"The government won’t say precisely how many American retirees live in Vietnam. Interviews with about a dozen such retirees suggest that some are here on one-year tourist visas; others are here just for a season or two; and still others have qualified for long residence by marrying Vietnamese citizens, as Rockhold did."
It's always odd to read stories like this. There's some kind of implication from the headline, or maybe even that the story was ever written, that there's a significant number of people doing this thing that's highlighted in the story. And then the story invariably will say that the actual number of people doing this thing is not really known, or is pretty low. Seems like you could write this story about so many different groups of people doing a thing. Maybe that's just the point, find a person doing something that's worth writing about and make it a more interesting story? Not really anything wrong with any of it I suppose, it's just usually obvious from the headline that the actual number of Americans retiring to Vietnam is pretty low.
Maybe indication of some kind of new trend, especially after people read this it brings more people over?
These stories are strange, its like a journalistic slant that I have seen alot of recently whereby costs have gotten so high(in the US) people are now living in previously war-torn countries like kings. Some people are always moving to Mexico or Thailand or another lower cost area from the US, its not news as it has always been happening.
I see no hard statistics or numbers mentioned in this article, just a few stories from individuals who have chosen this move to Vietnam. I feel like its a clickbait type story to scratch the "itch" of people struggling with the skyrocketing cost of living in CA/NY etc and also dealing with record high inflation.
Both are overpopulated now. I live in a peripheral suburb outside of Phoenix, AZ, first moving to the state in 2007. My rent has gone up by $500 just in the last 6 months. There's talk among the locals that the water supply won't sustain this growth.
Florida is in much worse shape from what I hear but I can't speak on specifics. I know the cost of living there is insane though. I'd pick Idaho or maybe rural CO if I were to do it over.
I wouldn't say that either is overpopulated. Arizona, in particular, has plenty of water and is sparsely populated. It has more square miles of mountains than Switzerland.
However, it may not have enough water to keep the huge cotton, alfalfa, and other water intensive crops growing. Agriculture is a huge industry in Arizona and it takes a lot of water to grow water intensive crops in the desert. This is done because water is extremely cheap and the sunshine gives you more harvests per year, and the lack of rain doesn't damage cotton. That's an issue of depleting aquifers via over-farming rather than too many people moving into the state and wasting too much water on showering and cooking.
Another issue for the Phoenix metro is sprawl. But again, that's not a question of too many people so much as too many wanting to live on large per-person plots of land all connected to the Phoenix metro. You can be rural and have large individual plots in the Verde Valley or other more rural areas and you can have urban areas with higher density, but trying to make low density urban areas doesn't scale very well.
South Florida is questionable from a water perspective. Northwest & northeast FL have a bit more flexibility, as they're at the end of river systems.
Per local radio news interviewing a university professor of real estate economics this morning, current prices are retirement surge from other states (due to market run) + supply / demand imbalance (due to firms going bust post-2008 and consequently new starts lagging population growth for years).
Fundamentally, Florida has always been linked to CA & NY via retirement, as FL prices are defined by what you could sell real estate out of state for (e.g. after kids move out).
We might catch a break from climate change as the amount of water coming from the Gulf increases, but that comes with its own problems. Especially with the polar vortex creeping further south in the cold months.
It's funny when local jurisdictions and/or states tangle with Army Corp of Engineers and/or railroads, and find out just how much authority Congress granted them. Precisely because their job function requires them to work across states.
The problem for Miami, as I understand it, is that the permeability and depth of the upper aquifer is pretty delicately balanced with sea level.
Higher sea level (even a smidge) results in increased saltwater infiltration into the freshwater aquifers they're drawing from. Which is a problem when you're Miami-sized and growing population.
I think Tampa / Orlando, and certainly Jacksonville and Pensacola, have more favorable geology and surface water.
Between sea level rise and worsening storms I think I'd put off making long term investments in a most coastal areas, but presumably folks retiring won't live long enough to see the worst of what's coming. I'll bet Florida will remain a great place to die for a while still.
I recently learned that an ex-brother-in-law made bank from Bitcoin and retired to Mexico (he is around 50). To be honest I mostly associate Mexico with cartel kidnappings and killings, so I was shocked that he would choose Mexico to retire to, but apparently retiring to Mexico is a meme?
> And then the story invariably will say that the actual number of people doing this thing is not really known, or is pretty low.
I think some people are also using the wrong types of visas and not wanting to make their identities public to avoid trouble. Especially the "tourist visa" people in the article. I knew people (pre-pandemic) who would participate in "visa runs" in Thailand. I tried a visa run once, but suspect that I did it repeatedly it would arise suspicion. There are also longer educational visas in Thailand, and some educational programs advertise how little time commitment is required (since actual learning didn't seem to be the point).
At least in Thailand visa runs are commonplace for a whole host of different folks. Some people I knew got into a little trouble, however by and large it wasn't frequent.
That being said, in Thailand there would be no need to for retirees as they have a retirement visa scheme that allow for renewal in country.
The system is a bit odd in Vietnam due to its nominally communist status. You generally talk to a visa agent who goes to the relevant government department to sort it and you are in theory part of a tour group though it's a bit of a loophole. In practice once you have your visa they let you in without problems - I've know people staying on repeating 3 month tourist visas for years.
I also find these articles odd because of the tension between what I assume are the liberal values of the authors and the nature of the moves. Cheap and luxurious expat living is bankrolled by the relative poverty of the native people. Yeah, having a bunch of servants has it’s charms. When I was a kid in Bangladesh my dad worked for a Planned Parenthood affiliate. We had a cook, a nanny, a maid, and a driver on what was maybe the equivalent of a $65,000 salary today. But that’s possible because people are poor. My dad has this story where he sent our cook’s teenage son with some money to get some cigarettes. And he couldn’t bring himself to buy them because a pack cost as much as what he was paid in a week. In my mind people who want to live that kind of lifestyle are kind of morally defective.
> Cheap and luxurious expat living is bankrolled by the relative poverty of the native people.
How are expats employing locals at local wages (instead of at the equivalent wages in their home countries) being "bankrolled" by poverty? They contribute more money (and more directly) to people in poor countries than the people living in Western countries whose houses are filled with goods made by poor people in countries they probably couldn't locate on a map.
> We had a cook, a nanny, a maid, and a driver on what was maybe the equivalent of a $65,000 salary today. But that’s possible because people are poor.
If your cook, nanny, maid and driver didn't work for your family, what do you realistically think they would have done to earn income?
Are people in Bangladesh poor because the tiny community of Western expats living there hire cooks, nannies, maids and drivers and don't pay them what they would earn in those roles in the US or Europe? Or are people in Bangladesh poor because of the country's troubled history, overpopulation, low urbanization, corrupt and ineffective institutions, etc.?
> In my mind people who want to live that kind of lifestyle are kind of morally defective.
Those are really strong words.
In your mind, are people in the West who buy and use products manufactured on the cheap in poor countries every single day of their lives also morally defective?
Edit:
You mentioned that your dad worked for a Planned Parenthood affiliate. Poor countries often desperately need knowledge, skills and experience that are in short supply locally, in all areas from medicine to infrastructure.
At the same time, it can be very difficult to find skilled foreigners willing to relocate to these countries and contribute their skills for the benefit of these countries. Even with high salaries, a cook, nanny, maid and driver, life in a place like Bangladesh is not going to appeal to the vast majority of Westerners.
So employers often help arrange for expats to have benefits, like household help, to incentivize people to come.
I've seen a lot of resentment towards tech workers in tech-hubs for bringing up the cost of living. They're blamed for bringing up the prices with to their outsized spending power allowing them to push up the prices beyond what locals can afford.
Expats in poorer country exceed this by at least an order of magnitude or two in relative spending power. I wouldn't be surprised if a high density of expats would cause resentment among the locals due to the resulting gentrification.
I've lived in numerous developing countries and while I can certainly think of a number of places where gentrification pushed locals out of certain neighborhoods, I've never seen expats doing this on the scale I witnessed in the US.
It's a complex issue.
First, expats are not a homogeneous bunch. In a lot of developing countries in SE Asia, for instance, the expat communities are not made up of large numbers of truly affluent people. Generally, the expats who live in the expensive buildings/houses and employ local help (maids, cooks, etc.) work for large companies (in higher-level roles), embassies and NGOs. The majority of the "digital nomad" types don't actually live affluent lifestyles in my experience. Sure, they make a lot more than the locals, but they're not spending $3,000/month on an apartment in Bangkok or HCMC. This doesn't mean they don't have an effect on local economies, but there just aren't enough expats in fast-growing, fast-developing cities to cause negative gentrification effects like you see in places like the SF Bay Area.
