Do you know what are the easiest countries to retire to?
After working for many years in the same city or in a country, people often get bored and wish to change their place of residence once they are retired. Boredom is, however, just one of the reasons. Others are the lower cost of living, better quality of life or even climate. Moreover, some people are just in love with other countries and want to spend there the rest of their leisure time.
If you think about it, retirement is the perfect time to fulfill your long desired wishes and to yield to another life adventure. However, for a retired US citizen, it is not the easiest thing just to move to another country outside of the States. A person who is planning to settle down in another foreign country needs to get introduced with two possible solutions. One is to choose to go for dual citizenship, which means to obtain a second passport, or another option is to apply for the citizenship of the new country they chose to reside while giving up the American one. Of course, there is always an option to just move to another country and be there illegally, and even though we don’t advise you to do that, on the other hand, we can recommend you to check our list of 11 easiest countries to live and work illegally. Let’s look more thoroughly through first two mentioned options.
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If you choose to apply for the dual citizenship, the pros are that dual citizens can receive the benefits and privileges of both countries. Moreover, you can own property in both of the countries. But, nothing is so perfect as it sounds. The US government imposes taxes on its citizens for the earned income outside of the States. So, that means you would have to pay double taxation. Another point is that it can take many years to acquire dual citizenship, which is not suitable for retired seniors.
Another more appropriate option is to simply apply for the citizenship of the country that you want to reside in and give up on your US citizenship. Of course, it is not easy to give up your American passport, but if you are certain that you want to spend the rest of your life in another place, then this is the best choice for you. Many countries, especially the ones inside the European Union offer you with their passports, possibility to enter and reside in many other countries. So, basically, you are not stuck in one place the whole time.
In order to obtain citizenship, there are different ways. Depending on in which country you want to apply for, you either have to live on the territory of that country for some period of time, or to invest in it, which is called citizenship by investment. Furthermore, if you don’t feel like giving up your American passport, there is one last option. Have you heard about residency by investment? You invest in one country where you want to live without losing your citizenship. This is maybe one of the best solutions, as for example, you choose the country with lower income taxes, and therefore you manage your own wealth. Some of the best countries to start a program of residency by investment, ranked by Global Passport Index, are Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom and the USA, in the fourth place. However, as the process is long and more expensive than citizenship by investment, we didn’t find it the most suitable for our topic.
As the easiest way for getting a citizenship in a foreign country as a retired person, we chose for the above-mentioned reasons, citizenship by investment. For that purpose, we checked 2nd Passports site and ranked our countries by the minimum time needed to get citizenship. Of course, we excluded the states, as the article is dedicated primarily to the citizens of the USA. The list of easiest countries to retire to goes from the biggest number of months acquired for the citizenship to the smallest one. However, as some of the countries had the same amount of months, we gave priority to the cheaper program in the list. Are you ready for the results? By a simple click on Next, you can start reading!
