Why Panama?

 A former colleague at a job long ago asked me: “Why Panama?”.

I thought i simply send a link to the blog post that explains it. But to my great surprise, i hadn’t written it yet! 😝

View from the terrace… 

Well, here we go…

I had only very few important criteria when considering retirement locations:

Warm, safe, affordable, tranquilo (my new favorite word), able to visit my parents relatively easily, availability of good food, availability of visa.

The southern US immediately disqualified, as it is NOT a safe place, with all the people running around with guns and using them. And it is way too expensive. Well, the political situation is also far from encouraging.

So, with that list in mind i checked out several other countries. 

Europe is too cold - i do not want to see snow ever again in my life - except on fotos.

Southern India would have been really nice! But, India has no visa. 

Dominican Republic is too loud - everybody and their grandmother has a huge boombox outside their door blasting anything they feel like into the air; and that at all kind of times night and day.

Tobago - where i had lived before for 4 years - is too expensive. I don’t want to spend all my savings on housing. So are most of the other small Caribbean islands. And the big ones have way to high a crime rate. 

Most of Africa and Middle East is politically too instable, or even in a war. So is Africa. I do not want to lose all my savings and have to start over again!

Thailand and surrounding countries have a language that is impossible for me to learn. 

Leaves northern South America and central America.

Most of the countries in that region are also politically rather instable or in some kind of civil war like unrest. 

Only Panama seems politically stable.

 It has visa regulations that are very conducive to immigrate. 

The real estate is quite affordable (you can get land for less than 10$/m2 [1$/sqft], and buy a good home for 150k [the one I’m building for example😝]). 

The language is close enough to english to be able to eventually learn it. 

The climate is awesom - you can choose your preferred temperature range by going higher up on the mountain or closer to the sea (at my land it rarely gets above 30C [86F] and rarely below 19C [64F]. 

I can grow much of my favorite food myself - the growing season is 12 months a year. Vegetables and local produce and products are quite affordable, too.

And, it is not much more costly to travel to Europe to visit my parents, than from the US. 

My land is at the end of an asphalted dead-end road that leads up the mountain. It’s very quiet here - muy tranquilo! 

Perftect!!!

Of course it has its downsides as well. But i can deal with and work around  those…

I have written about each of these items (good and bad) before in this blog. I hope you enjoy poking around… If there’s a question that isn’t addressed yet, please let me know, and I’ll write about my experiences and observations on that topic…