Second, in some places, like Bali, the economies are totally built around the presence of foreigners (expats, "semi-permanent" foreign residents and foreign tourists). Take them away and the locals suffer massively. Bali has been absolutely bleeding because of COVID. I guarantee you if you asked the average Balinese person if they want "normal" to return (which means a heavy foreigner population), they would tell you "yes x10000000000000".
Finally, a lot of developing countries, while still poor, have fast-growing economies and there is a lot of development taking place that is driven by the growing wealth and urbanization locally. I worked in Phnom Penh (Cambodia) for a time and while you could see the effect expats had in a neighborhood like BBK1, other neighborhoods were clearly changing more as a result of the growing wealth of locals and increased urbanization (people coming from the countryside to find opportunity in the city).
My in-laws lived in Central America back in the 50s, as my father in law worked there for a large international bank. They did have a live-in maid and a cook. My mother in law said at first it made her feel uncomfortable, but was told in no uncertain terms that Americans who could afford help but didn't hire help were seen as selfish. The locals needed the work.
No doubt there are people who hire local help and are terrible about it, but I think so long as the employed people are treated humanely, with empathy, and paid as good or better than local rates, there isn't a problem.
> My mother in law said at first it made her feel uncomfortable, but was told in no uncertain terms that Americans who could afford help but didn't hire help were seen as selfish.
Yes, because Americans aren’t even seen as the same kind of human in these countries. These societies often have rigid class structures even among the locals—my family is Bangladeshi, but affluent and our servants definitely didn’t think they were our equals—much less between locals and European/American foreigners.
The locals are reacting rationally to the situation. But what kind of person would want to leave an egalitarian society and live like that, just so they can be at the top of the pecking order?
So, we shouldn't do business with folks of lower means, is that right? And to avoid doing so we should restrict ourselves to particular heterogeneous countries, with geographic boundaries that aren't particularly effective at that goal. Spending money in places it is needed rather than already concentrated is morally defective because the spender might also benefit from the transaction?
(Believe I read something similar once about folks trying to help the homeless. If the helper benefited one iota as well, the helper was branded a "monster.")
I don't believe this is a healthy or valid take. We should all be helping each other, and a win/win situation is the best outcome imho. Because it incentivizes more.
> what kind of person would want to leave an egalitarian society and live like that, just so they can be at the top of the pecking order?
To play devil's advocate, say it's not about having servants or "living like a king", but about having the freedom to do things that don't make money.
How many bad things are done because someone thought it was "necessary" to pay rent, or to afford college for their kid?
If, instead of optimizing ad engagement to pay a mortgage in Palo Alto, I buy a modest house, outright, in a little Columbian town nobody's heard of, and open an ice cream shop out of the first floor, is that so bad? There's an electrician on YouTube who did that.
Or if I spend my days building strange concrete domes and planting banana trees? There's another guy who does that.
Or running a backpacker hostel that employs (and pays fairly) a local cook and a maid? Probably a lot of us have stayed at such a place.
I had friends who backpacked through South America after college. They ran into an American who, one day in the States, said "fuck it", got in his pickup truck, and started driving south. Eventually he fell in with an Amazon tribe; he doesn't speak the language too well, but he has the truck and he knows how to drive, and that's how he contributes. He's much happier now. Who knows what he'd had to do to pay rent in America.
What if all I want to do is walk around, and drink tea, and chat with people? What if I'm somehow tired and bored at the same time?
What if I get a donkey and work as a traveling children's library?
Do I have to keep my position at the top of World Empire, or can I just take my good fortune and use it to drop out and chill?
I'm no savior, but maybe I can get a well drilled or something. Maybe I need the water too. Or maybe I can do the bushes in the local park, if everybody else is too busy with some other thing that earns dinero.
Hell, there's a white girl on YouTube who met a Maasai dude in Africa, married him, and now lives there doing... I don't know what, but it can't earn much. Granted I think she's going to be a little more independent than is, uh, traditional in that culture. But he's like, "ok, whatever, I have a good wife". Doesn't demand much, is happy.
Surely if you're born inside the harem, with all its advantages, there's got to be a way out.
Hell, if I'm an American, maybe me leaving creates a slot at a company that'll be filled by an H1B, and the circle of life continues. "Have at it, brother; I'm done."
Yeah the harm with employing people is not in hiring them and benefitting from their work. Rather, it is in exploiting them--cheating them on wages in one of many ways, ordering them to do harm, having dangerous working conditions, degrading them, those are only a few examples. And exploitation in these forms exists according to the local context of the foreign land, and simultaneously is strongly informed by American views. Both.
I have seen many instances when expats try to treat foreign workers much better than they need to, but it does not work at all for either party. The intention is still worth indulging, however, in ways that aren't mutually harmful. It's just difficult sometimes.
But it can be done. And it's beautiful when it is done.
There may be harm in diverting human resources from uses that are more productive in the long term. The best arguments I've heard for minimum wage run in a similar vein, and perhaps there's some parallels to the "resource curse".
Back in the day aristocrats paid people to keep their coats on the shelf. It wasn't like they couldn't do it themselves. It was expected from aristocrats to support such jobs so that the lower classes can have some employment.
It's unclear to me why this is bad. The expat is not the cause of those people's poverty. The relationship between paid servants and employee should be mutually beneficial, as each gets what they desire, money on one hand, and convenience or more free time on the other.
It's not like wealthy people in developed countries don't have servants who are comparatively poor. Multiples of those servants salaries are spent on frivolous amusements. What's the better alternative? That they not spend money on staff and instead hoard it, depriving others of job opportunities? Hand out bags of money for no reason?
I understand your economic arguments. But I still think that anyone who would want to leave their relatively egalitarian western society to live among such inequality is morally defective.
And the social stratification in third world countries is completely different than what you have in America. For awhile we used a cleaning service run by someone who lives in our subdivision. In these third world countries, the lives of affluent expats and the natives who serve them pretty much don’t intersect at all except through the service relationship.
> But I still think that anyone who would want to leave their relatively egalitarian western society to live among such inequality is morally defective.
Open up your closets, cabinets, etc. How many of the goods you own are made in the West? How many are made in places like China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, etc.?
How can you say that Western society is "relatively egalitarian" when the majority of the goods Westerners consume are produced in poor or developing countries where inequality is the rule not the exception?
For heaven's sake, for decades, the West has literally shipped its trash to these countries for disposal or "recycling".
The West is only "relatively egalitarian" so long as you pretend that the West is a closed, self-contained society. In reality, the West has outsourced poverty, ultra-abusive labor practices, corruption, pollution and environmental destruction to countries most of their citizens can't locate on a map. Out of sight, out of mind.
If a Westerner is "morally defective" for choosing to live in poor, polluted, corrupt countries, what should one make of the Westerners who wouldn't want to even visit them but have no problem filling their lives with products made in them?
> In these third world countries, the lives of affluent expats and the natives who serve them pretty much don’t intersect at all except through the service relationship.
Ever lived in, say, the SF Bay Area? The dynamic between the affluent and the people who serve them isn't as different in the West as you make it out to be. The hotshot FANG engineer making $400,000/year and living in a $2.5 million house in Cupertino likely isn't "intersecting" with the cook at a Chipotle who shares an apartment with 3 other people in the worst neighborhood in the East Bay and commutes with multiple people to Mountain View every day.
I would never live in the Bay Area. I lived in DC, and the economic inequality was soul sucking. It was especially depressing only ever meeting non-white/Asian people in service roles. I got my family the heck out of there.
I lived in a developing country (China) for 9 years and could never bother with a maid if even a cleaning service. The logistics were just too huge for me, as a non native, and it didn’t seem to be worth it. I had friends who had babysitters, but more the part time kind and labor costs rose rapidly in the last decade. But the biggest thing is: the expats were often seen as poorer than many of the natives. The rich Chinese in Beijing had drivers, maids, etc… it wasn’t so common for the foreigners. I’ve felt the same way in Manila, Bangkok, the only place that seem to be where foreigners come out as the rich people are tourist towns (like Phuket, Bali, Boracay) designed completely around extracting their money. But admittedly, none of those places are truly third world.
I've lived in London and Vietnam. I don't think living in the relative poverty of Vietnam is a moral problem. The people will still be relatively poor if you don't go there and keep your eyes shut to the issues. Going there actually reduces local poverty as you can spend money there and benefit them rather than spending it London and benefiting millionaire property owners mostly.
I say relative poverty because most people there aren't that badly off and their economy is booming, growing far faster than the UK one.
> In these third world countries, the lives of affluent expats and the natives who serve them pretty much don’t intersect at all except through the service relationship.
How is this any different from in the US (or anywhere else, really)? Most well-off (or even just "comfortable") people don't mix much with low-income folks, outside of service relationships.
That’s untrue for huge swaths of America. In the Iowa town where my wife grew up, the doctor’s kid went to the same school as the poorest kids in town, because there was only one school for everyone. Even here in Annapolis, there’s e.g. not really any place to eat in town that nearly everyone couldn’t afford to go at least on a special occasion.
