The International Living Podcast

Episode 6: The Best Places to Retire in 2023

January 04, 2023 International Living
The International Living Podcast
Episode 6: The Best Places to Retire in 2023
Show Notes Transcript

In this week’s podcast, Executive Editor Jennifer Stevens delves deep into International Living’s Annual Global Retirement Index for 2023. Which destinations made the list? Which places lead the world in long-term visas, healthcare options, or cost of living? How affordable is a rental in Greece, or Mexico, or Portugal? Or even, why does International Living rank Italy’s climate higher than Panama’s?
 
Join Jen as she talks through the finer points of the Index, and explains the best ways to use it in your search for the overseas retirement that fits you best.

If you haven’t become a member yet—you can do it today with a special discount offer for podcast listeners. You’ll receive our monthly magazine plus a bundle of special extras, including our 2023 Global Retirement Index. Subscribe here: https://intliving.com/podcast.
 
Joining Jen and Jim in this week’s episode is International Living Editor Seán Keenan; the technician behind the numbers. Every year, sometime around August, Seán begins gathering the data that eventually becomes the Retirement Index. Once that’s done, the IL editorial team hones and adapts the Index on an annual basis, ensuring that it keeps up to date with the questions, concerns, and benefits that mean most to potential expats. 
 
Make no mistake, International Living's Annual Global Retirement Index is not a slipshod collection of government statistics or Googled data points—it’s compiled from information we solicit from our trusted in-country sources. Seán talks us through some of the methods we use to put it together, and some of the surprises and talking points from the results. 

Settle in, press play, and find out as we welcome you to the latest episode of International Living’s Bigger Better World podcast.

Music: Royalty Free Music From timtaj.com.

Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Jim Santos 0:01

Hello, everyone. I'm Jim Santos, and this is Bigger, Better World from International Living. In this podcast series, we introduce you to a bigger world, full of communities that are safe, welcoming, beautiful, and largely undiscovered. A better world. A friendly, great, value world where you can live richer, travel more, invest for profit, and enjoy a better life. We talked with our writers and other people just like you who took a chance and followed our guidance to create for themselves bigger, better lives all around the world. 

 

Let's get to it. 

 

All right. Phone the neighbors and wake the kids, everybody. And welcome to a very special show of Bigger, Better World, our first podcast of the new year. And we have a very special topic. We're going to be taking a look at the big news from the January 2023 edition of International Living magazine, the newly released International Living 2023 Global Retirement Index. 

 

Each year, the editors and writers for International Living rate and rank overseas destinations in seven categories to create the best tool out there for prioritizing which countries may be right for your particular taste and needs. Joining us today to go over this year's index and to talk about the evaluation process, our executive editor at International Living, Jennifer Stevens, and the managing editor and author of the January 2023 featured story, ‘The World's Best Places to Retire in 2023’, Sean Keenan.

 

Jim Santos 1:41 

So, Jen, Sean, welcome to a bigger, better world. And thanks for joining us.

 

Jennifer Stevens 1:46 

Thanks.

 

Sean Keenan 1:47 

Thank you, Jim. Good to be here.

 

Jim Santos 1:48 

I guess I'd like to start off for most of our readers, you guys are basically just names in the magazine. Although, Jennifer, I guess we see you a lot on the Postcards.

 

Jennifer Stevens 1:56

Yes, you do.

 

Jim Santos 1:58 

Could you guys give us a little background about executive editor and managing editor? What do you actually do for the magazine? And just tell us a little bit about your roles there.

 

Jennifer Stevens 2:07

Yeah, so I've been with International Living for more than 20 years, and I've had lots of different jobs there. But for many years, I've kind of helped us sort of with our direction in terms of what we're covering and how we're covering it. And now, right now, I've sort of been more involved in the day to day editorial, which has been really fun because I haven't dived in to this degree in a long time. So I'm getting to help more directly, and you'll see me in the Postcards every day and that kind of thing. So that's been kind of a cool thing for me personally.

 

Jim Santos 2:38

And Sean?

 

Sean Keenan 2:40

Well, for me, I should drill down a little bit deeper than that and a little bit more hands-on. And then I write a lot of the articles for the magazine these days, so a lot of that involves going out and researching the places that I write the articles about. So I spent quite a bit of time on the road around the world, which is one of the highlights of the job. And then the other part is coming back, mostly writing about it. These days, I take quite a bit of video as well. And one of the things that one of the responsibilities I have is to put together the Retirement Index, the Annual Global Retirement Index, which is kind of our key feature for the start of every new year, where we assess the benefits and upsides of going to retire in various countries around the world.

 

Jim Santos 3:26

Sean, are you based mostly in Ireland?

 

Sean Keenan 3:29

I am mostly based in Ireland, yeah. I work from Woodlock House, which is in the southeast coast of Ireland, and that's where International Living has its international headquarters.

