If you plan to start a business overseas — and most of you indicated you’ll have to generate some income to finance your overseas lifestyle — Panama is the country to look at. According to Kathleen Peddicord, publisher of the Overseas Retirement Letter, the country’s friendliness to business is why she and her real estate developer husband moved from Paris to Panama two years ago.

Kathleen explains:

“In the past few months, since my How to Retire Overseas book was published, I’ve been interviewed by at least two dozen members of the media…and every one of them has wondered:

” ‘You moved from Paris to Panama two years ago? Why would you do that?’

“Here’s the truth. If we had no children, no business, and no agenda beyond pursuing the best possible quality of life, we’d have stayed put in Paris. For us, the City of Light (from which I write you today…we’re here for the month of July) is the best place in the world to call home.

“However, about 2 ½ years ago, I did have another agenda. Having sold out my participation in the International Living group, where I’d been publisher for more than 23 years, I decided I wasn’t ready for retirement. What I wanted to do, I realized, was to start over…to build a new business from the ground up.

“France, I knew from experience, was not the place for this. The French are not the nasty, rude people many Americans imagine them to be, but one French stereotype is real: They have little tolerance for the entrepreneurial imagination. The red tape, the bureaucracy, the taxes, and the labor law in this country make it one of the least appealing places on earth to start or operate a business.

“Lief and I knew we’d have to relocate if I wanted to make a real go of a new business venture. But where?

“We took stock of our previous entrepreneurial adventures. By that time, we’d run businesses in the United States, Ireland, France, Nicaragua, Honduras, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Panama.

“When deciding where to base a business, you want to consider five things: the labor pool (how educated and at what cost); the infrastructure; relevant tax rates; the doing-business climate; and local labor law. Considering the world map and taking into account our own experiences, we concluded that, all things considered, Panama is the top choice worldwide if you’re in the market for a place to launch the kind of business I was in the market to launch.

“No place in the world is as entrepreneur-friendly as the United States when it comes to labor law. Nowhere else, for example, can you fire at will (without incurring costly consequences). The rest of the world favors the employee over the employer. We used to joke in France and Ireland that employees were for life. You hired a new one understanding that you were taking a big risk and incurring a long-term liability.

“This is much less true in Panama, but, still, sometimes, we miss the good old days in the States when we could ask an employee to leave on the spot — without written notices, without witnessed warnings, without the calling of tribunals — if his performance warranted it.

“That aside, Panama checks every box you want checked when you set out to start a business. We’ve been delighted by the eclectic pool of labor we’ve been able to tap into in Panama City. In our downtown office today, we have a Romanian, a German, two Russians, three Americans, and four Panamanians. All are educated and hard-working.

“In our high-rise office, we have high-speed wireless Internet, a VOIP phone system, and a telephone number that’s toll-free when dialed from the United States. As we’ve grown, we’ve been able to source bigger and more sophisticated IT and web-support systems, including an American IT pro in the city who responds immediately to our calls for help.

“Panama business taxes? We aren’t liable for any. Structure your business in this country properly, and you won’t be either. Depending where and how your revenues are sourced and, again, how your company is set up, you can operate corporate tax-free.

“The doing-business climate? Panama’s current President Ricardo Martinelli, a successful businessman himself, couldn’t be more pro-entrepreneur. Martinelli has made it his administration’s mission to make Panama the most business-friendly jurisdiction in the hemisphere, and he’s making good progress.

“At a recent American Chamber of Commerce meeting I attended, the Vice Minister of Commerce reported to the assembled group on his ministry’s efforts to attract mega multi-national companies to Panama. They’ve signed on more than 40 big-time international operations to date. Their goal is 100 by year-end.

“What’s getting the attention of the presidents and CEOs of some of the world’s biggest companies?

“They’re looking at the same things I looked at 2 ½ years ago–the labor pool, the tax situation, the infrastructure, and the doing-business climate.

“For them the stakes are much bigger. For my part, I can tell you that our little operation is thriving.”

Photo by Catherine Perkins

Guest Post by Barbara Diggs

Lucky is the expat that has no lingering guilt associated with his or her decision to live abroad. But, I think, rare is that expat also.

