we we we saw one guy he he was there like 15 years solid never left he's like in the country 15 years married a Uruguayan opened a restaurant with her because she was a chef he's there and he's going for his Panamanian citizenship because in theory that's the big thing Theory you can get it and you know oh and after I think it's five years or whatever it does doesn't really matter what the time it is you know if you go through all the stages all the steps be there a certain amount of time some of it is investing which it was a different amount of money back then I think than it is now but the frustrating part for us is meeting all these people who had gone through checked off all the boxes gone through the steps had been their way longer than the initial criteria and they still couldn't get the documents it was really difficult for them and we just thought we're not going to go through five or 10 years of this just to be disappointed yeah yeah you know I'll throw it out now I was going to save it to the end my impression with Uruguay was it was a wonderful country the people were great I loved everything about it we have a had a wonderful time met a ton of expats who actually all left they all went to Spain Alicante all of them so I guess that says something well I one went to Panama but he was from panel he just went back you're right okay um he came there because maybe Uruguay was the hot place at the time that that you know you go back 10 years ago and you look at all of the international where you going to retire type sites and Uya was like the poster child ugu in Ecuador that's where you go you know and for all the right reasons safe stable good currency all that sort of stuff um so he went from Panama and came and okay well maybe I should live here and then went back you know and everybody else everybody else left we left because it became really apparent to us and I think right now they altered some of the rules but if you get want to get a permanent residence in um Uruguay you have to buy something for $100,000 or more so all of a sudden there's a $100,000 ticket to get that resident card but this is the way it worked when we were there you have the temporary and then they have the address where you live and someone will come and show up at your door unannounced surprise visit and you had better be there and they don't tell you if they came they don't leave anything at the door like hey we were or if they did no one ever came so we were there like a year nobody came my take was they just wanted retirees to show up there with the possibility of getting permanent residents and the possibility of maybe becoming a citizen down the road but they wanted you to spend money on rent they wanted you to buy things and they wanted to just spend your money in that country and never come around the carrot yeah and they kept pushing the carrot further away yeah so you know and I think a lot of people would catch on to that at some point you know became really obvious to us so like I told you in a bunch of other videos if some country isn't treating you the way you want to be treated you bye-bye we're out of here so if somebody from uguay is watching this right now and you want to have retirees bolster your country the thing to do for you is copy Panama because Panama does it a 100% correctly on the money that's what you got to do sorry I know but but it it's you take the next part because it's kind of AG aggravating to me still after 10 12 years it is but there are a lot of good things about Mont Vio Uruguay pad deleste is fantastic oh my gosh you've got to look at that on the internet um and do you remember asking me years ago um to Maria sorry yeah you finally did that but what my what place I would choose what would be my favorite place to live yeah and that and what did I say I don't remember could have been anywhere okay you guys I hope you listened to your wives better than P does was it Milwaukee no my answer my answer was and and I didn't prepare for this at all but my answer was at the time I felt that we had the best lifestyle of anywhere that we had been in Mont Vio because we we rented a nice house there we lived a block from the beach and in Mont Vio pretty much the entire city has uh a paved um Waterfront walk you can't call it a boardwalk they call it the malacon and the beach is very very wide I want to say it's 30 40 50 feet wide 50 ft of sand all the way through the city I brought a sand wedge and early in the morning when nobody's there they take a rake and they rake up any junk that put's on the beach I was out there hitting hitting sand wedges in the beach for for practice and speaking of sand wges there's a golf course right downtown which one day a week is actually free for everybody it's a private course but they they open it by law to everybody yeah for free yeah right downtown so anybody can walk in and golf one day a week um and then on Sundays they turn the golf course into a big public park the malacon walkway is beautiful and they have lighting all the way along the malacon so it is alive day and night like you will see people walking and hanging out there and sitting on the beach all times of the day and night yeah running and bike riding and all you know all that sort of stuff it's a it's really it's a cool very cool area let's go to some of the bad things that you know that came up about it was very very cheap when we were there then like just as an example we would go to dinner at a nice restaurants cuz the food was good it's a meat country just like Argentina so you know you're getting a steak this thick and it's you know it's huge it's like I don't know like a 14 15 ounce steak two steaks baked potato salad to start um also maybe that fried cheese thing which a provoleta get one of