 

Jim Santos 3:43

And Jen, I know you do a lot of traveling yourself also.

 

Jennifer Stevens 3:46

I do. Right now I'm talking to you all from Colorado at the moment, but I get the great benefit of traveling. I've been like Sean, I've spent lots of over the years, I've done lots of writing for International Living, and I've had the great pleasure of seeing the places that we recommend first-hand. And it's tough job we have, Sean and I!

 

Jim Santos 4:10

Part of the fun of talking to the other writers of International Living is you never really know where they are or what they're doing.

 

Jennifer Stevens 4:16

Yeah, we are, kind of. Sometimes even among us on the staff, you know, we'll be like, where, where are you? You know, we do lots of Zoom calls because everyone is so far flung and so sometimes you'll look and you'll think that you're not at home. Where are you? Oh, we're here this week. Everyone's kind of galavanting around. It's fun. Truly, it’s an international aspect to the magazine, particularly when we have conferences and everyone's there.

 

Jim Santos 4:39

Right. I guess I want to start off with a little bit of background on the Global Retirement Index itself. How long has International Living doing this and exactly what is it that you pull together here?

 

Jennifer Stevens 4:52

Yeah, so I'll take that to start. We have been putting this together for 32 years. This 2023 edition is our 32nd one that we've put together, and it changes a bit each year. But that's because it's sort of I think of it as a living document in a way that this is something, it's a snapshot of time at that moment, that year, what we believe, our best recommendations, the best guidance we can give to a reader about what places make the most sense overseas for living well, for less. 

 

So all of the places on the index have been the places where we find really good value and places where we believe you can improve your quality of life. So they are safe, they are welcoming. The cost of living is lower than you would typically spend at home. The weather has something to recommend it. Right. Not everybody likes the same kind of climate, but we pick places where, if you want to be at the beach, then there's places on this list for you. If you want to be in a place where the climate is sort of spring-like year round, there are places on this list for you as well.

 

Jennifer Stevens 5:57

And so we really want this to be a very accessible and practical tool. So we take into account lots of statistics, but it's not meant to be a scientific output. It isn't just sort of high level stats that random governments generate, which are always of questionable utility and accuracy, frankly. Instead, we're taking some of that data, but we're also then asking our extensive, far flung network of folks who are on the ground and living in these countries that we're writing about to give us their current assessment of what's going on. 

 

And so we're trying to do that in a way that we're comparing apples to apples. And so instead of saying, what does it cost to rent an apartment? We would drill down and say, what does it cost to rent a two bedroom apartment in these, say, three towns that we really like, that we know that there's an established expat community, and we recommend they're easy and comfortable places to go? What does that two bedroom apartment cost there and not any two bedroom apartment, the kind of two bedroom apartment you'd want to rent, right? So we're bringing good judgment to this index.

 

So this is not…if you look at a site, there are all these sites on the internet that will tell you what's the cost of living here or there, but it's not a controlled situation, if you get me. There are people who want to live at different levels, right? You can live in the United States on next to nothing, but you're not going to be living very comfortably. And that can be true in all kinds of places. So we're trying to bring some sort of practical, real-world, accurate input into this index so that when a reader looks at it, they can say, okay, well, a two bedroom apartment costs, say it's $1,000 a month. That's the kind of apartment you'd want to live in, the kind of apartment you might spend $4,000 a month for in New York, right? Or probably more than that. That kind of livable, comfortable apartment that's going to cost that amount. This index is meant to be just a very practical tool where people can bring their own proclivities, their own priorities and interests and the things that they must have or the things that they don't care about.

 

Bring those ideas to this index and then look at it. Say, ‘okay. I want beach.’ Well, all right, if that's your number one thing, then these five countries are going to be where you want to focus. So it's just a way for people to focus in on the countries they should be considering.

 

Jim Santos 8:25

I think an important point of this process that you brought up is that you are getting your information from people who are actually living in those countries. When you see a lot of these listicles on the internet that are very popular, the top ten cities to retire to or the top ten states to retire to, there are often some really bizarre listings in there because someone is just going through Wikipedia and comparing tax rates. It's a very cut and dried thing. So the important thing is your criteria and your background in these.

 

Sean Keenan 8:52 

Absolutely. And when we come to the categories we've really defined and honed down and refined the whole set of questions that we ask our correspondents and our editors abroad and our contributors to this because we do it's exactly what Jen just said. We really need to actually get the probably more get the opinion rather than the information. The information is everywhere. But you can look up Numbeo, for example, and see what the price of what the price of a donut is in Arkansas, for example. But the thing is, that doesn't give you a real sense of what the actual cost of living is for somebody that actually lives there, because you need to get real, actual boots on the ground, real people in situ to be able to give you that information. Because it's far too easy to skew or be skewed by random lists of numbers. 

