Top 10 Best Places To Live Overseas In 2017

                                                           

From Kathleen Peddicord and the Editors of Live and Invest Overseas

PANAMA CITY, Panama- Live and Invest Overseas, the world’s leading resource on investment, real estate, retirement, and living overseas today released their ranking of the top 10 best places to live overseas in 2017.

“Our best places to live overseas list is part of a new series of New Year rankings that the editors of Live and Invest Overseas have put together,” said Kathleen Peddicord, author and publisher of Live and Invest Overseas. “For this list, we asked ourselves where are the best places in the world to live better, reinvent one’s life, and have a grand adventure in 2017?”

The list includes locales in traditional places like Portugal, France, and Spain, as well as places one would not expect, including the Dominican Republic, Malaysian Borneo, Nicaragua, and Colombia. The full list and explanation for each place that made the list follows below.

Other lists in the 2017 New Year Overseas series are “The Best Places to Buy Real Estate,” “The Best Places to Go Offshore” (for taxes, banking, asset protection, second passports, etc.), and “The Best Places to Start a Business.” Every July, Live and Invest Overseas publishes its annual Retire Overseas Index.

1)    Carvoeiro, Algarve, Portugal

Portugal is the best-kept secret of Old World Europe. For three years running, we have named its Algarve coast as the world’s best place to retire overseas.

Coastal Carvoeiro, in particular, qualifies as perhaps the most appealing place on earth to call home if you want to live on the water in a real-world (as opposed to a developing-world) setting.

The take-your-breath-away views from Carvoeiro’s rocky coast, the constant sunshine, the near-perfect weather year-round, the food, the wine, the history… it all adds up to top-shelf of living yours for a very bargain price.

Thanks to the current down value of the euro, the enviable coastal Continental lifestyle on offer in Carvoeiro is further reduced… and the cost of a very rentable home or condo is irresistibly discounted.

2)    El Poblado, Colombia

Escobar’s dead and the city he and his goons once terrorized is today at peace.

Located in one corner of Medellín, El Poblado offers a comfortable, tranquil, idyllic way of life for a super affordable cost. At the current exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the Colombian peso, the luxury-level cosmopolitan lifestyle available in El Poblado is an even greater bargain.

Medellín is culture rich and Euro chic; its people well dressed, well mannered, and welcoming. Medellín’s heart, El Poblado, is our #1 pick for city living on a budget.

3)    Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic

Las Terrenas is quintessential Caribbean with a French twist. The big and established community of French expats living in this white-sand beach town means fresh baguette, great restaurants, and kisses on both cheeks in greeting.

Infrastructure is improving, establishing residency is easy, and the cost of living is one of the great bargains of today’s Caribbean… making Las Terrenas our #1 pick for a new life with a Caribbean Sea view.

4)    Santa Familia, Belize

If you want to leave the troubles and the worries of our age behind, little Santa Familia village in Cayo, Belize, is calling your name. Life in Cayo is back to basics, simple, and sweet. You know your neighbors, they know you, and you all look out for each other.

Belize’s Cayo is a region of wide-open spaces, fresh air, warm sun and fertile land, making it our pick for the world’s best place to disconnect and unplug.

5)    Pau, France

France is a country of superlatives. World's best quality of life… best health care… best food… best art and fashion… most beautiful, most romantic city (more on this in a moment)…

To many, la vie française is the good life defined, and the charms and appeals of French Country Life are unrivalled. In this context, we suggest you consider Pau, also known as the “Green City” and the “Garden City,” thanks to its ratio of greenery per square meter per person, one of the highest of any European city.

Pau’s landscape is accessible woodlands, the steep slopes of Jurançon wine country, the history-packed Plaine de Nay and its main town of Nay and the pretty rolling countryside and ancient towns of the Gaves de Béarn.

Pau is also a university town, with close to 12,000 university students living on and off campus, helping to keep it lively.

Brits and other North Europeans have been seeking out this part of France for retirement for years. This is a very friendly bunch of people with a wide range of backgrounds and interests always ready to welcome newcomers.

6)    Chiang Mai, Thailand

Since the 1800s, the Thai city of Chiang Mai has been luring expats from the West with its über-low cost of living, great weather (especially compared with elsewhere in Thailand), rich history and distinct culture.

The heart of Chiang Mai lies within its old city walls where ancient and modern Buddhist temples coexist with public and international schools, residential and commercial neighborhoods.

Modern Chiang Mai has grown beyond the ancient walls and offers mega-malls, huge multi-national grocery and department stores, and all other trappings of life in the 21st century.

