Why is Panama the "Best Place in the World to Retire?"

in this video i discuss why panama is the number one place in the world to retire coming up next on holy schmidt holy schmidt i often read the comments section here on this channel particularly when we're talking about cost of living and where to retire the destination the philippines comes up again and again as the place to retire when it comes to cost of living followed closely by mexico and then the list drops from there when i see these recommendations the first thought that goes through my mind is what is the criteria being used don't get me wrong cost of living is important very very important in retirement but it's not the only thing over the last few years i've seen these countries recommended dozens of times in the comments section and i thought no more about it but one commenter recently talked about panama that's a new one i thought i filed it in the back of my head i didn't think much more about it and then a few days later i saw panama again and then i saw it a third time after the third time it seemed interesting enough for me to explore this further now this isn't a travel channel it's a retirement finances channel so in order for me to justify doing this presenting to you a destination recommendation or at least a place of interest i needed to be pretty sure i knew exactly what i was talking about so i went to work as it turns out there are a lot of opinions on where to live outside of the united states when it comes to retirement but what i found was most of the opinions were from websites that were just me too websites i agree that mexico is the best place to go because this website thinks it's the best place to go and that website thinks that this website is the best place to go the websites themselves looked like they were constructed within the last six to eight months trying to get a few followers or a few viewers as the case may be so not necessarily the beacon of truth when it comes to retirement and travel in retirement were to live in retirement and i mentioned the philippines that i mentioned mexico both are very nice i've been to both but i've also been to a lot of other very nice countries that had equal beauty and prices that competed with or exceeded outperformed those two countries so i've never been entirely convinced that mexico and the philippines are the place to retire they are good opportunities or good places to consider but as it turns out there are a lot of countries on this planet and all of them have something to offer so what is needed is an objective set of criteria and subjective opinions based on people that live in those countries then i came upon international living's online magazine now before we go any further i don't make a dime from international living i just want to let you know that this is the source of the data that we're going to talk about because it's excellent i was impressed by a few things the first is that they have an easy to understand methodology which i'll discuss in a second the second is that they will be the first to tell you that their information comes from subjective opinions as well as objective data and it has to be that way if you lived out in california and you're a californian you think california is the best place to live if you're in the midwest many people in the midwest think that that's the best place to live if you're down south same thing in other words people have different definitions of what they call paradise international living has a 30-year running annual global retirement index on best places to live in the world they make a comment in their index data that a couple can live well on 1650 per month and live like royalty on 25 to 2 600 per month as a couple and the data comes from people living in country people that have had a long relationship with international living have published or provided information to this publication for years and most of them are expats so from a due diligence perspective the magazine meets all the criteria they don't claim to know everything but they have a very solid framework and it's one that you can build upon when you're thinking about where to go next the magazine narrows the world down to the 25 best countries to retire in and then rates those countries from 1 to 100 on 10 different criteria the criteria ranges from things to do to people to be with to safety to cost of living and just so we frame the data correctly one is not good 100 is outstanding for you stick around to the end the last element is cost of living which for most of you is what you think about when you think about retirement it is important but there are nine other criteria which are equally as important depending on who you are all right let's get into it first let's talk about panama generally speaking it's about a three-hour flight from miami it's located in the middle between north america and south america between the pacific and the caribbean oceans it's warm and it's tropical but completely outside of the hurricane belt it does have high humidity and also a lot of rain particularly in the mountains and on the caribbean side of the country it's described as one of the sunniest expat destinations the days are bombing and pleasant it has light breezes and the mornings are bright and colorful the sky is cornflower blue the foliage is jungle green and the hues are i'm told amazing in terms of the color palette that's available to the eyes the infrastructure that most people in retirement care about most is excellent it has reliable power clean water that you can drink directly from the tap high-speed internet and excellent cell phone service and for those of you that like to ride on the metro for 35 cents you can get on the metro and be downtown in 10 minutes from the suburbs apparently it's the only country in the region that actually has a metro which is quite interesting all right let's get into the objective criteria housing value number one this category looks at the value of real estate and how expensive or inexpensive it is to rent or buy your dream