 

And this isn't a random list of numbers at all. The thing about it is we split it into categories so that exactly as Jen says, you can choose what is important to you and go down through that category. For example. So if climate is really important to you, you go down through that climate category and you probably dismiss places. Like, we've got a pretty low score for weather or climate here in Ireland because frankly the weather isn't that great in Ireland. That's not why you come here. However, if you go for something like the Affinity rating, how you're going to fit in there, or various other things that might be more important to you, Ireland can score really well on that. 

 

So again, another thing that to anticipate, probably something that's going to come up, is why is there only 16 countries on it this year compared to last year when there were more? Well, I mean, it is right from the very start when we start putting this thing together, it's a very selective process and that we wouldn't put a destination onto this list, onto the index, unless we were sure it actually offered something really good for the potential expat. And we've taken countries off this year because in the post-COVID period there have been quite a few countries around the world which used to offer long term visas, long term residency options for expats which eow either no longer do so, or have made it much more expensive, or have made it much more complicated, or have narrowed down the range of benefits that you get from those long term residency visas. So we've taken them straight off the list because we are very selective about this.

 

We wouldn't put anything on the list unless we thought it was really worth your while.

 

Jim Santos 11:30

That was something else I wanted to ask you. Retirement is kind of changing now and post-COVID, you've got people who are discovering that they can be Digital Nomads and be working in different countries. So sometimes people are going to other countries just to work or just to enjoy it. So is this index geared strictly to the people who are looking to retire in another country?

 

Jennifer Stevens 11:49

Yeah, exactly. We sort of were discussing that, actually. It's been called the Annual Global Retirement Index for all these 32 years. But as you pointed out, all of a sudden we have more younger people, people who aren't ready to retire, have opportunities to go abroad, and countries are coming to terms with this. They've noticed, right? There are people who can they're quite happy to have you come and bring your money and spend it in their country. And so all of a sudden, that is much more possible than it used to be. And so this list, while it is called the Retirement Index, is actually very useful for folks who are not who are considering, well, maybe I'd like to either retire early and work part time or I want to come go to a place I can just take my job with me. Where should I go? 

This list is quite useful because in all of these places, you're going to find good internet access, because part of what we consider something that's necessary, basically, is having good connectivity, right? Whether you're working or not in this day and age, that's important. And so, even in little small towns in Ecuador, two of our editors, Dan and Suzan, lived in Ecuador for years. And Dan was saying, we were chatting yesterday, and he said, when we lived in Cotacachi, which is this little town up in the mountains, we had excellent internet. We worked from there for years and they lived there for years ago. And so definitely the picks on this index are useful if you are ready to retire or younger.

 

Sean Keenan 13:26

I think, really, if you were just to look at the index, and the only category that really relates specifically to your retirement is probably that visas and benefits category. If you were to look at any of the others, if you're narrowing down your options for where you want to go to, you can just look at the other figures rather than that. Certainly on the International Living website, we have lots of information for Digital Nomads and for potential remote workers around the world. And I think we may actually also have another index that covers that.

 

Jennifer Stevens 13:57

Yeah, we do. And it's still up on the website that's specifically for Digital Nomads. And in a way, that index is more city specific. When we start to talk about this index, we'll see we've kind of dived in to our different countries and made specific city recommendations, different cities and towns. The digital nomad index is just city driven, but there's lots of opportunity because if you want to live comfortably and affordably and where the weather suits you, it doesn't matter if you're ready to retire or not. This index will point you to those places.

 

Jim Santos 14:30

Now, I remember my own experience when I was living in Ecuador, writing for the magazine. I would get these surveys and dutifully go down to the local Supermaxi with my little list and put in the prices for all the various items. So once you have all of this information compiled, when you have it gathered, rather, what do you do to compile that into the index form?

 

Sean Keenan 14:48 

That's my end of things. I've got to basically take all that feedback and I've got to turn that into a numerical value at one point or another. Now, you may remember, it's funny because what you did just mention about the cost of living is probably the only category that works in a slightly different way. The Affinity category is a little bit more complicated as well. But the rest of them, if you cast your mind back, a lot of the questions that I would ask would actually have a one to ten value. So, for example, I'm looking at the visas and benefits question here, category questions. So, for example, I've got a question on the questionnaire here which states, on a scale of one to ten, how easy is it to become a permanent resident in this destination? So that's a really great example of how we get a numerical value out of a piece of information like that. Because again, it's very subjective. And we don't shy away from the fact that this is subjective. We very much make a virtue of the fact that we want our Panama correspondent, our Panama editor's opinion on how easy it is to become a permanent residence, because we trust her, we trust Jessica to give us a straight answer on that.

 

Sean Keenan 16:07

Whereas we know perfectly well that if we were to go to a government office in Panama and say, how easy is it to become a permanent resident in Panama? They'd say, oh, super easy. Exactly. Whereas we need the actual, genuine, the opinion and the expertise of our people out there. So getting all those answers down into numerical value, that's generally statistical method, really, in that we offer a value. We assign a value to each of the questions, even if they're yes or no questions. We'll give a value to a yes and a value to no, depending on the question. Depending on whether question is pitched in a negative or positive way.

