Ten years ago, Breck Morrison and his wife, Marci Russo, moved from their home in Los Osos, Calif., to a tiny beach town on the east coast of Australia. They secured long-term retirement visas, allowing them to continue working while also enjoying a new life in Queensland. Ms. Russo is working as a teaching assistant. And after realizing that living in a small town required them to “make our own fun,” the couple began volunteering at community events and helped start a book club and a dragon boat club.
“We built our own house, worked hard at being a part of the community and have come to love our life here,” Mr. Morrison, a 64-year-old former cabinet maker, wrote in a comment posted on nytimes.com.
As Kerry Hannon reported in the Retirement section this week, more Americans like Mr. Morrison and Ms. Russo are choosing to take a “working retirement,” and many are doing so abroad. After the article, we asked readers to weigh in on both the rewards and challenges of resettling and working abroad.
“The big positives here over some expat destinations,” Mr. Morrison wrote about living in Queensland, “is the English-speaking, similar culture and the fun, Australian attitude toward life. Modest and inclusive, Australians like to give the fringe folks a go.”
In addition to enjoying a new culture and way of life abroad, readers also said they appreciated the lower cost of medical care and living expenses.
Tom Hill and his wife, Heather Dinwiddie, left the bulk of their belongings in storage outside Dulles International Airport near Washington and moved to Asia eight years ago, most recently to Vietnam. Ms. Dinwiddie teaches in a bilingual program at a French international school in Saigon, and Mr. Hill works at a school and edits English documents for an investment fund.
It has been significantly easier and cheaper to have access to quality medical care in Vietnam than back in the United States, said Mr. Hill, 64. In an e-mail elaborating on his posted comment, he said he recently visited a dentist about a root canal and found the office “sophisticated beyond anything I ever experienced in the U.S.”
He has also been spared of stress over paperwork and expenses.
“I have no idea how much the session cost,” he wrote. “It was all billed to our insurance carrier, an American firm, on the basis of a form I filled out four years ago. No signature was required. My crown will be ready Monday morning.”
A reader who went by the name AFD said lower medical costs had been a significant benefit to resettling in Seoul, South Korea, where “a trip to the doctor isn’t going to bankrupt me.”
“The last time I went to a doctor in the U.S. for treatment for a cold, it cost me a hundred bucks — and that was in a small mill town nearly 20 years ago,” he wrote. “Here in South Korea, it would cost me three bucks for the same exact service if my job didn’t pick up the tab.”
Benefiting from the dollar-peso exchange rate has been an advantage for a commenter who went by the name ckapilla, who resettled in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and continues to work part time as a programmer for a former employer in Seattle.
“I hope someday to cut the ties to my employer and work as an independent consultant, but so far the wonderful experience of getting paid a steady income in dollars and paying expenses in pesos is too enticing to give up,” ckapilla wrote.
“Even though I am working and getting paid at half my previous rate, expenses are so much lower here that I end up with extra dollars every month.”
A number of readers cautioned that moving abroad for a working retirement is not all guacamole and beaches. It also can include huge tax headaches.
“My advice for any American considering living abroad is to be very careful and consult a tax lawyer who understands about expats before making the move,” wrote marciovp, a dual citizen of the United States and Brazil who recently moved back to Brazil.
Ken Meissner, who was born in Brooklyn and worked as a tax director at the New York accounting firm Anchin, Block Anchin, moved to his wife’s hometown, Cabadbaran, in the Philippine province Agusan del Norte.
He said by e-mail that he and his wife now live “quite literally in the boondocks,” but a relatively high-speed Internet connection, access to Anchin, Block Anchin’s tax-information databases and remote access to its server in New York enable him to continue working for the company on a consulting basis. He is also affiliated with a local firm affiliated with Ernst Young, which he said handled a number of United States income tax returns, mostly for expats.
A magicJack device also makes him reachable by an American phone number – as long as one calls twice.
Mr. Meissner wrote that Americans working abroad need to be aware about how they are affected by Social Security taxes as well as reporting requirements for overseas bank, brokerage and other financial accounts.
“This underscores the article’s advice to work with a tax adviser who knows her way around U.S. expatriate tax issues,” he wrote.
Another reader, Barbara, began her working retirement in Puerto Escondido, in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, seven years ago as an English and Spanish teacher. She later started a bilingual magazine. She wrote that she appreciated meeting interesting people, but the paperwork had been intense.
“I had to go back to the U.S. to get all my college transcripts notarized, etc., to get a work permit, and I had to register with the tax office,” she wrote.
Despite the immigration, tax and bureaucratic challenges, she wrote that she has enjoyed feeling as if she is contributing to her new community.
“Younger women,” she wrote, “tell me I am a role model for what an older (66-year-old) woman can do.”
Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/going-abroad-to-keep-working-not-retire/?partner=rss&emc=rss