home overseas this rating looks at the price in expat territory so living with other people from your own country it looks at property taxes and it looks at the ease of acquiring or renting property in the country here panama ranked 80 out of 100 so pretty good not the cheapest in the lot in fact the cheapest was portugal at 87 so it's not that far off but it was an interesting data point because if it's only about the cost of where you live at least the home that you live in panama is good very good but not great category number two is benefits and discounts this is where panama shines some countries provide a financial infrastructure which heavily supports retirement in the form of discounts and other benefits panama was number one on the list this includes discounts for things like airfare food electricity transportation and here the country came in at an amazing 96 out of 100. ecuador was ranked 95 in this category and at the other end of the 25 on the list was thailand peru nicaragua and croatia coming in at 56. number three is ease of getting a visa panama ranked 100 out of 100 here in other words they want you to live there this is important because if they make it easy for you they'll make it easy for others like you no wonder panama has a huge expat community point four is fitting in entertainment feeling at home and here panama ranks a very respectable 89 in the category this category examines if you can get your north american comforts when you need them how easily is it to fit into the culture are there museums restaurants other elements within the city and the country that you would find very useful and entertaining in your day-to-day life events exhibitions outdoor activities and can you watch a movie in english if you want to and as i mentioned before panama is ranked 89 the highest in the category is 94. so not far from the top point five is infrastructure we talked about this at the beginning reliable electricity clean water right from the tap cell phone service that never goes down or rarely goes down in high speed internet access all important for an expat retiree who wants to stay in touch with the family back home and who wants to live a life of comfort in panama here panama came in at 80 out of 100 so pretty good the highest in the category was france coming in 96 out of 100 which you would expect and there was a four-way tie at 56 with peru belize the dominican republic and nicaragua all taking the last position category six is climate if you're going to move away from the united states you might as well go someplace that has a wonderful climate and panama does it's ranked 80 out of 100. there are other countries that are a little higher columbia topped the list at 87 and uruguay was at the bottom at 57. important to note that not everybody wants sunshine all the time and a lot of people don't like humidity so this category is a little bit more subjective beauty is in the eye of the beholder still if you know what it is that's being ranked then you have the opportunity to decide if what's being ranked is right for you point seven is healthcare i put big red stars in this category because i personally believe that that is the single most important category for a retiree moving abroad others will see it differently but still it is an important one to consider nonetheless here panama ranked 88 out of 100 so very very good interestingly costa rica came in at 97 and malta came in at 72. this particular category might make me flip-flop panama and costa rica others might see it differently in fact others do see it differently obviously but i will point out that costa rica was a very strong number two in this survey number eight is government protection of personal freedoms safety and security access to a reliable banking system etc here panama came in at a respectable 82 for reference france came in at 90 and columbia came in at 69. number nine is business opportunity when people retire sometimes they don't fully retire they work part-time they have projects that they work on that continue to generate income etc so wherever you go you want to make sure that you have access to business opportunities if that's something that you want to continue to do in your retirement years in this category panama ranked 84 which was the highest in the category there was also a three-way tie for the low of 56 with thailand vietnam and nicaragua at the bottom the final element the one that most people think about when they think about retirement is the cost of living here panama comes in at a very respectable 82 out of 100. the highest was vietnam and 96 and the lowest was ireland at 71. cost of living is of course important because retirees generally live on fixed income but it's not the be-all and end-all in fact you need the entire package to be happy you could live in a military barracks style abode in a remote part of the deep south and have a very low cost of living but the quality of life would be horrible so you need to focus on the overall score and here the overall score for panama was 86.1 followed very closely by costa rica at 85.1 the lowest on the list of top 25 by the way was ireland at 71 followed by malta at 75. the important thing to note as i mentioned with healthcare but really for any of the elements the ranking depends on what you consider the most important element not what a panel of people independent of your situation consider to be most important i've included a link to international living's webpage which has the 2022 numbers in it in the description below it has all 25 countries and the 10 categories and where each country ranks in each of the 10 categories if you like this video and you want to see more of me please make sure you click subscribe and turn on notifications so that you get alerted the next time i post a video i post about twice a week this is jeff schmidt thanks for watching

Channel: Holy Schmidt!

Views: 147,927

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Id: X-VfDtj82w4

Length: 12min 48sec (768 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 03 2022