> In the Iowa town where my wife grew up, the doctor’s kid went to the same school as the poorest kids in town, because there was only one school for everyone.
But the same would be true if you decide to live in the countryside or smaller city in a developing country. In major cities everywhere in the world, including the West, affluents can and often do live in bubbles. This has nothing to do with expats.
From my experience, it's still true in rural areas. I lived in the middle of nowhere, and the doctors' kids didn't go to the same school as the poorest kids in town. Typically, one spouse didn't work and would handle ferrying the kids significant distances to get to a better school.
Country clubs were also popular among the wealthy, and they had restaurants most people couldn't access. Golfing was a sign of wealth, since the only nearby golf course was at the country club.
Hobbies also divided people. One family friend had his own airstrip and planes. Riding horses was another popular and expensive hobby, and many chose to pay those less well-off to take care of their horses in the stables.
Homes were a huge division. Labor was cheap, so it wasn't uncommon for the doctors to live in homes so large that they basically couldn't be sold when they wanted to move.
Time was also a big differentiator. Wealthy families spent a lot more time away from home, driving an hour or so to get to the closest major city to shop at larger grocery stores with more exotic ingredients, or going to ethnic restaurants, or going to shows/concerts/etc. That was enabled by only having to have a single working spouse and/or hiring a maid. Almost all the well-off families had maids.
The fissure still exists, it just comes out in different ways since the local market can't sustain a single $50/plate restaurant.
So it's better to NOT employ poor people than to employ them?
Your logic is .. curious at best.
I think that there's a better argument for paying them more than they could expect normally.
> My dad has this story where he sent our cook’s teenage son with some money to get some cigarettes. And he couldn’t bring himself to buy them because a pack cost as much as what he was paid in a week.
This is odd... Did none of the working class smoke (surprising), or were there vast differentials in price between different kinds of cigarettes?
When I spent a couple months in northern India about 20 years ago a lot of people smoked what seemed like self-rolled cigarettes (or at least they looked different that the kind of cigarettes that you get in the west). Western cigarette brands were also available.
Highly agree. Why would you want to just keep up the cycle of poverty? Especially the fact that this guy is 66 and had kids with a Vietnamese woman who is most definitely 40 years younger than him. I see it all too often where white men take advantage of south east Asian women and live comfortably by keeping others in poverty.
You are assuming that these hypothetical "south east Asian women" are being exploited due to their contrast with "white men" i.e.:
- They are not white
- They are women
And they are being exploited solely because of these factors. This is both racist and sexist, which is just entirely a bad starting point for a view of the world. Everyone that you speak of has agency and makes choices. Perhaps you feel one side has been coerced, but frankly I do not see it from what you've pointed out here. All I see is people using the agency they have to make life choices that they think are best. That's a good thing.
Retiring to a cheaper country isn't a new trend, it's just more difficult than retiring to Florida for Americans or Southern Europe for Europeans so most people wouldn't go to the effort.
Yeah its actually hardest for foreigners to retire in Florida since the US is one of the few countries that doesn't offer retiree visas. Canadians have it relatively easy, usually splitting time between the two countries since they can spend 180 days at a time in the US on a B-2 tourist waiver.
Also health insurance issues. Most “snowbird” insurance is only cost-effective because they expect to G(you)TFO back to your government insurance if anything happens and discontinue your policy if anything happens. And often any medical condition needs to be stable to qualify in the first place.
I’m aware of a lot of Canadians that look further south to get away every winter to avoid a lot of health and tax related issues.
I’m thinking about retiring to Guam for that reason: Medicare is still valid there, not as cheap as SEA, but cheaper than most of the USA. Who knows, it’s a long way for me.
US did this to themselves, FATCA et al pushed very aggressively by US government through regional/EU governments. Same goes for ie Switzerland, land for US retirees on very opposite wealth spectrum compared to this article. Now there is like 1 bank in the land of banks that accepts US citizens.
And first part of the OP's statement is true - its easy to retire into southern Europe from wealthier parts of Europe. Quality of life, safety, healthcare etc is usually more than fine.
FATCA is a terrible law. It's like they're machine-gunning people who try to get over the Berlin Wall.
So, practical question for Americans living in Europe: Are you able to just forgo local banks and use an internationally-minded US bank for everything? One without international fees? Can you just get your paychecks deposited there, say? Does this make anything impossible? Say, getting a mortgage?
I have a German bank and am a US citizen. No problems here. I've seen this reposted online on several occasions but living here and knowing other Americans here I've not actually heard any stories of people being denied a bank account. No idea if it would work but I suppose you could use something like Wise to bank here - it gives you an IBAN like a normal bank so it should work.
See my comment below but again - this is reposted online everywhere but I've yet to encounter this even one time in my 10 years here that US citizens get denied an account or get complaints from their bank about FACTA.
I just Google'd "europe retirement visa". Many, many hits. Most Southern European nations have reasonable options. The GP post is valid to me. About healthcare: I have no idea how that works, but surely it will be cheaper than the United States.
In Italy you just get free (=public) healthcare. When we visited a few years ago with our then-baby son he developed a fever and we took him to a pediatric hospital & were treated without anyone asking to see any health insurance or talking about cost. We just got in, got treatment and got out at the end.
> Maybe indication of some kind of new trend, especially after people read this it brings more people over?
There's reporting on a trend and there's trying to create the trend.
It's often hard to tell which it is, especially when you have PR consultants who work with corporate press outlets to spin, imply, shape, and create a narrative that is plausible and has a few supporting data points.
It's the PR equivalent of "fake it until you make it"
> “ doing this thing that's highlighted in the story. And then the story invariably will say that the actual number of people doing this thing is not really known, or is pretty low. Seems like you could write this story about so many different groups of people doing a thing.”
Think of it from the perspective of the community of people who believe the ideology
How do you survive in these foreign lands as an expatriate? Through a community of like minded people, with networking and mutual support.
Special communities love to share their stories, or you may say they’re not just spectators but participants in their community.
Once you get your head around that, then consider all the people who don’t share their stories, and instead live in the _default_ world.
>Seems like you could write this story about so many different groups of people doing a thing.
Yes, there's a lot of questions about this type of article. Why about Vietnam when Americans go to many other countries or even US states for cheaper retirement? Why put "healthcare" before "decent standard of living" in the title? Why make it sound like a lot more people are doing it when the author really has no idea how many people are specifically going to Vietnam for healthcare and decent standard of living? Why is it in the "World & Nation" section rather than Travel? Is the author trying to plant a seed of some sort or make a statement, or is it just boring filler to fill pages in a slow news day?
I spent a lot of time thinking about this while I was traveling and would come across large numbers of people who are in really niche communities and the math didn't make sense to me. The obvious answer in reteospect is that the world is huge and a tiny percentage of people doing anything equals a large number of people. If 1 in 10,000 Americans are doing this that's still a huge group.
I cannot read the article because there is a paywall, but does the author imply that it is a new trend? It can be worthy of coverage even if it isn't trendy, provided the author does not cast it as such.
This seems like an idealized version of these stories.
Healthcare is cheaper. Part of the story is that you get what you pay for and people really don't want to be in these hospitals. Another part of the story is that a lot of retirees are scraping by and don't even have the money for cheaper healthcare. I live in a similar country and I can show you loads of community posts where foreigners are asking for donations to help out a friend who has a major illness and can't afford the care. Also, in some of these cases, you're screwed if you can't pony up this cash up front.
My buddy explained that the best reason many come here is the "soft touch." They are going to die. They don't want the health care system keeping them alive. They want a place where they can get friendly helpers for affordable prices and die relatively happy in a place with nice weather.
Affordable housing might just mean you live in a sh*thole. It's more accepted here. Nobody is going to look at you weird if you live in the sort of place you can't live in back home because of restrictions. If you want something from back home, then it's probably going to cost you more rather than less.
All commodities cost the same on some market and then get adjusted based on government fiddling. Land prices may or may not be crazy, depending on demand. Labor is the big discount. People probably work for peanuts depending on what you want. That labor probably also works at a way slower pace and requires more people.
It's a mixed bag. And no story can be complete without talking about foreigners going for the ladies because even a broke foreigner is probably doing pretty good compared to someone providing cheap labor.
Can't say if you are serious or not - healthcare costs compared to US are insanely low. Even if you go to private clinics. If you actually live there, you ask around to not get fleeced by some 'posh' places that cost too much for what they provide.
But yes if given person would be (almost) homeless in US, they won't be doing great in such a place, in fast developing big city. You can move to more rural place and not the center of biggest city, and cut expenses by at least 50%.
Plus having part time servants if practically unaffordable for many of these retirees back home.
> But yes if given person would be (almost) homeless in US, they won't be doing great in such a place, in fast developing big city. You can move to more rural place and not the center of biggest city, and cut expenses by at least 50%.