The biggest advantage to life in Chiang Mai is its cost in general and of health care in particular. A couple can live here comfortably on as little as US$1,100 per month, and you can see an English-speaking doctor for US$20.

7)    Playa del Carmen, Mexico

Playa del Carmen is a little beach town that sits about an hour south of Cancún on Mexico’s Riviera Maya. Once a sleepy fishing town, the port was inadvertently put on the map by Jacques Cousteau in 1954 when he filmed an underwater documentary of the Great Mayan Reef just offshore.

Divers began seeking out these Caribbean waters for themselves, and in the 1970s a port was built to ferry the tourists from the mainland to Cozumel.

Today Playa is home to more than 10,000 foreigners, including Europeans, Americans, Canadians, Argentinians, Venezuelans and many other nationals of all ages including 20- and 30-somethings, young families and retired couples.

Playa is also a welcoming destination for the LGBT community.

8)    Barcelona, Spain

Barcelona, in the northeast of Spain on the Mediterranean Sea, is a vibrant, colorful, proud city that combines the passion of the Spanish with the efficiency and organization of the Catalans.

This is a city with a strong energy that has not been dampened by Spain’s ongoing economic woes and the economic, cultural, and administrative capital of Catalonia.

Spain's second-biggest city is easily and quickly explored thanks to its compact, well-laid-out design… and the opportunities for diversion, entertainment, and discovery are many. Art and architecture from pre-Roman to Modernista is around every corner. This is a city of galleries, museums, monuments, theaters, restaurants and shopping… with the beach just right there.

9)    Granada, Nicaragua

Nicaragua is a beautiful country with a troubled history that appeals to the romantic, the poet, the eco-traveler, the surfer (the break off Nicaragua’s Pacific coast is world-class) and the bargain hunter. The cost of living, of real estate and of everything else is a steal.

Geographically, Nicaragua is blessed, with two long coastlines and two big lakes, plus volcanoes, highlands, rain forest and rivers. In this regard, it's got everything Costa Rica's got, all less discovered, less developed and less expensive.

Architecturally, too, Nicaragua is notable. Colonial Granada is its architectural jewel. This city, one of the oldest in Latin America, is also busier and livelier today than at any other time during its near five centuries of history, attracting tourists and expats in record numbers.

When you see it, you understand why. The setting for this colonial town is like out of a fairy tale—the lake, the volcano, the mountains. At night, the backdrop is an ink-streaked sky that, just before the sun sets, illuminates the yellow and white cathedrals in ways that would have inspired Matisse to set up his easel.

10)   Kota Kinabalu, Malaysian Borneo

This laid-back and quiet city is one of the most pleasant places to live in Asia and is incredibly welcoming. Its biggest practical advantages are the low cost of living and the high standard (and low cost) of health care. A couple could live well here on US$1,200 a month or less.

The city is small and walkable, less than 3 kilometers from end-to-end. Life revolves around the water and is lived out-of-doors. At home, you can fill your days snorkeling, diving, boating and ferry hopping from the city center to neighboring islands.

This is a little-known, low-key, low-population destination offering a tranquil, serene, close-to-nature lifestyle at a cost that’s a global bargain.

       Bonus from Kathleen: Paris, France

I would argue that no list of world’s most appealing places to spend time is complete if it doesn’t include Paris. This is as true as we turn the corner into 2017 as it has been since people first compiled world’s best lists.

Life in Paris can be as good as life gets anywhere. I figure you know that.

What you may not realize is that the cost of living in Paris can be manageable.

About a month before our move from France to Panama, my husband Lief presented me with a budget showing that our cost of living in Panama City would be more or less on par with what it had been in Paris.

I suggested that Lief, an accountant by training, double-check his figures.

But Lief was right. Our day-to-day costs have averaged out to be the same in the Hub of the Americas as they were in the City of Light.

Paris is a place where even a modest lifestyle can feel rich and where some of the greatest pleasures—strolls along the Seine, picnics in the Luxembourg Gardens—come free.

Paris is also a city where a car is an unnecessary liability. We lived four years in Paris happily auto-free. We walked everywhere. The butcher, the baker, the grocer, the wine shop and our son’s school were all less than 15 minutes from our apartment, as were (are) the Tuileries Gardens, the Louvre, the Latin Quarter, six movie theaters and at least a dozen cafes and restaurants.

When we wanted to venture beyond our quartier we took the Metro. For 1 euro 90 cents you can get from anywhere to anywhere in this city you might want to go.

