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When it comes to retirement planning, most people default to the established model of putting their savings into traditional investment vehicles, crossing their fingers, and hoping for the best. One problem with this approach is that you are effectively putting your future in the hands of the market and/or your investment manager.
In this episode, we talk about an alternative retirement strategy that involves leveraging certain professional, cultural, and financial benefits that come with living and working outside of the U.S. In other words, we share some ideas around how you can accelerate your retirement timeline or extend your financial runway by becoming a U.S. expatriate.
We start by covering Ian’s personal transition from the U.S. to Dubai, which was initiated by an employment opportunity that required him to relocate indefinitely. Next, we talk about some of the benefits and sacrifices that come with expat lifestyle and share some resources for helping you determine whether retiring abroad is an attractive option for you. Finally, we discuss a few different ways to test the waters for retiring abroad and share an example from a real-world couple who is making the leap right now.
Key Takeaways
Retiring Abroad Offers a Substantial Number of Benefits
Relocating to another country can feel like an overwhelming proposition, but it also comes with a host of attractive benefits. For starters, you can move to a country where the exchange rate for the U.S. dollar is favorable, which can instantly multiply the value of your nest egg.
Additionally, you open yourself up to a whole new world of personal and professional networks, job opportunities, and cultural influences. Tune in to the episode to hear us discuss all of these benefits – and more!
You Will Also Have to Make Certain Sacrifices
Of course, moving abroad doesn’t come without its own set of challenges and sacrifices. Most people are worried about leaving behind their friends and family, but we talk about how technology and the global economy has made it easier than ever to maintain strong, long distance relationships and foster new relationships with people around the corner or around the globe.
You Don’t Have to Jump in Head First
There is a common misconception that retiring abroad has to be an “all or nothing” effort. While there are certainly people who are passionate about the expat lifestyle, there are many more who aren’t quite ready to make the leap. If you find yourself in the latter group, we share some advice and resources for testing the waters by exploring retirement opportunities in a temporary or part-time arrangement.
It’s A Realistic Opportunity for Anyone Who Is Interested
If you’re sitting there thinking, “This sounds great, but I could never make it happen,” then think again. We share the story of a real-world couple who has sold most of their physical assets and are relocating to Mexico as the first step in their journey to retiring abroad.
Just like Ian, these folks have taken their control of their future by liquidating their assets and moving abroad to instantly increase the value of their nest egg and extend their retirement runway. It’s a viable path for them to take and you can do the same!
Resources and Recommendations
- Numbeo – The cost of living calculator that Ian recommends for evaluating a potential
- Retire Abroad: 49 Questions Answered – Ian’s first book that answers all of the most common questions around living and working abroad
- Online Business Basics: Fund Your Retirement – Ian’s second book that provides guidance and resources for building a location independent business that can fund your retirement lifestyle
- Additional Retirement Rehab Resources on Living Abroad
- Retirement Rehab Homepage
Transcription of This Episode
Welcome to The Red Pill Retirement podcast, where we give you the raw, unfiltered truth about retirement planning in the modern age. Pensions and 401Ks are quickly becoming a thing of the past, so we’re here to share resources and recommendations that will help you create the retirement lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of. If you’re ready to take control of your financial future, we’re here to help. Let’s get started.
Hey everyone, we’ve got another great interview with Mr. Ian Bond for you today. We are talking all about how retiring abroad does not have to be a scary endeavor. Now I know a lot of people think about the opportunity to retire abroad, and they get nervous, thinking that there’s going to be a huge capital requirement, resource requirement. It’s going to be a logistical nightmare. On top of all that, they’re going to have to move very far away from their friends and family, and maybe even leave their career behind.
But in this episode today, we’re going to talk about how a lot of those fears are unfounded and overblown, and how retiring abroad is a viable alternative for most of the professionals out there. In fact, it is an extremely attractive option for a lot of professionals, especially those who may not have been as proactive with retirement planning as they might have liked, or have had some kind of life event that has kind of presented a financial shock to their nest egg, and they’re looking to either accelerate their retirement timeline, or extend their financial runway.