 

Jennifer Stevens 16:53

Yeah, layered recipe, let's put it that way. We combine the data with the opinion and we stir, right, and we come up with numbers that we all feel comfortable getting around. There's a lot of debate.

 

Sean Keenan 17:08 

Yeah. One interesting one is the climate. I always find climate is the one that people push back on and they tell me, how come, like, Roatan? Roatan is this beautiful little Caribbean island? Why has it got a low score on climate? And my answer to that is it's only got one climate. So, basically, if you really love 85-degree heat and year round sunshine, great, that's going to be 100% for you. However, I work in an office here in Ireland with a bunch of people who would melt in that heat and would hate that heat, so it's not good for them. 

 

So our highest scores on the climate category are the places that have got the most variations, stable variations in climate. So Ecuador, for example, your old stomping ground, Ecuador, does really well in climate because it's got a massive range of climates, right from the top of Cotopaxi, for example, which is year round snow, all the way down to the beach in Salinas, where you used to live, which is year round warm temperatures. Yeah.

 

Jim Santos 18:09

That brings up another thing that makes it kind of a daunting process for you, giving us something just as straightforward as I mentioned, like going down to the Supermaxi to get prices. Well, the price of potatoes in the grocery store and the price of potatoes in the local market, open air market, are quite different. And the cost of a two bedroom place on the beach in low season is different from the cost in high season. And the price just a few blocks off the beach is different from the price on the beach. And then you bring up well, you could live in the Andes too, because I lived in a resort city. It's really one of the most expensive places to live in Ecuador. So it must be quite a task trying to coordinate when there's so much variety in each country as well.

 

Sean Keenan 18:49

It is, but we pitched the questions in such a way that I will ask someone I do actually specify where they buy these things. There's one section of the list of items. One section of that is from your local supermarket, and the other one does actually mention markets. But there's a lot of places on the questionnaire where we do, again, have to get that subjectivity into it, get that opinion and expertise into it. 

 

And I will ask people, for example, here's a question from the housing section. What can you expect to pay for a two bedroom, two bathroom apartment in an expat friendly neighborhood? So there is a value judgment there. There's no point someone telling me, oh, look, you can get a place to rent in Guayaquil in Ecuador, in the worst part of Guayaquil, and it's $200 a month. That's no use to us. We're not looking for that. We're looking for something that is actually practical and feasible for the kind of people who are going to be making use of this resource. And that's, again, why it's so dependent on the people on the other side of it, knowing essentially what it is I'm looking for and not gaming the system.

 

There's no advantage to them in gaming that, they know perfectly well what kind of place we're talking about and what kind of level of comfort is expected. So that's kind of the feedback they give. 

 

Jim Santos 20:20

Well, now that we've built the drama up to a fever pitch here, let's take a look at the actual 2023 Global Retirement Index. First of all, who were the big winners there? What was the biggest surprise for you this year in the index?

 

Sean Keenan 20:33

Surprise? Let's see.

 

Jennifer Stevens 20:35

Those are two different things, maybe. I don't think any of us were that surprised when we looked at the numbers, how it came out. So Portugal wins the index for all sorts of good reasons, and I think this was not a surprise. There are some surprises on this.

 

Sean Keenan 20:52

There's one, the great one I've got.

 

Jennifer Stevens 20:53

But I know what Sean's going to say. There are some great surprises. You talk about the surprises, but Portugal wins in part because of the timeliness of this pick. The U.S. Dollar is so strong right now against the euro, stronger that it's been in many, many years. And so it is just a timely time to be looking in Europe, right? And the U.S. Dollar is strong against the Mexican peso, which to that point, Mexico comes in second. And that is part of the reason, because the value propositions in these countries are really extraordinary today. And that's part of that idea of that. This index is a snapshot in time.

 

Jim Santos 21:34

When we were just at the Atlanta conference, the Bootcamp, in October of 2022, I was surprised how many people were talking about Portugal, how many of the attendees were asked about Portugal.

 

Jennifer Stevens 21:46

It's interesting. It is a country, and we've been talking about Portugal for 40 years, right? We've been talking about Portugal for a long time, but it has just in the last two years, sort of seeped into the mainstream consciousness, if you will. I think you'll see reporting about Portugal all over, not just in International Living, this whole idea that you can live better for less overseas. For many, many years, for decades, nobody was talking about this but us. And now, because I think in part, it is so much easier than ever to go overseas, information is so much more readily available to people. 

 

Whether that information is accurate or not is a different thing. And often it's not. It's either inaccurate or it's incomplete. But people can see just by doing a little search, oh, it is possible to go overseas, and they can begin to see the possibilities. And so we're seeing more coverage of this idea generally in the mainstream media, but in addition, Portugal in particular, it's just the best value place in Europe, in Western Europe anyway, today. And so I think that is part of the reason that it's gotten other coverage beyond just International Living, but it's one of the reasons that it wins. It wins for us. And Sean, you lived in Portugal for a while, so you should tell us.