Other things in Paris can be cheap, too, including necessaries of modern living like cable, telephone and Internet. You can get a phone plan in France that includes unlimited calls to anywhere in Europe, North America, and the Caribbean plus cable TV and wireless internet and cable for 45 euros monthly.

These thoughts are on my mind as we move into 2017 because this summer Lief and I will be repositioning our home base from Panama City back to Paris. 

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you go? For me the answer to that question has always been Paris.

About Live and Invest Overseas

Based in Panama City, Panama, LIOS is the leading resource for people who want to live, retire, and invest overseas. Headed by Kathleen Peddicord and Lief Simon – who collectively have more than 50 years’ experience visiting, living, and investing in foreign countries – LIOS and its free e-letter service the Overseas Opportunity Letter have more than 500,000 regular readers. More info available at www.liveandinvestoverseas.com.  

Top 10 Tips For Moving Abroad

 

My Best Advice For Anyone Considering A Move Overseas

By Kathleen Peddicord

More than 18 years living overseas, first in Ireland, then France, now Panama, have taught me…

1. Patience… the kind of patience you learn doing time…

The other day I stood at the counter of a small grocery shop in Panama City watching as the young man on the other side of the counter tried to tally up my purchases. One item I’d presented was missing a price tag, so the young man walked from behind the counter to the back of the shop to find a matching item that did show a price. Several minutes later he returned.

When he looked down to enter the amount into his adding machine (the shop didn’t have a cash register), he noticed that it was out of paper. He walked from behind the counter again, this time disappearing behind the door to the left. Several minutes later, he returned with a roll of adding machine paper.

As he began to replace the paper in his machine, his phone rang, so he laid the roll of paper on the counter to answer it. Several minutes later, he finished his conversation and picked up the roll of paper again. Several minutes after that, he’d succeeded in getting the paper installed in the machine.

After adding up my few purchases, he reached beneath the counter for a bag to put the groceries in but found he was out of bags, so he came out from behind the counter and disappeared again behind the door to the left. Several minutes later, he returned with a single plastic bag. Four other customers stood in line behind me. I guess he was counting on them not wanting bags.

My items placed in the plastic bag, the young man looked up at me. “That’s US$12.65,” he told me in Spanish.

I handed him a 10-dollar bill and a 5-dollar bill. The young man reached beneath the counter for the cigar box where he keeps his change. No singles. He called out to the young woman stocking shelves, who finished what she was doing then joined the young man behind the counter and counted out change for me from her apron pocket.

This is the kind of scene that plays out all day long every day all across the developing world. You muster the patience to take it in stride. Or you move on from the developing world.

2. To embrace ambiguity…

Will the corner grocer open his shop at 9 a.m. as his sign indicates… or will he open later… or at all?

Will the lady behind the counter in the immigration office accept my prepared dossier or request additional paperwork not indicated in any of my four previous conversations with her?

Will the banker cash my check or question the signature (as happens for me with bankers in Panama City a couple of times every month)?

Will the car in front of mine turn right from the right-hand turn lane we’re both in or will he turn left across two lanes of traffic?

Will the delivery man show up on Thursday as promised? Sometime this week?

Will the waitress return with my order?

I’ve come to see these as philosophical rather than practical musings and have trained myself not to be surprised when the answer is, as it often is, contrary to expectations.

3. Not to mind not understanding what’s going on around me…

Why is that work crew digging another hole in the middle of that street? They dug a hole in that same spot and then covered it over last week. Why dig another one… and why do it now, during morning rush-hour traffic?

Why has the government changed such-and-such national holiday from Friday to Monday (as happened recently in Panama without warning or explanation)?

Why does the landline phone go out every time it rains?

Why is the electricity out… and when will it be restored?

4. Not to be bothered by things that don’t matter…

See above.

5. To savor the “Nutella” moments…

The frustrations and challenges of living in a foreign country, especially in the developing world, are many, but so are the moments of extraordinary discovery and delight. Seeing the look of unadulterated pleasure on my 5-year-old son’s face the first time he tried a Nutella crepe when we were living in Paris was one. As were celebrating my daughter’s 16th birthday at a café on the Left Bank of the Seine with a view of the Louvre… the first time my husband and I dined at a rooftop restaurant in Istanbul overlooking the Bosphorus… the scene of white sheep in rolling green fields outside my bedroom window in Ireland all those years… the view of the long line of ships awaiting their turn for passage through the Panama Canal that I see from my bedroom window now every morning… kayaking with the kids down the Macal River in Belize… watching my children learn to ride horseback in the field behind our home in Ireland… rocking in a big wicker chair on the front porch of the Alhambra Hotel overlooking the main plaza in Granada, Nicaragua, the oldest city in the Americas, as life carries on as it has in this spot for centuries…

6. To let go…

My mother helped me to pack up my house in Baltimore in advance of my move from the States to Ireland years ago. Standing on a stepstool in front of an open kitchen cabinet, she asked, “What do you want to do with all this?”