We talk about how that can be done by moving abroad and taking advantage of things like building a location independent business, leveraging your expertise as a professional here in the United States to gain an influential position at a company abroad. Also, leveraging currency exchanges to double, triple, or even 10x the value of your current nest egg, because you’re living now in a country where the dollar is worth ten times the amount that it would be here in the States, because of the exchange rate with the local currency in whatever country that you move to.
So, some of the key takeaways that we talk about in this episode are those benefits that retiring abroad offers, as well as some of the trade offs that you will have to be accepting of, and why maybe they aren’t quite as concerning as most people might feel. Then we also talk about a couple of different models for testing out retiring abroad as an opportunity or as a next step in your life without selling all of your worldly goods and relocating full time to another country that you may or may not be familiar with. Then finally, we really hammer home the point that this is a realistic opportunity for anybody who is interested by telling the story of a couple who is doing this right now.
So first, we share Ian’s personal story. Then we share the story of a couple who took a slightly different path, but they are currently in the process of relocating from the U.S. to Mexico, and they’ve doubled their nest egg in the process. So it really is a great episode. If any of that strikes a chord for you, I strong encourage you to keep listening. And of course, as always, let us know what you think by leaving a review in the iTunes store and wherever you get your podcast.
So without further ado, let’s get into the interview with Ian. Hope you enjoy.
All right, welcome back to The Red Pill Retirement podcast. My name is James Sours, and I’m your host. I’m joined, as always, by the lovely Mr. Ian Bond. Ian, how are you doing today?
I’m doing great, James. How are you?
I’m doing great as well. The weather here in Cleveland is beautiful, and people are outside walking their dogs, jogging, working in the yard. This is just my favorite time of the year. It’s like energizing to see all the activity going on. I hate the winter here in Cleveland. As much as I love the city, it just kind of drags me down. So I’m full of energy right now. I don’t know about you over there in Dubai.
Yeah, well it’s a little warm over here right now. So we didn’t lose LeBron here, but we do have some heat and humidity. Actually, the skies are crystal blue. It’s gorgeous, although it’s warm.
Right, right. Well hey, that’s one of the considerations we’re going to talk about today, because today’s episode is all about retiring abroad and how it is a valid choice to either accelerate your retirement timeline, because you’re leveraging things like currency conversions and location independence, or extend your runway, and you take the nest egg that you have, and use those same principles to kind of double the value of your money, because you’re moving to a country where the U.S. dollar is worth more.
So we will start off, I guess, by telling a little bit more about your story. I know, Ian, you made the transition internationally through your employer and accepted a position there. Then that has kind of overflowed into a lifestyle now, it sounds like. So I’ll let you tell the story, but let’s start off by giving an example from your personal experience.
Yeah, my personal experience is actually probably demonstrative of the way it has worked for a lot of people who work overseas. I had a long career where I traveled overseas, and so I’ve worked on four continents. Lo and behold one day in 2013, I was contacted by an in-house recruiter for a bank over here and it started a dialogue. Would I be interested in an opportunity that looked like this? So, you know, I responded, checked out the person, make sure it wasn’t some kind of fishing expedition. I said, yeah I’d be interested.
So arranged to Skype a conference call, where I heard more about some of the details and I threw my hat into the ring. Then over what was a fairly long period of time, I would call it about eight or nine months, I did Skype interviews, ultimately a trip, and then ultimately got an offer. Then fairly quickly, relocated in September of 2014.
Because everything kind of came together quickly at the end, and because it was a new thing for my family, I moved over here, eight time zones ahead of New York City, where we were living. My wife and kids stayed behind. We had paid for schools, and to be honest with you, you don’t know if things are exactly going to work out the way you think they’re going to work out. I also kind of felt like coming into a new situation, it would be good for me to have total focus. We kind of had the opportunity to relocate after the first term, but the school situations here really didn’t permit it. The schools were kind of full.
