All About Retiring in Belize
Published on Thursday, March 26th, 2009
Previously known as British Honduras, Belize lies on the east coast of Central America in the heart of the Caribbean Basin. Bordered on the north by Mexico, the south and west by Guatemala and to the east by the Caribbean Sea, Belize is an English speaking sub tropical country of 200,000 people, with the longest barrier reef in the western hemisphere.
With an average temperature of 26 degrees centigrade and sea temperatures around 30 degrees centigrade, with brisk prevailing winds off the Caribbean Sea to cool the country, Belize is a Mecca for divers and bird watchers and really can be described as a paradise, it is possible to retire in Belize quite easily.
In this article we are all about retiring in Belize!
If you’re looking for a place to buy a property in 2009, what about Belize? It’s a spectacularly beautiful nation with a fabulous climate, it’s part of the British Commonwealth and English is the main language in Belize, tourism is on the increase, the nation is considered safe and stable – and if all that wasn’t enough to persuade you, what about the fact that it’s a celebrity hotspot?
There are an estimated 77 million babyboomers in America who are embarking upon or about to enter into retirement – and thanks to the dire state of the US economy, the way the stock markets have crashed and housing markets across the States are depressed, a new study by Ernst and Young shows that up to 60% of these babyboomers will have to cut their living standards by a quarter if they want to survive in retirement.
We touched upon what makes a good expatriate employee yesterday in our article ‘
The benefits of the Belize retired persons’ incentive programme are well known and understood by the many North Americans who make use of it annually, but for Britons and Europeans, the scheme is lesser known and therefore lesser exploited. We aim to put that right today as we explore the massive financial and lifestyle benefits that this impressive and competitive scheme offers qualifying persons over the age of 45.
You might think that investing in property anywhere in the world right now is tantamount to madness – after all house prices in the US and UK are falling and therefore the value of our equity is on the slide. Added to this it is getting harder and harder to arrange domestic mortgages let alone raise one to buy abroad. But what if I were to tell you that there really is one market in the world where it still makes sense to buy property?
You may be wondering about the strange title for this article – the concept of time when living in Belize? What’s she on about? Well, the fact of the matter is, in Belize time is taken less seriously than in the UK, time is languid and laid back, and barring all emergencies, you need to get used to everything taking a lot more time and there actually being less time in the day to achieve your list of many things to do once you move to Belize!
The thought of living in a tropical paradise where the sea is warm year round, you wake up to a world full of exotic flora and fauna every day and where the sand is white, the lifestyle is laidback and the sun almost always seems to shine lures many expats to live in Belize annually.
Coming in at number four in the Sunday Times list of top destinations for British retirees is Belize! The report entitled: “Revealed: the best places in the world for retirement,” decided not to look necessarily at the top places Britons were currently choosing, but at the nations they should be considering for the best retirement overseas – which is why Belize ranks above Spain, and Panama even ranks above France in the findings.