 

Sean Keenan 23:04

I did, and I think well, I know I wrote this in the article as well. What I loved about Portugal…there's a lot of things to love about Portugal. It's very compact, and it's got a massive range of beach, mountains, cities, year round warm beaches down the south and so on. It's got this very old world European feel about it. But what I loved about it, and what I said in the article, was it was the first place I lived abroad, and it was the first place I ever lived where I just didn't have to worry about money anymore. It was amazing. I remember actually, it actually caused me to be a little bit more mature about things. I remember it was the first time I'd ever had my alcohol consumption limited by my own personal restraint rather than money! But yeah, it takes such a weight off your mind. You don't even realize, I think, how stressed and how angry you are a lot of the time when your money just doesn't stretch as far as you feel it should.

 

And that applies to you no matter how much money you have. I've known a few very wealthy people, and they get just as annoyed by bad value as any of the rest of us do. It's not actually about how much they've got. It's just that feeling of being ripped off, and nobody likes that. And I've never felt ripped off once in Portugal at all. I think you could possibly go to maybe down to one of the marinas in one of the really high end resorts down on the south coast and feel that you're probably paying a premium for what you're getting. But of course, you'd be in one of the premium locations. 

 

But there's so many places in Portugal to go that are not, you can't call them premium locations because they've still not been discovered. It's got so many little castle towns and lovely little fishing villages and coastal Atlantic villages and resorts that just really haven't become overpriced in a way that maybe you'd expect them to.

 

Jim Santos 25:14

Our second episode of Bigger, Better World, we talked to Jan and Chris Schroeder, who were the winners of the Test Drive Your Retirement Contest for International Living, and they brought up something about Portugal that I've also heard quite often. They said that Portugal is listed as the third-safest country in the world.

 

Sean Keenan 25:31

Yeah, absolutely. And that just ties in absolutely with the feel of being over there. It's a really gentle slow paced sort of a place, and that's an easy set of terms to actually throw around. But when you get there, it's just like I say, it feels old and it feels like an older way of life. It's not to say that it's not modern. It's not to say that it doesn't have big modern cities and financial areas and business districts, and it's as up to date as anywhere. But, yeah, there's definitely a real sense of community and tradition and just quietness.

 

Jennifer Stevens 26:15

I think there's a gentleness to the culture, I think, that Americans will comment on. I know we talked to a woman who is an American who moved to Lisbon with her son and husband in the last year or so, and she talked about that sort of freneticness of having a kid in the U.S. And it's kind of scary. I mean, I have kids in school here right now, and every morning you send them off to school and you just think, okay, well, let's just hope it's going to be okay today. And you don't have to feel that way when your kids are in school. Not just in Portugal, I would say kind of anywhere else on our index, frankly. So I think you're right. That safety factor is something that is important to people. And another category that Portugal scores well in is healthcare. You have good access to excellent healthcare that is affordable in Portugal. And that's another reason Americans are looking overseas, because the cost of healthcare in the U.S. is just prohibitively expensive for so many people.

 

Sean Keenan 27:15

Right. And you know yourself, Jim, from Ecuador, there are places on this index where there are really very good national healthcare systems, which you can, as an expat, sometimes for a price, sometimes you don't actually have to pay. Sometimes you have to top it up with your own insurance. But places like Ecuador, places like Costa Rica, places like France and Spain and Portugal, all of them have healthcare options that are significantly more affordable than that of the United States. 

 

Jim Santos 27:51 

Not even the public systems? Even the private systems.

 

Sean Keenan 27:54

Even the private systems, yeah.

 

Jim Santos 27:56

Several of the countries you mentioned there have pretty good business, what do you call it? Medical tourism.

 

Sean Keenan 28:00

Medical tourism, yeah. And then there are other countries on here, like Thailand, for example, which don't have a national healthcare system of the same sort, but when we hear reports, and I've been around Thailand as well, looking at the price lists and hospitals and so on, and dental practices, and you look at them and you realize, okay, there's not actually a huge need to have insurance here. You could pay for most of this stuff out of pocket. And it's great care, too, very well regarded care. But I wanted to come to the surprise. You did ask me about the surprise, and I'm grinning to myself, I love this. This absolutely came as a surprise to us as well, is that the countries Thailand and Italy got identical scores in the index this year.

 

Jennifer Stevens 28:49

Right. Not across categories.

 

Sean Keenan 28:51

No, not across categories. Identical final totals, which I absolutely love that idea, because they are so very, very different from each other. But yeah, you could very easily argue for either one of them. I couldn't choose between one and the other, which would be the best one to retire. And I love the fact that they just came out tied.

 

Jim Santos 29:14

You have to try both.