those and a bottle of wine and you're out of there for 35 bucks us for both of us it was wonderful now the steaks are not typically the kind of cut you would see in the US you know if you go to Longhorn and you get that nice big steak um but they they're different types of cuts of meat and you have to learn what they are there's different different cuts and in the Spanish word for what they are so beoo that was that was a good one good one I don't know what that I think that was corresponded to something uh tenderloin tender yeah like it it was really really good but anyway so that's the way it was now now when you um again we haven't been back but I know from talking to our friends in buar about their experience in the town of Salto which is north of Buenos areis and on the western side of Uruguay where it used to be where argentinians would drive over to Uruguay to shop and things now it's the other way around where there's a flood of uruguayans going into Argentina because the prices are so much higher higher now in Uruguay and so much lower in Argentina so the prices have really gone up when we were there um as a negative to me Imports of anything was incredibly expensive and other stuff that was there that was maybe made there or it was imported from China which is pretty much the only importing thing that wasn't irrationally High um from our experience it is really fairly cheap junk stuff especially pots and pans and you know they're like really thin and you all that the pots were disgusting we definitely um in one of our trips going back brought our own stainless steel pan and pots it was like I know when we were there and now picture this a Hyundai Elantra an Elantra in US dollars in the dealership as was one right by where we lived it was $35,000 at the time back home is like I don't know 20 21 somewhere in there and you would only be able to buy spaghetti sauce imported they did not make their own spaghetti sauce for example so um in in the food department any of the pre-made Foods would definitely be imported everything local was you made it from scratch yeah which was actually good they had some pretty cool things there you know again it's not all bad it was a very healthy lifestyle yeah all in all it was really a nice country except for a few things and again some those few good things are the or some of the good things that really made it great aren't the same anymore it's not quite as safe that appears to be you see that on the forums for Uruguay a lot it is nowhere near as cheap as it was for a retirement thing and also um lots of bureaucracy there um you know and that I guess goes hand inand with all the government stuff I was talking to you about so you know I mean that's kind of the downside of Uruguay in addition to the upside and there was a lot of upside they're just not as many as they were before I don't remember actually enjoying going into the city in down town and it just always felt kind of grungy dirtier to me than than out by where we were living yeah you know and it really actually it's funny it's important to choose words carefully because I would describe it and not that you're wrong but but it definitely gives you the impression and we said it on a few videos I would say everything looked like if you went right downtown everything looked older and a bit rundown which gave you the impression of sketchy and not that they were dirty but they were just you know older and they not they were falling apart or anything but you know it was like I the other thing too uh a lot of people say this even today you start watching videos now people who visit it's it's sort of boring not a a whole lot going on there now you can take that two ways one is okay it's boring not a whole lot going on there not so good or it's a nice quiet lifestyle and if you like that and you want that great place to go for that so you know there's those things so that's Uruguay let's move to Argentina now so Argentina has some beautiful places and it's a pretty big country I mean who hasn't heard of mendosa the wine region it's amazing but we spent most of our time there in Buenos arees and wow that is a huge City now some people will argue that its suburbs are not really considered part of the city but it's a massive city with the widest Road in the world it's comparable the city itself I know it it's one amount of people but the metropolitan area is is the exact same roughly give or take 100,000 people as the New York City metropolitan area all the Burrows of New York Northern New Jersey basically anybody who's going to be Computing Computing commuting or Computing maybe Computing on the trade while they're Computing anyway coming into New York City to work if you're working in Manhattan and you know and you're within that commuting distance that's the metro area of New York City same size size same amount of people as buenos so it's a big big Metropolis area there's hands down no competition when it comes to cost of living the value that you get living there and the low amount of money that you required with an exchange to maintain a good lifestyle there is incredibly low yeah so you're anywhere between 35 and 50% less than both Panama or or wide huge amount of websites will basically give you those numbers somewhere in between suffice to say that it's noticeably cheaper in Argentina if and it's a huge if if not it's not gonna be so cheap for you if you your income that you're getting is not in Argentinian Pesos here US Canadian Euro some other currency that's way more stable than the Argentinian peso then uh you know you're golden you're super golden you know just like Uruguay they have great people it's a really nice country it's a huge country they have great food super food as a matter of fact and we have great