Laura Begley Bloom is a travel and lifestyle authority and content strategist that collaborates with a number of publications, including FORBES, Food & Wine, Wallpaper and The New York Times (just to mention a few). She recently came up with the list of top ten “Places So Cheap You Might Not Need to Work”, and guess what? Mexico is number three.
Admit it: You often dream of quitting your job, ditching it all and moving to paradise. Guess what? That dream could be a reality. In 2018 and 2017, I looked at the best places in the world where the cost of living is so affordable that you can quit your job, retire early and stop working. These are places that are considerably cheaper than in the U.S. — and where life is a whole lot easier. For 2019, I tapped into International Living, which releases an Annual Global Retirement Index, a list of the top places to retire around the globe. And this list isn’t just for retirees: It’s also for people who want to live somewhere so cheap that they don’t have to work. “This index is designed to be a cheat-sheet of sorts, to help point people toward the spots that might make the most sense for them overseas,” says International Living’s executive editor Jennifer Stevens.
On International Living’s list of the World’s Best Places to Retire in 2019, the editors ranked the destinations based on 13 categories, including cost of living, climate, healthcare and more. They also included a new category this year: opportunity. “We’ve added it because we know that many folks are interested in working remotely or starting something new in retirement,” says Stevens. “So we consider the strength of the economy, how easy and reliable it is to connect online and how supportive local authorities are toward small businesses.”
In addition to the data points, International Living takes into consideration the informed judgment and real-world experience of the magazine’s contributors and editors in the field, as well as that of additional in-country expats. “Macro-economic data that reflects the state of affairs across an entire country isn’t nearly as useful as the actual cost to rent an apartment that an expat would like in a safe area of a town or city we recommend,” says Stevens. “And when we compare specific data like that across communities we recommend in different countries, a useful picture begins to emerge.”
Click here to see the top 10 cheapest places to live in 2019 (According to Travel Specialist Laura Begley Bloom)