It’s always the third question.
“You’re retiring??” Yes.
“Where are you going to live – are you staying here, or moving?” We’re headed to Panamà.
“Why Panamà?”
Why, indeed.
First, the practical reasons:
- Weather. We wanted somewhere with warmer weather. A friend of mine put it succinctly when discussing location: “I don’t want to be old in the cold.” That resonates, and with being close to the equator, Panamà checked that box. Plus, no threat from hurricanes.
- Stable government. With so much uncertainty in the world, we wanted somewhere where things weren’t volatile. With a key location and an economy driven by the Panamà Canal, that box was checked.
- First world healthcare. None of us is getting any younger. We wanted to be someplace where we could get the standard of healthcare that we could receive in the U.S. Panamà has a burgeoning medical tourism industry and has hospitals that are affiliated with Johns Hopkins.
There were other reasons, of course – cost of living, currency, Panamà’s pensionado visa program (all topics to be discussed at length later), but those were the three reason I would provide.
The personal answer goes a little deeper.
We are fortunate to take retirement early. Our corporate careers were fulfilling, but we both wanted to give back to a community. We’ve both had the opportunity to live for extended periods of time outside of the U.S., and we wanted to experience that again. We both felt that living outside of the U.S. makes us feel more like part of the global community.
In Panamà, we think we’ll be able to do that, as well as give back to country where we’ve chosen to migrate for much of the year.
What form will that take? At this point we don’t know, but we’re looking forward to finding out.
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