friends that live there so it's always fun for us to go and I don't think everybody's gonna be knocking on their door here but yeah yeah I mean one of the things you know when I was explaining what it cost in Uruguay when we were there to get you know the couple of steaks you know the salad bottle of wine all that stuff it was pretty much the same in Argentina the price was roughly about the same in American dollarss back then as I recall the exchange rate was something like six pesos or eight pesos for a US dollar something like that now it's over a thousand pesos for a US dollar so that's how much inflation went up but it's also why everything is so much cheaper it's because um because even though they have crazy inflation their their peso hasn't kept up with it as far as the exchange rate if you're exchanging American American dollar you just get a better deal you're you know stuff becomes incredibly cheap uh to you because that and as said you know we mentioned very low prices there for pretty much everything one of the things is safety now I know a lot of people have put in comments I'm sure they didn't watch maybe all of our videos know words from beginning to end and I don't remember which one it was who is it yeah I don't remember which one it was but they would say oh my God turmoil and stuff like that new president he's doing a lot of stuff people are some people are complaining not did a whole video on what was going on there so look for that video yeah but there some summation was oh my God that's going to be brutal you don't want to go to that country it's super unsafe that is 100% wrong I can't stress that at the moment maybe somewhere down the road it might be that mean it could happen to any country but at the moment the US state department if you want to believe the US state department and if you don't I don't know who you're going to believe I mean oh my God they put out countries and warnings and things like that to the US State Department Argentina as of the end of December we're only you know less than two months away okay from from that reading Argentina is safer than most parts of Western Europe and even when we went there last um people would say oh were were you scared was it unsafe and there are definitely parts of every city that you're going to avoid but to be truthful we went to all the areas of Buenos are when we were there we would go to the santelmo market on Sunday and um I can't tell you how many other places we explored we would even get on the subway and go to the end of the line and just get out and see what's there I mean we were everywhere and we never felt unsafe I'll put up a map here which shows red areas that are sketchy you kind of don't want to get go into them especially at night like laoka laoka is one of those areas where at daytime it's fine it's a cool little area but you don't want to be walking around there at night you may be fine but it's one of those wide chance it another one is rtio which is over by the train station we walked through there one time there was a lot of people all around but at the same time it was like this is a sketchy area we should probably walk fast and get out of here U you you could just feel it but there's not that many of those areas I mean when you look at this map you know that's on the screen now you can clearly see that's a big giant City and there's only a few little red areas it's not you know not that big of a deal but on the opposite side of that there are a bunch of really beautiful areas I mean right downtown you've got recoletta um all the palmos yes El Grano yeah there there's there's a lot for Spanish it was if you're in Buenos Ares I didn't really think even with our third and fourth uh you know four-year-old Spanish I we brought we used it because you're trying to get a little bit better and bring it up to like four and a half year olds but I didn't really think we needed it there now when we went to a couple towns that were outside of Buenos arees um we went to something dco I can't remember what the with the San Antonio for the GAO Festival you definitely need Spanish there but we went with our friends who are Argentinian and they live in Buenos areis they were out there so you know any thing that came up you know they did talking it was great but I don't think we would have fared all that well there see some Spanish would be definitely helpful right in the smaller Villages and towns people are less likely to be speaking English now when it comes to climate you can pretty much choose any climate you want pretty much in Argentina you you can go down to P pentagonia way down at the bottom you know you're pretty much you know next stop is South Pole and it's going to be massively windy Indy and all that sort of stuff you can go to the mountains um where you know some of the towns look like you're in Bavaria and they're very very German you can go to the Andes um you can go Inland you can go down the coast you know south east of um venaris um Mard Plata and you know when you're in coastal towns roughly though it's got the same climate around buenos as mono does in Uruguay the way we described it because again it's only an hour boat ride between across the river like Uruguay they have good health care there we went to one hospital to give blood we met someone who was asking us a friend you know a new friend hey would you give blood because the way their blood system works there which a lot of countries are starting to do now where if you we're going to you or a friend relative anybody is going to go into an operation uh this particular person was having a heart operation and they needed five pints of blood at standby that he may or may may not need he had to donate five or get friends to donate five pints of blood um didn't