Retire In Panama

Panama offers incomparable advantages for the potential retiree or foreign resident. This country has great weather, a low cost of living. Additionally, it has a foreign-resident-friendly tax system, and one of the best banking systems in the region. The political situation is stable, and it has a bright economic outlook.

Panama has the world’s best program of discounts and perks for foreign retirees. No wonder Panama’s quickly become a top retirement haven.

You will fall in love with this multifaceted tropical country. Choose to settle in cosmopolitan Panama City, a calm sunny beach like Coronado, or in a cool mountainside town like Boquete. Your options are limitless.

If you rush south during winter, you’ll appreciate the year-round warm climate in Panama.

Retirement In Panama Has Benefits

Finding another country with the same level of retirement benefits is difficult. The pensionado visa makes retiring in Panama easy, even if you are well below the typical retirement age. Benefits include discounts and conveniences that range anywhere from 15% to 50%. These discounts include restaurants, medications, transportation, and a whole lot more.

There’s a tax exemption to import your household items when moving to Panama. Other conveniences include special programs at participating businesses and even express lines. Retirees are able to forgo the usual lines at banks and some government institutions.

In Panama, you will never be bored. You can go to the theater, catch a movie, attend a concert, or watch the regular sporting matches. Enjoy all these activities for half-off when you retire in Panama. Your current entertainment budget could be cut in half.

Panama, the hub of the Americas, is attracting people from all over the world. The culture and cuisine mix allows you to taste some of the best meals. Enjoy from Caribbean to Chinese cuisine, and from French to Italian cuisine. What’s more, enjoy dining at restaurants and save on the bill. Restaurants give retirees anywhere from 15% to 25% off.

See the Panama Visa and Residency Information section to read more about the benefits of retiring in Panama.

Top Reasons To Retire In Panama

If you’ve been a Live And Invest Overseas reader for any time, you’ve heard us go on about Panama. We could have chosen to base our Live And Invest Overseas operation anywhere in the world…

Fifteen years ago, we chose Panama. We made that decision based on the decade-plus of experience we’d already had investing and doing business in this country.

We know Panama from a foreigner’s point of view like nobody else.

Here in Panama, over the past nearly three decades, we’ve bought pre-construction for investment and centuries-old French-colonial for renovation…

We’ve invested in raw land… both oceanfront and riverside… and commercial rentals…

Also, we’ve started businesses, formed corporations, and opened bank accounts…

In short, we’ve acquired full-time residency through the country’s ground-breaking “Specific Countries” visa program…

We’ve hired staff, shipped household belongings, put our son through school, sourced architects and carpenters, paid local utility bills, researched which health insurance plan makes most sense for our family, bought cars (because finally we’d had enough of dealing with Panama City taxi drivers!), gotten local driver’s licenses, even started a local franchise (a family project)…

What do we think of Panama today? We’re more bullish than ever on the prospects for this little isthmus. Our Live And Invest Overseas HQ is thriving in Panama City… Lief and I consider Los Islotes (from where I write today) our permanent home base…

And, we continue to make new investments in this country that has fully rebounded from the pandemic shutdowns.

Why, specifically, do we call Panama the world’s #1 Do Everything Haven?

Here you go… Some reasons to retire in Panama:

#1: The cost of living is affordable

Outside Panama City, it remains downright cheap. You could retire near the beach in Chitré, for example, on the country’s Azuero Peninsula, on a budget of US$1,000 per month or even less…

#2: The sun shines year-round.

Panama City can be too hot and sticky for some retirees’ tastes, but, again, look beyond the capital, and you find pockets of near-perfect climates in some regions. If you prefer cool mountain temperatures to steamy sea-level ones, consider Boquete or, less discovered and therefore more affordable, Santa Fe…

#3: The retirees’ path is well-marked

This country has been attracting foreign retirees in growing numbers for more than a decade. It offers many and very user-friendly options for establishing foreign residency if you want to live here full-time, and it is home to established and welcoming communities of expats and retirees.

#4: You can get by without speaking Spanish

I don’t recommend it, but, in Panama City, you don’t have to learn to speak Spanish if you don’t want to.

#5: Health care in Panama is of an international standard

Health care in Panama is of an international standard, and Panama City is home to Hospital Punta Pacífica, the only hospital in Latin America affiliated with and managed by Johns Hopkins Medicine International.

#6: The cost of medical care is a bargain

Like everything, medical costs are higher in Panama City than elsewhere in the country, but, even in the capital, a doctor’s visit costs US$50 or less.

