Life Situation: Married 30yo male, 29 old year wife and no kids (four cats and an old dog, all adopted/rescued from the streets).
We live in the "best city" in our Country (Medellin-Colombia), in a very nice area (expensive compared to the rest) and very nice apartment (460sqft). We are very happy here with our current lifestyle, we try to be frugal but we live here because it is safer than cheaper neighborhoods.
However, we are worried about the direction this country may take where a
situation like Venezuela may occur.
We are thinking immigrating to Canada could be a good option, but the cost of living will impact our path to FI.
In the details below, you'll see how cheaper it is to live in a LATAM country, I have converted the values to USD using 1x3000 COP. (conversion rates range between 2800-3000)
Gross Salary/Wages: 80,400 USD
Other Ordinary Income: - Rental income: 200 USD (We are likely selling this property soon, see assets)
- Being a Software engineer I could take on additional freelancing work hours, which could bring additional 1000 to 3000 USD If I just stopped gaming a couple hours at night T_T (
don't count on this)
Current Expenses:Entertainment | 150 |
Transportation | 100 |
Rent | 600 |
Internet | 44 |
Utilities | 84 |
Groceries | 240 |
House Cleaning | 100 |
Pet Care | 100 |
Monthly taxes (pension unavoidable) | 70 |
Health Insurance | 120 |
Misc | 200 |
Charity | 40 |
Vacations/Christmas/Birthdays | 100 |
Total | 1948 |
Adjusted Gross Income: 4952 USD/mo
Taxes: I have to pay about a month's worth of salary per year: 6700 USD.
Expected ER expenses: 30k/yr
Assets:- Savings 10.000 (will go away in taxes soon)
- Investments: 27.600
- Paid off Apartment: 100.000 (generating 200 in rent, which is why we are going to sell it to invest somewhere better)
- I have stock options at my company, impossible to know how much they'll be worth, but I'll estimate a
minimum of 100.000 in four years.
- Pension: 7.600 (not very likely to ever be able to cash this)
No car, we work from home, no liabilities.
Specific Question(s): We know that many people like to retire in LATAM, given how much cheaper it is (as you can see above), while we are very happy here, and our lifestyle is very good, the difference is that these people can just go elsewhere if things go south here, we do not have that option. I may sound pessimistic, and nothing may happen here, but if it does, we want to have options, be able to leave in case the country's situation goes bad.
We like the option of Canada, because there may be a chance we can move there and keep my current job (because I love it, and because the shares could be worth a lot), unfortunately
the relocation guide has no entries for Canada, which makes it harder for me to estimate the hit on our FI goal.
However, I wanted to get your opinion in general, is this a good move? what would you do in our situation? would moving to a different LATAM country be a better idea? Europe is also an option If I decide to switch jobs.
Additional reasons we don't like it here much: Pure rant, so you may want to stop reading from here:
- Being a third world country means:
- Lost of corruption (ranked 90 with a 37
corruption perception index)
- There is a lot of insecurity (you don't want to move around on your bike)
- Taxes are high and are never reinvested (more so than many other countries)
- No investment in education
- Streets are in bad shape