So my family actually came over the Christmas holidays, had a wonderful time. While the September to December timeframe went fairly quickly, between the beginning of the year, January, when they went back to the States, and when they ultimately moved over here, which was kind of the end of June, that went very, very slowly for me. I missed my family a lot. I think I described in prior sessions with you, I was able to utilize all of the free time that I had, because I had very short … I didn’t have family responsibilities. So I spent a lot of time learning about what I called the new economy.
But that’s how it all happened. Quite frankly, it happened because of my professional network. I was recruited off of LinkedIn. It’s because of some of the firms I worked for. The principals over here knew of my reputation from a firm that we worked at together, although I didn’t know them at that firm. I was one of the candidates that made the short list. Then ultimately, during the interviewing process … And of course, I only know this now, but during the interviewing process, I guess I did relatively well.
Lo and behold, and in a very quick fashion, at the end of the summer of 2014, in a fairly short period of time, got on a plane with a couple of suitcases and relocated. So that’s how I ultimately moved abroad, after spending an enormous amount of time on planes, traveling from the U.S. to places of business that were outside the U.S., which I did for the better part of three decades.
Right. So your transition was kind of an opportunity that arose … And frankly, it sounds like it was a risk that you took. I mean, you weren’t really familiar with working internationally or working abroad. So it was kind of something that you had to learn as you went along. But now that you have had some experience there, and you’ve been doing this for a few years, I believe you told me offline that you’re thinking about living abroad indefinitely. Your family’s on board, so there must be something about that situation that’s pretty awesome.
So let’s talk about some of the benefits of living and working abroad, especially somebody that might be based in the U.S. now, and this would be a transition for them that they’d be making either through their employer or maybe as a voluntary life transition or a new chapter in their life. What are some of the benefits that you’ve experienced?
Sure, well just to clarify, I spent an enormous amount of time working abroad, but not living abroad. So it’s easy when you get … Even if you’re gone for a week, you get on a plane and you go back to wherever you live. But the benefits of living abroad, I think there are many. First of all, I think there’s a fascinating cultural aspect of moving your family and living in another country. There’s the local population, which is wonderful here. Then there’s the [inaudible 00:10:26] population. You meet incredibly interesting families.
I think, frankly, the international families that we know, they’re incredibly very accomplished, first of all. There is a different perspective they bring to life, because they do do this. They’re very close families. So we appreciate very much the people that we have met. We’ve made some great friends.
we can talk about the financial trade-offs. There are great benefits to being an employee internationally. Things like you get paid for a trip home every year. You get usually some kind of a bonus for … You get various bonuses. Generally, things like health care coverage for when you work overseas are much better than they are in the States. Although, I think in lots of countries where I know people working, health care is diminishing as a benefit. We rarely come out of pocket for anything healthcare related. I’m trying to think of the last time that I came out of pocket for something. We had a family member spend some time in the hospital, and we never saw a bill for a four or five day stay in the hospital, so that’s amazing.
Now, the flip-side is you are leaving behind friends and family. So I have an older mother. She’s in her mid-80s. We Skype together, so my mother is a [inaudible 00:12:11] with using Skype. It’s not the same, and it’s a long plane flight to get everybody to go visit. Now one of the things that I think everybody plans on when they move abroad is that they’re going to get visited by people a lot. It happens a lot less than you think. You think you’re going to get visited, and you don’t. We actually skivvied down and gave up a bedroom a couple years ago, because no one came. We had a few people come, but we decided that we didn’t need an empty bedroom for most of the year.
I would say the biggest thing on the negative side is you have to kind of deal with leaving people behind. I find it very easy these days with communication to talk to people as frequently as I want to. I was living in New York City …
Because I want to. I was living in New York City most recently. My siblings are living in Miami, Florida, so I didn’t see them that frequently anyways. And so, you know, yes, I left other friends behind and my kids left their friends behind and my wife left her friends behind, but we replaced a lot of those relationships. And the people that I had been friendly with professionally in the states, I’m still friendly with. We stay in touch, but everybody moves on in their career. So those would be some of the things I would mention. If there’s anything you’d like to dive into more deeply, I’d be happy to go there.
