Guest Post by Kathleen Peddicord
“I’m ready to make my move, Kathleen,” explained an attendee at our conference in Panama City earlier this month. “I’m ready to go for it.
“But I’m so confused. I mean, what do I do first? And then what do I do second?
“Could you break it down for me, as though I were a child? Seriously, speak to me like one of your children. I need a step-by-step plan…”
Step 1: Identify a destination. Where depends on what’s important to you, what kind of lifestyle you want to lead, and how much money you have to fund your retirement…
Step 2: If you intend to relocate full-time, arrange to meet with an attorney in your chosen destination, one experienced helping foreigners established residency, to determine the best residency visa option given your circumstances. If you don’t intend to relocate full-time, skip to Step 3…
Step 3: Speak with a tax advisor (an attorney who specializes in taxation is best) in your chosen destination…and, as well, with a tax advisor (again, an attorney experienced with international tax issues) in your home country. If you’re an American, it’s especially important that you identify two advisors and connect the dots of your new tax life with those of your old one…
Step 4: Research rental options in your destination. I strongly recommend you rent first, to give yourself a chance to try your new home (country, town, neighborhood, street, beach) on for size before committing to a real estate purchase…
Step 5: Research health insurance options, comparing local, in-country policies (cost, coverage, restrictions) with those of international options like Bupa…
Step 6: Take your administrative life virtual. Make sure you can access all bank accounts, brokerage accounts, credit card accounts, and investment portfolio online and that you can move money around from one to another electronically…
Step 7: Figure out what to do with all your stuff. What’s coming with you, what’s going in storage, what’s being sold, and what’s being given away…
Piece of cake.
This is the approach we’ve decided to take for our first-ever general Retire Overseas Conference, which we’re planning to hold Stateside in May 2011. City and venue will be finalized this coming week, and registration will be open before year-end.
Meantime, the program is set. We’ll walk you through the process, step-by-step, of how to get from where you are now to where you want to be.
We’ll even help you identify the best place for you to think about retiring overseas, given your preferences, your priorities, your personal circumstances, and your retirement budget. The conference will consist of a series of workshops, very interactive, each led by a panel of experts.
Come with a dream. You’ll leave with a plan.
Stay tuned for details. . .
Kathleen Peddicord is the acknowledged expert in overseas retirement. She’s the author of How to Retire Overseas and publisher of the Overseas Retirement Letter. With her kind permission, we’ve reprinted the above post from her blog.