Interesting piece in the Monitor on how more and more Americans are choosing to move to Latin America. Thanks to my friend Frank Rossi for pointing this one out to me. A few thoughts after a quick, but not just skimmed, read: 1. Yes. You certainly should consider it. For lots of reasons, including making your retirement the next chapter in the adventure rather than a settling back into ease. Including the very real and beneficial effects on your brain of daily exposure to foreign language and new ways of doing things. There are some studies, and certainly anectdotal evidence (including from me!) that this helps delay cognitive decline and may in fact improve your overall mental quality. 2. The specific countries in this article are nowhere near our part of South America, Uruguay, either geographically or culturally. Latin America consists of dozens of countries on two continents and the Caribbean. South America consists of more than just Latin America, in that there are Dutch, French, and English-speaking countries (ok, overseas department of France) in northern South America. Not all of Latin American is Hispano-America, because, Brazil. 3. Its not the Sun Belt. Not our part of it. Were quite a ways SOUTH of the equator, about the same as North Carolina is north of it. Unlike NC, where I lived for a while, we dont get snow in Uruguay. But I had one hell of an electric heating bill last winter, during May through some of September. 4. Refer back to 1. Not of of Latin America is the same. E.g. this quote about Colombia is nonsensically wrong if applied to Uruguay: // begin article quote Americans are used to good roads, first-rate telephone and Internet service, and reasonable customer service. Moving south can be jarring. The streets are bad and poorly maintained, there are no lights or signage, and parking spaces are nonexistent, says Cummiskey of urban life in Medellín. // end quote Ive been quite happy with the customer service at the vast majority of local companies, stores, restaurants, and even the government-owned phone, water, and electric companies. Yes we have some dirt roads, like the one I live on, but were a beach resort town, and the US is starting to abandon pavement in rural areas too, so cast not the first third world stone. We have divided highways, we have reliable electric, good water, and Im writing this over fiber-optic-to-home internet, a free upgrade from good and cheap DSL, as part of a really good bundle of mobile broadband, home phone, high-speed (now VERY high-speed) internet, for less than 50 dollars a month. But thats in highly developed Uruguay. 5. Some of the experts in the article are the usual suspects of overseas living types, who make loads of money selling you their packages of info, their conferences, their books, and selling you on real estate in which directly or indirectly, they have financial interests. That said, Im not calling them shills, but their financial interests could be better disclosed here, and in general. THAT said, I have bought Kathleen Peddicords book and learned a lot from it. I subscribed to International Living for a year. I follow both Peddicords @Live Live and Invest Overseas page and her former employer, International Living, and get both their email newsletters. There is good info there, but there is also a subtle and not-so-subtle sell. There is a certain amount of herding you towards countries and regions in which they have some type of financial interest or partnership. I find the mainstream media, such as this Monitor article and other venues like US News and World Report, NBCNews, and others that regularly have articles from those usual suspects quite remiss in any meaningful disclosures about these potential confilicts of interest and the blurring of the editorial/advertorial line. Speaking of disclosures: My wife, writer Lisa Marie Mercer, occasionally writes for International Living Magazine and their website, and gets paid actual money. Also, we have not yet monetized Uruguay Expat Life or any of our network of Uruguay referral and info sites, other than some trival Amazon Associates and other affiliate commission ads (like for the VPN we use and recommend to expats and travelers). Were working on ideas to monetize but right now were only indirectly doing so by getting street cred and building reputational karma from UruguayExpat.Info (our main site), our Facebook Page linked above, our open-to-all Google Community for Uruguay Expat Life at is.gd/UYcommunity (the real link is ludicrously long!), our Google+ Pages Uruguay Expat Life at https://plus.google/+Uruguayexpatinfo and Uruguay For Me at https://plus.google/+UruguayforMe, and our Uruguay Expat Life Twitter https://twitter/UruguayForMe. Please check any or all of them out for ideas of life, expatriation, immigration to a country deeper in South America and in many ways surprisingly European, our new home of Uruguay.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 01:41:18 +0000
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