 

Jennifer Stevens 29:16

Yeah, exactly. But it does point to this idea that this index, you do have to bring your own priorities to it, right? Because depending on what's most important to you, that's going to lead you down a certain path and point you to a certain number of spots. And I think, Sean, you made this point earlier, all of the countries on this index are worth your attention. There is no one spot in the world that's one size fits all kind of country that everybody's going to like. It doesn't work that way, because what's important to me isn't necessarily what's important to you. Right. You have to bring your own priorities to this. 

 

But when you do, it really is a useful tool because you can kind of navigate your way through that. If your number one priority is having excellent healthcare at a cost you can afford, then you're going to want to look at the healthcare category and see what countries come out at the top there, and then you can bring your secondary priorities. And maybe that's climate, or maybe that's a cultural, maybe it's beach, or maybe you want to be able to go to museums and that kind of thing.

 

Jennifer Stevens 30:17

So you have to navigate your way through the index. But it's really meant to be a useful tool and a reliable tool. As we said. This isn't just something we threw together from information on the Internet. This is something we've thought through and fought over, to be honest. There's a lot of debate that goes into putting this thing together.

 

Sean Keenan 30:37

And also, again, something I referred to earlier, which is it does depend on a degree of expert interpretation as well from our people putting this together, our editors and our correspondents and our contributors out there, we trust them now. We've had long enough time with them over the years. Now that we know that they understand what we're looking for, they understand that we don't want the crazy headline, headline figures or whatever. We want the actual, real day to day living experience.

 

Jim Santos 31:09

Okay, so Portugal came up on top. See, there was almost a tie for the second position.

 

Sean Keenan 31:14

Yes. Very close. Very, very close. It's always tight at the top, to be honest, pretty much every year within the first three or four. There's not much more than a couple of percentage points between them. We do bring these countries onto this list for a reason. But yeah, between Mexico and Panama, Panama and Ecuador, there's really around about one percentage point between the three of them. And you can't argue with that. I've been to all those places and I couldn't tell you which is the best one to retire in because it genuinely is just, again, the same thing that we've been saying. What fits you? What fits you best? 

 

I know there's a completely different feel to Ecuador, to what there is in Panama, for example. So it's just a case. Does the feel of Panama, which is probably… let's say the feel of Panama to me is one thing that would define it would be it's compact, it's close, and it's very familiar. If you're in the United States, very familiar. You recognize a lot of the things you see about yourself. And the experience is fairly familiar on a day to day basis.

 

Whereas Ecuador is so gentle and calm, dignified, but it's a little more alien. So alien is the wrong word. A little bit more unfamiliar. So which is the better country to retire to? You tell me, Jim.

 

Jennifer Stevens 32:41

Right. Well, that's kind of the point. Right. You have to figure out what your tolerance levels are or what your interests are. I mean, if you are so excited to learn about Mayan culture and you're really excited to explore the culinary riches that are in another country, then you might love Mexico or you might love Ecuador and those might be more important to you than a place like Panama, which has indigenous culture. But it's different. So I think it very much depends on what you are interested in doing, the kind of life you want to have. 

 

Mexico, just to make the point, Mexico has so much to offer that is just of a great variety. Right. You can be on a tropical beach on the Caribbean side. You can be on a more drier beach on the Pacific over in the Baja or over down in Cabo. You can be up in the colonial highlands and have really sort of excellent weather year round. In a place like San Miguel de Allende, you are at about 6000ft. So there's not lots of bugs. It's very dry, crisp air, really comfortable and very arts rich. There's just a lot of variety in a place like Mexico.

 

Jennifer Stevens 33:57

You can drive to which it's close and you can fly in affordably. So there's lots of reasons on the cost of living side for which Mexico really shines, particularly now with that strong U.S. Dollar because the exchange rate, I mean, it has put Mexico on sale for Americans.

 

Jim Santos 34:16

Yeah, it looks like that's the category of where it really stood out from Panama's. Cost of living.

 

Sean Keenan 34:19

Exactly. Yeah. And that's for the reason that Panama uses the U.S. Dollar as its primary currency. So there's not actually any… it's not to say that it's expensive, but it's just basically, you're not getting that leverage from your currency conversion, which you are in Mexico right at the moment. So just for the moment, that's enough to push Mexico up a little bit above Panama.

 

Jim Santos 34:43 

What surprised me was Greece popped up in the top ten.

 

Sean Keenan 34:47

We decided it was time.

 

Jennifer Stevens 34:48 

Yeah. You go, Sean. We're very excited about it.

 

Sean Keenan 34:52

Well, I mean, in a nutshell, that's about it. We just decided it was time because we are getting feedback from it. Sometimes the index really bends to the will of the people, too. We got a lot of people asking us about Greece. We're seeing a lot of reports coming in from people expats living in Greece. We're getting quite a few digital nomads there. And ultimately it was a case of, well, we're looking at it and thinking we're taking some of these places, we're taking some of the destinations off the index this year because they've kind of disqualified themselves. So do we really have a very good excuse why Greece shouldn't be in there?