Maybe you feel a bit guilty about how living abroad will affect your children, or you worry about the feelings of loved ones left behind. You might even have conflicted feelings about preferring another country over your own.

For me, as excited as I was to move to Paris nine years ago, I felt terribly guilty about leaving my mother behind.

At the time of my decision to move, my father had died only sixteen months earlier and my mother was still adjusting to her new life. Even though my brother and sister lived in the same city as she – and I didn’t – I fretted that I was bailing out at a time that she needed me.



Moreover, I knew that even without the complicating factor of my father’s death, she wouldn’t really understand or appreciate my desire to live in another country. This was a woman who lived (and still lives) five minutes away from where she was born, grew up, married, divorced and married again. Although she’d visited many U.S. states, she had never left the country and nor expressed any desire to, save a vague wish to visit the Caribbean.

I knew she would see my wish to live in Paris as evidence of my so-called “wildness” (she thought me “wild” because I did things like go skiing, parasailing, and make trips down the coast of California alone), and because she’d consider the move to be “wild” and strange, it would worry her.

There was no particular point at which I broke the news to her. I had decided to move to Paris after visiting a friend there on the back end of one of my “wild” ski trips in the French Alps. I was leaning out the windows of my friend’s apartment on rue du Bac, watching ordinary scenes of Parisian life below, when I became gripped with the notion that I had to live in Paris. I didn’t want to be another fly-by-night tourist exclaiming, “I feel like I’m in a movie!” when wandering down Parisian streets. I wanted to have a real relationship with the city.

Still looking out the window, I called my boyfriend (now husband) in New York and said,“Let’s move to Paris,” and he said, “Let’s do it.”

When I returned to the U.S., I was bursting with the news, like a girl in love. My mother heard the news of our decision along with the rest of my family and friends, but other than getting a queer deer-in-the-headlights look on her face when I talked about it, she didn’t say much. She probably didn’t take me seriously since there were few people less equipped to move to Paris than me: I couldn’t speak a word of French, nor was I qualified to practice law in France, and I was too saddled with student loans wait tables or teach English.

It was only when I got a lead on a law job in Paris it dawned on her that I was determined to make the move happen. When I told her about the potential job, a pained expression crossed her face and she wailed: “Can’t you wait until I’m dead?” I shot back: “I have to wait that long? You’re only sixty-five!” But even as I hugged her and told her not to be silly and to think of all the great trips she would take, guilt grabbed my heart and twisted it with both hands.

Fifteen months after I made that fateful call to my boyfriend, he and I moved to Paris. (How we both managed to get jobs is another story.)

A full year later, my mother made her first trip across the Atlantic Ocean. I cannot describe the pleasure it gave me to see my homebody mother sitting in Parisian café (fanning her hands against the smoke, it’s true), savoring a chausson aux pommes, or gasping with delight upon seeing the Eiffel Tower or Sacre Coeur.

As she visited more and more over the years, I marveled that this woman who had only been on an airplane two or three times before I moved, had grown so comfortable with international travel that once when her plane was diverted to Lyon because of fog in Paris, she hardly turned a hair (while I was freaking out with worry). When she safely arrived in Paris she mused that next time she would like to actually see Lyon.

My husband and I have been living in Paris for over nine years now, and my mother comes over two or three times a year. She walks down Parisian streets and handles basic transactions with an ease that makes me swell with pride.

While I still have rushes of guilt about living abroad, a year or two ago, she said something that assured me that I made the right decision. She was at lunch with a friend and other people she didn’t know very well, when the conversation turned to Paris and London. “It made me feel so good that I’d actually visited these places and was able to join the conversation,” she told me later. “I probably knew Paris better than anyone there!”

I realized then that my expat journey has been a journey for her as well — an enlightening, confidence-building journey in which she has discovered the fun of being “wild,” and the pleasure of having an intimate relationship with a city that most people only dream of.

Isn’t it lucky, then, that I didn’t “wait until she was dead” to move to Paris? Sure, she misses me … but if I hadn’t moved, there are other things she would have missed as well.

