Housing and Retirement

Every now and then, I see an online article about retirees overseas.  They get a big bang for their buck and have a better retirement than they could afford here in the States.  I wonder about that.  I have lived abroad.  It's not for everybody.  I never realized how truly American I was until I spent time overseas.  I never lived in a country where I didn't know the language.  I'm pretty adventurous but I can't imagine being 60 or 70 years old and trying to learn French or Rumanian or something.  I speak Spanish fluently but I would never consider living in Costa Rica.  I know I would not adapt.  I'm too set in my ways.  I'm too American.  When it comes to living abroad, it's the small things that get in the way.  All the little cultural cues that people in another country understand immediately can be opaque to foreigners.  This is not for me.  I want to feel comfortable.  My husband wants a tropical paradise and even started talking to me about a Caribbean Island.  No, too expensive.  On an island we would be food poor.  Anything not found in abundance on the island would be prohibitively expensive. Milk costs ten dollars a gallon.   I'm cheap, that's not for me.  So I decided to think about Florida which has the same weather but is on the mainland and part of the USA.  You could live there just as cheaply as in some more exotic places, possibly even more cheaply and with the savings travel, if so inclined.  The biggest living expense is housing.  If you can keep housing costs to a minimum, then even a social security check will do.  Keep an eye on housing costs.  If you can find a cheap place to live, you'll find everything else is pretty cheap.  Low housing costs leave a lot of wiggle room for other expenses.  Always keep housing low.   Housing should never account for more than a third of total income.  My mother has made a small fortune this way.  She buys a house and when it goes up in price she sells it.  Then she takes the money and buys another house in a cheaper neighborhood.  When the price of that one goes up she sells and moves all over again.  She has been smart and lucky.  You can't get too attached to houses.  By keeping her housing expenses very low she has managed to live practically for free.  She bought a co-op in 1996 and when she sold it ten years later she made back all ten tears of  maintenance and the purchase price too.  She even made a tidy profit.  I did the same thing.  I like real estate as an investment.  Right now my house is paying me an income, even if I end up under water someday, it'll still be okay, because it's giving me money.  Now is a great time to buy a place for retirement.  At the end of this year we will be looking for a place to buy.  With any luck we can pay cash.