Choosing A New Location? It's All About Cost Of Living

Income and spending have a critical juncture at what is known as cost of living. If your cost of living is rising and your income isn't, you're on a fast-track to pain. The only solutions are to find a lower cost of living, which translates as "lowered standard of living" and usually leads to "lower quality of life" or you can increase your income. In a poor economy that isn't so easy.

Looking at general trends, it appears that residents of Canada, the UK and the US are headed for massive pain in terms of lowered standard of living. This is a trend that one notices slowly, as when the costs of basic needs keep rising in the stores, or suddenly, as when one loses a job and lands in the middle of an income crisis.

What most people don't understand is that the business cycle is, well, cyclic. It's also geographical, in that even in times of global depression there are areas that are doing quite well- somewhere in the world. Think of the seasons: When it's winter in the Northern Hemisphere, it's summer in the Southern Hemisphere. Unfortunately, economic cycles run for anywhere from years to decades whereas seasons of weather only last for months.

As we've pointed out before, the difference between an immigrant and a refugee is that the immigrant relocated with their assets while the refugee lost everything before deciding to leave. With the economic trends firmly in place, anyone who is looking at decades ahead of them on a fairly fixed income needs to pay close attention to this point.

Leveraging Your Assets

The average person in Canada, the UK or the US is rich compared to the vast majority of the world, however, making the translation requires that the individual liquidate their assets in the "first world" and take that money to someplace where they can live a better life.

Currently there are a lot of offshore destinations that are vying for the attention of "rich" foreigners: Panama, The Philippines, Costa Rica, Dubai, Thailand, Belize... and the list goes on and on. When one compares these locations, one has to reduce the information to some common denominators in order to make valid comparisons. Part of this process is deciding what is important to one's individual lifestyle. However, everyone has to live somewhere, eat food, get medical care and access other basics of life.

There are other factors- like the level of infrastructure. Nicaragua is a beautiful country and it's Pacific coast is gorgeous... but the infrastructure isn't very good once one gets outside a major city. Roads are horrible and public services aren't anything to write home about. For the vast majority of the Caribbean and Central America, hurricanes are a serious consideration. What happens when a hurricane blows through and wreck the place? How long does it take to rebuild? What happens in the meanwhile? It's significant that Margarita has excellent infrastructure and is outside the hurricane belt, because these are issues that will effect both your cost of living and quality of life over time.

However, to stay on topic and help your decision making process, we'll start covering some basic lifestyle costs on Margarita Island on the following page:

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