Where to retire?

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I'm planning to split my time, half in the northern woods of maine in the summer and then the winters in Bonaire.. Best of both worlds.. My place here in Maine is all paid for and yearly tax bill on 180 acres , the house and shop is a whopping $1,200 bucks... Can work in my shop on hotrods in the summer ( Which I LOVE to do ) to help with the cost of Bonaire.. And spending the winters Diving and drinking beer on the beach...

Jim....
 
I'm planning to split my time, half in the northern woods of maine in the summer and then the winters in Bonaire.. Best of both worlds.. My place here in Maine is all paid for and yearly tax bill on 180 acres , the house and shop is a whopping $1,200 bucks... Can work in my shop on hotrods in the summer ( Which I LOVE to do ) to help with the cost of Bonaire.. And spending the winters Diving and drinking beer on the beach...

Jim....

I may just show up on your doorstop and ask to be adopted.
 
"From everything I have heard I at least want to visit Bonaire. Funny thing though--I met two people from Bonaire on Cozumel last month. They were taking diving vacations so I guess Bonaire doesn't have everything."

True, that. Worth keeping in mind, because any dive destination isn't going to have all you want to do, most likely. When I was a kid, I thought it'd be great living near a 6 Flags or other large amusement park. A cousin who did indicated to me it wasn't all that. Then, granted as an adult, I lived in Louisville 4 years, which had Kentucky Kingdom. I went once.

Bonaire is sweet for cheap shore diving on your own terms, really good viz., warm water, mostly minimal current, nice reef & it's often been considered 'fishy' (although I thought Key Largo was more so). But if you dig into threads on it, you'll see it's not the place for big stuff. Tarpon, tiger grouper, green morays and green & hawksbill sea turtles (most I've seen were small; occasionally a big'un), a few of the barracuda, a few cubera snapper...that's your big stuff. 8 Trips, well over 150 dives there, haven't seen a shark there yet.

So you hit the Florida Keys, and how, hey, black grouper, Nassau grouper, more big barracuda, nurse and reef sharks, on the deep wrecks Goliath grouper...but, based on my trip, lower viz., and it's all mostly all boat diving (granted, cheapest I've done when bought as a big package).

My point is, depending on how much you want to dive & how cheap, it may be worthwhile to plan on living somewhere with convenient access to an airport with direct flights to good places.

If I were aiming for dive destination to live, I'd seriously consider south Florida, toward the Atlantic side. Between Jupiter & the Florida Keys, with West Palm Beach and Boynton Beach in between, and an occasional trip to Blue Heron Bridge, you'd have a variety of diving environments that could be hard to match elsewhere. Mostly boat diving, but something to think about.

Richard.
 
My biggest thing is retirement on the cheap... I'm 55 and debt free... Have a good chunk of cash put away and many assets to sell along the way... I don't want to start over with a $200,000 mortgage ... have to pay $7,000 a year in taxes.. As I told my wife when she talked about moving to Houston , TX to be by my daughter a few years ago... YOU CAN GO... But , I'm not starting over... She is taking a year off from work to live in the apartment of the new house they bought and be the nanny...

Starting retirement at 55 is doable , But you need a BIG pile of cash or be smart how you do it... I don't have the "BIG" pile... So, It be smart for me....

Jim...
 
My current thoughts on living cheap are I am in the process of establishing a mediocre sum of passive incomes. I would like to live someplace cheap and be able to afford a dive vacation every few months. I believe I can do it. My girlfriend, however, is anything but frugal so we may need to reach a compromise :wink: As long as she pays her half and doesn't try to commit me to more than I'm willing to commit to then it should work :)

I'm not debt-free. I owe $46 on my credit card and still owe over $8000 on my car. I intend to pay off the car this year. As for the credit card, hey, it's a rewards card so I use it for everything and pay it off every week.

I'm fairly certain that in Costa Rica property taxes consist of a one-time tax of 1.5% of the sale price of the home.



I think I just added Saint Martin to my list of dive destinations. My girlfriend keeps finding incredible deals.
 
I found Portobelo, Panama fine for diving (Panama Divers). Don't think a whole lot of English is spoken in the city (town) there though. A good choice may be The Bahamas? English there. Don't forget that even though you permanently reside in country outside the U.S. you must file a U.S. tax return every year regardless of your non-US residency or the fact that you may owe no US taxes at all (this has always been the case, but the last 2-3 years it's gotten very sticky for us "expats" due to the ridiculous FACTA law passed in 2010). If American citizens you will need a U.S. (not foreign) passport to re-enter the U.S. The U.S. and Eritrea (in Africa) are the only 2 countries in the world that require citizens, as opposed to residents, to file every year. Applies to dual citizens as well, of course.
 
Meanwhile many countries are no longer double-taxing expats who moved there.

For me the US taxes are to be expected as I will be earning my money here (well, I might pick up a few bucks wherever I end up--which opens up other cans of worms).

So, if you lose your passport or it expires they won't let you back into the USA even though you are paying taxes? And they probably wonder why we want to live somewhere else :wink:
 
That's why I'm going to Bonaire.. My biggest worry is if someone is going to steal my old flip-flops and water bottle...

Him...
 
I just missed going to Bonaire--my girlfriend found really cheap airfare and didn't book it! Unfortunately I'll just have to go to Hawai'i instead next month to go on the manta ray night dive. I DID book the cheap airfare when I saw it! Meanwhile I will still be watching the airfares.

I will be checking out some real estate while on the Big Island. At least it appears to be a better place to live than South California. Having said that I was warned by someone who lived there to not lock my car while parked at the beach otherwise it will probably be broken into. I'd better take my flip flops and water bottle with me :wink:
 
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