Sure. So on the benefits side, I think one thing that comes to mind to me is if you are thinking about retiring abroad because you want to live internationally or you want to travel, as we all know, if you relocate to somewhere in Europe, then you can travel even more because the countries are closer together. So you could visit more countries, once you establish a home base or a headquarters over there abroad versus in the U.S., you are not flying across an ocean every time. So I think maybe that’s like that’s one of the secondary, but it’s not necessarily a professional benefit, but if travel is something that interests you, retiring abroad and making your new home abroad makes everything else a lot closer to go visit those other countries that are neighboring, wherever it is you’re going to be living out of.
And one other specific thing that I want to make sure I get your input on is the perception or the perceived value of professional work experience in the U.S. when you move abroad. So when you go to another country and you come in as an executive or a senior professional manager or director level with experience at a big U.S. corporation, there’s a certain perception around that in other countries that exponentially increases your value to an organization that might be operating over there, whether it’s a branch or a sub brand or product line or something like that that you’re going to be working on for maybe a parent company international. Is that true in your experience?
Yeah. So let me answer the second part first. I’ll go back to your first part. Look there’s just no question that the blue passport, from a credential standpoint gives you an enormous benefit, certainly in the part of the world that I work in, but every other part of the world that I’m familiar with. You have enormous credibility if you’ve worked in a large corporate setting, you have seen things by being in a big city like or working for a U.S. corporation. Quite frankly, a lot of people don’t see. So it’s a huge advantage and with all due respect to my friends from the UK, my friends from Canada and my friends from Australia, the American passport is still very, in experience, is very, very highly valued so that goes without saying.
Now, switching over the first part of your question, I’ve written many times that I keep a tab open on my browser to a site called numbeo.com, N-U-M-B-E-O.com. And there they have a cost of living calculator, and I compare when I’m reading about some far away place, I compare the cost of living to New York City. And one of the reason I use New York City is that it’s on the scale, on numbeo, it’s ranked as 100, and so I think right now the number that they use for numbeo is $7,700 per month is what people spend and this is how it compares to the city that you want to compare it to. Now I know what the relative cost of living is in New York City and it’s more than $7,700 for most people I know, but I can shade the numbers and say, well, three bedroom apartment in the center city in New York is underestimated by this amount. So it’s probably under estimated where I’m looking at.
Now, let’s go to the specific example you get. If you were to run the number of New York City versus let’s say Lisbon, Portugal, which I was visited with my family last summer, you would find that it costs probably $7,700 per month in New York City and the equivalent cost of living in Lisbon, Portugal is about $3,000. So, Miami, Florida is going to be 57 or $5,800. It’s very hard to find a place in the United States for $3,000. And if you do find a place for $3,000, you’re not in a western European capital city where you can be skiing in Switzerland and a short train ride and driving to Paris with your family or hopping on a plane and going to the UK for a weekend.
So my family happens to speak Portuguese, ’cause my wife is from Brazil. But that’s one of the reasons we went to look at Lisbon, but the reality is that going to your point that right now the American dollar is so strong that it’s just ridiculously cheap to look at places, and even western Europe is cheap. Paris is cheap. Okay. I guess probably the places that might still be expensive, London would still be quite an expensive place. Switzerland is still quite an expensive place, but dependent, you’re typically not gonna retire to Zurich, you’re not going to retire to London. You’re gonna retire someplace outside of, and so you can still find plenty of very reasonable places if you choose to live abroad and at a fraction of what it costs in the United States.
Right. And you don’t necessarily have to sacrifice all the amenities that you’re used to Maybe in a U.S. city like transportation, you’ve got restaurants and dining, the arts. I mean, all those things exist in a place like Lisbon, but you’re getting all of that for effectively half the price factored in.
