Living in Nicaragua: Pros and Cons of Retiring Abroad

Living in Nicaragua: Pros and Cons of Retiring Abroad

I’m Scott is Miller and on today’s show we’re going to be talking about the pros and cons of retiring abroad and specifically in Latin America and even more specifically the benefits of Nicaragua within that region but we’re going to talk about retiring abroad in general and narrow it down and provide

Some important guidelines for perhaps making some decisions that you didn’t know you could make as early as you Can the idea of retiring abroad is a popular one for a lot of reasons for a lot of people they think about this as a sort of form of of Permanent Vacation that you’re able to take only once you’re retired and that’s very valuable you can use your retirement as an

Opportunity to go to the place or places that you always wanted to be when you were younger but didn’t have the time or maybe you visited them but you didn’t have the chance to actually live there so retiring abroad can be a fulfillment of a lifelong dream and that’s wonderful

But there’s other reasons to consider it if that’s the reason you’re looking at moving abroad you’ve probably already made your decision and you don’t need need me to highlight why it’s great but retiring abroad can offer you a lot of other opportunities and some of them may be obvious but it’s not necessarily

Things that you’re thinking about and planning around so let’s dive into that for a lot of people the benefit of retiring abroad comes significantly from the lower cost of living now it’s not 100% true that every foreign location is going to be lower cost than any location

You may be retiring from but the majority of people who are looking at retiring abroad or can seriously consider it are coming from high cost locations United States Canada Western Europe and so forth and are looking at or considering places that are a lot more affordable whether that’s Latin

America southeast Asia or perhaps the Mediterranean region of Europe or even North Africa there’s a lot of places in the world that cost a fraction of what much of the developed World cost retiring abroad in a lower cost location can mean so much more than just having some comfort that your retirement

Savings are going to hold out as long as you want often the drop in cost of living and the greater range of possibilities means is means that your retirement may be able to start years earlier or in many cases truly many cases decades earlier here in Nicaragua the official retirement age is 45

Whereas in the United States we consider the early retirement age to be 62 and common retirement age to be closer to 69 as a really large gap and much of the world is like this considering retirement to be able to happen much more early in your life and by doing

That and living in a lower cost location you may simply have a much greater retirement just a huge portion of your life and instead of it being a time where you’re winding down and finally having a chance to rest it could be the time that you’re able to start an

Adventure or go on and do many new things in your life like getting new dogs who just love chasing squirrels up trees lower cost of living at your home also means more power for doing more things it could be going out to restaurants or fancier restaurants more

Often it could be hiring people to take care of you or to take care of tasks watch over your home watch over your pets uh and do other things so you can travel more leave the house more simply have more Adventures your buying power to everything in life just keeps

Increasing retiring with more buying power also means more opportunity to choose a location that fulfills your dreams whether that’s living on a beach or living on a mountain or wherever it is that is exciting for you the place you always wish you could have been you have an opportunity to choose where you

Want to be rather than focusing on where you have to be for your career your family or whatever I actually have two dogs that are barking at just nothing up in a tree and a parrot who is mimicking them so no matter which way I face I

Have someone barking at me by having the ability to afford a bigger house or a more desirable location or simply a fancier place or a place with more amenities you have a better chance for a more enjoyable retirement but it’s far beyond that by saving money in your

Everyday life by just getting more for your dollars that also means more opportunity for travel for exploring the world for having Adventures Beyond just staying home if done right you can potentially move abroad and get both a better home in a more desirable location so that when you are home you enjoy your

Retirement more as well as having more time more resources for going out and going to other places and enjoying that aspect of your retirement more as well it simply gives you more power and it’s often overlooked just how you could leverage that additional buying power it’s often seen as just this very simple

Well will have more cushion but it could mean doing all those things while still leaving more for the Next Generation that’s powerful knowing that you are getting a better retirement you have uh more that you can enjoy and future Generations will likely have more from you whether that is a larger inheritance

That is able to be left on or a uh foreign investment like a house on an ocean in a beautiful location that may be something that the family wants to use for generations to come there are so many advantages in being abroad that it’s really difficult just to tackle all

