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Retire Abroad.
Anyone here consider retiring abroad? A monthly income of $3-4k puts you at about 90th Percentile in a lot of countries in South America, East Asia, or Eastern Europe. Should be very easily attainable for most rads with dividend earning investments.
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35 Replies
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Yes, I have.
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Yes and many of my Rads friends are also thinking the same.
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Sounds like a plan, if you like the place.
My brothers and their families , and community of friends, are all where I live, hard to imagine me moving away even to somewhere 1 hour north, if I had any choice.
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How do you feel about getting healthcare in Prague or Bogota?
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It all depends on who you encounter in the ED. It could be a Healthcare provider ( a new resident on call or someone) in a California hospital that is understaffed and overwhelmed , who completely misses your mothers diagnosis of meningitis. It is not dependent on Prague or Bogota. It is a lottery.
Also people are flying to different countries for CABG or knee replacement for fraction of costs.-
You could even do a little telerad to help pay the bills. Check out a website called international living – discusses housing costs, medical care, education etc — all the information you might need to live abroad.
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It would make more sense to work part of the year in the US and vacation the other part abroad, even as a per diem.
The salary reduction for “retiring” abroad is insane. Interviewed for a job in New Zealand that paid $950 a day. The cost of living adjustment still makes taking a job like that extremely stupid.
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Quote from rads4meplease
Anyone here consider retiring abroad? A monthly income of $3-4k puts you at about 90th Percentile in a lot of countries in South America, East Asia, or Eastern Europe. Should be very easily attainable for most rads with dividend earning investments.
In the places where 3-4k puts you in the 90th percentile, you really want to be in the 99th percentile 😉
Most of the expats seem to be back much faster than they anticipated. If you kids or grandkids, they are not going to come visit you more than once in Thailand.
Keep a low maintenance place in the US as your base and spend one or two month stretches in those interesting locations. Work some locums while stateside to get beer money and select another destination for the next trip. If you are flexible on travel, flights are cheap. Rent a place locally. Most locales, if you spend less than 90 days consider you a ‘tourist’ and you dont have visa hassles.
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On the medical care stuff.
90% + of medical care for older individuals is taking care of chronic conditions and medication dependent. Doctors in these places you mention, especially in the “private” sector as are probably just as good if not better at dealing with those things than docs in the USA. To boot, medications are pennies on the dollar. For complex stuff (i.e. knee replacement surgery, bypass, etc.) would likely make the the trip to the USA.-
I’ve seen multiple articles (I think mostly in WSJ) about people retiring to places like Panama, etc
Seems to work well for people who meet 2 conditions: (1) don’t have a strong family/social reason to live in the US (2) middle retirement income (say ~$50k).
Sounds like those people really do get a marked boost from the cost of living, in terms of house/eating out/etc.
But, for most of us (1) is a show-stopper. And if you’re spending $300k/year in those places I’m guessing you need to live in a gated community with private security, etc. -
Quote from PirateRad
On the medical care stuff.
90% + of medical care for older individuals is taking care of chronic conditions and medication dependent. Doctors in these places you mention, especially in the “private” sector as are probably just as good if not better at dealing with those things than docs in the USA. To boot, medications are pennies on the dollar. For complex stuff (i.e. knee replacement surgery, bypass, etc.) would likely make the the trip to the USA.When you are ‘young retired’, that may be true.
Just dealing with issues for an elderly relative who did the expat retirement thing 40 years ago and wasn’t savy enough to return in time. That government medical care isn’t all that great once you hit your late 80s and you are in need of specialized medical surgical services.
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Quote from fw
Quote from PirateRad
On the medical care stuff.
90% + of medical care for older individuals is taking care of chronic conditions and medication dependent. Doctors in these places you mention, especially in the “private” sector as are probably just as good if not better at dealing with those things than docs in the USA. To boot, medications are pennies on the dollar. For complex stuff (i.e. knee replacement surgery, bypass, etc.) would likely make the the trip to the USA.When you are ‘young retired’, that may be true.
