Colombia continues to get a raw deal when ranked as a retirement or remote working destination by the so-called experts like International Living (IL) and Motley Fool (MF).
In IL´s latest ranking, Colombia has fallen to No 10 after being in the top 5 a few years ago. Still not terrible but...their Global Retirement Index is a joke. Why ? Without getting into a deep dive into the errors in the individual category scores, they do not give weight to the categories. They simply add up the scores from the 7 categories and divide by 7.
Cost of Living for most retirees is the No 1 and should be given the greatest weight. Healthcare is No 1A and is No 1 for many. Quality of Life, which takes into account lots of factors, is No 1B.
But I would be remiss in not mentioning the score (83) they give Colombia for Healthcare. That is INSULTING. America Economia magazine which is like the Forbes of Latin America consistently ranks over 20 Colombia hospitals in their top 60 with 5 in the Top 10...
Even relatively small Manizales where I live has 2 internationally accredited hospitals. The one 5 minutes from me saved my life 3 years ago when I had a massive heart attack. With my Colombia health insurance, my total cost for the 21 days in ICU and 3 nights in a private suite cost me a total of $70.
As far as Quality of Life...Colombia is amazing...first class modern shopping centers, tons of great low cost restaurants, the 2nd most biodiverse country in the world with spectacular outdoor activities and scenery...choose your climate...a wide variety of places to live which have all the comforts of home (the US) at about 1/3rd the price !
And don´t think that Colombia is just for people living on a small monthly income like Social Security. I have friends from the US who make a ton of money every month but they still choose Colombia because they can live a lifestyle they could never afford in the US even making over $100,000 a year or much more.
The 68 score on Visa/Benefits borders on prejudicial. Colombia has some of THE easiest, lowest cost Retirement, Investor and Digital Nomad Visas in the world ! Sure Panama has some special discounts for seniors but those don´t even come close to lowering Panama's cost of living to what you get everyday in Colombia.
MF just published an article entitled ¨Thinking of Relocating for Retirement? Here Are Some of the Cheapest Places to Live¨.
They make some good recommendations upfront.
NOTE: Extended Stay Colombia offers the largest selection of professionally managed fully furnished apartments in Colombia with deeply discounted rates for stays of 30 nights or more.
MF start by posing the question...Many people relocate in retirement because they simply want to. They may have dreamed of living in, say, Spain, throughout their working lives. Or perhaps they visited Costa Rica on vacation and decided they'd love to live there one day. Other people, though, consider relocating in retirement because a retirement in America is looking financially shaky to them.
If you're in that latter group, here are some places you might consider moving to, as they're inexpensive places to live.
MF uses worlddata.info as their source for cost of living around the world. I use Numbeo.com as it's the largest crowdsourced cost of living info but the two have almost identical results so use whichever you like, Colombia is one of the lowest cost of living countries on both.
But then MF has a couple charts for you to look at. The US is given a score of 100 so you can compare ¨apples to apples¨ when looking at the score of the other countries. Colombia, which has a world data cost of living index (COLI) of 38.2 is not listed in the first group. Portugal has a COLI of 67.9 nearly twice that of Colombia. Cost Rica´s COLI is 59.4 which is over 50 % higher than Colombia´s.
Then MF provides another list. They leave off Colombia but include Ecuador which has a COLI of 49.7 or 30 % higher than Colombia.
SMH....before you take IL´s or MF´s word for it, come down and check out Colombia.