I know a number of people who’ve retired to Mexico, a Mexican peso is, just flat on its back. It’s almost 19, 20 to the dollar right now. Two years ago, two and a half years ago, it was 12/13 to the dollar. So it’s had a massive depreciation in Mexico. You know, you have Costcos and Walmarts right down the road from you depending on where you live. So probably the number one country that North Americans retired to is Mexico. Now in Mexico, you can live in the Central Highlands and live at a high elevation and it can be quite cool and temperate, or you can live on the beach. So you can live, literally pick the climate that you want. You could pick the population size that you want. And in some cities, I think the predominant population is the expat population. So, you know, in the Lake Chapala region, that’s very, very well known expat population in places like that. Same with San Miguel de Allende and the highlands are closer to the coast and Merida, a place that I love. It’s very close to the beaches and it’s warmer and hotter if that’s what you’re looking for. So the choices are endless.
Right. We’ve covered I think the benefits in great detail. There’s a lot of upside to retiring abroad and living and working abroad, if you can get over that primary sacrifice, which is you’re going to be moving away from your friends and family that you may have back here in the states and maybe to some degree your professional network. But the counterpoint to that is with all the technology that we have and the internet operating globally, it’s never been easier to keep in touch with somebody who is 5,000 miles away than it is today. So you don’t necessarily have to reduce those relationships down to nothing and like you said before, people may not visit as much as they say they will, but they can. They can come visit you and you can still go home. So if you can get past that, then it sounds like retiring abroad and, and building a career and a life somewhere other than the U.S. is a great retirement option for people in certain situations. So if somebody is sitting at home listening to this and they say, hey, this all sounds great, I want to live in a climate that is perfect all year round and I want to have all this culture and this travel, but I don’t even know where to get started. I know that you’ve written about several different models that you can use to make this transition. So maybe we could cover those briefly and tell the folks at home some of the options that they have, they don’t necessarily have to live abroad full time. So talk about some of your ideas around that.
Okay. Yeah, sure. When we first started writing about living abroad, I got a number of questions and so we accumulated the questions, we actually published the book, which you can buy on Amazon, it’s called “Retire Abroad, 49 Questions Answered.” And so he literally took all of the top questions and tried to answer them so that they wouldn’t keep getting questions to be honest with you. And I thought there was a lot of bad information out there. Probably the biggest question that I got subsequently is, well, you know, how do I accelerate this? And so we have a separate book called “Fund Your Retirement” and that’s all about how to make money in a location independent fashion, so that you don’t have to live in a U.S. city and you can earn money in dollars and pay for living expenses in pesos or euros or Thai baht or whatever currency you choose to do it in. So “Retire Abroad, 49 Questions Answered” and then “Fund Your Retirement” are two resources that we’ve published as books.
But I think the use of technology today, the world is just entirely connected. And so you can be in touch with people as much as you want. I mean, really the question is how good is your Wifi? Here we are, eight time zones away and I talk to people in my mornings before they’re going to bed. My daughter is a college student. I spend time, she’s a night owl and so she’s in the U.S. And so I talk to her in my morning, right before she’s going to bed. And then in the late afternoon United States starts to wake up and depending on where somebody is, East Coast or the West Coast, it’s just a question of connecting with them. Technology’s so good, it’s just amazing.
Right, and then let’s make sure that, so we’ve got those resources and we’ve got the point addressed where you can stay in touch with the folks at home, but let’s make sure that we touch on the three different models that you described to me about how you can live or retire abroad. But you don’t necessarily have to go all in. You can kind of set up a home base in the U.S. And how about for a little bit, so what are your thoughts around those?
Yeah. So, okay. Yeah, I probably handicap how people think about it, there’s a group that’s probably maybe 15 percent of the number of people that I had interacted with that are hardcore. They want to leave the United States, they want to move abroad. I would say they have little regard for, they’ve already solved for this in their minds. They have little regard for staying too much in touch. They are clearly the wanderers and explorers and they would go back probably, but they’re not that concerned about it. The biggest section of people are people that clearly they’re thinking about retiring abroad, moving abroad but they still probably are going to have a foot back and they’re thinking about how to make the transition. And then the third group is the group that definitely wants the ability to travel, but they probably are going to use the U.S. as a base to travel from, to start with.
