9 Great Affordable Places to Retire Abroad

Peddicord calls Braga “more authentically Portuguese” than the hotspots to its south but says it is still welcoming to new arrivals. All full-time residents, including expats, can access the country’s highly rated and affordable health care system. And Portugal’s culture of respect for older people runs deep: By law, seats on public transit and spots at the front of lines at public facilities must be given up for people ages 65-plus.

Potential drawbacks: “It’s colder than you might expect,” Titley says. “It’s not the Algarve. It does have a coastline, but it’s not a beach destination in the same way. Colder and rainier.”

Cayo, Belize

What it is: Mountainous, largely agricultural district in western Belize

Estimated monthly budget for a couple: $1,880

Why to retire there: Belize is tropical, affordable and English-speaking, which has put it on a lot of retirees’ radars. While many tourists and expats make for Caribbean islands like Ambergris Caye (featured on Survivor and Temptation Island) and the beach lifestyle they foster, inland Cayo offers a dramatically different landscape of hills and rivers, rainforests and Mayan ruins.

“It’s a very natural setting, a lot of wide-open spaces,” Peddicord says. “It’s like the Old West in a lot of ways. It's affordable, loads of sunshine, you can grow your own food, keep livestock. It's that kind of life.” The country remains largely uncommercialized — there are no malls or McDonald’s — and “some people see that as a big plus.”

Potential drawbacks: “Health care and hospital infrastructure is not Belize’s strong suit,” says Peddicord. “Generally, the infrastructure is lacking. You need to go and spend time in Belize and make sure that you're OK with how underdeveloped it is.”

Chiang Mai, Thailand

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What it is: City of 1.2 million in the highlands of northern Thailand

Estimated monthly budget for a couple: $1,020

Why to retire there: Thailand is "arguably the cheapest place in the world to live well," Peddicord writes in At Home Abroad, and Chiang Mai offers a distinct change of pace from better-known, beach-forward destinations like Pattaya City and Phuket in the country's south.

“Chiang Mai is kind of a laid-back yoga-hippie town in the mountains,” Titley says. “It has less of a tourist buzz than some of the other areas of the country, like Phuket or Pattaya. You don’t feel that sort of full-moon, beach-party type of crowd.”

Housing and health care are keys to Thailand's affordability, she says. “You can live in a really comfortable, well-appointed place in most places in Thailand for a couple hundred dollars [a month].” Low-cost, high-quality health care facilities have made the country a magnet for medical tourists.

Potential drawbacks: “The culture shock is going to be dramatic,” Peddicord says, and the distance can make it challenging, and expensive, to stay connected to family and friends. “It's going to be a more outside-the-box choice,” she says. “For some people that's exciting and invigorating, and for other people that could be just too much to take.”

Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic

What it is: Resort town of about 26,000 on the Caribbean coast in northeastern Dominican Republic

Estimated monthly budget for a couple: $1,480

Why to retire there: “It's the Caribbean, but it's not at the price tag of, say, Turks and Caicos,” Titley says. “You get all the benefits of life by the sea — living on or near a white sand beach with the swaying palms, everything you could want in terms of Caribbean appeal — just much more affordable.” A full-service hospital opened in Las Terrenas in 2021, meaning locals no longer need travel to the capital city of Santo Domingo nearly 100 miles away for major medical care.

Another thing that separates Las Terrenas from your average tropical paradise: a large community of European expats, who started moving there in the 1970s and ’80s and opening small businesses. “You can, for instance, go buy a baguette at a French boulangerie or a German sausage,” she says. “It has an international flavor to it; it's more than just a sleepy little beach town.”

Potential drawbacks: It’s still a little beach town. "To me, and I don't mean to sound too negative, one Caribbean island is like another Caribbean island," Peddicord says. “If your idea of the perfect life is snorkeling, diving, sailing, swimming, the Caribbean makes a lot of sense. But I think the main complaint we hear is, it gets kind of boring.”

Medellín, Colombia

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What it is: City of 2.6 million perched at nearly 4,900 feet above sea level in the Upper Andes

Estimated monthly budget for a couple: $1,620

Why to retire there: Once notorious as a violent battleground for drug cartels, Colombia’s second-largest city is notable now as a vast, varied and very green metropolis — or it should be, says Peddicord, who has owned an apartment there for nearly 20 years.

“It’s unfortunate, the stigma that Medellín still struggles with. It’s not a reality on the ground at all,” she says. “The only thing I know to say to people when they doubt me and think I'm just hyping the place up is, you need to go see it. The feedback I get, more than anything, is you didn't do it justice.”

Medellín is “a city for living outdoors,” she says, with warm weather year-round and “trees and gardens and parks everywhere,” plus big-city shopping and transit amenities and highly-rated hospitals where care “is pennies on the dollar for what you pay in the United States.”

Potential drawbacks: “You do need to speak Spanish,” Peddicord says. “And your family and friends are going to think you’re crazy unless you can get them to come and visit you.”

Colombia is under a U.S. State Department travel advisory citing violent crime and civil unrest in parts of the country, although it focuses on regions near the Venezuelan and Ecuadoran borders, hundreds of miles from Medellín.

Mendoza, Argentina

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What it is: City and region in the foothills of the Andes in western Argentina

Estimated monthly budget for a couple: $1,440

Why to retire there: If you love vacationing in Napa or Bordeaux but can’t afford to live there, this might be the place to retire. Mendoza city is a bustling hub of about 1 million; the surrounding region is “vineyard land, grape country,” Peddicord says, famous for Malbecs and a mecca for mountain recreation.

“You can have any kind of lifestyle you might want in Argentina, from Buenos Aires, the Paris of Latin America, to mountain living, coastal,” she says. “We highlight the vineyard lifestyle because I think [Mendoza] is the most affordable place in the world to embrace that.”

Argentina has universal public health care, regardless of residency status, and there are plentiful, affordable private insurance options in major cities like Mendoza.

Potential drawbacks: Argentina is a long way away. If you want family to visit or anticipate returning regularly to the States, “you have to factor in that inaccessibility and the cost of travel,” Peddicord says. It’s also been plagued for decades by economic woes, notably currency devaluation and high inflation. “For some retirees, living with that kind of uncertainty and risk would be more than they'd be up for,” she says.

Valencia, Spain

What it is: City of about 800,000 on Spain’s Mediterranean coast

Estimated monthly budget for a couple: $2,220

Why to retire there: Crowned Live and Invest Overseas’ top retirement destination for 2025, Valencia combines “the best of Old World Europe” with living costs that are “ridiculously affordable for the quality of life you’re buying,” Peddicord says. (Portugal used to exemplify that match, she says, but the exploding popularity of Spain’s Iberian neighbor has driven up property costs.)

Known for its food (especially oranges and paella), Valencia “is kind of the Goldilocks city of Spain,” Titley says — “not too big, not too small,” full of neighborhoods that make it feel like a collection of towns. It’s blessed with near year-round sunshine, great beaches minutes from the ancient city center, and Spain’s largest urban park, the winding, 5.6-mile Jardín del Turia, planted in a former riverbed.

On top of that, there’s high-quality health care and first-rate public transportation. “It’s definitely a place where you can cut out the major expense of having a car,” Titley says. “It’s an opportunity to shift some of your budget to an area that brings you joy.”

Potential drawbacks: “The need to speak Spanish,” Titley says. “When we compare Spain and Portugal, that's one area where Spain falls down a bit. You do need to make more of an effort with the local language, and a lot of people aren't up for that.”