If South America sounds like a tempting retirement destination, we are glad to help by pointing out the best places to retire in Colombia.
You may have heard some bad stuff about Colombia like problems with drug cartels, but that’s all in the past now. The country has high democracy values, protects civil rights and is safer than it used to be. Don’t get us started with the natural attractions. Beautiful beaches, mountains, tropical forests, deserts, Colombia has it all. The best thing – living in the country is ridiculously cheap. If you are coming from the United States, everything will be three times cheaper here. Also, you’ll be just a 3 or 4 hours flight away from the U.S. soil if you get homesick.
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Although it is cheap to live here, quality of life isn’t that low, especially when it comes to healthcare. There is a big income inequality in the country but equal access to healthcare. In the 1990s, the healthcare was a big issue in Colombia, with only 23.5% of the population having access to healthcare. According to OECD Review of Colombia’s Health System, the figure in 2014 was 96.6%. This is all thanks to government’s efforts to increase the healthcare quality and provide it for the entire population, spending 7.2% of GDP on health. Colombia has one of the best hospitals in Latin America and the country has seen medical tourism growth in the last couple of years.
We said earlier that Colombia is safer compared to previous years, but the crime ratings are still pretty high in the bigger cities. According to the United States Overseas Security Advisory Council Crime and Safety report, criminals often target foreigners on the street. The most common crimes are assaults, mugging, and frauds. The criminals are almost always armed and it isn’t rare for assaults to turn violent. Burglaries and carjacking are also very common. Other points of concerns include civil unrests and environmental hazards. If you would rather go to a place much safer but less warm, check out our list of 10 Best Places to Retire in Canada.
In order to create the list of best places to retire in Colombia, we first started with taking recommendations from Retire Fabulously, Investopedia, and Expat Exchange among others. Then we ranked the places according to their cost of living index (Numbeo) and hospital to population ratio (Google Maps), while also taking in consideration weather averages through the year (temperature, rainy and sunny days) taken from World Weather Online. For each of these criteria, the destination earned points that were then summed up into our IM Score. In order for you to better understand the provided data, we should mention that the cost of living index should be compared to 100.00 which is the cost of living in New York. The hospital to population ratio tells you, in theory, how many persons from the entire population are assigned to one hospital. When it comes to weather averages, the data provided tells you the lowest and highest monthly averages in the year for temperature, rainy and sunny days. Huh! Let’s check out our list of best places to retire in Colombia then, shall we?