The ones that are brought about by the greater Financial buying power and prosperity that can come from making that decision long before we look at uh health and climatic benefits due to events around the house I had to stop recording and I’m now several hours later and scrambling to get the video

Done for you so it’s important so I’m here in the office and I apologize for the lack of decoration we’re still setting this up as more of a studio we’re experimenting with what we can do here but it’s definitely an improvement every time we do it so if uh if we look

Beyond the financial benefits there’s so much that makes retiring abroad attractive Beyond also just finding the place that you love if you absolutely fall in love with the Pacific Ocean then being abroad probably gives you more access to the Pacific Ocean than staying at home while you may be able to get

That in your home country you likely have many fewer options in fact you must have many fewer options the International Community has the largest Pacific Shore for sure if you are looking for something completely different though you want to live high in the Himalayas you want to be on the

Indian Ocean you want to be on the Savannah in Tanzania you’re not going to be able to get that in your home country unless of course that home country is Tanzania you have so many options by moving abroad that simply by moving abroad you can pick and choose exactly

The place that makes sense for you and that’s something you don’t get to do in your home country you are just in the country you were given and maybe that’s a great country and maybe you love it there and maybe it it is the place that

Offers the most for you but there is so much value in getting that opportunity to uh choose a place that very beyond everything else is very likely to save you a lot of money very likely to give you better healthare and especially if you’re coming from North America US

Canada or the UK less so from the majority of of Continental Europe moving abroad often means much much greater access to health care and that can be very important almost always during retirement it’s one of the most important things that we consider during retirement is what our access to

Healthcare is going to be like both in cost of that health care which is very significant uh as a consideration but also the quality of that care and while every country is going to vary and every scenario is going to vary and your needs will vary what we often find moving

Abroad especially from those specifically three countries the US UK and Canada is that nearly the entire world offers much better health care in some cases Better Health Care at a price point in some cases Better Health Care as an absolute uh and in some cases adds

Uh more options just a greater range of healthcare for example I’ll use Nicaragua as an example but this applies to a vast number of countries and is in no way a specialty of Nicaragua in what it offers and that is for the majority of the people coming from those

Countries if you were to move to Nicaragua what you get first of all is a dramatic change in the cost of healthcare I don’t care how much Insurance you somehow manage to have in the United States which is almost always not very much during retirement that

Your health care costs here are going to be so much lower than the health care cost in your home country that chances are your cost of receiving Healthcare is going to drop dramatically and you’re just going to have more buying power for that healthare that’s the first piece

The second piece is the quality of that care we talked about this in the healthcare episode if you haven’t seen that definitely go check out we have several right we talk about the cost of healthcare we talked about the quality of healthcare we talked about what it means to have uh Regional Healthcare

Rather than National healthare just because small countries and how we think about it but you are likely to get a jump in the manner in which care is given right instead of you have to go to a hospital doctors will come to you instead of needing to find a nursing

Home you can staff uh it would be cheaper to have your own staff who takes care of you in your own home and gives you all the flexibility of being in charge being able to say well this is the food I want I don’t care what the

Doctor says I want someone in my house 24/7 I still want to go to the movie theater I just want someone to come with me I want to whatever it is you want to do you’re in in charge but you can hire staff that stays with you 24/7 and in

Almost all cases that would not just be plausible but it would be dramatically less expensive than say looking at a nursing home or something like that that you would normally do in in North America and that quality of life jump right is is is significant and that’s if

That’s needed right if you don’t need that then living abroad gives you the options of living in a community with other retirees and maybe you have shared resources that’ll be a fractional of the cost but even if you need that acute care you need that really persistent care suddenly those options become much

More flexible if you need a nursing home you still need a nursing home or if you want one you can still do that but if you want the flexibility of having options of having someone come to your home maybe parttime maybe full-time suddenly those things are accessible in

A way that there simply aren’t in the United States of course if you have a billion dollars you can afford to do anything but for normal people people who need to use terms like retirement these things are significant people who have billions of dollars never really retired they just slow down right did