Right. And so the point there is you don’t have to jump all in. If this is something you want to test out, you can go live abroad for a month or even two months and just kinda get a feel for it. And if it’s not quite right, then you just come home and you’re back to your current situation. So you can mitigate the risk that way by testing the waters. But maybe to bring all of this home, and you could tell us the story. You told me a story of a couple who actually put this into practice. And they changed their life electively. There wasn’t a job opportunity, anything that was going to take them abroad, they were in maybe that second bucket or maybe even-
… gonna take them abroad, they were in maybe that second bucket or maybe even that first bucket, you’ll be able to tell me. But they wanted to try this out and so they took the slice of action to validate the opportunity and see if it was a good fit for them. So why don’t you tell that story real quick to bring us up.
Yeah, so around the beginning of the year, a couple reached out to me, and they were committed to retiring early. And they decided to sell their home which was on the market, which ultimately sold and they now have cash. And they have chosen where they’re gonna go. They’re gonna go to Mexico to start. They have plans to travel around from there, but they want to start in Mexico. And all they’re waiting for, is for the husband’s pension to vest, and they will have a pension which they can live off of. They have a smallish nest egg but they aren’t anticipating a big lifestyle, and they are now solving for the third piece of that, which is how to fund a bigger lifestyle should they want to. And so they’re working very diligently at what I call the big three, which is coaching, consulting, freelancing or eCommerce. And they’re looking into how they each might do that individually, or how they might team out to do things. But they’re gone in the next … by the end of the summer, they’re gone. So, yeah.
And what I love about that story is, we’re basically providing the listeners with two different models here today. One is yours, where you made this transition through an opportunity that came up professionally, and the other one is theirs, where they are taking matters into their own hands. They know what kind of future they want, and they’re altering their lifestyle in a way that isn’t necessarily risky, but is going to get them one step closer to that world where they are living abroad, and they’re living the lifestyle that they want. They’re in a location that they wanna be in, and they have the opportunity to go to other locations they wanna go to.
So if anybody’s listening at home and they’re kind of on the fence about this, they’re like, “Yeah, that all sounds great, but, that’s not a realistic outcome for me. I’m just Joe Schmoe sitting at home. That’s never gonna happen.” The fact of the matter is, it could. And there are real people out there who are doing it, and I know this is probably a great place to plug your community because there are other real people inside of the Retirement Rehab community, that folks listening at home can connect with. And you’ll hear I’m sure, a dozen stories of people who did the exact same thing, or something very similar, and are living their dreams basically by working and living abroad, and maybe running a business or maintaining an employment situation and doing some stuff on the side, to make that dream a reality.
Yeah, so I would say that inside the community, inside the Retiree Rehab community, it’s a very lively debate as to what people are gonna do. And there’s some people that just say, “I’m just gonna stay in the states, but I think that the idea, want to kind of lower my cost of living.” So they might move from Cleveland to someplace that’s less expensive. They don’t need to be in an urban area. They could be a train ride or a longer car ride away and live more cheaply, and accomplish something in between. So there’s no requirement that in the community, you have to pick a retire abroad option. But I would say, there’s a very lively debate, and people who haven’t thought about it before, or may have thought about it but felt a little bit uncomfortable about it, you could see a lot of questions being asked about, “Well, what’s that really like?” So it’s really kind of exciting to see.
What I always suggest to people is, take your two week vacation and after you’ve researched someplace, go and visit it and see what it’s really like if you’re really intrigued by it. Now you can’t stay in a five star resort, and expect to have that be the cost of living. You have to kind of figure out what it’s gonna be like to live locally, but you can get a very good view by traveling someplace and seeing what the vibe is like in a two week vacation for sure. And obviously, the longer you spend or the more times you go back, the more comfortable you’re gonna be.
Yeah, and I love that idea, and you can do that two or three years in a row, and visit a different location every time, or go back to the same location, just dive a little deeper. Go to a different market, stay in a different neighborhood. And by the end of that, you’ll have a great sense for, if that’s gonna be a valid place for you to live indefinitely or if you wanna keep exploring.