#7: Local Panama health insurance

Local Panama health insurance (which can be good, comprehensive coverage, all you need living in this country) can cost US$100 per month or less…

#8: The infrastructure is of a high standard

This is a place where things generally work—the internet, cable TV, phone service, etc., are all as reliable as anywhere in the States. The roadways and highway systems are being constantly expanded and improved. ATMs are on every corner.

#9: The currency in Panama is the U.S. dollar

The currency in Panama is the U.S. dollar, so U.S. retirees have no currency-exchange risk or confusion to worry about.

#10: Panama City is an international travel hub

Panama City is an international travel hub, very accessible from North America. The flight from Miami, for example, is about two-and-a-half hours.

#11: Panama’s pensionado program of special benefits and discounts for foreign retirees is the current Gold Standard

Retired in this country, you can save as much as 50% on everything from restaurant meals to in-country airfares, from prescription medicines to closing costs on your new beach house.

#12: This is a nature-lover’s paradise

This is a nature-lover’s paradise, boasting some of the world’s best surfing, snorkeling, diving, sportfishing, birding, hiking, and adventure-travel opportunities anywhere on earth.

#13: This is a safe, welcoming place to call home

#14: Retirees you meet in Panama aren’t losing sleep over their futures

They’re embracing them.

Retire Part-Time In Panama

“I can only stay for about an hour. I have a meeting about establishing a food co-op at 10:30, and, right after, I’m getting a lesson on which bus to take to get to the El Dorado shopping center.”

Bobette Jones lives like a Panamanian. She walks nearly everywhere, and, to get places too far to walk, she hops on a bus. Bobette makes Panama her home seven to eight months a year and spends the rest of the year at her summer home on an island in Lake Huron.

She first came to Panama to learn Spanish before embarking on a two-month-long pilgrimage across Spain from the French border to the Atlantic Ocean. Bobette says she didn’t know a single Spanish word before coming to Panama and was disappointed to find that quite a few Panamanians do not speak English, contrary to what she had been told.

The expat and Panamanian communities embraced Bobette within her first weeks in the country, so she decided to pack up her life in Seattle and spend most of her time in Panama.

Her first address was an apartment in Punta Paitilla, an upscale oceanfront neighborhood in Panama City. In Punta Paitilla, she lived with friends, but, after deciding to make Panama a more permanent home, Bobette was looking for more comfortable accommodation.

Through a Panamanian doctor friend, Bobette rented an apartment in El Cangrejo. And, she admits her decision came down to the apartment and not the neighborhood. Now, after calling the neighborhood home for four years, she couldn’t be happier with her choice.

The apartment building Bobette lives in is just off El Cangrejo’s main street, Via Argentina. The building is more than 20 years old and was built at a time when apartments were constructed with ample square footage.

The apartment has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a large maid’s room, which has been converted into an office. The building has an immaculately maintained pool and attentive staff. Also, the building manager lives on-site. For all this space and service, Bobette pays about $1,200 a month in rent.

“I don’t own a car, and, living in El Cangrejo, I don’t need to,” says Bobette. “I walk everywhere. The grocery store, the beauty salon, the movie theater, not to mention I’m within a few minutes’ walk of what I consider to be some of the best restaurants in the country. If I can’t walk somewhere, I take a city bus or the Metro.”

Plus, a retired attorney, Bobette spent the later years of her working life in health research and preventative medicine. Impressed with the interest Panamanians and expats in this country have in alternative medicine, Bobette hopes to become involved in that field in some capacity.

She says her own natural medicine practitioner in Panama City goes beyond what is expected and even gives her advice over the phone for minor complaints. Bobette has experience with conventional medicine in Panama, too.

When she informed her international medical insurance provider that her doctor was recommending cataract surgery, the insurance company approved the procedure within 45 minutes, recognizing that having the surgery performed in Panama would cost them a fraction what it’d cost if Bobette underwent the procedure in the United States. She gives glowing reviews of Panama’s hospitals and doctors.

But, adjusting to life in a foreign country takes getting used to. The challenge for Bobette in Panama is getting used to the lack of customer service. “When I was living in my first apartment in Panama City,” she explained, “my water heater broke, and it took a month before the service technician came to repair it, even though he called every day and promised he was on the way.”

She recounts a handful of other frustrations with the service industry in Panama, but, overall, she is very happy with life in this country.

“I feel safer walking after dark in Panama than I do in Seattle. My wallet was taken from my purse once, but that was my fault for making it so accessible. Besides that, I’ve had no problems. I also like that it’s so easy to get to Panama, from just about anywhere in North America, and the airfares are usually cheaper than flying across a couple of U.S. states. The tropical weather doesn’t hurt either.”

And with that parting thought, Bobette is off to her meeting to find out how to start a food co-op. She is typical of a growing number of retirees living in Panama. They may have ditched the 9-to-5, but they are not slowing down.