This is what a lot of people do. And the quality of health care in this area is taking a huge plunge. You can still travel to the city for things that you can schedule, but what about emergencies? I recently had a friend pass away, when an ambulance could have saved him. You may not have the full suite of services when you get outside of the top X major cities.
> But yes if given person would be (almost) homeless in US, they won't be doing great in such a place, in fast developing big city.
An article talking about retirement destinations is going to be talking about a lot of these people. Even an insanely low medical bill can be a problem for some of these people. That bill could still be significant, but it's also a massive difference from what it would be in the US. Someone who is living from one pension check to the next would have problems.
Vibe of the story is middle class retirees moving to Vietnam to have an upper middle class retirement; nobody on the median income line in the US can afford to have in-home staff to help them, or afford care outside of what Medicare offers.
I can compare with what I have seen in Colombia and living expenses are very cheap in Medellin for example.
Lunch (and a very good one with drink): $4USD
Hairdresser: $5 USD
Rent: $450 USD a month for a little "studio" in a good location
Airport taxi: $20 USD (one hour ride).
My wife was in a hospital in Danang and they were telling us if she doesn’t improve they’ll have to airlift her to Bangkok since they didn’t have the capability for further care in the country. That was almost 10 years ago so hopefully things have improved some but it’s still a pretty poor country. Any retirees used to even small city hospitals will be in for a rude awakening.
They take the most productive in via immigration and push the old and least productive out by minimizing social services. It's literally stack ranking, now applied to an entire population lol. Good times.
Some kinds of bacteria consume sugar in a way that has negative externalities - they emit acid and increase the environmental pH. When these bacteria have a high population density, the increased consumption leads to a rapid rise in the environmental pH, followed by mass extinction. This is known as self-inflicted extinction ecological suicide.
Well, in some country, you can move to the south, like in France, we have southern France. Eh !
Joke aside. French retirees don't need to leave France to have a good climat, and yet some of them go to Portugal because of tax advantages, others go to Tunisia Tunisia because they can take advantage of the very low wages...
Under most EU country tax laws your "usual residence" which determines in theory where you should pay your taxes is where you reside "most of the year" that translates to 183 days.
What not-so-few people try doing is to establish "on paper" residence in a lower tax country while staying most of the time in the (usually) state where they were born, have family, relations and often also economical interests.
While (again usually) most retired people actually move to the other country, often because - besides the tax lowering - it offers better climate, lower costs, etc., a number of people still working try that way to simply save on taxes, particularly if having a large income and thus being on a higher tax bracket.
Once a month or so there is a newspaper article here in Italy about <put here the name of a reknown athlete/singer/musician/actor/artist/whatever> having been fined for high sums for having established residence in (say) Montecarlo or in the UK (before Brexit) but actually being in Italy all the time or nearly so.
“If you have retired to another EU country and spend more than 6 months a year there, that country may consider you a tax-resident. If so, you may have to pay tax to that country on your total worldwide income - including pensions you receive from other EU countries.
Exception: public sector pensions are usually taxed only in the country of the administration that employed you.”
But yeah, the above website is called Your Europe, and it is extremely useful for such information.
One one hand it’s legitimately a lot better when your money goes a heck of a lot further. On the other hand if this happened en masse it would ruin a lot of the lives of people who live and work there by making housing costs go up.
At least they actually build housing to put people in SEA, unlike in the US where it’s considered detrimental to not limit the supply.
... is not true. You're thinking of land. There are heavy restrictions, but condo ownership -- for example -- is usually straight-forward. Also, it's possible to get a 30-year lease on land, which for a retiree is probably going to be sufficient.
And as far as I know will not be true at all soon. The new digital nomad visa being introduced (along with a few others) appears it's also going to allow ownership of up to 1 rai of land for residential purposes.
I can't speak for your situation, but I spent 3 months in Thailand and folks were hurting badly from everything related to the pandemic. Tourism is way down, and lockdowns have hurt there like everywhere else. I'd never rule out Thai government incompetency, but they're in between a rock and a hard place at the moment and looking for ways out.
I was reading about property ownership in Vietnam, and it sounds complicated. I believe the state is the owner of much land and real estate, and that "owners" as we'd think of them in the west have secured long-term leases on the property. And I'm uncertain about the availability of those leases to foreigners (meaning I literally do not know either way, I'm not trying to insinuate anything).
I don't think this analogy conveys anything particularly useful. The reasons most restaurants don't charge Michelin star prices are:
* Ingredient costs go up rapidly too.
* Because of that, the profit margins are narrow in the restaurant business at all restaurant price levels. There are rich restauranteurs here and there but owning a high end restaurant is still a very risky business venture and many are barely scraping by.
* You become talent bound. Finding chefs who can prepare food at that level is hard. Designing a good menu is very hard. Food is like any other creative art, you can't just arbitrarily decide to make amazing food—many try and fail.
* There is limited demand. Most people can't afford to eat high end food often and even those who can often don't want to go to the same restaurant over and over.
I don't see how any of this maps to the topic being discussed.
If we're talking about construction work in South-East Asia, the same basic principles apply. Limited demand because there really aren't that many foreigners relative to locals (and some of the foreigners don't have more money than the local middle class anyway), and satisfying the foreigners' more exacting standards, weird ideas about construction and insistence on exotic materials needs more skill than most local construction workers possess, and competent English. That means most people in construction are only going to get to work for a wealthy Westerner through a middleman, and that middleman is going to pay them the standard local rates.
Local demand is much larger than foreigner demand, catering just to foreigners leaves a lot of profit uncollected. If foreigner demand is unlimited, then sure, all the capital will simply chase their money, but it’s quite impossible where foreigners make up a small minority of the population.
Spanish estate agents selling property in Valencia for foreigners drive very nice BMWs I can tell you.
Capitalism, unlike what Marx claims,does not exploit. It co-opts. The locals always get their share. Some more than others perhaps but what can you do?
The free market is not in play when doing cross border real estate deals, because if countries allowed foreigners to buy up all their land they wouldn't really have much of a country anymore eventually.
Housing costs tend to go up with economic development.
I had a discussion about this with a Portuguese guy once: you have the lazy communist bastard who wants everything to stay the same, and you have the smart entrepreneur who makes lots of € selling overpriced coffee to the pale hordes from the North.
It's a Red Queen's race, though. Because the housing costs go up, the standard of living remains the same.
The end result is a less moral society, because people have to change to stranger and stranger business just to keep their place in the hierarchy.
Instead of having a normal ('communist') job, you have to get involved in dirty tourism stuff. The end result of this is as in New York City or San Fransisco, where anyone with a 'normal' job has obviously had rent go up way more than income. Granted, they too could go into tech or finance, but the benefits to society of this are most unclear.
I loved visiting Vietnam, I wonder how many of the people commenting on these threads got close with locals though. I did on two separate trips and let me tell you the country is no utopia. Pollution and lack of freedoms are a big deal there. There is propaganda all over the country. There is an underbelly (potentially foreigner driven, idk) of sex work, drugs etc.
> Pollution and lack of freedoms are a big deal there. There is propaganda all over the country. There is an underbelly (potentially foreigner driven, idk) of sex work, drugs etc.
So it is pretty much like the US but with healthcare.
is this a joke? What's created public support for invasion countries all over the world in the past decades, if not propaganda from the military industrial complex?
Have you read any piece of international news recently that's not about how bad Russia or China is?
unanimous support or not, we are talking about whether propaganda exists. Leading up to the Iraq war, pro war was the only narrative reported by mainstream media
This might sound like a quip but is it even wrong? Every wonk acknowledges that third party votes are likely to be wasted. And people get mad at you if you “protest vote”. How is that not an effective duopoly?
Until they're not. There's a pretty reasonable assumption of nonviolent transfer of power to the third/fourth party should R/D lose. I cannot safely say the same about VN or CN
Duopoly and dictatorships are different. The US government is always controlled by one of two political parties but that doesn't make it a dictatorship.
If every option you have is oppression, what is the point of calling it not a dictatorship? Life is shit regardless, you may as well live where it is cheap.
I guess this has less to do with the number of parties, more to do with separation of powers, horizontally via branches of the government and vertically through local autonomy, and perhaps free press
cronyism is still slightly better than bloodline, and not worse than random selection, I mean democracy. Politicians don't spend all of their office time running instead of doing work.
No, I was using the US & Canada as a comparison. Much much worse pollution ( I left Saigon with sores on my throat from the air pollution), much much worse propagand as in performative cultural demonstrations in the square daily, tore down all the old monuments and erected new ones of their "Savior" Ho Chi Minh (and others). Fake "art" that demonstrates cultural values they want to force on people.
> There is an underbelly (potentially foreigner driven, idk) of sex work, drugs etc.
