The Short Story

One thing is common to all people planning for retirement – they want to retire in comfort and be able to pay their bills for the remainder of their lives without being a burden to anyone...and they don’t want to have to worry about it after they’ve retired.

If you are not wealthy and are concerned about having enough money, there are two basic approaches you can take if you want your money to last twice as long as it can now. You can either double your money or you can cut your expenses in half. Living in the US, Canada or Europe makes it very difficult to take either course, especially the latter, and be comfortable.

Doubling your money has always been and will always be difficult. Cutting your expenses in half has long been impractical, if not impossible, but no longer is.

Moving to a nation like Panama or another offers you the opportunity to dramatically reduce your expenses, whether by half or less or more (you will decide), while enjoying real benefits not as easily or as inexpensively found in your own society – a warm climate, beautiful surroundings, a nicer house than you live in now for less money, a local labor force that is far less expensive than is true where you live now, a local labor force that is proud of the work they do and sees their jobs as careers to be proud of, not dead-end jobs to be left behind as quickly as possible, and other benefits.

What are the extra costs to you? For the best results, you have to be sensitive to the local culture, learn enough of the local language to be able to converse with your new friends and employees, and be flexible enough to understand and appreciate that it requires sincere effort on your part for the maximum benefits.

You and I are surrounded by tens of millions of people just like us who are concerned with retirement planning and worried that they simply don’t have the money to retire, or who have already retired and now are fearful that their money won’t stretch as far as their life-spans. They aren’t giving any serious attention to moving overseas because no one has ever put the potential benefits to them directly and in simple, straight-forward terms. I run into this all the time in my own life. Regardless of what they end up doing, I have found that folks are universally grateful to have this retirement alternative brought to their attention.

If you know people who may be in this situation, do them a favor. Share this brief essay with them by giving them the web address: http://www.retirementwave.com/shortstory.htm. Give them one more useful alternative to consider. Facing something as important as retirement planning, we can all use a little help from our friends.

For brief updates on Retirement Wave as it develops, sign up at our Updates section. Also, find other essays at Small Talk and read more about Retirement Wave's Services.