matter who but basically they're not going to give you five out of the hospital unless you put five in ahead of time yeah so you've got a bank five pints of blood or whatever the amount is that they think you could possibly need during your surgery before they will agree to book you for surgery MH it's crazy but all in all you know the hospitals were good you walked around through it and you know taking taken it all in also we know from our friends who live in Buenos arees you know and they come back to Toronto at times you know have been gone back and forth and you know want to get treatment in you know for particular things you know in Canada and the doctors actually solved their problem in Buenos saris where they couldn't get it solved in Canada one last thing for visas which is U kind of interesting is I believe this has changed from when we were there to now temporary um residence visa in Argentina not all that hard to get the permanent residence you can get in three years so you get the temporary it's a one-year visa and then you renew it and they'll give you a two-year temporary visa and at the end of that you get a permanent Visa so three years or you can do onee temporary and start the two-year thing with another temporary but at two-year mark twoyear this is one of the fastest in the entire world you can apply for citizenship and the odds are pretty decent that you're going to get citizenship if you hit all the qualifications they're not going to hold it back from you like you know our impression is uguay was doing yeah so you know and that's with a pension Visa too like if you want they're equivalent of a sort of a pension Auto Visa like Panama has not with all the perks but you know it's the retirement Visa that's a path to citizenship also where in Panama it's not but usually when you're old you do you really care about citizenship necessarily you know if you have a nice place to live probably not but um anyway those are the good points I guess you would if you are wanting to surrender your citizenship from where you're leaving if you're going some people want to do that so then you'd want to have citizenship somewhere else true and you might want to give up US citizenship for the tax part you know there some people do that not a lot but definitely some people do that so those are the good sides the downsides is you know I think you all have seen the news by now they have a new president although he had nothing to do with this he's trying to solve this but they have crazy high inflation they're pushing 140 150 160% per year and he's trying to knock that down so again lots of inflation prices will be rising for sure but you have a currency that basically is not going to have to worry about that all that much it's still going to be cheap for you for a really long time but it is a negative um one of the things in Buenos arees was I was looking at the rents the rents there are not they're not expensive but they're they're basically like Panama City prices they're not all that cheap either but to me they look comparable to Panama City but if you wanted to go somewhere else like Mendoza or you know pentagonia or some other Salto one of those other smaller towns I'm sure that they would be less so you could you know live on less money in argen is uguay yeah well it also but yeah I know there's a town on the other side but it sort of looks like one one one big town in that region um and the other downside there is um so uh on the other side I believe is Concordia Concordia wow like the University of Montreal like the university um the last downside to me there's going to be a lot of of demonstrations and it's not just because of the new president they they there was demonstrations when we were there I don't know they seem to go like I don't know what's every three weeks there somebody's demonstrating about something they walk down the street and all that stuff but it's not like what happened in Portland and you know and also in Min Minneapolis and you know they don't get out of hand and burn buildings down and beat people and stuff like that they just go through the streets to you know we want this that there aren't demonstrations in Panama yeah but again peaceful like and I mean like super super peaceful like you know you could walk through the crowd and have no fear that something's going to happen to you if anything they would be hey you want to walk with us yeah sure and um you know and you do that and the last downside uh I don't know if it's a it turned out to be either a downside or an upside there is a new president he is trying economic moves that almost every country on the planet has never done it he's taken it 180 from all the normal countries and he believes that this will solve their problems if it does it is going to be an awesome country because they were super wealthy I don't know 50 60 years ago 100 years ago for sure one of the most wealthy planets on the countries on the planet if he turns it around it'll be amazing but total Wild card whether he can do that or not and it may end up being still just as messed up as it was before he came into office all right let's move on to Panama now so Panama I know that most of our viewers are really interested in Panama as we are so I know you want to hear how Panama compares to the other places we're talking about um one thing about Panama is you can choose the area that you you want to settle in and you could be in a in a young family neighborhood an older neighborhood um if you're more with expats you're going to be with with an older community but it's all mixed because obviously they're not segregated communities uh but in Panama we found that it was pretty easy to to get onto this social networks to meet up with other expats to to be welcomed