I can remember one woman being profiled in these "Americans are retiring abroad" stories. Usually it is a man and they are often married to a much younger local woman. They did not go there with a spouse.
I noticed this in China too. Older male expats with local wives or sex partners. Some of them were on their second or third local wife. There's a whole culture that develops around it of young women who make it a goal to try find a western husband, either for the money, or for the convenient foreign citizenship. Unfortunately this creates some resentment of expats amongst the local men, and gives expats in general a bit of a poor reputation.
Maybe I'm jus non-traditional but I don't understand the poor reputation. Consensual relationship marriage, who cares why the parties consented so long as it wasn't done under force?
It's hilarious going to a certain 3rd world country with my wife (where she was born). My wife is dual citizen (gained citizenship and good career before I met her) and makes more than I do. In this country impoverished women often marry rich westerners. When we go people assume I'm her sugar-daddy/visa-husband. The odd thing to me is I don't see our relationship as any more or less valid, who the fuck cares that we married for a different reason than someone else? Also in many nations marriage is as much about connections as it is anything else.
It's a valid assumption because it's rare for a woman to make more than the man, and it's especially common for women in those countries to seek foreign sugar daddies, I don't understand why you think it's mysterious. It would be mysterious if nobody assumed that.
>The odd thing to me is I don't see our relationship as any more or less valid, who the fuck cares that we married for a different reason than someone else?
It's only odd to you because you're not affected by it. Men in local populations have a MUCH HARDER time finding wives that are local. When a foreigner jumps in and snatches up one while barely speaking the language it's a little "wtf."
Let's put things into reality. The fact of the matter is women marry up. They are attracted to men with higher status. Globally, white men occupy this status. Not officially mind you, no white man or person of any race would say this, but subconsciously that's the hierarchy. That's why white men, if they date women of other races often have a much easier time. Women everywhere tend to just put white men on that pedestal. In terms of status, a white man can get better results if they date another woman of a different class and race then they would if they dated some women of the same race and status. That's reality. The statistics on dating sites verify this racial phenomenon.
So of course if the tables were turned and rich asian and black men came stateside and started taking away white women the resentment would exist in the other direction. And such resentment does sort of exist (not in the dating scene) in terms of employment and jobs.
It's normal there's nothing wrong or right about the situation, but it is what it is.
> It's only odd to you because you're not affected by it. Men in local populations have a MUCH HARDER time finding wives that are local. When a foreigner jumps in and snatches up one while barely speaking the language it's a little "wtf."
Why not simply improve their country? That would solve their problem.
Have you seen the improvements china has made? In terms of wealth and technology the country is projected to surpass US GDP in the near future.
I would say the subconscious sentiment is reversing only fairly recently. Groups like BTS are changing the game. Among the youngest generations Asians are seen very differently.
However the overall sentiment will remain for most our lifetimes.
>In terms of status, a white man can get better results if they date another woman of a different class and race then they would if they dated some women of the same race and status.
Asians are indisputably higher earners in US than white, on average. If anything it would make more sense that people view it that someone from an Asian country such as my wife married down and not up, if we're viewing through the race lenses you are viewing things through.
Shockingly, I found the same study, and you are correct.
Factoid: the second richest kind of heterosexual household in the US, on average, is Asian woman, white man. Interestingly, Asian-Asian and White-White lag significantly behind both.
Almost paradoxically, from a purely financial outcome perspective a white man is expected to be better off marrying an asian woman, while an asian man is expected to be better off marrying a white woman.
I didn't realize there was a pair like that where both male and female are statistically better off financially marrying the complement, but it seems white/asian pair is the winning combination for maximum expected income?
>Highly doubt these averages indicate causation. More likely these pairs formed because the women are choosing men with certain financial attributes. Either way correlation doesn't indicate causation, and I believe you are mistakenly assuming such a connection.
I think you are mistaken about what 'expected' means.
Expected value doesn't imply causation [0]. Sorry for not being more clear here, I was using the word as it's used in probability theory. Since there is no weighting here, expected basically means average, not some causative assertion.
>white women will only choose an Asian who's so financially well off that race no longer matters
This is just straight up racist. You can say what white woman will do on average or what white woman is expected to do, but you can't possibly know white women will 'only' choose an Asian when they're financially well off.
>Being married implies some marrying happen. You're just playing semantic games.
I'm not playing fucking semantic games. I'm telling you your sentence is straight up wrong. I already get what you mean. We can end it here. But your usage of the term marriage HEAVILY implies causation and that's what I thought your meaning was when I read your language.
Obviously you meant different. BUT my technical guideline will help you prevent future misunderstandings. If your logic and technical language is bulletproof then your entire argument will be as well.
>Sure, you can backtrack and it becomes a population observation rather than a racist rant about what white women will ONLY choose.
What's wrong with backtracking? I don't understand. You use imprecise language and you backtrack and I can't? All the fuck we're doing here is trying to communicate and clarify communication. When I attempt to clarify you accuse me of backtracking and try to paint me as a racist?
It is 100% true that as a generality white women are not interested in asian men due to status. Even Asian women in the US aren't as interested in Asian men as a result of the same perception. This is a VERY real phenomenon. It is not racist to describe reality.
Do you know who I am? I'm asian. I grew up facing some of the most racist white people in existence. Do not call me a racist, not after what the white race did to my people and others. Let me be absolutely clear. I am not racist. Neither are you, but if you choose to call me a racist EVEN though I clearly am not then you are no worse then them.
"Are you white? Why are you backtracking on all the people your race enslaved and killed?" It would be wrong if I used the previous sentence on you. I'm not. Just throwing it in here as an example to show you how ludicrous your backtracking bs is.
Please don't post flamewar comments to HN, no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
Flamewar comments and personal attacks will get you banned here. We've had to warn you about this more than once already. I'm not going to ban you right now, because you've also posted good comments, but if you don't fix this then we'll end up having to, so please fix this.
In China there is already a gender imbalance in the favor of men thanks to the one child policy, which means straight young men can struggle to find a romantic partner. When older, richer foreigners come along and snap up local women - who are already in short supply - it definitely breeds resentment. Tangled up with that is the existing problem of human trafficking, where brides are shipped in from Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar etc. It's easy for an increasingly nationalistic culture to blame foreigners for exacerbating these issues.
I can see how that is the case in China. My wife is from a country where there is no shortage of women. Probably 90% of the people speak passable English, so there is no language barrier. I don't see a lot of hostile resentment to be honest.
The presumption is more of a practical and amusing one. Many of the villages are funded in part by remittance from US and this country was saved by US from literal mass rape by Japanese in WWII and unlike other countries we never seriously fucked them afterwards so the people overall are very cheery in dealing with Americans in my experience.
The Philipines is has a long and notorious history of mail-order brides[1]. Parent's incredulity on peoples attitudes rings a little hollow when that's explicitly spelled out.
1. The term predates the world-wide web to a time when women in developing counties would be in a literal catalog, and correspondence was done via mail.
Another word for the process of getting a mail-order "bride" in the context of the current day is "internet dating", which everyone does. The other term is still used to evoke some historically charged negative emotions due to the implication that perhaps people are bought or relationships are started for the wrong reasons, but the modern dating scene has the exact same problems. What is left then is racism (it's "bad" because the parties are from different countries and perhaps even have different skin colour), and deserves to just go straight out the window.
You're skipping over the power dynamics- the brides are often very poor and dependent on spouse for financial support, the lack of support network (bride leaves family & friends thousands of miles away),as well as the precarious visa situation (real or perceived). Other than that, it's just like internet dating, like you said.
So what are you going to do? Ban these brides from seeking a husband abroad? What is the point of complaining about mail order brides?
You can educate them on all these things (many of these brides surely already know this) and yet many would still choose on their free volition to proceed ahead.
Don't put words in my mouth: I said your incredulity at people rings hollow - not your experience.
It's like a Tesla owner being surprised that people assume they bought a Tesla because it's an EV, when the real reason is because they love the seats and infotainment system. It should not be surpring to discover that a widely-held semtiment (right or wrong) is widely-held.
I see, the issue is you don't understand what incredulity means. It doesn't mean I'm surprised. I'm perfectly willing to _believe_ that people have rational views on what a situation may be. I understand your wish to be sanctimonious, and perhaps it would have been wise for me to turn the other cheek rather than point out your hypocrisy of putting words in my mouth. Mea Culpa.
This is a very new cultural assumption (something like the 1960s ?)
Prior to that marriage was a lot less about contemporary concepts like "emotional love", "my forever best friend" etc.
Vietnam still has a very old religious under pinning (idk the exact definitions, but something like daoist - bhuddist - ancestor worship). Marriage and family means something very different there than in the US meaning (nearly formless these days)
In some sense I think they have it right. The chemical induced feeling of love lasts a couple years at best. The rest is about relationship, bonding, family, duty and responsibility - IMO. I would wager those who don't marry for love but make a pact to form a working relationship still get most the upsides of marriage.
