The average American household over 65 spends $5,119 a month. A couple in Cuenca, Ecuador spends $2,075 — rent, power, food, health cover, visa renewals, flights home and a contingency, every line counted. This is the manual that tells you which of nine countries your income qualifies you for, what the first year really costs, and when the honest answer is no.
The Manual
Can I afford it. What can I actually own. Which visa my income buys. What happens when I get sick. What the first ninety days look like. Whether I will be alone. Seven sections. Forty-five chapters. Nine country files. Start this weekend with the three-task Road Map and know which countries you are eligible for before you book a single flight.
Illustrated ebook · 300+ pages · First Edition
The thirteen-line budget. The 1.7× first year. The exchange-rate trap that cost one man 17% of his income for doing nothing. The three countries where your dollar is simply the money. The Costa Rica contribution that costs $180 a month and appears in no comparison table. Why you do not buy in year one. Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, Portugal, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines and Thailand — each costed to the same template, so you can hold one against another. The Road Map pays back the $27 inside an hour.
What you get for $27:
Instant access · Pay once · Yours forever
Educational content only. Not legal, tax, immigration, medical or financial advice. Verify visa rules and costs with a licensed professional in your destination country.
The Math
Pull up your last twelve months of statements. The left column is a retired couple in an ordinary American city. The right column is the same couple, living the same way, in the town at the top of the Manual’s table — the same basket, priced from the same source, in the same month.
Housing, utilities, internet and restaurant prices: Numbeo, Tucson, August 2026. Transport and healthcare: BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey, 65+, for two people. Approximate.
Numbeo, Cuenca, September 2026, and the Cuenca expat cost-of-living table. Add two flights home a year and a 10% contingency and you land on the Manual’s $2,075.
$4,242 a month. $50,904 a year. Same couple, same habits. — The house is a third. The meals out are a third. Healthcare is a fifth. Transport is a twelfth, because nobody needs a car. That is not a saving so much as a different life, and the Manual shows you which lines move, which do not, and which country moves them furthest.
Illustrative comparison from published averages. Results vary by household, income, destination and exchange rate.
What's Inside
Forty-five chapters across seven sections, plus the appendix. Every chapter outside the country files has the same eight parts — the trouble, the fix, the real numbers, how to do it, what it does not do, when to hire somebody, the math, and the sources. Read them in any order. Find the question keeping you awake and start there.
Reader Results
Three readers, three different situations. What they said after reading it.
★★★★★I was mostly looking at the Philippines before I bought this. I’m still leaning that way but there were definitely a few things in here I hadn’t thought about, especially around owning property. Glad I read it before going over there.
★★★★★My husband and I have been talking about leaving the US when he retires next year. We’ve watched probably hundreds of YouTube videos at this point. This was useful just to have everything in one place and actually compare the countries properly. We’re down to Panama and Ecuador now.
★★★★★I’m 64 and the healthcare part was probably the most useful for me. Some of it I already knew from doing my own research but quite a bit I didn’t. I’ve got a much better idea now of what I need to figure out before making any decisions.
V. About the Author
I am not going to tell you I am living the dream on a beach somewhere. I spend my days reading property listings, visa regulations, hospital price lists and land registry rules across a dozen countries. I talk to people who have made the move and to people who made it and came home. I check what they tell me against the documents. That is the job.
I do not sell relocation tours. I do not run property conferences. I do not take a commission from a developer, a visa agency, an insurance broker or a real estate agent in any country in this book. Almost every guide to retiring abroad is published by a company that makes its money somewhere else, and lead generation cannot afford to talk you out of the thing it is generating leads for. I make my money one way: you pay $27 for the book. The only thing I have to sell you is being right.
Some of this started as research for the New Life Abroad channel. Most of it goes a good deal further than the videos do, because a video has to end and a chapter does not. Every figure has a source and a date. Where a country is a bad idea for somebody in your position, I say so inside the chapter about that country rather than burying it at the back.
It is enough. Just not in America. If you finish this book and decide to stay in Ohio, I have done my job.
Order the Manual
Instant access — in your inbox within 60 seconds of payment. Read on any phone, tablet, or computer. Print the worksheets at the kitchen table. 7-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked — if it’s not for you, email and the $27 comes back the same day.
Illustrated ebook · 300+ pages · First Edition
The Move Abroad Manual. Nine countries costed to the same template — afford, own, visa, health, move, stay — with every figure sourced and dated. Find the two countries that fit your income. Skip the seven that don’t.
What you get for $27:
Secure Checkout · Pay once · Yours forever
Educational content only. Not legal, tax, immigration, medical or financial advice. Verify visa rules and costs with a licensed professional in your destination country.
🔒 Secure Checkout·Visa · Mastercard · PayPal · Apple Pay·7-day refund
FAQ
That is the first task in the Road Map, and it takes twenty minutes. Panama and Costa Rica both set their retirement visa at $1,000 a month in lifetime pension income. Ecuador is around $1,446. Mexico moved its temporary residency requirement in 2026 to about $4,718 a month — more than double the average Social Security check — and the Manual says so plainly rather than selling you a Mexico chapter you cannot use. Chapter 9 has the full table for all nine countries.
No. Medicare does not travel, and this is the single largest thing the magazines leave out. Section Five — six chapters — covers what international health insurance really costs after 60, the age at which insurers stop selling it, the public systems you can join as a resident, getting your medication legally every month, and the endgame: long-term care and going home. The Road Map tells you to get a real quote at your real age before you decide anything.
Yes. The published budgets in the Manual are for couples because that is how the best data is reported, and every one of them shows you the lines so you can take a single person's version. The thirteen-line worksheet in the appendix is built for either. The chapter on why the second year decides it is written with the person living alone very much in mind.
Chapter 31 is called "The language problem nobody admits to at 65," and it answers this honestly rather than reassuringly. The short version: it depends on the country and the town, some of the nine are far easier than others, and every country file tells you where the English-speaking expats actually are.
Every figure carries a source and the month it was checked, so you can see exactly how old it is. Where the source is a company that sells relocation services, the Manual says so and treats its figures as the optimistic end. When a visa threshold or a price moves, the book is updated and you get the new edition free. You paid once.
Instant access — emailed to you within 60 seconds. A 300+ page PDF you can read on any phone, tablet or computer, or print on plain paper. The worksheets, tables and checklists in the appendix are made to be printed. No DRM, no app, no subscription. Yours forever.
Seven days, no questions asked. Send an email and you get a full refund. The Manual stays yours.
Last call
$27 once. Instant access. 7-day money-back guarantee. Run the Road Map tonight and know which countries you qualify for by morning. First Edition, 300+ pages, lifetime updates.
Get the Manual · $27Wait — one thing
Task one of the Road Map takes twenty minutes and tells you which of nine countries your income actually gets you into. Most people learn they don’t qualify for the one they had their heart set on — and that they do for three they’d never considered. 7-day refund if it’s not for you.
Get the Manual · $27