My ex music Teacher and friend is now in Thailand.
His girlfriend had lived in Arkansas for several years. She returned home for family. He missed her and eventually followed her to Bangkok. He’s already playing gigs at bars that cater to Europeans.
He posted a photo playing at the Blarnery Stone Bangkok. Their website is a FB page.
Bangkok sounds like a welcoming place for Expats.
I’m considering this in Pattaya Thailand; I’m selling my house Aptos, CA, to buy a townhouse in Capitola. Going to pay down the mortgage on the new place from the old house, then find a place to rent in Thailand for about the sum of what I was paying on the expensive place. I should clear >$550 on the old place, townhouse is $899k. Lotsa room to play around.
And when you come home you’ll have nothing.
I wish you all the luck in the world.
There are just too many variables to make this viable for 99% of Americans. So many things.
We haven’t even thought about what these countries are gonna say about an influx of disgruntled Americans.
I have a suspicion they’ll soon stop giving visas.
There’s no Casablanca and a nice saloon owner named Rick, for Americans.
But if there was, then to slightly paraphrase Rick in that scenario, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, they’ll walk into mine.”
Yes, we have begun active study efforts, because it’s a prerequisite for the passport.
I came in with a little German and my wife came in with a little more French, and this was useful day-to-day for getting around, but a few years of student-level language is not sufficient for the sort of technical writing you find in official correspondence. We still spend a lot of time pointing Google Translate at the letters our kids bring home from school.
And even with these adjustment headaches as immigrants (which is what we are: not expats; we are immigrants), we find life here dramatically superior.
First, it’s Luxembourgish, not Luxembourgian. And there’s more Dutch in it than French (which makes sense if you know the history; just look at our flag). I’d say it’s about 10% French, 30% Dutch, and 60% German, with the German having kind of a drunken-mushmouth quality (“das ist” → “dat ass”). But I do agree that if you’re a fluent German speaker, you listen to Luxembourgish and think you might be able to follow it, but find you can’t.
I wish the winning half of the US was sane but it’s not. I’m also approaching 70, But as much as I like living without this stress I love my country and I’m determined to outlive the insanity.
If you’re any kind of traveler, then you’ve met no end of expats all around the world.
They make it work just fine. It just shouldn’t be done on a whim.
Actually, Ireland are one of a number of countries that offer a retirement visa. You just need to prove you have an income of E50k per year (as a single person)
Oooo, that’s interesting. Me great grandfather was from Ireland.
Have you by chance a link handy?
Ireland has a housing shortage and it’s very expensive to live there.
But it’s a lovely country.
That’s an important point. In our favour, being retired, we don’t need (and may prefer not to) live inside a major city.
Here you are. Looks like you also need an additional lumpsum of rainy day savings:
Spain and Italy also have retirement visas, which would certainly be my preferred choice. More sun for the old bones.
Excellent, thank you. Assuming the requirement to have savings equal to a residential property isn’t for a large home, that should be doable for us.
My problem would be finding health insurance with pre existing conditions at my age. Just too much risk.
Plus I have no plans to leave - just travel.
Sorry about this …
My wife and I have been cross-shopping Spain, Italy and Portugal. We put those plans on hold a couple years ago due to a health scare, but we’ve started looking again. We have friends in Portugal and Spain, but I prefer Italy. Portugal and Spain have recently tightened up their golden visa programs but I recall we had some other options too.
Not sure about other European countries, but Switzerland’s pretty strict about having a passport and a residence permit. There are plenty of people without papers, but they are living with friends, family or their employers, not on their own.
Not just now, It’s been years. As an American there are only certain banks that will do business with me. As soon as I leave the country, every single account I have here has to be closed.
Of course, most people aren’t going to choose Switzerland - it’s too expensive. And Swiss German is really not the same as German, which makes learning the local lingo extra challenging.
And we got lucky - hubby’s company wanted him here. We had very little difficultly coming here.
Never been on the East shore of Tahoe, have you? 
I sponsored my (then-)common-law spouse in 2010. Piece of cake. There were hoops to jump through and expenses and it took some months, but we did it ourselves, from California. I had never lived in Canada. We are now both Canadian citizens and residents and happy here.
What would happen if a retired US citizen were to sneak over the Canadian border, get a cheap apartment, and not leave? The bank wouldn’t know you’re not supposed to be there.