Retirement in Ecuador:
We Won The Retirement Lottery

by Barb
(Queretaro, Mexico)

My husband and I knew that our retirement incomes would not stretch far enough back home in Vancouver, BC, Canada, no matter how many years we worked.

My husband had been forced to retire early and I retired at age 59 last June, 2011 from Education. It was time even though I still loved my job.

For several years we had looked far and wide and traveled to each spot that we thought held potential. We knew that no matter where we lived we could augment our income via the Internet.

In June I sold every personally owned item in my classroom or gave it away. We were headed to Cuenca, Ecuador! We had spent 5 weeks there exploring the city extensively and loved it. We had 5 criteria: weather, affordability, health care, safety and friendly people.

We left Canada at the end of September having sold or given away all of our household belongings including two cars. We took a week to recover in Mazatlan and there we received an email from our lawyers in Cuenca regarding further changes to the immigration requirements. These final changes needed to be done back in Canada. We could not afford to return to Canada!

We took a plunge and went to Queretaro in central Mexico, a city with a colonial heart that we had heard much about - all good - and had already added to our must visit list. We love it here and we are now much closer to family and friends and vice versa. Queretaro fulfills all of our criteria.

We definitely feel that we won the retirement lottery!!!


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We Won The Retirement Lottery

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Update
by: Barb

My husband and I were going to retire to a South American country - Ecuador (write-up above); however, bureaucracy at this time snarled our plans, which was very disappointing.

Dear Reader, if you are thinking of doing this, don't be put off by our experience. We were caught in the maelstrom of change and things have settled down now. We regrouped with Plan B. We are now living in Mexico - Queretaro, to be exact and loving it.

We are still finding our rhythm as we work on establishing ourselves; organizing our financial picture; applying for a bank account, immigration visas, health care insurance, phone service, & utilities; learning Spanish; setting up a household, etc., in addition to making friends, exploring the city, the state and other parts of Mexico.

We have been here nearly four months.

Our pensions are small. We cannot afford to retire in Canada (besides reaching our quota of bad weather), but our biggest challenge is not having enough time to do everything we want to.

May that continue to be our only concern and yours. -- Barb

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