Just dealing with issues for an elderly relative who did the expat retirement thing 40 years ago and wasn’t savy enough to return in time. That government medical care isn’t all that great once you hit your late 80s and you are in need of specialized medical surgical services.
Agree. My parents retired to Canada around age 55, and even that first world nation’s healthcare they didn’t feel comfortable relying on in late old age.
They regularly returned to the US for preventive services and surgeries.
They’re now late 80s and I drove them up to the Canada for what is very likely the last time in May of this year.
They had a blast for nearly thirty years though!-
The above are all wise observations.
Even rural locations in-country are difficult places to live with chronic medical conditions. And essentially getting old is a chronic condition.
I lived in a place in the military where if you had any sort of sub specialized emergent medical condition basically the treatment was a rosary and a handshake.
Besides, despite all the complaints about the USA there are a multitude places I would live here over abroad. The problem is deciding which one.-
Why though. Retiring very comfortably in the US is easily attainable for most rads.
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Quote from tigershark06
Why though. Retiring very comfortably in the US is easily attainable for most rads.
Yeah. I can see falling in love with a place and just wanting to spend your life there.
But the “move abroad to make your money go farther” thing doesn’t seem to make much sense for a group that is in the top 2-3% of American income.
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Quote from dergon
Quote from tigershark06
Why though. Retiring very comfortably in the US is easily attainable for most rads.
Yeah. I can see falling in love with a place and just wanting to spend your life there.
But the “move abroad to make your money go farther” thing doesn’t seem to make much sense for a group that is in the top 2-3% of American income.
Not sure if you knew the first PACS admin from Philips. They used to tinker together speechmike things in MSI. He retired and they went to somewhere over by Philippines. I forget where exactly but supposedly some city had a lot of British people and apparently money goes way farther.
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Frequently the above is exmilitary and had lived there, or their wife is Filipino.
A white howlie pulling out from Iowa and moving to Luzon would not go well on many levels.-
retire and move to bali, and then live like a king with multiple full time servants
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Ive lived in the third world for a year as an adult. If someone is considering it, easy enough: try it out for a year without making any permanent changes or moves.
Im guessing that those who are affluent and have been living comfortably in the United States their whole life generally will not find the sacrifices of living in a 3rd world country acceptable. There will be exceptions, but most of us want our creature comforts and like the city/town to be clean and sanitation efficient and not smelly everywhere and poverty everywhere. Were not talking about retiring to Dubai.
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Why not just get a vacation/retirement place in Hawaii and do some Telerad from over there? -
Because thats doesnt let you live like a king on the cheap
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Quote from Flounce
Im guessing that those who are affluent and have been living comfortably in the United States their whole life generally will not find the sacrifices of living in a 3rd world country acceptable. There will be exceptions, but most of us want our creature comforts and like the city/town to be clean and sanitation efficient and not smelly everywhere and poverty everywhere. Were not talking about retiring to Dubai.
That’s why I said that you want to be in the top 1% in those places. Gated community, driver, security, cook gardener, staff attorney (and chief bribe dispenser) to deal with the authorities.
I would hate that life 🙂
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Quote from boomer
The above are all wise observations.
Even rural locations in-country are difficult places to live with chronic medical conditions. And essentially getting old is a chronic condition.
[/Quote]That’s the situation in some of the rural hospitals I have worked at. Now if you are tied in with a big family, getting old ‘in place’ is doable. If you have a supply of underemployed grandkids, nieces and nephews who can drive you to the ASC two hours away to get X/Y/Z done or someone who will pull his truck camper in the hospital lot while you are admitted. Without that family support, getting up in age in a rural location just sux. Had a early local BC recurrence in tumor board a few months ago. Seemed puzzling until someone figured out that the aged Pt was a no-show for RT due to transportation issues. Social work tries to do their magic, but there are limitations on how far the transport companies are allowed to go. You can’t call an Uber if your address is ‘general delivery’.