They ever work was what is the what is the meaning of work at that it’s different right but when we talk about having a career and giving it up to retire then we are in a price range where full-time care in the home is generally either a burden or an

Impossibility so healthc care uh just in the manner in which it can be delivered the ability to have people come to you the just the general care quality goes up so much and this applies yes in Nicaragua here but applies so broadly to so many places you have so many options

Where this is true and then you have the greater range of care of course if you live in the United States you can hop on a plane and fly somewhere for care but that can be cost- prohibitive because you’re already paying presumably for some amount of care and life in the

United States by living abroad you have this ability to lower your cost day to-day get better care in your in your local community whatever it is you need and then if you need greater care you need something that you can’t get locally you have the financial resources from having done those things compared

To where you came from so it doesn’t matter we’re just doing a comparison right it doesn’t matter uh how much you started with you’ve spent so much less than you would have needed to that the difference would pay for these things that you can then go to a place that has

Whatever uh dramatically more uh acute or Advanced or or whatever specialty care that you may need when that time comes one of the most powerful tools that you have in your Arsenal and of course it goes back to cost of living is by saving money you have more money to

Make more decisions and be in control of those decisions if other people like insurance companies or or government agencies are covering the cost of your health insurance with your dollars of course your tax dollars or whatever that gives them the power to make the decisions for you but when you’re the

One paying you have that power to determine how things are going to be done and so it can be really significant from a healthcare and a stress reduction uh uh modality to uh be abroad and be in that position of of having control so that you know what is best for you is

Going to be done related to healthcare for a number of people is climate you may be looking at moving somewhere simply because as you uh near retirement many of us start to have more uh needs for our climatic conditions to be more controlled whether it is you need a

Warmer climate a drier climate or possibly a cooler climate all of those things tend to change over time now many many people are able to live where they always did and it doesn’t pose a problem and for some people they already live where it is ideal for them but for a

Great number of people when you get older it starts to become a problem that you need to start looking at moving to a place that will have a weather or climatic condition that is better for you for example maybe you develop asthma over the years or you’ve always had it

But the risks of it become uh more dramatic as you as you age maybe you need to move to a desert environment and of course you can do that in almost any country uh that you can imagine but you’re looking at moving already and instead of

Moving and taking on one high cost move to another high cost location you can look at moving abroad to one of any number of places that have desert-like conditions that can offer you all the benefits we already said but with whatever climatic needs you have and so

Maybe you uh at early retirement you’re looking at moving to a place like Nicaragua that is middling not humid not dry just kind of in the middle we often 40 to 60% humidity this can work for a lot of people but maybe this is not enough for you as you get older by

Living here again you have that flexibility from saving money for so many years that you can then move on again more easily than you could if you had stayed in say the United States or Canada and then you decide okay I want to move on to a place that is much more

Like a desert I need really dry conditions not just dryish conditions and so you look at perhaps a Peru or a northern Chile where you can have uh many more resources you can have access to larger Medical centers than you would have here and also very dry conditions

And while that cost of living may be slightly higher it’s much more in line with Nicaragua than it is with Canada or UK a completely unrelated benefit that almost no one ever talks about is becoming a destination in and of yourself most people only think of destinations for people when we’re

Talking about a wedding for example people have destination weddings and it becomes a oh I’m going to go on vacation to attend this wedding that’s fantastic and we’re used to that concept but but as you get older often we live in places that people find very boring because we

Lived there it was probably a bedroom community a place that we used to commute a place that we used to work and very few of our family and friends are saying wow I really wish I could go to whatever place that is when you retire abroad you have an opportunity to be a

Destination retiree that is a live in a place or provide a house with extra rooms maybe live in an area that has hotels whatever and make it a destination for people to come and visit you in your retirement maybe you are giving up living around people you grew up with but in many

Cases those people have moved on or will have a change of position when they come to retirement as well if they’re even still there at retirement uh so in most cases not all right in some cases staying in your hometown is going to be the best thing you are the only one