 

Jennifer Stevens 35:32

Well, and in fact they have improved their visa situation for some years. It was genuinely a challenge to get a longer term visa. And so that was part of the reason that Greece hadn't been on the index. But now Greece is making it much easier for people to come and also for something like their golden visa, which is essentially being able to buy residency effectively and making an investment in the country. It's actually one of the more affordable countries to do that in Europe. So there were some reasons, sort of from a technical standpoint, that Greece makes sense now in a way it didn't five years ago.

 

Sean Keenan 36:09

And again, it is one of Europe's more affordable options too. And who doesn't really want to go and live in Greece?

 

Jennifer Stevens 36:20

It's beautiful.

 

Sean Keenan 36:22 

Yeah.

 

Jim Santos 36:23

General already got into part of this. But one of the things I wanted to ask is how would a typical reader actually use the index? I mean, you mentioned that you might look at which category is most important to you first and kind of reference choices.

 

Jennifer Stevens 36:34

I hope people do two things with it. I hope that they will genuinely get a glass of wine or a cup of coffee or something and sit down with 100 pages of content that we provide along with this index. It's not just the chart of whose wins with the scores, but we dive into the meat of all of these places and offer very specific recommendations for different towns that we like. And we provide lots of context and sort of a wealth of education, if you will, about why these places are worth your attention. 

 

And so I would hope that people would do two things, read through that, because you might find that a place intrigues you that you didn't think would set aside your preconceived notions about places and really take the time to read what we have produced because that is content that came from the guys on the ground. Right. This isn't just again, I have kind of been beating this point, I realize, but this isn't something we just threw together from Internet research. I mean, this is a long 100 page report that gives you lots of practical, useful details and brings to it the good judgment of the people we have on the ground in these places.

 

So I would hope that people would come without their preconceived notions and allow themselves to be charmed by places they might not have thought would charm them. And then secondarily, come with the things, do that reading also with this idea of an open mind, but the idea that, okay, well, what's most important to me are these three things. Maybe it's health care and cost of living, and I want to be in a place where there are a good expat population or something like that. Maybe those are your three things. So you want to read through that with an open mind, because it might be that those places are not the places you thought they'd be.

 

Sean Keenan 38:18

Right.

 

Jim Santos 38:18

So this is a lot more than just the index, just the chart that lists the numbers.

 

Jennifer Stevens 38:23

Yeah, absolutely. The numbers are useful. But here's the thing. You don't make a decision about where you're going to live based on just a country. Right. You wouldn't say, I live in the U.S. Because every little community is different. Right. You choose to live someplace specifically because of the community that's there, the attributes and the people and the community you'll find there. That's the same overseas, too. So even though we rank these countries, we are not trying to give people, we're not trying to say that every single place in Portugal, for example, or in any of these countries is worthy of your attention, or it would be a great place for you to live as an expat. That's not the case. 

 

What we try to do is say, look, here are the communities within that country that we think are good for you, that these places that we recommend because they are a little bit of an established expat community. You can get by speaking not perfectly the local language. You can make friends easily. They're easy to get in and out of all those things that make a place livable, right? And attractive. Those are built in, baked into the specific communities that we recommend.

 

And so that's another value, I think, that we bring to this. This isn't just a sort of listicle, hey, Portugal wins. Here you go. Because that's just step one, right? Portugal wins. Well, now, where should I go? And that's what this big report does. It points you to some specific places in all of these countries that we like.

 

Jim Santos 39:55

Well, how would International Living member go about getting the entire index, whose hundreds of pages you're talking about?

 

Jennifer Stevens 40:00

Yes. So we include it for our members, for International Living members. When you become a member of IL and you will get your monthly magazine, we will also include for you our big Annual Global Retirement Index. And that's part of it, but we don't sort of publish it out there for everybody to see. If you want the whole kit and caboodle, you got to become a member.

 

Jim Santos 40:23

There's no free lunch.

 

Sean Keenan 40:24

No. It takes us a lot of time and effort to put it together so we don't go throwing it away. Ee start putting this together in August, right?

 

Jennifer Stevens 40:33

Yeah. It is really a big production push on every year. He looks at us like, oh, my God, I have to do this again! 

 

Jim Santos 40:43

It seems like by the time you get it finished, it's about time to start the next one.

 

Jennifer Stevens 40:47

That is actually true.

 

Sean Keenan 40:48

Pretty much it.

 

Jennifer Stevens 40:49 

Yeah, I will say. So to get all of the details in this index, which is genuinely valuable, we give that to our subscribers, to our readers. However, there is a lot of good information on our website as well. So if you've never gone to look someone's listening, and if you've never gone to look at our InternationalLiving.com website, please do. There's a ton of good stuff on there. And in addition, there is a free e-letter called our IL Postcards that goes out every day, and there's no harm done. You can subscribe and unsubscribe if you don't like it, but you'll get lots of great information about our countries that we like there, along with lots of stories of people who are living there, which gives you kind of a view of a peek into what life is like in these places. And that can be really useful, too. 