Barbara Diggs is a lawyer-turned-freelance writer living in Paris. She blogs about her expat life at International Mama.

How has your family influenced your choices? Click the Comment link below.

Every year, Mercer conducts a Quality of Living survey. Results for 2010 were announced a couple of days ago.

Vienna, Austria, keeps its #1 spot for another year. Top 10 cities worldwide for quality of living are:

1. Vienna, Austria
2. Zurich, Switzerland
3. Geneva, Switzerland
4. Vancouver, Canada
5. Auckland, New Zealand
6. Dusseldorf, Germany
7. Frankfurt, Germany
8. Munich, Germany
9. Bern, Switzerland
10. Sydney, Australia

The first US city on the list is Honolulu, at #31. Singapore, at #28, tops the list for Asia. Central and South America and Africa are no shows, at least among the top 50 choices.



Mercer’s results show Paris, France at #34, a far cry from France’s high rankings on most quality of life indices.

Mercer bases their rankings on “detailed assessments and evaluations of 10 key categories and 39 criteria or factors” including:

• Political and social environment
• Medical and health considerations
• Public services and transport
• Consumer goods
• Economic environment
• Schools and education
• Recreation
• Housing
• Socio-cultural environment
• Natural environment

Mercer’s goal is to help companies and governments figure out how much to pay their international employees — so they really don’t evaluate the 221 cities on their list in the same way you or I would when choosing a place to live.

You can read more about their methodology here.

This year, Mercer also provided an Eco-Ranking for the first time, rating cities on such environmental concerns as water availability, water potability, waste removal, sewage, air pollution and traffic congestion.

Top 10 Green Cities include:

1. Calgary, Canada
2. Honolulu, US
3. Ottawa, Canada
4. Helsinki, Finland
5. Wellington, New Zealand
6. Minneapolis, US
7. Adelaide, Australia
8. Copenhagen, Denmark
9. Kobe Japan and Oslo, Norway (tied)

Singapore again topped the list of Asian cities, coming in at #22. Africa was represented by Capetown, South Africa, #30. South America almost made the list, with Point-A-Pitre, Guadaloupe (one of the Windward Islands in the eastern Caribbean) coming in at #49.

While these lists provide some interesting comparisons and information, don’t take them as gospel in deciding where you might like to live as an expat.

Don’t miss new information! Click here to get posts from Future Expats Forum in your email.

Guest Post by Catherine Perkins

The author in Paris, April 2010

When I left the United States in February for a two month stay in France, I was very prepared. I had a bag loaded with French language resources (a dictionary, a phrase book, a traveler’s guide), and some new cold-weather clothing. Living in Florida my entire life, I’d never had much need for a heavy coat before, but I purchased a lovely blue parka just before I left.

I never once used the language books, and I ditched the parka my first week there (too flashy) in favor of a black coat. So basically, I was totally unprepared.

No matter how much research you do ahead of time, there are some cultural differences that you just can’t prepare for. Table manners, for example. Although I’d read plenty of materials beforehand about the order of meal courses, it wasn’t until I was eating dinner with French people that I realized how differently they held their silverware.



Or one time, after a long day touring Paris (almost completely on foot, mind you), my friend and I stopped for dinner at a restaurant. I ordered water immediately, and had to wait a long time before they brought it out. Once it arrived and he poured me a glass, I gulped down the entire thing in one go. My friend couldn’t have looked any more disgusted than if I’d belched at the table. Apparently sucking down a glass of water like I did (even if you’re really thirsty!) is a social faux pas. How was I to know?

But it wasn’t just etiquette. Everything about France, from the layout of the cities to the mindset of the citizens, was foreign.

When I went, I was expecting I’d have to speak French all the time; I thought I didn’t have a choice. I found that it was very much the opposite. As soon as people realized I was from America, they immediately switched languages. I didn’t have very many opportunities to practice French because everyone around me wanted to practice English! And I’m not talking about a few people here and there, either. I mean everyone: the shopkeepers, waitresses, University students, delivery boys, people selling flowers on the street.

If something like that happened in the United States — if a French person came to visit Florida — the people around him would not be taking advantage of the opportunity to practice a foreign language; they’d be demanding he speak English.