Who’s going to know how that plays out for you but for a lot of people moving to a really desirable really interesting destination in retirement can not just mean that you’re meeting and getting to be friends with interesting people in that place but also that you have this

Opportunity for your kids your grandkids your friends your extended family groups whatever to have a reason to come and visit you in an interesting vacation location especially if you’re younger uh in in retirement which you often can be uh when when you’re retiring abroad because you can retire more early in

Most cases you you don’t want to just settle into your homes most likely a few people do but mostly you don’t you want that opportunity where you can have friends and family come and visit and enjoy the space with you and you can host whether it’s in your own home or

You’re just using a hotel down the street or whatever but you make it an exciting event to come visit you and depending on where you go you can choose a place either that isolates you you want to get away from those people I understand right you can choose a place

That is very difficult for the majority of them to get to or you can choose a place based on how easy it is for them to get to for us for example when we were looking at places we wanted to live long term one of the factors was we did

Want to make it easy we weren’t going to prioritize it above all things but we were considering and ended up with a very simple location being here in Nicaragua our family is all coming from the United States and coming from the United States it is both quick and

Simple I guess more than both it is quick and simple and very affordable to come to Nicaragua I just bought tickets home one way $16 that’s very affordable for flying across most of a continent uh and to get from Nicaragua to the United States is only about two and a quarter

Hours that’s not a bad amount of time in an airplane and if I absolutely have to I can drive from here that would be ridiculously long but those options exist and that’s really important for us in choosing a place we were younger when we first retired I ended up coming out

Of retirement for various reasons but we did the process once and made that decision and went through those steps and these are things we’ve thought about and are important for us and even though now I’m not retired and I’m a YouTuber of course uh it is a factor in where we

Chose to live that our family and our friends would never feel that we had moved away should never feel that we were dramatically more distant and in fact for many of our family we are equidistant or closer because we used to have to drive to go see each other and

Now the time for them to go to the airport get a flight to our our airport here and then drive the nearly 2 hours from that airport to where we live which is not prioritized based on the airport we we decided that that was we were

Going to let that be a longer distance we could have lived right by the airport and that would have been fine too but with a 2-hour drive here we are still one to two hours closer than we were when we lived in the United States and

Actually lived in the same state as most of our family that’s dramatic that we we didn’t just make it reasonably similar we made it just the tiniest bit better other than having to catch a flight and uh so that’s that’s a really important thing I think a lot of people just

Overlook that they think that living abroad uh simply means you’re going to be putting up a barrier and making it difficult for people to come to you and of course there could be a mental barrier that makes that feel true and the feeling will be real right if people

Feel that is true then they will probably act as though that is true and that is something you can combat right show how cheap it is show how easy it is demonstrate maybe do a flight with them and once people see typically and realize oh I can be there in a few hours

For hardly any money with no effort and then I get a vacation then I’m going someplace interesting it’s not like I’m just going to visit a family member and here we are in some boring little town in Iowa and what is there to do it’s just Iowa like yeah we’ve been to the

Local Diner great instead it’s a destination oh my gosh while we’re here can we go see the ocean can we go see the volcanoes can we go visit epe or that’s Nicaragua right but what if you’re in Peru oh can we go to Machu Picchu can we go see the Valley of the

Gods can we go into the mountains can we go food tripping through Lima because it’s the the world’s food destination right pick your country pick the things that will be amazing there but no matter which country you pick it’s going to have something interesting when you’re coming from abroad so it’s like real

Potential to create this incredible draw to make you a destination and of course that goes beyond being a destination for your friends and family it also means it’s a destination for you and this probably has already occurred to you but it may not that by moving to a new

Country it gives you an adventure later in life it gives you an opportunity all and of itself even if you do none of the other things we’re talking about it gives you an everyday challenge of getting up and exploring a new country exploring its culture its food its

Customs its location its sights its sounds everything and of course that may sound scary and especially as we approach retirement we start to lean in many cases towards wanting the familiar wanting the comfortable and that is actually something that often contributes to a slowing down during retirement if we combat that we have

