Yeah, you make some great points. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention about the educational system in many of these places. Definitely if you have kids in many places private schools are almost a must. On the plus side when they are older is many of these countries have FREE Universities that are fairly decent for residents.
No doubt, life as a “singleton” is MUCH easier. I spent much of my single days traveling around South America, Latin American and Mexico. It’s just a wonderful place full of wonderful and warm and caring people for the most part.
Some countries are better than others. Someone mentioned Colombia and things have drastically improved over the years. I remember over a decade ago when I first went there, there weren’t many Americans going. In fact, the US State Department was warning against going there.
I remember when I first went even in major cities like Cali, Bogota, and Medellin I didn’t see many Americans there at all. It was TOTALLY obvious I wasn’t from there but I didn’t have any problems at all. Although it was a bit of a culture shock to see police with machine guns roaming around the public shopping malls to protect the stores. LOL.
It still does have pockets of violence but even when I went over a decade ago, if you were fluent in Spanish even if you were obviously a foreigner, you could mostly avoid problems. But to be fair I’ll say that I have family living there now and several of them have experienced random bouts of violence. One has a bullet lodged in his forehead. A thief came on a bus and robbed everyone and started shooting and he literally has a bullet in his forehead which they say is too dangerous to remove. Yet others got robbed.
In all my travels around the world, I’ve never met more friendly and caring and warm people than in Colombia. Just wonderful genuinely caring people. And absolutely the most beautiful females on the planet!
I think the perfect combination in retirement is having a home base here in the USA but going down for part of the year down in various countries. That way you get the best of both worlds. I do plan to spend a few months in retirement living down South once the kids are older and out of the house and we’re empty nesters.
