by Kathleen Peddicord
Tuesday, October 11, 201
US News
Del Webb understood. When he conceived Sun City in Arizona, he realized that an important part of the appeal behind this retirement option would be the promise of community. Retiring to Sun City meant retiring among like-minded folks and never having to look too far to find company for dinner or someone to share a round of golf with you.
About 10,000 Baby Boomers will retire every day for the next 19 years. Nearly 12 percent of these (about 26 million would-be retirees) are considering retiring overseas.
If you're among that group, one thing to recognize is that there's no such thing as Sun City in most of the rest of the world. The formalized U.S. retirement communities that many of our parents opted for at this point in their lives don't exist in the countries that today offer the greatest retirement advantages and benefits.
That is not to say, however, that it's not possible to retire overseas among like-minded folks.
A friend who relocated his family from the United States to the south of France about the same time that we moved from the States to Ireland (some 13 years ago) once remarked, "You know, I think we're doing this the hard way. Here in France, we're scrambling to learn French so we can figure out what's going on, because we're always confused. We're trying to make friends and to find a place for ourselves in a French country community where families have known each other for generations. We don't understand French cultural nuances yet, so we're committing one faux pas after another. And we don't have any other Americans around to commiserate with, no one to show us the ropes. We've really jumped into the deep end of this living overseas thing.
"And you have, too, in Ireland. You aren't struggling with a new language [in fact, my husband and I would have argued that we were!], but you're on your own in a foreign community. You're living and working and sending your children to school among the Irish. You've plopped yourself down and are trying to fit in among the local community. Read more >>