This great opportunity to have a more vigorous retirement enjoy more life for longer because we’re energizing ourselves because we’re pushing ourselves because we’re keeping our our brains more engaged because we’re excited about every little thing and this is something I love about living abroad it’s one of the reasons I don’t

Want to live in my home country and my home country happens to be the United States but the statement I don’t want to live in my home country goes true regardless of what would have been my home country I could have been from the UK I could have been from Canada I could

Have been from Nicaragua and honestly I would always have wanted a different country because I love the adventure of I grew up here I have this context I want a different one and you know I’m lucky that I grew up in the United States that gives me a lot of power to

Choose the next country that I that I mooved to and my next Country Wasn’t Nicaragua Nicaragua was my uh technically my third country but I came back to it so now it’s my ninth but uh this is my permanent home right but we did a lot of exploration this is what we

Picked I’m not saying it’s what’s right for you but if you’re looking at retirement and you’re coming from any of the countries I mentioned or most countries in the world it is a really good candidate it should be on nearly anyone’s short list it is safe it is

Affordable it has great Healthcare has great connections to places with other Healthcare uh supplies when needed it has all the things you tend to want to check off when you’re looking at retirement plus it has things like mountains and oceans but it doesn’t have the incredible terrain that makes it

Really unsafe or difficult and so it’s a really good combination of accessibility close to North America easy to get to Europe is there’s a little bit of complication but it’s not too bad um and the low cost of living with uh availability of inhome healthcare and

Those kinds of things just is it’s a fantastic option there are many other fantastic options as well but this one really does shine and I think more people need to put it on their list of things to consider for sure but it doesn’t have to be the only one you’re

Looking at by any stretch I mentioned some good ones right Mexico Guatemala El Salvador Peru Colombia Argentina Chile right there are many Uruguay right lots of places are absolutely fantastic just in this is just Latin America right if you’re looking at Europe there’s potentially some amazing options there

Spain Portugal Italy Greece uh there’s so many spots around the world that could be great live abroad locations depending on which factors you’re looking for right if you want to prioritize low cost you may find that southeast Asia is going to be your lowest cost or potentially Eastern

Africa right there’s some of those places are just going to they’re going to blow Latin America away in in cost of living and your dollar is going to go farther if you’re looking for the absolute lowest cost you have the most most strained budgets those places are

Likely going to be your Best Bets but if you need to return to North America for anything the cost of flights and those places will often offset any of that benefit and then Latin America becomes Far and Away your best choice but if you have a higher budget and you’re looking

More for specific Adventures specific cultural benefits connections to the world just who knows what Europe could easily still fall into that list much of Europe is much more approachable and affordable Than People realize and so there’s a world of options there but by making your retirement years a time of Adventure Discovery

Excitement that means you’re more likely to be engaged you’re more likely to be active you’re more likely to be healthy you’re more likely to get out and do things and and be a part of the world and that’s really important for you personally in nearly all cases this is a

Great way for you to improve your life expectancy for you to improve the quality of life during those years just from that aspect ECT right regardless of well then we can have a more comfortable home because we have more buying power and we can have more uh comfortable food

Because we can afford more food we can afford more preparation of food and we can have inhome Healthcare that we couldn’t afford otherwise we’d be stuck in a nursing home right all those things layer on top but before that the simple Improvement in life expectancy from being active and and keeping ourselves

Engaged goes so far it’s so important so those are those are the reasons that I feel that looking at retirement abroad and and Nicaragua is a great example of a retirement abroad location and living here I know many many retirees who did a much more traditional path they they

Went until uh somewhere between 58 and and 70 and decided to retire uh at a more normal age right and they came down here and they have fallen in love and are so happy with this location but of course I also know many in Costa Rica

For example or in Panama um those are great locations too right it all depends on what you’re looking for there are just the world has so many options um and I encourage you to get out and explore them and I encourage you to put Nicaragua on that list to look into look

