Author: Diane

  • The Price of Paradise – Our living expenses in Panama

    Diane

    Well, here we are living the dream in beautiful Panama. But, at what cost? To repeat a little background for context, I retired the end of May and Mike retired the end of July. We have currently decided to live in Panama for a good portion of the year while still maintaining our home in… Read more

  • “House” Hunting in Panama

    Diane

    Well, here we are in beautiful Panama. After spending a couple of weeks in the city working on my visa and Mike’s citizenship, we headed to the Coronado area about and hour and a half outside the city. Our previous explorations led us here as the place we thought would be the best area for… Read more

  • Our Path to Panama

    Diane

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    As mentioned in earlier posts, one of the big considerations when looking at places outside the U.S. for retirement has been the ease of obtaining residency and any perks one receives as a resident of that country. There are a number of options for Panama, depending on one’s situation. The most common visa options for… Read more

  • Passport Panama

    Diane

    One of the items under consideration as we move into retirement is what we want our new reality to be. Something that has been on our radar for several years has been the idea of living in another country. We’ve really been considering Panama (the country). Why Panama? Well, one reason is that Mike was… Read more

  • Little Hiccups

    Diane

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    Just when you think you have everything taken care of, you find you really don’t. As I mentioned in a previous post, insurance was one of my biggest pains upon retirement. I decided to go with my TRS (Teacher Retirement System) Medicare Advantage plan (TRS Advantage). In order to make that happen, I had to… Read more

  • Decisions, decisions…

    Diane

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    I’m sure that everyone has many decisions to make once they have pulled the trigger and decided to retire. For me, the toughest decision I’ve had to make so far is health insurance. Hands down. My situation, though not the norm for everyone, may be similar to what many people have to navigate so I… Read more

  • Our Panama Relocation Tour

    Diane

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    In the fall of 2021, we booked our Panama Relocation Tour for June 10, 2022. There are at least two relocation tour companies based in Panama. We chose Panama Relocation Tours. The other that I know of is Retire in Panama. We chose the Panama Relocation Tour company because it had great reviews and seemed… Read more

  • First Explorations of Panama

    Diane

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    Many of our friends, when told we are considering Panama as a retirement location, asked “Why Panama?” Good question. We first became aware of Panama as a retirement location almost by accident. When we first began talking about retirement, like many people, we started looking at articles and blogs about possible retirement locations should we… Read more

  • Pulling the Trigger:

    Diane

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    I’ll be honest. I did a really terrible job of planning for retirement. Partly because of life choices, circumstances, and happenstance; and partly because I just wasn’t very educated about what I needed to do to retire comfortably. So, there I was in 2017 at the age of 60, beginning to think about retirement (yeah,… Read more