I'm surprised nobody posted this very famous video of a British man and his Asian girlfriend getting harassed by a local in Taipei, Taiwan 7 years ago. [1]
The aggressor ended up getting in trouble and appeared on the local news but I'm sure a lot of people shared his toxic views.
I ended up listening to a podcast for divorced men, and one guest was some sort of "seducer guru" who said literally "if you are a male westerner with a job, regardless of what you look like, you have value somewhere else in the world". Which is basically true, if slightly depressing when expressed in those terms.
A friend of mine is an engineer in Ghana, but there aren't a lot of jobs, so he earns about $200 a month. He earns more money doing Mechanical Turk and surveys through a VPN.
In the mornings I often watch a twitch streamer who goes to places in cities in Thailand and I'm always struck by all the old white men with young Thai women that she passes on the street.
I find Vietnamese family to be extremely welcoming.
It’s rapidly developing so lots of nice builings and projects going up but the older generation (who grew up with the war) seem to be the ones lost. The new generation isn’t affected by it (same as how new generation Chinese don’t know what poverty is - I mean the city folk cuz rural folk are still poor)
This channel (Troy Vietnam) dives into the underbelly of it. So much poverty :(
> rapidly developing so lots of nice [buildings] and projects going up
This is also very true -- it's modernizing rapidly. For example, the first crypocurrency trader I ever met was in Vietnam, and there were many touristy but nice hotels with things like roof top bars/clubs, the younger people were very technically focused (social media, smart phones etc) where as the older people were very much paper (and some email) driven. There is a sharp contrast between generations compared to N.A. where most everyone of my friends' parents have a smart phone and use computers well enough to get by.
me and a friend were going to go clear landmines after college so we could put "know how to clear landmines" on our resume as a sort of eye-catcher / joke. Parents weren't all that in to it as you can imagine. Fortunately, our laziness took over, we got jobs, and we never actually did it.
Vietnam (unlike Cambodia and Thailand) has no long term retirement visa. It would be particularly insane to build your life around having to renew your tourist visa every 3 months...
For US people, it used to be very easy to get a "business visa" that was good for a year.
If you lived in Saigon, you'd do the Moc Bai border run with Cambodia once a year. Drive (or bus) a couple hours to the border. Literally walk over the border and walk back into VN. On the way out and back in, you can pay some coffee money for faster service. You put a 200k or 500k note in your passport at the desk and they put it on the top of the stack.
That was the truly entertaining bit. Tons of scammers hanging around pushing some sort of service. Rightly so, a lot of people get frustrated or uncomfortable at border crossings. I've done VN/Cambodia/Laos border crossings enough times that it doesn't bother me. I understand the game now. It really is just part of the way things are done.
I kind of wish it was that way in the US. Even paying off corrupt cops right on the street in Vietnam. Far better than getting a ticket and going to court.
Not to mention that you still need to pay taxes to the IRS even if you live abroad.
Want to not pay taxes? You must renounce your US citizenship. Want to renounce your citizenship? You must now pay an expatriation/exit tax on your assets that can range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars for some retirees.
If you are born in the United States, you are truly stuck here and forced to pay a forever tax by virtue of being alive.
I don’t think those people really care about paying US taxes considering life is so cheap in Vietnam. The mere fact of not paying American prices for housing, healthcare, food, etc is a substantial discount. The tax money they lost will not make that much of a difference there, as opposed to Europe.
US LTCG taxes are ridiculously low (0% under the 15% tax bracket), and that's going to be the primary income source for early retirees. This is such an overblown argument unless you're working overseas and then you're often very well paid AND countries often have tax treaties to give you a break.
Middle class, working-age Americans with normal IT jobs in the EU sigh, look longingly at their (if lucky) dormant 401k/Roth accounts back home, realize they really are going to be working until retirement age because no one will open a brokerage account for an American here, and that while tax treaties generally prevent double taxation on wage income, things get “fun” on just about anything else.
If I lived abroad, I'd make my parent's address my primary address and keep all us accounts tied to it. Transfer money via crypto stablecoin (Ironically, sending money internationally is crypto's only killer app) and invest with your US accounts until you gain whatever residency / citizenship that allows one access to the financial system in your country.
Americans living in foreign countries have to pay taxes on income over $100k if I’m not mistaken.
You do still have to file though. Which is bullshit.
And the expensive , laborious process for renouncing citizenship is also bullshit.
Is it really so bad to just keep your US citizenship?
I understand that, if you're working and making any reasonable amount of money, you're going to get hit with a lot of double taxation, which sucks. Plus FATCA and the other annoyances.
But say you're retired with a modest burn rate. Then, between the Foreign Tax Credit and the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, you won't really have to pay much in US tax, right?
But then you have another problem. If you renounce your citizenship -- which passport will you use to enter into Vietnam, or which ever country you'd like to stay in.
Looking it up there is a $2m threshold before this tax matters. Then there are various yearly tax exclusions and credit that make this negligible for average retirees.
Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. Not any other sort of income, including things like parental leave benefits.
(Not exactly) Pro-tip: if you are in pretty much any EU country, and have anything on top of earned income (rental income, any form of government-paid benefits), you are possibly better off not claiming the FEIE - there’s a reason you have to specifically request it when filing, and it’s not because the IRS want to be jerks (about that, anyway).
That's what Eduardo Saverin did (one of the co-founders of Facebook). Settled out of court, moved all the money out of country, ran off to Singapore, and renounced his citizenship. Dodged some $700 million in taxes. IIRC he's barred from entry into the US for any reason until he pays back taxes or something.
I know someone who fought for South Vietnam in the war and is now a US citizen who travels there for a month or two and comes back, alternating time between a home here and Vietnam. Obviously it's easier for someone who is fluent in the language.
My father in law is retired and spends most of the year in Costa Rica. Never mentions visa problems or anything. Just talks about surfing and hiking and stuff. So it must be fairly easy there.
I think this will be a growing trend as the US becomes more and more expensive for those with a fixed income but with the freedom to live anywhere. Vietnam and Thailand seem like good options, where else is emerging as a promising affordable retirement destination? Mexico? Central America?
Cambodia is another good option in term of cost, safety for expats, local culture, and ease of getting a Visa.
Due to its lower development level, most big factors in cost of living such as housing, utilities, and transportation are still cheaper or comparable to other countries in Southeast Asia. Overall foods are also very cheap but more fancy options are also available when eating out.
Cambodia is now one of the safest place in Asia for expats. There are many good options for international schools for families with children. There are also many good affordable options for healthcare with internationally trained doctors and modern facilities. You can even get private health insurance now.
With a long history, you will have many avenues for exploring the local history and culture. Or you can simply enjoy the fact that a predominantly Buddhist Cambodia makes it the world’s friendliest country according to Rough Guides:
https://www.roughguides.com/gallery/the-friendliest-countrie...
Cambodia is also one of the few countries with an easy-to-get retirement Visa. You can also get a work Visa. For younger people not yet ready to retire or not working, a Visa renewal run to Thailand is a quick and cheap round trip plane ride costing as low as $100.
Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama are already popular retirement destinations for people from Canada and the US. Much like with gentrification in cities, I expect to find the truly affordable destination you will need to be a little bit ahead of the trend.
Costa Rica seems to be showing up in some discussions as a retirement option for Americans for cost of living and healthcare options. Panama has been on this list for a while. Would love to hear about others
Avoid Mexico at all cost, it's one of the most dangerous places on earth, is unlikely to improve in the next decade or two, and there are far better options in Latin America.
Although I disagree completely with "avoid Mexico at all costs", kidnapping is a real threat. They won't kill you but it's a pretty unpleasant experience, and avoiding cocaine won't protect you.
Anecdotal - I lived in Mexico City for 2 years running around doing very stupid things. Only kidnapped once, by the police, for less than a few hours, because I was doing illegal things in public.
Mexico has serious crime issues and murder issues. But this is mostly confined to specific areas and specific cities along drug running corridors.
It is a bit like someone looking at Chicago and saying it's a war zone. They would be correct, in the worst parts of town. The average HN poster is unlikely to ever set foot in those areas, so their experience will be vastly different.
This is a very misinformed comment. Mexico indeed has enormous issues with violent crime but those incidents are very unlikely to affect expats who choose to retire there.
There is a legitimate distinction for it. I wouldn't, for example, call the US Ambassador to Japan or a member of the Armed Forces stationed in Okinawa an immigrant. It's a distinction becomes looser it describing people who have private sector jobs or have lived in the area for a long time but are jetting between one country and another.
Anecdotal, but I have seen this trend also. My sister-in-law is Vietnamese and this is the plan my brother and I have for our folks if finances get tight. The cost of living is just so much lower there, especially when compared with a HCOL coastal metro.