At more on this channel um we go through so many things about everything in the country right from food to weather to you know exploring different cities what there is to do how you can get around what the safety is like what it’s like when you retire here all those things

But I don’t mean to push you to Nicaragua specifically that’s not the point here it’s just a great example of of the kinds of advantages that are waiting for you and perhaps you should start a journey of looking at where in the world you would want to live where

In the world you could live where in the world offers the things that would be important to you and and take a moment to really say what if I could make everything better and what if I could do it at such lower cost what if I could

Retire earlier to do those things and not just have more retirement but improve every single minute of that retirement and have just so much more life to enjoy that life and even if the thing you want to do and we’re starting to have retirees who are at this age

This is a new thing right not that no one’s ever done this but basically no one’s ever done this we are about to see the Gen xers move into the ages I’m at the very uh youngest actually of the Gen xers so there’s a lot of gen xers that

Are starting to consider the possibility of retirement and some are actually retiring and gen xers represent the first major uh generation where we have video Gamers that are retiring so for many of you that I’m talking to about early retirement for those of you that I’m talking about current retirement

We’re still talking uh to the to the youngest of the Boomers right if you’re at normal expected planned retirement you are one of the the the babies of the Baby Boomers but if you were looking at early retirement maybe just a little bit early right 50 7ish right uh the Boomers

Go down to I think about age 58 right now so if you’re about 57 or younger you’re one of my generation you’re part of the Gen xers and the Boomers pretty safely are not video Gamers not really deep into it some of them play quite a

Bit I know some that play a lot but they tend to be casual gamers and it’s only so much but of the Gen xers we’re starting to have serious Gamers who are going to be retiring well let me tell you if the thing you want to do is sit

In your home and play video games all day long moving abroad gives you lower cost of video games lower cost of that room to sit in lower cost of every aspect of your life which means you can play video games sooner and keep playing them for longer and enjoy them more

Because there’s less worry of being able to afford to keep doing it so no matter what you’re looking at I really think that moving abroad offers opportunities that you may never have thought of that are within your reach and will make your life better no matter when when you’re

Retiring I don’t care if you’re retiring at 45 which is completely plausible or you’re retiring at 80 and I don’t care if you’re looking to relax at home and just do nothing or you want to have the most unbelievable Adventures that anyone’s ever had and you’re just

Waiting to get to that point of your life where you have time to do it if those are any of those things any of those spectrum of things apply to you retiring abroad most likely gives you the opportunity to do whatever it is you want to do more and better and possibly

Sooner thanks for joining me like And subscribe as always if you would be so kind to support the channel uh you can buy me a coffee at buyme coffee.com Scott Allen Miller that comes directly to me and helps make this channel possible YouTube pays essentially nothing and so it is very important to

Help support all the work that we do here uh through your donations or whatever um so we really appreciate that it makes it makes a really huge difference it really does and so many of you do donate it’s it’s wonderful thank you so much and uh share on social media

Let someone know about this episode do you know someone who needs to think about retiring we have more resources on here we talk about retiring on a regular basis and we talk about relocating and just life in Latin America all the time so if there’s if you’re interested or

You know someone who might need to think about retiring or what their options are or they’re they’re currently struggling with how they’re uh able to afford their retirement in the current economic climate bring them over to this channel we have a lot of resources get down in

The comments and ask me right feel free to ask away I don’t have every answer but we have a lot we can find things out let me know what you think about retiring about Latin American living about relocating to Nicaragua specifically I am based in Nicaragua uh

But I’ve lived all over the world and I love to help people uh with their Journey towards a happier life whether you’re young and with kids and you’re just looking for a different place to live or you’re looking for retirement reach out we’re always always happy to

Put your questions on the show and as always I will see all of you tomorrow

Many people decide to consider retiring in Nicaragua due to low cost, high safety, warm weather and a welcoming visa system that means most people from North America including the US and Canada, as well as much of Europe, are able to retire with little more than a passport and a knapsack. Is retiring abroad right for you? Should you put Nicaragua on your retirement short list? Why Nicaragua? Why Latin America for retirees?

21 January 2024

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