It was cultural differences like these that amazed and sometimes embarrassed me. Truly, the only way to learn about a foreign culture is to experience it firsthand. You can’t be afraid to make mistakes, because you will make mistakes regardless. You’ll discover things that you like and other things that you don’t like; some things will remind you of home and others will leave you completely lost.

Here are a few things I learned:

• If you want to experience a different culture and way of life, try not to have expectations.
• Don’t constantly compare it to what you’re used to, because no matter how much you believe that it can’t be so different, it often will be.
• You probably won’t get the same comforts you’re accustomed to (tiny refrigerators, toilet in a separate room from the sink).
• Take time to really try living as the local people do. Relax and let yourself enjoy each moment. Things will feel different, strange, and foreign, but that should be part of the fun.

Whether you travel, live in, or are moving to a foreign country, I hope you dive in and enjoy the experience of learning about a different culture.

Recently, the Live and Invest Overseas e-letter has been talking about France in the run-up to their upcoming conference about living and investing there. France is not one of the countries we’ve been considering as a retirement destination because of the expense. But with headlines like, “Your Second Home In France (Could Cost As Little As 45,000 Euro),” is it worth reconsidering, I wonder?

Correspondent Lucy Culpepper writes with enthusiasm about the Languedoc and Bearn regions of the country and touts a one-bedroom apartment for 28,000 Euro, a stone townhouse needing renovation for $42,700, a two-bedroom village house furnished for $70,419. . . she makes it sound very enticing.

Kathleen Peddicord writes glowingly about the joys of Parisian life, which she and her family enjoyed for several years before moving to Panama.

“We lived in Paris for four years, with two children, and I’m here to tell you that we were able to control our costs within a very reasonable budget.”

Unfortunately, she doesn’t define that “very reasonable budget.” According to an email, it’s possible to “live in France on US $1,300 a month.”

Would that it were true! Year after year, France is voted the country with the best quality of life and best health care. Our daughter has just returned from a 2-1/2 month trip to France and she definitely fell in love with Paris. Our son speaks French fluently, has fond memories of a visit and speaks of going there to live. The thought of living in France is tremendously appealing on many levels.

I just have a hard time believing that it’s affordable on a Social Security income.

I’d love to hear from any expats in France who can provide some real-world experience!

It’s been a while since I’ve done any kind of list, so I thought I’d give you a look today at some of the expat blogs I follow, and that you might find helpful, too.

1. Empty Nest Expat. Currently living in Prague, the blogger describes herself as “an American expatriate bursting with enthusiasm to GET OUT AND EXPERIENCE OUR GLOBE! ”

2. Living In the Sun. This is a website with four offshoot blogs, each dealing with a European/Mediterranean country. There’s one for France, Portugal, Spain and Greece.
3. Soul Travelers 3. Two fifty-something parents and a nine-year old travel the world in “an epic odyssey: open-ended, years long slow trip around the world as a family adventure, unschool, spiritual journey and lifestyle.”
4. Expat+Harem. A Berkely, CA native living in Istanbul with her Turkish husband.
5. My Several Worlds. The author is a traveler and photographer. Originally from Ottawa, Canada, she currently lives and works in Taipei. Her site features gorgeous photos, as well as information about teaching English abroad.
6. Career by Choice. Megan Fitzgerald helps expats develop their careers abroad.
7. Traveling4Health. While not specifically an expat blog, this is a terrific resource for anyone interested in health care abroad.
8. Mid-Atlantic English, the blog of an American who’s lived for an extended time in the UK.
9. The Cranky Yank. This is the personal blog of Dan Prescher from International Living, and he always has a unique perspective.

   Do you have a favorite expat blog? Share it by clicking on the Comment link below.

   ]]> http://futureexpats.com/9-expat-blogs-to-follow/feed 7 http://futureexpats.com/its-not-the-easter-bunny-its-the-easter-bell http://futureexpats.com/its-not-the-easter-bunny-its-the-easter-bell#comments Tue, 06 Apr 2010 02:12:57 +0000 FutureExpat http://futureexpats.com/?p=1808

   Gifts from the Easter Bell

   My youngest daughter is halfway through a 2-1/2 month sojourn in France. This Easter, she was fortunate to spend the weekend with a French family in the village of Soissons.