India is not quite as welcoming to foreigners, from a banking/legal/property-ownership perspective. If you've already met an Indian partner in the West (or are Indian yourself -- but then you'd know this) and are thinking about moving back there as a geoarbitrage play and/or to be with family (in-laws), it could work. I do worry a little about the political climate though. On the one hand, people will go out of their way to be nice to you in a way that doesn't happen in the West. On the other, it's a country where "is an Indian citizen", "looks Indian", and "is Hindu" are not really separate concepts outside of some minority communities. Whether India would work depends on what kind of family you have there, I think. Because in India, family is everything.
One thing often left unsaid about some of the locales in these articles is a fairly loose attitude towards sex, prostitution, and relationships between older foreign men and much younger women.
You will find the people profiled in these to be overwhelmingly men.
India has tons of English speakers by raw numbers, but as a percentage it's below world average[1]. Obviously, it's higher in the more cosmopolitan areas where westerners are likely to go, but the same would be true of every country.
That's like saying you won't visit the US because of racism. I don't know what you think caste is, but just like racism, it has been illegal for a long time. And just like racism it is still prevalent, but it's probably the worst possible reason to avoid India
India is quite as expat-friendly as Thailand or Vietnam. India is crowded. Cities where you'd find other expats are usually very expensive already.
All that said, India has a niche that can only be surpassed by China - road tripping on diverse terrains. Done by lots of retired expats from Thailand and Vietnam.
While the article suggests that Thailand is no longer cheap (due to popularity?), it is still quite cheap. For $1-2k/mo you can live comfortably, including beach areas. Things work pretty well, and the people tend to be generally friendly and positive (despite their relative poverty).
Honestly though, one doesn't have to settle for any single place. Try several, spending a few months in each. And before you decide to live long term in a place, be sure to stay during whichever is considered to be their worst season.
Yup. It's no wonder why medical tourism is such a big thing. Why pay 10 thousand dollars a month for [insert any random drug here] in the United States, when you can buy a roundtrip ticket to France to pick up a 3 month supply of the same drug for less money?
If you have a medical condition that leads to high healthcare costs, it's almost universally recommended to move elsewhere.
I early-retired last year in the U.S. and with a family of five we pay over $2,500 a month for health care premiums and that still doesn't cover our daughter's OT ($700 / month), my compound Rx at $450 a dose, or my wife's therapist. It's kind of a strange because we need to pull out extra income to pay for the health care which in turn raises our retirement income which in turn raises the health care costs by reducing subsidies.
It sometimes seems like our medical and end-of-life care systems are designed to soak up all the savings of everyone but the very rich, to keep it from being inherited. What good is our higher level of income (than many other rich countries) if it's all just gonna end up going to hospitals, insurance (including supplemental coverage for Medicare), and hospice care?
Not sure if this story is written about 12 people or 1200. But still, I can't help but chuckle when considering the resources the American empire spent to stop the spread of socialism in Vietnam, only to have its citizens later move there to enjoy its perks.
Notably, the pastor and well known boardgame enthusiast, Tom Vasel (The Dice Tower - https://www.youtube.com/user/thedicetower) moved to Vietnam before 2008. He has raised a couple girls there. He goes on trips back to the US rarely and has been very happy with his move.
I wonder if there are fraud schemes whereby a retiree moves overseas, dies and retirement benefits are collected by a third party. It might make sense to offer a retiree a lump sum to settle overseas with their cooperation in collecting post-mortem benefits for a few years.
I'd love to do this some day but I'm pretty comfortable starting over. I'd be surprised if any significant portion of the US population would be willing to leave friends/family/routines for lower CoL.
I’ll go out on a limb and say that amount of people willing or even able to do so is totally insignificant. Retiring to another country amounts to becoming stranger in a strange land where they may speak some English, with vastly different healthcare system and healthcare practises, having to learn and unlearn at least some customs or manners, leaving your family, friends, networks and safety nets behind. Starting over in another country can be life changing, but I believe that for most people it is simply not something they are willing to go through, especially during their golden years.
Oh and there is an added bonus: having to deal with stateside banks wanting to close your brokerage accounts as soon as you let them know you're about to move abroad with unknown intent to return. And finding it near impossible to open brokerage accounts in foreign banks when they learn that you're an American citizen. Because FATCA. (to be fair, I believe this depends a bit where you're relocating to, but at least with Europe, no dice)
A big thing probably not mentioned in the article that white people are treated exceptionally well in certain countries. And not to mention the whole sex tourism.
I've always wished there were different travel sites for non-whites, or at least different sections on travel sites addressing specific issues. Black people can travel somewhere that seems wonderful on wikivoyage, and find out that it's the opposite for them.
You seem to only be able to find out about that kind of thing through personal networks. In my experience if black people have a really good time in a country, they tell everyone else they know, and that country/city probably gets a sudden boost in tourism.
later: hadn't checked in a while, it tentatively looks like travelnoire.com might be what I was asking for.
I personally know a man from the East Coast, who is 67 with bad health, sold a house but was bad with money a decade ago, and lives mainly in Viet Nam now, travelling to California to get medical when he must (which is not unusual). I do not know very many people, but I know that guy now.
There's no irony. What you're referencing was half a century ago. It also isn't ironic for a German circa 1960 to move to the US, or a Russian circa 1995 to move to the US, or for an American to move to Japan in the 1970s, and it wasn't ironic for a million Vietnamese to move to the US, and so on.
The people of Vietnam no longer much care about the US involvement in the Vietnam Civil War (which is one reason why US popularity with the people of Vietnam is so high). Soon everyone that fought in that war will be dead and its memory will particularly have faded away accordingly.
I have customers in Vietnam; they said they had to turn around and fight the Chinese who they still dislike for many reasons including Chinese racism. I’m told they don’t even think about Americans all that much. I think they see Westerners as trustworthy business partners who are generally easy to do business with.
It’s hard to Google it now; but I remember reading how Vietnamese leaders were saying even during the war how they didn’t hate the American people and look forward to one day sitting down with them to drink tea.
As do most of the countries with "free world" Internet, Vietnam buys into the global anti China propaganda, it help that our relationship with them has been patchy though out history and we currently have sovereign dispute with them in the South China Sea.
Speaking of racism, the reason there are not that many Chinese in Vietnam anymore is that they were literally asked to leave the country when the 2 allies split.
I'm not saying China is a trustworthy partner, just find the idea that Americans are better laughable
> There is plenty of pro China propaganda to go around.
Maybe, but I doubt that's your personal experience. Most people in the "free world" are shielded from pro China propaganda. So, that there is more pro China propaganda than Western propaganda is just their belief.
Wait so members of the generation of Americans who massacred the Vietnamese are going to retire in ... Vietnam ... because they have a more attractive place to live than Americans do ... and you look at that and think "nope nothing to see here"? Lmao dude
According to this graph it's ~40,000 Vietnamese immigrating to the US. I'll be generous and say 40 Americans have retired to Vietnam. The difference is obvious
I'm not sure it's so much about costs ... prices have evened out considerably around the world. America is the cheapest country in the world for many goods, for example, iphones :) More probably, those retirees look for a good company ...
I often thought about retiring to a country with a low cost of living but is safe and non-totalitarian. I've never done more than looking up standards of living and freedom index rankings on wikipedia but it is an attractive idea.
Costa Rica might fit your bill. Probably not as cheap as Vietnam but definitely cheaper than the US and very non-totalitarian; they abolished their military 70 years ago.
Think of it this way. You either have an imperfect central power that makes imperfect decisions or you have a bunch of imperfect people arguing over imperfect decisions.
Either way the decisions are imperfect. China gets a lot of shit wrong and a lot of shit right. Same with the states.
You just have to make sure the totalitarian ruling that state isn't some kind of psychopath. If the dictator is overall benevolent then it's not all that bad.
> You just have to make sure the totalitarian ruling that state isn't some kind of psychopath. If the dictator is overall benevolent then it's not all that bad.
I think that's the issue though. Totalitarian states rarely have guard rails for such contingencies of having a bad ruler or series of bad rulers. China historically solved this issue with very bloody rebellions -- it's estimated that tens of millions of people died during the An Lushan rebellion of the Tang dynasty. The whole "mandate of heaven" thing is just a wrapper around this concept -- basically if things get bad enough the people can always rise up and violently replace one dynasty with another. With that in mind, Chinese dynasties either did a good job of ruling the country or repressed the hell out of the people when things aren't going well. Democracy, on the other hand, has a nonviolent means of changing the trajectory. It may not always guarantee good results but a non-violent way of changing government is preferable to a violent one.
>It may not always guarantee good results but a non-violent way of changing government is preferable to a violent one.
I think it's because we've had good times throughout most of US history. Things haven't gotten bad enough for a revolt. Also US history is basically a minuscule fraction of Chinas' history.