and get into you know a social Community pretty easily yeah and it's a really nice country um pretty much no matter where you are from we traed across it from one end to the other and loved all of it the people are super friendly and they're really nice they're very helpful it's a very safe country no matter what end of it I'm sure there's my understanding is that there's there's there's some areas that like kind of like noo but then no one in the right mind would go down there that's really like an the barrier something that's down uh against the Colombian border it's like a jungle down there and some people kind of come through but the Gap there's no retire in the right mind's going to be down by so so everything else is you know super safe um which is great it is cheaper than North America that's for sure if you're in the US or Canada it's GNA be 20 25% cheaper and they have the pensionado Visa if you get that so once you're legally retired living legally in the country and you're over the age of 55 as I recall definitely 65 and stuff like that retirement age you know for Social Security um you're going to get discounts on everything um with that card you just show it and all of a sudden restaurants are 25% cheaper and pretty much everything is cheaper and although I was cutting pad off earlier they they definitely do make sense with with how they welcome pension pensioners pensionado down there because basically if you come in and don't become a burden to society prove that you have enough income to maintain your um your expenses while you're down there and don't plan to work of it's like they welcome you with open arms come and bring your money spend it here uh contribute to to our country and enjoy yourself and what could be better than that yeah and what I really liked about the Panamanian government and the way they handle things first off they're pretty Hightech um when we were going through to get sedes and stuff it was like boom boom boom boom boom you know it wasn't Third World by any stretch it was it was pretty smoking you jump through the Hoops that they outline and they give you what they promise there's there's no wavering on anything yeah and and that's a big deal like I you know it's kind of like business I guess I just sort of think in business terms you know being in business for you know bazillion years when you sort of want somebody makes a deal with you you want both sides to actually come through with what they're supposed to be doing that's what I didn't think happened with uguay it's like oh here do this and you can have that but it was more like you might be you maybe would get that you might with Panama it's like it seems like it's just a cut and dry you do this here's that do one next step okay here's the other card want to do more here's the third card now peny out a Visa there's no citizenship but again but other other venues visas you know through the system can lead to citizenship not aware of that you know we didn't really check into it because it wasn't anything that we were we were going to do the health care there is good there's a John Hopkins Hospital Affiliated John Hopkins I mean what else more you say there are about three hospitals around chetry I mean we're getting off track because we're mainly talking about Panama City here but but yeah plenty of Health Care to be found around Panama yeah except if you get into some of the smaller areas then you're going to have a ways to go and actually bouquete is one of those areas where there is no hospital there are clinics so you know if you're having health issues Bou is a beautiful place to settle and the climate is amazing but if you want to be close to a hospital you might want to be in in another metropolitan area like Dei Chet tray Panama City and you know some other areas that no real hospitals that that we ever saw around Coronado either um and one of the things about Panama is you can pick your climate which is um different than the other countries really because you can go from blazing hot year round to not quite as hot year round to 75 degrees pretty much year round you can't do that in the other two countries one of the other benefits of Panama is it's a quick plane ride to to get into the US I think it's like I don't know an hour and hour and a half hour and a quarter from somewhere in Florida um from most anywhere in North America it's very accessible it's quick the food is good I mean I'm just trying to go through some of the things that we touched on in the other countries the food is good in Panama it's really nice the prices as we mentioned they're you know they're they're cheaper than North America um you can definitely live better for Less there and there are lots of expats lots of expats from all over the world english- speaking in Panama pretty much virtually everywhere there's expat meetings and even in you know a town you know as small as chetra although that struck me as not all that small of a town I really like chetra it's a you know nice place same thing with Vulcan and other places but what I'm getting at is it's going to be easy for you to find friends and um probably ultimately lifelong friends at least for that end of your life or the remainder of your life so um yeah it it's a pan Panama's got a lot of pluses going for for it some downsides um I found you know struck me about Panama and there's not very many is that rents vary depending on the area and in some areas like and again you can find them cheaper but some areas like bokete and some of the really nice parts of Panama City they're again cheaper than North America but they're not all that cheap I think one of the downsides of Panama is the lack of good sidewalks if anybody has mobility issues I mean in Panama City you'll see a lot of good