How To Reach the ‘Retirement Trifecta’ by Moving Abroad

In a recent episode of “The Richer Way,” a GOBankingRates podcast, recognized experts on retiring abroad Edd and Cynthia Staton paid host Jaime Catmull a visit and brought with them their invaluable advice on how to not only attain what is known as “The Retirement Trifecta,” but how to do so when retiring abroad.

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First, let’s establish terms. What is the “retirement trifecta”? This trio of goals is, essentially, the foundation of any comfortable retirement. They are:

• Lowering your cost of living

• Raising your standard of living

• Preserving and growing your nest egg

Years ago, the Statons were working hard and had a solid retirement plan in place while living in Las Vegas.

“And then 2008 happened,” Edd Staton noted in the episode, referring to The Great Recession. “We not only lost our jobs, we lost the whole industries that we worked in .. Our investments and savings were in free fall. We were in a really tough situation.”

“We had to come up with a Plan B,” Cynthia added.

Their first step was to move to a place with a lower cost of living — not just move to a cheaper city, but a cheaper country.

Making the Move

The Statons realized they had two choices: Either “settle for a substandard retirement” in the United States, or go “for the best shot we had,” which was retirement abroad. The couple opted for Ecuador, which immediately provided a lower cost of living, which is the first step in the “retirement trifecta.” In fact, Ecuador offered them “everything that we were looking for.”

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Ecuador, they noted, offers a climate in which it is “springtime all the time,” great healthcare, good public transportation and is still close enough to the U.S. that they can come back on a regular basis to visit their stateside family members — all of which helped increase their standard of living, as compared to a retirement in Las Vegas. There was even a “happy accident” of time zones: Ecuador is in the same time zone as the East Coast of America, where their extended family lives. By moving from Las Vegas to Ecuador, Edd and Cynthia were actually able to be “closer” to their family, time-wise, than ever before.

Further, given the low cost of living in Ecuador (as compared to Las Vegas), the happily retired couple are able to live the high life on their Social Security budget, easily affording an “upscale lifestyle” in a penthouse apartment without having “to spend every penny of that budget,” and are instead able to actually save money despite their comfortable lifestyle.

Now, Edd and Cynthia highly recommend that you do more than just online research when finding a retirement location abroad, noting you should “put boots on the ground” and physically explore your prospective retirement location for as long as you can before settling on it. In doing so, you could more easily (and successfully) find a retirement location abroad that allows you to lower your cost of living, which in turn raises your standard of living, which in turn then allows you to preserve and grow that retirement nest egg — the true “retirement trifecta.”

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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: How To Reach the ‘Retirement Trifecta’ by Moving Abroad