   The village is northeast of Paris, about halfway to the Belgian border. The Cathedral Saint-Gervais & Saint-Protais dates from

   Continue reading It’s Not the Easter Bunny, It’s the Easter Bell!

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   Gifts from the Easter Bell

   My youngest daughter is halfway through a 2-1/2 month sojourn in France. This Easter, she was fortunate to spend the weekend with a French family in the village of Soissons.

   The village is northeast of Paris, about halfway to the Belgian border. The Cathedral Saint-Gervais & Saint-Protais dates from the 12th century, and a municipal museum is housed in the former Saint Léger Abbey, also started during the 12th century. They approached the village down avenues lined with Prunius trees in full blossom.
   
   My daughter’s weekend family included

   • maman

   • papa
   • two grandmeres
   • two single grown children
   • one son with his
     • wife

     • daughter
     • infant son

   At one point, there were 10 people around the table. Most of the conversation was in French, German and English but Dutch, Russian, Spanish, Japanese and the old language of Brittany were also represented.

   Chocolate and Candy

   The French hide chocolate and candy for the kids, but the perpetrater isn’t the Easter Bunny. It’s the cloche (bell). This apparently came about because all the church bells are silent from Good Friday until Easter morning, so when the bells return, the candy appears. It’s hidden outside, not indoors.

   The Easter Bell did hide chocolate outside on the terrace for the little girl to find. But my daughter and each of the other young adults received a gift of candy and chocolate as well — they just didn’t have to hunt for it!

   Good food played an important role in the weekend’s festivities (naturellement — it’s France!). Meals included a duck confit, lamb, and a wonderful orange dessert.
   

   

   You can't see it, but there's a layer of cake at the bottom.

   
   My daughter also tried escargot for the first time. She’s not a big fan, but the garlic sauce it was served with was delicious!

   Other notable foods included a homemade vegetable soup, quiche, apple tart, brioche, French cheeses, and bread.

   Have you experienced a holiday in another country that you’d like to share? Click the Comment link below.

   ]]> http://futureexpats.com/its-not-the-easter-bunny-its-the-easter-bell/feed 0 http://futureexpats.com/almost-frenchill-never-be-french http://futureexpats.com/almost-frenchill-never-be-french#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 01:17:40 +0000 FutureExpat http://futureexpats.com/?p=1566 Last week my youngest daughter flew from Orlando, FL to Europe. She’ll be spending about 2-1/2 months in Lille, France to round out her gap year between high school and college. In honor of her French adventure, I decided to review a couple of books by expats in France.

   Almost French, subtitled Love and

   Continue reading Almost French/I’ll Never Be French

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   Last week my youngest daughter flew from Orlando, FL to Europe. She’ll be spending about 2-1/2 months in Lille, France to round out her gap year between high school and college. In honor of her French adventure, I decided to review a couple of books by expats in France.

   Almost French, subtitled Love and a New Life in Paris, was written by Sarah Turnbull. An Australian journalist, she met Frédéric while traveling in Eastern Europe, visited him in Paris, and ended up making a life with him. She explains:

   “I left Australia hoping to cram a lifetime of adventures into one unforgettable year. Instead, I ended up with a new life. … The idea was to immerse myself in fascinating foreign cultures, to work as a freelance journalist in Eastern Europe, whichin my mind bubbled with unwritten, hard-hitting stories.

   “When [Frédéric] invited me to visit him in Paris, I’d hesitated just long enough to make sure he was serious before saying yes. Why not? After all, this is what travelling is all about, isn’t it: seizing opportunities, doing things you wouldn’t normally do, being open to the accidental?

   “That trip to Paris was more than eight years ago now. And except for four months when I resumed my travels, I have been living here ever since.”

   
   
   Turnbull wittily describes her introduction to French life, her realizations that the French are different, and her growing appreciation for what she found. And what she found was a society that demanded propriety, that was largely uninterested in her until she’d been among them for several years, that expected standards of dress, grooming, manners and table setting completely alien to her informal Australian background. A society where introducing oneself at a cocktail party was scandalously bold!