sidewalks and other areas but then there are also a lot that are broken up you'll be walking along and then there's a big hole in front of you with no warning um walking around at night on some of those streets can be pretty tricky you almost want to be walking with a flashlight to make sure you know you don't break an ankle stepping into a hole um you just described all of Uruguay too it was the same there yeah yes you're right uh that was true in parts of Uruguay not all of it in Parts um true I did not notice that in Buenos areis no no well big city major city gigantic City actually yeah so I think you know their their infrastructure is just you know five or six notches above other places one last thing about um a downside of Panama I mean it's not really a big downside but you can sort of see where it's going so many expats are going there that they pushing the prices up inadvertently I'm certainly not doing it on on purpose no one in a right mind would do that but you know they can pay a little bit more for something so okay I'll pay a little bit more just to get it and so the rents you know Are Climbing prices on some things are climbing because people can pay it you know because they have more money than people Pats just want to be generous to locals by you know tipping bigger give you know giving more um to help people there because we can and ultimately that ends up maybe not being the best thing in the way that we're doing it with money versus with care and donations and volunteering and that sort of thing or just providing food for people like there are ways of helping with without handing out money yeah and but the bottom line of that ultimately is it's not really going to affect you unless you live for another 40 years probably or 30 years um so yeah a lot of that's going to depend depend on your age because it's just going to eek up but the prices have gone up a lot even the last five years yeah but well a lot you know but prices have G up everywhere I mean everything's moving and I saw a thing where maybe it was four months ago I I noticed it where the inflation rate for Panama was like 4 and a half% when it was clocking you know 78 n maybe higher uh in other parts of the world like the us so I don't think their prices are moving anywhere near as fast as uh you know as North America one of the things that I forgot to add in here but I can do it now for for probably all three countries there's a lot of videos and you can go on you know on the net and you know find websites that'll tell you this but I saw some videos and this sort of sums it up as to why prices don't won't move as fast in Panama as they will in North America the inflation rate will never get out of control and all that sort of stuff there um because you know their their their economic policies are normal versus what Argentina was doing not politics is just kind of the way it is but here's the thing I was watching this video about Mexico and there was a Mexican um young lady really smart I think she actually lived in La visiting relatives English and also perfect Spanish she was going through to people in Mexico and the city that she was in and the question was if you could have a really good job that would make you happy and you'd be thrilled to have the job what would it be and they're talking about you know the job and well what would that pay like what kind of money would you be looking for long story short it was $115,000 us when converted from Mexican pesos into US dollars that was the dream job they're a manager of a probably you an office of a multinational 15 grand the the the the a the median or average salary in Uruguay is going to be pretty similar so if you have most of your population making 15 18 19 20 grand per year that's what they're making your prices are just not going to go blowing through the roof if you have any semblance of of of of you know knowledge as a government you're GNA be doing everything you can to hold that baby down so you know but that's basically why the locals complain about the tourists and the expats in Panama because their income has not risen and yet prices have and so it's it's the same situation I think wherever we North Americans go we're kind of ruining it for the locals so we've got to be smarter about how we do this well that's why I was mentioning you know that that's the downside that expats new expat retirees are pushing things up but again because of so many non- expats in the country it's not going to be moving like it does you know in the US or Canada um because everybody's making I don't know even know what the average wage in the US or Canada is but I think it's like 60 60 70,000 actually Walmart's paying $100,000 for long-distance truck drivers that's a starting salary i s it on the back of a truck 100 Grand so let's go through the uh what would you pick and I have no idea what you're going to say those are the three countries if we were starting right this moment and you had to pick one what would you do and give me a quick reason why I don't know that I have an answer for you but one thing cheater cheater the one thing that I enjoy is being by the water in Panama of course there's ocean all around everywhere whether you're on the on the Gulf side or the Pacific side here you've got tons of opportunity to be by the water which is incredible and then the views when you're in the mountains like it's just breathtaking in uguay we lived by the beach we were by the water even though Argentina has tons of water the ocean going all the way down the coast in Buenos Aris there really isn't a lot of Waterfront areas that people spend time I mean there is by the dock and there's the big sculpture and everything there's one specific area which is Waterfront but it isn't really in the areas