Day 07: Step #3, Finding Your Haven
Thin-Slicing To Find The Overseas Haven That Suits You Best
Dear Student,
You aren’t going to move to Panama or France, not to Belize or Ecuador, nor to Uruguay, Malaysia, Italy, Argentina, or Thailand…
Ah, but a new life in a small beach town on Panama’s Pacific coast… a fresh start with a renovation project in a centuries-old city in the heart of France… or Italy… on horse farm in Belize’s beautiful mountainous interior… or perhaps an Old World-style apartment in the heart of Buenos Aires…
These are starting-over overseas ideas that might be just what you’re in the market for.
I call it thin-slicing.
This stage of our program is about identifying (or confirming) your destination choice. As I’ve pointed out, this isn’t a matter of picking a country; thinking about or planning for a new life in a new country does you little good. The cost of real estate, for example, can vary wildly from one region to another within any given country… as can your lifestyle and, therefore, your overall cost of living, as we considered yesterday.
Just as your life in Manhattan would bear little resemblance to a life in a small town in the U.S. Midwest.
Belize, to take one example, is a tiny country, but the lifestyle (and, importantly, the cost of living) options it offers vary markedly region to region.
Clear turquoise waters lapping gently against soft white sand. Palm trees rustling in the warm breeze. Fishing boats bobbing on the horizon. Birdsong and island tunes all around…
That’s one face of Belize, on Ambergris Caye. This is unadulterated, unpretentious Caribbean… the sea, sand, and sunshine of the Caymans or the Virgin Islands without the price tag.
San Pedro town, a former fishing village, is the center of activity and home to a growing expatriate community of North Americans and Europeans catered to now by dozens of restaurants, shops, art galleries, and community organizations. You could settle in here quickly and easily, as the language (like everywhere in Belize) is English.
The real estate market, for both buying and renting, is developed, meaning you have many options at all price points. You can buy a condo for as little as US$160,000 or invest up to US$2 million or more, and you can rent for as little as US$900 to US$1,500 per month depending on the season.
Life on Ambergris is relaxed and friendly, carefree and sunny. Adopt this island as your home, and you’d enjoy most all services and comforts of home. And you’d certainly never want for like-minded company.
Back on the mainland, life in Belize is very different. Inland, in the rain forest, is the Cayo District, a land of mountains and Mayan ruins, rivers and waterfalls. This is Belize’s frontier, a land where a man (or a woman) comes to stake a claim and make his own way. The wide-open spaces of Cayo appeal to the adventuresome and the independent. Living here, you’d enjoy lots of elbow room and far-reaching vistas.
You’d also enjoy a higher level of support than you might expect. I was surprised and delighted during my most recent visit to Cayo to find many more shops and services than existed when I was in this part of the world last.
On the opening afternoon of a recent Live and Invest in Panama Conference, one of the attendees approached me, nervously, and said, “My wife and I don’t like it here. This isn’t for us. I think we’re going to leave and return to the States tomorrow. This just isn’t what we expected at all.”
“What did you expect?” I asked. “That is, what were you hoping for?”
“We like the beach,” the man replied. “For us, the idea of moving to Panama has been all about living at the beach.
“Plus, we’re on a very fixed income for our retirement. Already I can tell that we wouldn’t be able to afford living here in Panama City. We were hoping to find somewhere affordable on the ocean. I guess our expectations were unrealistic.”
“No,” I explained. “It’s not that your expectations were unrealistic. It’s that Panama City isn’t going to meet them. But that doesn’t mean you won’t find what you’re looking for in Panama.
“In fact, I think I know just where you should look. And here’s what I suggest:
“Stay on and finish out the conference. You’ll make many important and useful contacts and connections here. Then, when the conference is finished, travel out to the Azuero Peninsula, to the town of Las Tablas. I think that there you’ll find exactly what you came for…”
I forgot about this conversation until some weeks later, when I received an email from that reader. Here’s what he wrote:
“Kathleen and crew, after attending your Live and Invest in Panama City seminar, my wife of 44 years and I decided to purchase a home and live now, full time, in Las Tablas, Panama! Just wanted to let you know how things turned out…”
My point isn’t that you should move to Las Tablas. My point is that you shouldn’t judge any country by the first city within it that you happen to visit.
Belize City, for example, is a wholly unappealing place—poor, dirty, and unsafe in parts. I’ve just shown you, though, that, beyond Belize City, this country can be a delight. Don’t land in Belize City, wander around for a few days, and decide (as a friend did recently) that all Belize is a hellhole. You’re missing out.
The landscape, the climate, the cost of living, the level of safety, even the tax rates vary city by city, region by region anywhere. You know this to be true back home. Florida isn’t Texas… Manhattan isn’t Detroit. But, somehow, we can forget this once we cross international borders.
Here’s the important point: You aren’t going to move to any country. You are going to move to a city or a town or a beach or a neighborhood in one of them.
Let’s thin-slice one more example: France.
Paris is the best place on earth to seek out a luxury lifestyle on a budget. Whatever your idea of the high life, you can find it in the City of Light, and the best part about this city is that some of the best it has to offer comes free.
Life’s sweetest pleasures are here for the taking. Picnics in the Luxembourg Gardens, long walks along the Seine, afternoons lost among the cobblestones of the Latin Quarter. These things cost not a sou.
Paris is a never-ending feast of gallery openings and special performances, exhibitions and celebrations, many available for little cost. You can join conversation groups, discussion groups, and book clubs sometimes free. You can enjoy prix fixe meals for US$20 or less, and you can spend hours in a café, seeing and being seen, for the price of but a single café au lait.
The more practical necessities of life don’t come free in Paris, but they are more affordable than you might imagine. France boasts perhaps the world’s best infrastructure (after Switzerland, maybe), and it’s a bargain. Cable TV, Internet, and telephone, as well as the Metro, the bus, and the RER train system, are likely less costly than comparable services wherever you’re living now.
All that said (and true), a new life in Paris may be beyond your budget (you’d be looking at the equivalent of about US$4,000 per month, including rent).
Look beyond Paris, though, and France becomes far more affordable, for this country hides country and coastal towns where the cost of living can, in fact, qualify as budget.
The “other” south of France, the southwest of this country, for example, which we focused on for our budget on Day 5, may not be the cheapest place to live in the world, but I’d say it’s one of the most affordable options on the Continent. More to the point, this part of France delivers an extraordinary and hard-to-match quality of life for every euro invested.
This region is historic, colorful, eclectic, always changing, authentically French, and, at the same time, very open to expats or retirees. Villages here date from prehistoric times, but the feel of this part of France is medieval. The living is simple and traditional while still offering all the services and amenities of the 21st century, including good schooling for children ages 3 to 18.