I glanced

 over and told her to put everything in the cabinet into a box and then to take it home with her.

“But all your teas… your spices!” she replied. “You can’t just give all of this away!”

To make the move from Baltimore to Waterford, I had to clear out a three-bedroom house, a basement, an attic, and a garage. That required a lot of letting go. At the time, it seemed hard to give so much away. Now I smile and shake my head at the thought that a reluctance to part with the paraphernalia of my life to that point could have stood in the way of launching the new life I’ve enjoyed all these years since.

7. To bloom where I’ve planted myself…

Ireland was cold, drizzly, and grey more days than it wasn’t, and Waterford, where we were based for seven years, was (is) a backwater. Panama City, where we’ve been living now for more than seven years, is hot and humid every day of the year. It’s also a boomtown, meaning congestion, chaos, and crazy traffic.

In Ireland, I could have complained that I missed sunshine and the trappings of a real city, as I did, and today, here in Panama City, I could complain about the tumult. The truth is, sometimes I do. Then I remind myself of the big-picture reasons why I am where I am. Ireland was the best place for me and my family when we were there, weather and nightlife notwithstanding, and the same is true now for Panama City.

8. To downsize on the fly…

I began learning about letting go that afternoon with my mom in my Baltimore kitchen. My graduate lesson in the exercise of downsizing came in Paris. We relocated with two children from a 5,000-square-foot house in Waterford to a 1,100-square-foot apartment in the City of Light. I stored my son’s clothes in the china hutch in the dining room and his toys and games under his bed. My husband and I shared a single desk in the living room when we worked at home (as we often did), and the four of us ate dinner each night at an undersized table that was like something out of “Alice In Wonderland.”

And I wouldn’t trade a single day in Paris or a single memory of our years there for any number of additional square feet of living space.

9. To ask for help…

I’m a resourceful, self-reliant, Type-A American woman. I can take care of myself. However, living overseas, I’ve learned that sometimes life is easier and more fun when I don’t. Here in Panama, we’re able to afford a full-time maid. It’s an indulgence I wouldn’t have considered, living in the States, but the help around the house sure is nice.

10. To abandon any idea I ever had about “normal”…

What’s a “normal” way to celebrate a child’s birthday (in Panama, the piñata is key) or to shop for a Christmas tree (in Panama City, we buy ours out of a local wholesaler’s refrigerated meat locker)? More seriously, what’s a normal way to raise children or run a business? My family thought I was crazy to move my 8-year-old daughter from Baltimore to Waterford and to give birth to my second child in Ireland. They still think I’m crazy, I guess, for living and running my business in Panama.

I used to worry that our lifestyle might translate down the road into years of psychotherapy for our two children. Today, though, they both speak three languages and have a global perspective that makes me both proud and optimistic about their future prospects. Whatever life throws at them, they’ll be fine.

Not normal, maybe… but fine.

About Kathleen Peddicord

Founder and Publisher, Live and Invest Overseas

Kathleen Peddicord has been covering the live, retire and invest overseas beat for nearly 30 years. About 15 years ago, she finally took her own advice and relocated from the East Coast of the United States, with her family and her business, to the southeast coast of Ireland. Kathleen lived and ran her publishing business in Waterford for seven years before moving again, this time to Paris.

In 2008, Kathleen decided to take a break, during which she did two things. First, Kathleen began work to launch a new publishing group, Live and Invest Overseas, and a new free e-letter service, the Overseas Opportunity Letter.

In addition, during her recent sabbatical, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon made another important geographic decision. Specifically, they decided to make a third international move with their family and Kathleen’s new business. In the summer of 2008, Kathleen and Lief moved from Paris to Panama City, where they’re currently living, operating the Live and Invest Overseas business, and raising their family.

Kathleen is perhaps the most qualified to cover the “Live and Invest Overseas” beat in the world, having been researching, writing, speaking and presenting on these topics for nearly three decades. Kathleen has traveled to more than 50 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, and renovated properties in 6. She has written innumerable books, reports, and essays on why and how you might want to do the same, and she has appeared often at conferences (including the AARP National Convention) and on television and radio detailing the opportunities for living, retiring, and investing around the world.

In addition to writing books and her speaking engagements, Kathleen writes daily to readers of her Overseas Opportunity Letter. www.KathleenPeddicord.com.