that we spent time and those are things that I really enjoy myself and and that's what I look for in a place that I want to spend a lot of time so do you want to call a friend and get find your answer yeah what so what what do you say okay that's Argentina what about the other two well it's tough though because Argentina is such a great buying opportunity now with with the dollar going so far there it's like if you're looking at your wallet um yeah onsr is is pretty tempting to get down there but then if you go back and forth you've got the long flights did you take a politician course to ask you a question did you like give it be everything but the answer what it's a pick one come on it's not going to be Uruguay for all the reasons that we talked about earlier I don't know I I think it has to be Panama okay okay what would you say um my choices are easy if I was younger I think you know again I'm 75 coming up on 76 if I was younger uh I would or am I 76 now coming up on 77 that's awful I I don't remember holy God I didn't catch that you are 76 really oh my God uh anyway if old man syndrome yeah if I was if I was younger 65 66 67 somewhere in that range Argentina would be instantly the choice I take the gamble on the new guy because even if the new guy doesn't pull it off and everything goes back to the way it was the way it was if you have American money was actually totally fine it was safe um prices were cheap it was totally fine and we know that because of our friends who live there um and you know they tell us what's going on and all that sort of stuff so I'd pick Argentina being older though Panama would be the choice uguay to me was ruled out as soon as I I felt we were being screwed um by the by the country by the government itself was purely a governmental issue wasn't the people love the country love the people but uh to me that that would be just an instant rule out unless for some reason they change the rules and they make it cut and dried you do X Y and Z and here's your permanent residence and you know throw in ABC and there's your passport if they do that and there's no well I don't know then okay then then all of a sudden uguay would be um In Contention with Panama although I think I would still choose Panama on that instance so younger person I'd take Argentina older person I would take Panama I think in Panama you would have a much richer Fuller life with a lot of friends if you were in Buenos arees you would be able to make friends there but the trade-off is you are in a really smoking vibrant fun city it's a beautiful lots to do awesome go watch the tango dancers even on the corner of the street you'll see people dancing Tango and putting on a little show but again that's a younger thing because you know we're not going Tango dancing so I guess we could old people probably do do that that wouldn't be us um at least at the moment anyway G the for future do I have to go find another partner dance partner only so that's pretty much it uh hope you like this this has been long this is a long one it's going to take forever to edit this baby um but hopefully that give you a really good feel for those three countries at least our impression of it and I think it's going to be pretty darn close to um you know to way things are oh one more thing Let me throw that in here um you're probably aware because you would see it on TV and other things that the Panama Canal is having a problem with water and so therefore less ships are coming through I think they're running at half capacity or something like that because there's less you know there's been less rain less water in Panama it's even worse in Uruguay where they have been having huge droughts in Uruguay and and water evidently was sort of rationed um that they had to kill an enormous amount of cattle there because the farmers couldn't feed them because there wasn't enough rain on the crops not enough water and things like that so those two countries Uruguay especially has water problems um I think Panama would be way better off than Uruguay um to solve that water problem because there's a rainy season where a year ago he didn't have a rainy season that I can recall I don't remember any rainy season there but pan has a rainy season and when it rains you got tons of tons of water it may not help the canal but you know you're not going to be like you know you're out in Southern California going I can't water my lawn or stuff like that there's G to be enough water for that so there there's that type of thing too again got off on a tangent but hopefully that will be decent information so you want to close it up there Buckaroo with the uh subscribe and all that other good stuff yeah we sure hope you enjoyed some of the information that we shared and please leave your comments we'd love to know what you hear um in in what we're delivering to you what your thoughts are what else you'd like to hear us talk about or show you um really love to share lots more information and we do have some videos coming up of some of the neighborhoods in Panama City so those will be coming up pretty soon yeah it'll be similar to this although way shorter way shorter so please subscribe and you'll be you know clicking that uh notification Bell so that you'll you'll know when they drop and uh hey say good night Gracie come back and see us again soon bye for now

Channel: Laptop Seniors

Views: 80,259

Keywords: Retiring in Panama, Retiring in Argentina, Retiring in Uruguay, Is Argentina a good place to retire?, Is Argentina better than Uruguay to retire?, If Panama better than Uruguay to retire?, Is Uruguay a good place to retire, Compare Uruguay Argentina and Panama for retirement

Id: Es03YFevkaM

Length: 53min 52sec (3232 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2024