[999900000999]

> but I could probably sell my belongings and live a very good life on a beach somewhere in Latin America

I actually think it’s easier to cut back vs chasing some magic high networth before retirement.

The average salary in Costa Rica is only 1200$ a month. Meaning if you live an average life there you might be able to retire with 240k. Assuming 6% yields per year.

[anticorporate]

Agreed. I'm quite content living a rather simple lifestyle, owning very few new things, doing almost of the maintenance on my belongings myself. The "magic number" was really more about giving myself permission than anything else.

The one thing you do have to factor for, though, is what happens if you don't keep your health. The thing that kept me in tech a little longer than I hoped to be there was a parent with long-term care needs. I could live a happy life on ~$2k a month, but it took five times that just to keep my mom alive the last few years of her life.

Living that cheaply does require adopting the lifestyle. But cooking at home or eating a casado from the local soda instead of a US-style restaurant meal sounds preferable to me anyway.

[999900000999]

Sorry about your family’s experience with the Healthcare Industrial Complex.

It’s really designed to drain every last dime.

As bleak as it sounds I made sure to take a long vacation last year at the spur of the moment. Tomorrow isn’t promised and you might save for a retirement that you never see.

I hope to do this every time I’m laid off or otherwise with an abundance of free time

[Loughla]

Like all things, there's a balance between spending everything now and planning for the future.

I always tell my kids that they won't inherit much cash, but they're having a great time with all of the vacations and fun equipment we have.

We will have enough money to retire and live for 30-35 years at most, frugally, and 15-20 if we really go nuts. I'll be dead waaaaayyyy before that, so it'll be up to my spouse to piss away the cash.

[999900000999]

I agree.

After seeing how fast my family wasted the proceeds of an estate that took 60 years to build, I don't think leaving a large amount of money is a great idea.

A certain someone just didn't want to work, and while that's fine if you invest the money and move to Vietnam, it won't sustain you if you want to stay in America.

I'm sure your spouse would rather party with you today vs having no you and a lot of money. Can you retire today ?

[lbrito]

Don't wanna spoil your dream, but have you actually lived in Latin America? Cost of living might not be what you think. I also have the feeling that foreigners don't really understand the crime situation. Of course, its a big regions with some variation.

[anticorporate]

I've not lived there but I've spent significant time in a handful of places there. I think a lot of people have cost-of-living shock because they try to live a US lifestyle in a place where import costs vastly outweigh any savings on local goods.

My reason for wanting to move comes more from culture and place than cost of living. That said, I do expect my cost of living to be lower, because my cost of living is artificially high where I live today; I could probably cut it in half by moving domestically in the same state.

Crime is a legitimate concern, but it's highly variable across the vast expanse of Latin America. There are very safe places to live across the region, but you need to do your research.

[lbrito]

Re: cost of living, I'm thinking more about things like housing and utilities.

Where I live (BC), power costs around CAD 0.085/kWh. In my home state in Brazil, the cost is CAD 0.25/kWh - 3 times higher. Natural gas is 20 times more expensive, although you'll only be using it for cooking. Basically any consumer good is as expensive or more expensive. Inflation is higher, credit is much more expensive. Housing is significantly cheaper than in large US/CA metros, but isn't exactly cheap: a nice apartment in my city rents goes for about 1500 CAD.

Like you said, its a big region. I don't know much about the rest of Latin America, but from the conversations I've had with people from other countries, they say yeah, we're on the same boat. Crime is also increasingly metastasizing as a problem in previously safer regions (Uruguay, Argentina, Equador).

[anticorporate]

This is exactly the kind of calculus I hope everyone does. For example, I can't say I'm jealous of much else about the cost of living in BC, but my electricity rates in North Carolina are more than double yours, much closer to Brazil's. Everywhere's a little different. My biggest expenses (taxes, housing, and health care) will probably go down in most of the places I'd consider moving to, but some things (like transportation, and consumer goods as you mention) I would expect to go up, especially since I spend less in those categories than most people I know to begin with.

[999900000999]

I was trying to match the parent comment. Much of Asia would probably cheaper and safer.

I did spend significant time in Asia and I found myself actually more comfortable than in the US. People just leave each other alone.