 

I would say, too, that while I said before there's not any one size fits all country, there are great options, quite literally all over the world. Right. And so right now, Europe makes a lot of sense because of that strong U.S. dollar. But even without that strong U.S. dollar, places like France and Spain and Greece and Portugal and Italy, they make good sense regardless, because even if the dollar were not as strong as it currently is, you're still getting excellent value in those places.

 

Jennifer Stevens 42:04

And that's something, I think, that is a surprise to people. Our perception is, oh, you're going to go on vacation to Paris. It's going to cost a fortune. And it can. Right.

 

Sean Keenan 42:14

It will.

 

Jennifer Stevens 42:15

Right. And you can spend lots of money staying at a really nice hotel in Paris or whatever. But across Europe, the quality of life is very high, and the cost of living across the board is just going to be less than it is in the U.S. And that just means that you can live in a small community where there is a wonderful bakery and there are cafés. And because the local government supports the arts to such a degree, there will be free concerts all summer, every week. And you can just lead a very culturally rich, interesting, comfortable life and do it for much less than it would cost you in the U.S. 

 

And that is true in both Europe and in Central and in South America, and so I think you will find that and in Southeast Asia as well. In fact, Thailand has a great, really high quality of life for less. And there are other places that have fallen, as Sean pointed out, falling off the index this year. For example, Malaysia. We really like Malaysia, Penang in particular, wonderful place to live, but their visa situation has become really difficult and so if you're not looking for a full time escape, you're just looking for some place to go a few months a year, and you like the idea of living really luxuriously, one of the best places in the world to do that is Malaysia and Penang in particular, I would argue. But it's going to be harder to stay full time, so that's why it's not on the index. But if you're just looking for a place to go spend part of the year, our list would actually be a bit longer.

 

Jim Santos 43:49

The quality of life issue is an interesting point. I noticed my wife and I really enjoyed a two week stay in Uruguay and the cost of living there is pretty much the same as in the U.S. So there's not a huge bang for the buck thing. But the quality of living there seems so much higher because the people are so relaxed and so comfortable and the government is so steady and their economy is so steady. So maybe that will be, Sean, start working on category number eight for a quality of life index.

 

Sean Keenan 44:18

Yeah, well, we have one that's Governance. Governance and Development. So yeah, Uruguay always scores very highly on that one.

 

Jennifer Stevens 44:27

Yeah, that is a really good point that I think that whole idea of quality of life is something that encourages people. It's one of those pull factors, as I call them, for people who are interested in going abroad. Like this idea that it's pretty appealing to just be able to afford to relax and slow down and choose how you're spending your days. The U.S. is pretty frenetic and our political situation is so divisive. It's stressful here, just getting up in the morning and looking at the news. You can put yourself in a bad first thing if you want and there's sort of less of that in the countries that we're recommending. And that just that kind of separation, that departure into a place where the people are the pace maybe are a little more gentle than here at home, makes a world of difference in people's quality of life.

 

Jim Santos 45:17

Once again, you can find International Living's 2023 global Retirement Index in the January 2023 edition of the magazine and members can access it directly at Intliving.com/Index2023. That's Intliving.com/Index2023. Now, if you're not a member yet, stay tuned for a special discount offer for podcast listeners. I'd like to thank our special guest executive editor Jennifer Stevens and managing editor Sean Keenan for joining us today. Jen. Sean, thanks and have a great 2023.

 

Jennifer Stevens 45:49

Thank you.

 

Jim Santos 46:01

The Bigger, Better World podcast is the production of International living. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. If you have an idea for an episode or a question you'd like us to answer, email us at mailbag@internationalliving.com. And don't forget to put podcast in the subject line of your email. That's mailbag@internationalliving.com. We created Bigger, Better World to help showcase the ideas we explore at International Living each month and grow our community of travel lovers, expats, and experts who believe, as we do, that the world is full of opportunity to create a more interesting, more international life. 

 

You don't have to be rich or famous to do that. You just need to know the secrets. And that's what we bring you at International Living. If you haven't become a member yet, you can do it today with a special discount offer for podcast listeners. You'll receive our monthly magazine, plus a bundle of special extras. You'll find the link in our show notes, or you can go to intliving.com/podcast. That's intliving.com/podcast. Thanks again for tuning in to bigger, Better World.

 

Jim Santos 47.12

I'm Jim Santos for International Living, and I'll see you next week when we'll be checking in with International Living writer and editor of the Global Intelligence Letter, Jeff Opdyke, currently living in Prague in the Czech Republic. Until next time. Remember, there's a bigger, better World waiting for you.