   “Coming to terms with this emphasis on appearances is tough. … In France, vanity is not a vice. Rigorous self-maintenance is imbued from bith – it’s a mark of self-pride. … Men are expected to pay close attention to their appearances as well. The loaded phrase, “se mettre en valeur” is used all the time. It means “to make the most of yourself.” This is not something the French do when they feel like it: they do it every day. Sloppiness in appearance is condered a fatal disease. Once it takes hold, you’re on an irreversible downhill slide. You’ve committed the unforgivable. You’ve let yourself go.”

   She and Frédéric disagree over visits to his home in the north. To him, it is normal to spend at least one weekend a month with his father in the town where he grew up, surrounded by extended family. She finds the northern part of the country ugly, and is very uncomfortable immersed in his family’s rituals. The beaches of his home area bear no resemblance to the hot, sunny, sandy Australian beaches in her native Sydney.

   She spends his friends’ dinner parties crying in the bathroom after being treated like a piece of furniture for hours. Her only female friends are expats like herself.

   When she considers getting a dog, she notes that Parisian dogs are treated better than Parisian children.

   “Where I grew up, dogs are dogs. … But in Paris, a city of roughly two hundred thousand dogs, … canines lead lives that are remarkably similar to their masters. They stay in chateaux-hotels and have expensive haircuts. A night out means dressing up and dining at fine restaurants. What makes this unrestrained spoiling even more bizarre is that it’s totally at odds with the strict discipline the French mete out to their kids. While children are expected to sit rod-straight at restaurants, eating and conversing like little grownups, dogs are babied andindulged, perched on velvet stools and hand-fed from plates.”

   Gradually, Turnbull’s perceptions change. She starts seeing beauty in the northern landscape, and fits in better with Fréderíc’s family and friends. She finds that the Parisian system of neighborhoods allows people of different walks of life to be known and accepted. She sees value in the French habit of never letting oneself go. She recognizes that a woman who initially looked through her at dinner parties has become a friend. She has become almost French.
   
   American Mark Greenside, on the other hand, freely admits in his title, “I’ll Never Be French.” His book chronicles a vacation in Brittany which led to an impulse purchase of a house there. After years of being an American renter, he is now a French homeowner, splitting his time between the two countries.

   The French people he meets in the tiny Breton village don’t bear much resemblance to the Parisians described by Turnbull. Despite his almost total lack of French language skills and his sloppy personal appearance, his neighbors take him under their collective wing. They share meals, introduce him to the community, Madame helps him find and purchase his house and saves him from wasting a lot of extra money hiring one contractor over another. Nevertheless,

   “If this were the end of a story, things would reconcile, add up, I would add up, or at least have direction, there’d be no loose ends, and the end might take you back to the beginning. But this isn’t a story, it’s my life, and the French and American sides don’t easily fit. When I’m in France, I see how American I am. In the US, it’s the reverse. I now try to bring the best of my American self … to France and the best of my French self … to America, and often fall short in both places.”

   Almost French was published in 2002, I’ll Never Be French in 2008. The people and lives they describe are very different. I’m left wondering whether Parisians are really so different from Bretons? Did French people change so much in six years? Do the French treat scruffy men better than informal women? I suppose all of these are true and none of them are true.

   The bottom line is that we bring to any life experience the sum total of our personalities, experiences, education and training then try to make sense of the results. And that is true whether we still live in the town where we were born, or a strange country halfway round the world.

   Buy from Amazon

   
   Click here to see previously reviewed books available for purchase at Amazon.
   ]]> http://futureexpats.com/almost-frenchill-never-be-french/feed 5 http://futureexpats.com/which-countries-have-the-best-health-care http://futureexpats.com/which-countries-have-the-best-health-care#comments Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:50:10 +0000 FutureExpat http://futureexpats.com/?p=1253 In the Expat Web group on LinkedIn, a member asked recently, “As an Expat, which countries do you think have the best and worst healthcare systems?”

   Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, Canada, Malta and France all received positive comments. One poster said Japan’s was “the worst I ever experienced.” The US was mentioned favorably, but “only

   Continue reading Which Countries Have the Best Health Care?

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   In the Expat Web group on LinkedIn, a member asked recently, “As an Expat, which countries do you think have the best and worst healthcare systems?”

   Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, Canada, Malta and France all received positive comments. One poster said Japan’s was “the worst I ever experienced.” The US was mentioned favorably, but “only if you have good insurance. Prices are about 5 to 10 times the costs of France or Belgium.” This kind of anecdotal information is interesting, but not all that useful.

   Of course to most expats and would-be expats, especially those of us who are approaching retirement age, health care is an important consideration in where we choose to live. What is its quality? Is it at least as good as what I’m used to? How expensive is it? How accessible is it? Will I have to be in a major city to have quality care available?

   So what’s a concerned health care consumer to do?

   There’s an interesting bubble chart on the Columbia University website, showing the average life expectancy and health care spending by country.

   The US is way off by itself as the biggest spender. But our life expectancy (77 years) lags behind Japan (85), Switzerland, Australia, France, Canada, Norway, Spain, New Zealand, Austria, Korea, Portugal, UK, Luxembourg and Denmark, all of whom spend considerably less (around half!) than we do per capita.

   The WHO (World Health Organization) has published a listing of medical care by country. Compiled in the year 2000, it’s a bit outdated, but might provide a good starting point. You can see it here.

   A Few Considerations

   First, I think it’s safe to assume that the care you’ll receive in rural areas will not be as up-to-date or comprehensive as the care you can receive in major cities. That’s true in the US just as much as anywhere else.

   If living in a bustling metro area is not your taste, how fast and easy is transportation to those areas you’re considering? Use your common sense – if your dream retirement is on a remote beach or mountain-top retreat that’s an 8-hour drive over mostly dirt roads to get to the nearest city, that will be an issue in accessing quality health care. If it’s an hour or two over good roads, you’ll have significantly better access.

   Are there hot spots of medical tourism in the country you’re considering? If so, you can be pretty well assured those doctors will speak English, have up-to-date training and use modern equipment. According to Business Week:

   “The low cost and high quality of medical service is a big selling point for Singapore and Thailand, which have heavily promoted medical tourism in recent years. Hospital costs are as much as one-half what they would cost in the U.S.” Read the entire article here

   Other popular medical tourism destinations include Panama, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia, South Korea, India and Israel. There are plenty of websites which discuss medical tourism, as any Google search will show.

   Once you’ve narrowed down some possible destinations with health care facilities that will meet your needs, conduct your own research. When you visit the area, ask a lot of questions, find out what other expats do for health care, visit the hospitals and clinics if you can.

   Ultimately, as with any other aspect of your move, you need to just do it.

   
   ]]> http://futureexpats.com/which-countries-have-the-best-health-care/feed 5 http://futureexpats.com/where-in-the-world-do-employees-get-the-most-time-off http://futureexpats.com/where-in-the-world-do-employees-get-the-most-time-off#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:41:19 +0000 FutureExpat http://futureexpats.com/?p=1236 According to a survey by Mercer, it’s not who you might think! By looking at a country’s statutory annual leave, statutory holidays and public holidays, they compiled a list of where employees get the most time off. One caveat: it’s based on what an employee working a five-day week for 10 years is

   Continue reading Where in the World Do Employees Get the Most Time Off?

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   According to a survey by Mercer, it’s not who you might think! By looking at a country’s statutory annual leave, statutory holidays and public holidays, they compiled a list of where employees get the most time off. One caveat: it’s based on what an employee working a five-day week for 10 years is entitled to.

   At the top? Brazil and Lithuania, with 41 days annually. Finland, France and Russia follow, with 40 days. The rest of Europe gets 33-38 days.

   Where does the US fit? At the bottom with 10 days, because the US has no statutory vacation requirement. (They do note that many employers give 15 days of vacation after 10 years of service.) China beats the US, with 21 days off. Interestingly, Hungary calculates mandatory vacation time based on the age of the employee, with more time off as you age.

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