Argentina makes its appearance onto a lot of ‘best of’ lists and Argentines themselves will tell you the country has the best beef, wine and most beautiful women. It’s not surprising then that the country makes it onto so many ‘Best Places to Retire Abroad’ lists.
The website Global Post placed Argentina on their 2010 low-cost retirement destinations line-up. Alongside Costa Rica it has the lowest costs of living of any country on their six-country list and also ranks the highest on the human development index. Another website, Retiring-Overseas, places Argentina on their list of 11 countries named as the best places to retire abroad.
The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), a US-based non-profit for those over 50, listed Argentina as number one on the ten best places to retire abroad in 2010. The article provides a good basic round-up of what retirees can expect here in terms of cost of living and culture.
The only thing the AARP got wrong was stating that Americans are a minority in the expatriate community. In fact, there are over 60,000 Americans in Argentina (link in Spanish) and they are the country’s fifth largest immigrant population.
The AARP article lead to a flurry of spin-offs such as, ‘The best places to retire outside the U.S.’ on Yahoo’s finance page. The article recaps the AARP findings and inadvertently reveals that the author must have never actually visited Argentina — she ends the article with, ‘Olé!,’ a word never uttered in Argentina.
The Yahoo article just indicates the need to take online retirement advice written by someone behind a desk in New York with the proverbial grain of salt, and do your own homework before taking the plunge.
But it is true that there are many older people still enmeshed in the developed world’s rat race who could liquidate their assets and comfortably live in Argentina sipping Malbec and playing golf for the rest of their lives — as long as the country remains stable. Culture, culinary delights and bargain properties are part of the draw for baby boomers looking to stretch their retirement savings overseas.
For those who can’t yet cash in their retirement funds and run to Argentina, the Los Angeles Times recently ran an article called, ‘Early retirement may be dangerous to your health.’ The article claims that retirement adversely affects physical and cognitive health, but whether that applies to retirees who come to Argentina to learn Spanish and dance tango is debatable.