I agree that democracy providing the theoretical mechanism for peaceful removal of bad leaders makes it a better system, but I think the distinction is more relevant when you're a local person deeply invested in the politics of the country which determine your family's future or as a matter of principle then when you're a foreigner looking for somewhere cheap to live (poorer democracies are generally pretty flawed and not immune to violent upheaval anyway).
"Totalitarian" tends to imply pretty extreme leadership, but there are a fair few non-democracies with non-extreme leadership which are pretty safe for expats, and a fair few developing world democracies where election time ratchets up the risk of violence.
>You just have to make sure the totalitarian ruling that state isn't some kind of psychopath.
Do you think you could find even one?
>Either way the decisions are imperfect.
I'd buy this if there would be a stable totalitarian state that's doing well in terms of productivity and human rights. Otherwise, I'm inclined to think that totalitarianism always means an elite oppressing the majority of the people, institutional abuse, and countless other horrors.
>I'd buy this if there would be a stable totalitarian state that's doing well in terms of productivity and human rights.
China is still an example. Human rights is also a matter of perspective. You have to realize from Chinas' perspective what they are doing is correct. The western media sort of paints a one sided story here. Although I totally agree that China is overall wrong in their actions here, there is still an alternative perspective that needs to be considered if you want your opinion to be as unbiased as possible.
Consider this. Did you know that Chinas actions towards the Uyghurs were caused by domestic terror attacks? The US reaction of going into an all out 2 decade long war for a terrorist attack is not far off from Chinas reaction. China is definitely wrong to make re-education camps, though I will argue much more people were slaughtered as a result of armed conflict from the US reaction then the amount of people who died as the result of being placed in re-education camps.
Not justifying anything for China here. I disagree with them. But if you didn't know about what I told you above then it likely means your information source(s) is/are biased.
All in all, I still believe China is an example of a totalitarian government ruled by an imperfect person, but he is definitely not a psychopath.
Singapore is another example of a more totalitarian government. Less biased media coverage on them though because they're not really an economic rival to the united states.
Now I want to caveat what I wrote here with some perspective. Don't take sides. Don't have extreme opinions on anything. Politics is complicated and you should view the world through the lens of complexity rather then through a lens of they're right or they're wrong.
I just saw this very short (1 minute and 50 seconds) video yesterday of a woman with a more severe form of a disease that I have called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS). Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzsmGUTE3TE
In the video, she's showing off hundreds of bottles of medications she's gone through, most of them not covered by insurance because they are available over-the-counter. Even the prescription-only drugs were not covered by Medicare (!). It doesn't make any sense.
Insurance is useless if they will not pay for the only medications that will treat your disease. It struck me that she would have a far better quality of life and cheaper healthcare if she just moved to another country, because the US healthcare system is an atrocious disaster.
Knowing the US healthcare system at least half of those drugs are not only insanely expensive but counter productive. The system rewards waste. I have a related condition and get my meds from the gray and black markets (thanks China and India)
peptidesciences is gray market, and certain overseas online pharmacies you can legally order 3 months supply with a prescription. Some of these suppliers don’t check for the prescription. These seem to cater to the Trans community so a list of reliable suppliers can be found in Trans reddit groups. China and India are the original sources of the meds not the retailers, I prefer Indian where possible.
Low Dose Naltrexone is highly effective for MCAS but it’s generic and cheap so there is absolutely no money in it. It’s easy enough to get a normal legal prescription for this from AgelessRx. I prefer to manage the dose myself with titrated 50mg pills which also happens to be cheaper, but unfortunately black market.
Interesting, what do you get from peptidesciences? I know about it used mostly for some bodybuilding PEDs along with some stuff in the longevity/biohacking community.
Ipamorelin/ModGRF, NAD+, GHK-cu, and occasionally Semax, Selank, and Thymosin Alpha 1.
The GHRPs is probably the most beneficial for me, followed by NAD+. After many decades of medical gaslighting I now act as my own doctor/medical researcher and so far I’m doing a much better job at it.
Vietnam has great public healthcare, overall elderly VN population is more healthy than American: less obesity, fewer cardiac diseases, more healthy diet, more exercise, etc.
There a lot of things that American can learn from Vietnam
yes, I lived in VN, rode a motorcycle, got in a little accident and got small surgical treatment at a local public hospital and was quite happy about the outcome and service.
There are also private hospitals with european or Singapore level service for more money, and still far far cheaper than anything US healthcare.
Try having a complex disease in Vietnam and you'll realize just how big the gap is. My extended family couldn't get a basic cancer drug anywhere in Vietnam. Had to ship it to them as it was dirt cheap and readily available in the US.
All the comments to the contrary, it's quite spectacular that Americans (regardless of the number) are retiring to a country that was demonized by the US for decades and humiliated the US in a very public fashion.
I personally dont think it's good for the Vietnamese that the color of your money is the only thing that decides your future. But, hey, capitalism, right ?
Vietnam is the same single party state capital system nominally named the Communist Party that nominally teaches Marxist ideology to a population while doing state capital instead, the same one we - the US - decisively lost to 50 years ago and the same as China
For Americans, why does Vietnam spark ideas of an up and coming fantasy land, while China sparks ideas of a dystopian fear land, when the day to day experience would be the same and completely divorced from the governing system?
> For Americans, why does Vietnam spark ideas of an up and coming fantasy land
It doesn't?
I've known a few people who've traveled there and I don't recall any of them ever saying they wanted to stay forever. However, the idea of it being a "fantasy land" probably has to do with it's climate. Jungle and rain forest (I'm not exactly sure what the distinction here is, if there is one) is not a biome available in the continental US, of which there are relatively few.
I very much doubt rich tourists are suffering the ire of the government in Vietnam while I'm not sure I'd expect as much from China since they are more wealthy.
> when the day to day experience would be the same and completely divorced from the governing system?
Given what I said above, I doubt the experience is at all similar from a tourist perspective.
My experience is one of Americans fawning over new hotels and resort towns and digital nomad lifestyles in Vietnam. Not staying forever but for extended indefinite periods of time.
The same and different Americans would have absolute fear and disdain over the entire concept of China, while my other Western friends might rave over how much fun they had in Shanghai or balmier tropical places like Hainan
Its hard for me to reconcile the different realities, I think theyre related because theyre both single party communist systems that teach marxist ideology, have no check and balance over squashing dissidents, and one group of travellers seems more objective than the other
Perhaps they are just unaware of the reality of the rest of the country.
I live near Mexico and everyone around me is aware of the strife that goes on in Mexico day-to-day. I wouldn't want to live there because of that but, when I visit, I either stay in those resort towns you mention and, when I'm not, I'm obviously a foreigner and am a source of tourism dollars as long as I stay in the right areas.
If I had no idea of the normal conditions of the country, I'd have a much different idea of Mexico than I do.
China is probably similar. News about bad things in China makes it the US. Maybe it's propaganda but it isn't _all_ propaganda. On the other hand, the only thing most people know about Vietnam is an 60 year old war (experienced through media) and the resort town and tourist attractions they visit.
I'd guess that the idea of China is probably exaggerated in the American's mind (including mine) but it's probably more accurate than what they think of Vietnam.
If I had to find a place to retire on the cheap it would be Eastern Europe. Probably Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, even maybe Poland (more expensive). You are a hop, skip and jump away from the rest of Europe, Turkey, etc and it's probably just as or more affordable than Asia or Latin America. A doctor in some of those countries earns $250-$300 USD a month. You can live an extremely comfortable life on SS in that part of the world with access to what you mostly are accustom to back in the USA.
The quality of women is also higher in south east Asia. Western women are known for partying in their 20s, then trying to find some BETA male to pay the bill in their 30s.
Exit is fine until they migrate back with younger wife and then died. It depends upon the size of the wives. If it is chinese scale America is doomed. But Vietnam is a small country.
Americans or male sexpats? I have personally never heard of couples relocate to SE Asia for retirement like what happens in less wealthy EU countries. It's mostly single men, usually older, there to enjoy the prostitutes or worse, pedophiles.
Interesting. In most non-technical hacker news threads I always scroll to the bottom to find out what the unpopular opinions are on a topic. HN should have a sort by controversial feature like Reddit does.
It's always odd to read stories like this. There's some kind of implication from the headline, or maybe even that the story was ever written, that there's a significant number of people doing this thing that's highlighted in the story. And then the story invariably will say that the actual number of people doing this thing is not really known, or is pretty low. Seems like you could write this story about so many different groups of people doing a thing. Maybe that's just the point, find a person doing something that's worth writing about and make it a more interesting story? Not really anything wrong with any of it I suppose, it's just usually obvious from the headline that the actual number of Americans retiring to Vietnam is pretty low.
Maybe indication of some kind of new trend, especially after people read this it brings more people over?