So, I love that, and I love that the community exists at Retirement Rehab, because there’s no better way to, I guess, remove any fears or anxiety somebody has about something, than to talk to someone who’s already done it. Somebody who’s two or three steps ahead of you, and you don’t have to go read a random article on the internet and trust that it’s good advice. You could talk to a person and they will literally tell you, “Here’s what we did, here’s what we would do differently if we could go back and do it,” so I love that you have the book, you have Fund Your Retirement, and you’ve got the community to help anybody who’s lightening and thinking about this out, and give them real world resources, to kind of help them make an educated decision around this. So-
Let me just leave you with one teaser, which people kind of come across at some point in the analysis which is, if you are thinking that you’re going to develop a location independent income, every US taxpayer can earn $104,100 in 2018, and not be subject to federal income tax. So if you are working with a spouse or a partner, you can each earn that and not pay federal income tax. You do have to pay payroll tax at 15%, but that substantially adds to the economics or the economic benefit, of doing this exact same thing if you were to choose to supplement your retirement income, living in the United States as opposed to not living in the United States. That’s a huge deal.
Well that’s a great point to take it home with. You know, Ian, we’ve covered a lot of great information today, and of course everything that we’ve talked about, from the book to the course, to the community, to Numbeo, and some of the resources that you pointed us to, to help kind of make those cost of living calculations, and evaluate a potential location. We’re gonna link all those up in the show notes. But I really appreciate your time as always, Ian, and I know the folks at home are gonna get a lot of value out of this. And I’m sure that they might write into you, and you might have an edit or addition to the book, and it might not be 49 questions, it might be 101 questions next time, because we’re gonna have some folks dial in or email you and send some more questions.
But, thank you for your time today, and we’ll come back. I’m sure we’ll touch on this topic again, and go a little bit deeper. But I appreciate your time today, Ian, thanks so much.
Thanks, James, it’s a pleasure as always. It’s great to hooking up with you, and look forward to doing it again, thanks.
Sounds good, all right, thanks. Take care.
So there you have it. Another great interview with Ian. Today we talked about retiring abroad and how, although it’s a very attractive option in the minds of a lot of folks, who doesn’t want to move to a country that they love visiting, or move to a climate that has the weather that they would love to enjoy, day in and day out? Of course, it’s attractive to a lot of people, but it can also feel overwhelming. Because, strictly from a logistical perspective, there is the physical relocation, there’s a certain perceived expense that comes with that. Of course, you’re gonna be leaving behind some of the personal relationships that you formed here in the US. But, despite all of those things, I think today that we really hammered home the point that there is a substantial amount of upside that comes with retiring abroad. And, a lot of the disadvantages or a lot of the cons that might be associated with the concept, can be overcome thanks to developments that we’ve had in technology, and of course the economy, and just the nature of connectedness that’s taking place around the world.
So, I think that we have established that this is an attractive option, and today we shared a bunch of resources to help you make your personal decision as to whether or not this is the right next step for you, as you progress along your retirement journey. So, just a couple of those resources we talked about today was Ian’s first book, Retire Abroad: 49 Questions Answered, and that is pretty self explanatory in that, if you have questions about what is required to retire abroad and what your lifestyle changes might be, and what kind of impact that might have for your retirement planning, and for extending the runway you have for yourself in retirement, that’s a great resource.
We also shared Ian’s second book, which is called Online Business Basics: Fund Your Retirement. And that is a guide book for helping you build a location independent business that can generate revenue, that can sustain your lifestyle through a retirement, regardless of where you are. If you want to have a home base here in the US and travel frequently, or if you wanna permanently relocate to another country, that book is gonna give you a blueprint for building revenue streams that can sustain that indefinitely.
And then of course, we talked about the Retirement Rehab community as a source of support. If you’re considering this lifestyle, you can connect with people who are two, three, four, or even five steps ahead of you in that process, and learn from their experiences so that you don’t make the same mistakes or have the same delays. So we talked about all of those resources and more, and as always, those will be linked up in the show notes. If you want more information about what we talked about today, make sure that you go to redpillretirement.com. and seek out episode three about retiring abroad. As always, we loved having you join us for this conversation, and we look forward to diving deeper into this topic and more on future episodes of the Red Pill Retirement Podcast. So until next time, hope you’re having a great day and thanks for listening.