Hi there, fantastic community you have here...I've been lurking for the past couple weeks, almost since I booked my June AC trip...will be my first time in Belize.
The interesting thing is that once I started looking for a place to vacation and get away from it all for a week, that this trip became as much of an exploratory venture as it is a vacation. I'm fascinated now with the prospect of retiring early and leaving California for a more simple and relaxing existence. I've gone down this wormhole of online research, and on paper, I think I can do it. The final determination is still to come (do I think I can adjust to the environment, will things be the same when I retire, etc...), but I feel like I have one foot out the door already.
My situation is that I was looking at the prospect of working until I was 62-63 in order to have enough of a pension to comfortably support my current living situation in California. I'm going to turn 50 this year...so that's another dozen years in this poor air quality, paying through the nose for everything. But my calculations for retiring at 55 would leave me with a pension income of about $5800/mo before taxes, plus I'd still probably be pulling in another $1000-1500 a month in consulting income (which can be done remotely). Social Security would come into play 6 years later, but that would add another $2K+/mo at that point.
So with that income, I'm fairly confident that I could swing it financially and be fairly comfortable. My fantasy is to have a little place (either own or rent) on the water in either Placencia or northern AC, with a dock for my boat, to be my home base. I'm single, no children, in relative good health...and I'm already starting to downsize my personal footprint of "stuff" as a result of this exercise/epiphany.
So given the fact that I haven't even set foot in the country yet, is this a crazy dream, destined to fail? Or is it something I can realistically start working towards and planning for? Do you see anything changing dramatically in the next five years that might make me think twice about Belize?
Thanks for reading my rambling first post, and hope to hear some feedback from some of the knowledgeable veteran expats here!
-David
The interesting thing is that once I started looking for a place to vacation and get away from it all for a week, that this trip became as much of an exploratory venture as it is a vacation. I'm fascinated now with the prospect of retiring early and leaving California for a more simple and relaxing existence. I've gone down this wormhole of online research, and on paper, I think I can do it. The final determination is still to come (do I think I can adjust to the environment, will things be the same when I retire, etc...), but I feel like I have one foot out the door already.
My situation is that I was looking at the prospect of working until I was 62-63 in order to have enough of a pension to comfortably support my current living situation in California. I'm going to turn 50 this year...so that's another dozen years in this poor air quality, paying through the nose for everything. But my calculations for retiring at 55 would leave me with a pension income of about $5800/mo before taxes, plus I'd still probably be pulling in another $1000-1500 a month in consulting income (which can be done remotely). Social Security would come into play 6 years later, but that would add another $2K+/mo at that point.
So with that income, I'm fairly confident that I could swing it financially and be fairly comfortable. My fantasy is to have a little place (either own or rent) on the water in either Placencia or northern AC, with a dock for my boat, to be my home base. I'm single, no children, in relative good health...and I'm already starting to downsize my personal footprint of "stuff" as a result of this exercise/epiphany.
So given the fact that I haven't even set foot in the country yet, is this a crazy dream, destined to fail? Or is it something I can realistically start working towards and planning for? Do you see anything changing dramatically in the next five years that might make me think twice about Belize?
Thanks for reading my rambling first post, and hope to hear some feedback from some of the knowledgeable veteran expats here!
-David
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