Posts Tagged Living In Mexico
For some East Bay retirees, Mexico an affordable alternative
Posted by Cabo Real Estate in Articles on October 5, 2010
By Kathleen Kirkwood
Brad Billingsley and his wife Linda
Brad Billingsley could have been waiting for his tee time at an Arizona golf course.
Instead, the former Lafayette resident and his wife Linda were in a lagoon off Cabo San Lucas, snapping photos of gray whales bobbing next to their small charter boat.
“Every day, it’s an adventure here,” Brad Billingsley said. “It’s added 20 years to my life.”
Brad, 62, and Linda Billingsley, 61, are among the “silver surge” of baby boomers seeking alternative retirement nests in Mexico, according to a recent report by the International Community Foundation.
It’s not certain how many U.S. retirees are living in Mexico — a 2004 study puts it between 500,000 and 600,000 — but the foundation and other researchers say the number is bound to increase as more boomers settle into their golden years and find Mexico an affordable alternative. Almost half the retirees living in coastal areas are getting by comfortably on less than $1,000 per month, said the report, which cites the growth of real estate projects targeted at retirees as proof that expatriates are flocking south of the border.
The Billingsleys had seriously considered a retirement community with a golf course in central Arizona. But they lacked the enthusiasm for fairway living that seemed to consume retirees there. “Their entire lives were involved with golf,” Brad Billingsley said.
In 2007, the couple became expatriates and settled into a $300,000, two-bedroom beachfront condominium in Rosarito Beach, in Baja California.
They’ve made the most out of their retirement dollars, Brad Billingsley said. The cost of living — from groceries to health care — is low in their beachfront town and there’s plenty to do, such as driving down the coast to Cabo, walking on the beach and shopping at the local mercado. Read the rest of this entry »
The world’s best places to retire
Posted by Cabo Real Estate in Articles on November 23, 2009
US retirees looking for lives of comfort at bargain-basement prices might do well to look at a sunny, sophisticated city near the equator.
By MSN Money staff
US retirees looking for lives of comfort at bargain-basement prices might do well to look at a sunny, sophisticated city near the equator.
The best place in the world to retire, according to expatriate lifestyle magazine International Living, is sunny, cheap, cosmopolitan and 8,000 feet high in the Andes.
Cuenca, Ecuador’s third-largest city, is a well-preserved colonial city of cobblestone streets and dramatic period architecture, with modern suburbs, shopping and all the comforts American retirees might expect. Yet they can live there — and well — for about $17,000 a year, the magazine says.
Cuenca and Ecuador in particular have so much to offer, says International Living Managing Editor Laura Sheridan, that the country bumped Mexico from the top spot in the publication’s Annual Retirement Index, released last month.
The index analyzes and ranks 29 countries in categories including real-estate costs, special benefits offered to retirees, culture, safety and stability, health care, climate, infrastructure and cost of living. The rankings are below.
“We look closely at the best opportunities worldwide for retirement living,” Sheridan says. “Where will the retiree’s dollars go farthest? Which country is the safest? Where is the health care best? We give top priority to those things that matter most to anyone planning for retirement, including programs with special benefits for retirees . . . things like tax breaks and discounts, for example, that various governments offer in an effort to attract investment and retirement dollars.” Read the rest of this entry »
Why retirees are fleeing the US
Posted by Cabo Real Estate in Articles on November 23, 2009
A move to another country may make economic sense, especially for seniors who don’t have enough savings to live in retirement without a dramatic cut in lifestyle.
By Scott Burns
A move to another country may make economic sense
Several years ago a Dallas couple approaching retirement disappeared. Well-known on the charitable-event circuit, the couple were in Dallas one day and gone the next. Phone disconnected. No forwarding address. No working cell-phone number.
Eventually, word spread that they were somewhere in Mexico. They had sold whatever they owned, packed their car and headed for the border. They were, conflicting reports said, living in small towns, the kind of places seldom featured in travel magazines.
We can only speculate on what happened. I think they were broke, had little or nothing in savings and knew they had to make a major change to survive on their Social Security income and minimal savings. Like millions of other Americans, their ship never came in. They got older. Work became harder to find. Suddenly, they realized their life was entirely unsustainable. They were heading toward a cliff. Read the rest of this entry »
Where Americans Visit Most – Forbes – The top 20 foreign destinations of U.S. travelers
Posted by Cabo Real Estate in Articles on October 21, 2009
By Rob Baedeker – originally posted on forbestraveler.com
Where Americans Visit Most - Forbes - The top 20 foreign destinations of U.S. travelers
In a year when economic indicators took Grand Canyon-sized plunges, it should come as no surprise that fewer Americans jetted off to foreign lands than they did the previous year.
What may be surprising is that the decline in U.S. outbound travel wasn’t worse: Overall, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office of Travel and Tourism Industries (OTTI), American travelers to foreign countries totaled 63.6 million in 2008, the last full year statistics are available, just a one percent decrease compared to 2007.
Whether the downward trend will continue throughout 2009 remains to be seen, but indicators are pointing towards further decreases. OTTI’s data through May of this year show an overall 7.7% decrease compared with the same time frame in 2008. Akashi says Japan is “expecting just a flat line of the number of U.S. travelers this year,” and Fitch says Mexico had “a slight reduction of international visitors (1.9 percent) from January to May 2009.”
However, the ranking of overseas destinations is likely to be unchanged. Read the rest of this entry »
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