Acute care isn’t so much of an issue. Even our little cats&dogs hospital can diagnose a perfed sigmoid and big-U will send a helicopter for anything the ER can sell as cardiac. But try to see a hepatologist and you need to be prepared for a two day trip.
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When my wife and I retire, we were thinking about keeping our current home and living in different areas of the world for a month or so at a time via airbnb or equivalent. Seems like it would be more adventurous.
Long term, usa healthcare is unbeatable in my opinion so wont leave permanently.-
Quote from lk
When my wife and I retire, we were thinking about keeping our current home and living in different areas of the world for a month or so at a time via airbnb or equivalent. Seems like it would be more adventurous.
Same … lots of travel while we’re physically able, but we’re not leaving the home city.
Long term, usa healthcare is unbeatable in my opinion so wont leave permanently.
Especially if you’re on medicare
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Quote from dergon
Quote from lk
When my wife and I retire, we were thinking about keeping our current home and living in different areas of the world for a month or so at a time via airbnb or equivalent. Seems like it would be more adventurous.
Same … lots of travel while we’re physically able, but we’re not leaving the home city.
Long term, usa healthcare is unbeatable in my opinion so wont leave permanently.
Especially if you’re on medicare
You have a rather large ball and chain holding you to the home city for the foreseeable future.
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Quote from drad123
Quote from dergon
Quote from lk
When my wife and I retire, we were thinking about keeping our current home and living in different areas of the world for a month or so at a time via airbnb or equivalent. Seems like it would be more adventurous.
Same … lots of travel while we’re physically able, but we’re not leaving the home city.
Long term, usa healthcare is unbeatable in my opinion so wont leave permanently.
Especially if you’re on medicare
You have a rather large ball and chain holding you to the home city for the foreseeable future.
Yeah. But mrs_dergon and I had extensive discussions before proceeeding with the build about whether we planned to move out of cleveland at some point in the next 15-ish years to a retirement place. The answer was no.
We already have our Canada island. So this house in CLE plus that … and then rent other places and travel.
Had we been thinking about moving to Florida or something we wouldn’t have built the big house here. -
one of the rad groups I know is already hiring rads to work FTE/PTE for USA rates and read prelims… even residents are making the switch, 2 that i know of are leaving the fly over states to go live in APAC.
USA doesn’t seem to be the great place it once was. -
where is APAC, Why not PRC or PRNK
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acronym for “Asia-Pacific”
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the number of jobs for doing prelims overseas is still pretty small. -
depends who you know and where you look. I know of a few groups building up prelim teams (non of which are TRS). Prelims are making a big come back for overnight ER work.
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India is still significantly worse than US. All Desis want to immigrate here but can’t visas.
Sure, there are signs that the future potential there is good, but there is a long way to go.
If one is a wealthy Desi Rad in the US, no way they would move to work in India or retire there.
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not sure any rads want to live in India. More like Thailand, Maldives, Fiji… the more desirable locations. As long as you have decent internet or starlink you can live where ever you want. Isn’t that the point of telerad?
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Maldives I would consider but max for a few weeks a year. -
I would be very interested in moving to Europe permanently despite having all my.family here. Never been to South America and don’t want to due to its 3rd world/crime element. Went to Asia once and its no good for living. Tropical climate and lack of walkable cities, whats the point… but I don’t think even cheap parts of Europe are really cheap, just a little cheaper than here and with falling usd that will not last. And the usual countries for expats like france/italy/Spain would all have higher taxes for w-2 income than usa. So financially it wouldn’t make sense unless the salary is almost the same.. and if u get fired because the job market in usa changes, then u have to pack your bags and leave. In any case I would be seriously interested in doing prelim reads overnight in the future for a private group or hospital if such positions really existed.
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