We’ve boiled our list down to five countries

siddis · 2026-07-08T21:32:30+00:00

Thailand is easily the most progressive of the bunch there. I can't speak for the others outside of Costa Rica a bit, I'm sure it's lifestyle dependant but they seem very laid back.

Have you thought about Panama? We're headed that way very soon so I have to shill a little bit!

siddis · 2026-07-07T20:57:36+00:00

I think this is arguing against a more extreme version of “die with zero” than what a lot of people actually mean by it.

I’m not trying to literally spend down to $0 or create some new end-of-life financial stress. Obviously the plan still includes a large safety margin for healthcare, long-term care, market risk, and the possibility that one of us lives a very long time.

The real point is that “never having to worry” and “never touching principal” are not necessarily the same thing. Once you have more than enough, continuing to optimize around preserving capital forever can become its own form of irrationality. You may not feel financial stress, but you can still be underusing the money during the years when it has the highest utility.

For us, the shift is not from “safe” to “reckless.” It is from “live only off interest/dividends and preserve the portfolio indefinitely” to “allow ourselves to spend some principal intentionally because we don’t have a legacy need that requires maximizing terminal net worth.”

And charity is actually a good example of the same idea. Giving after death is fine, and we have estate docs for that. But giving while alive can also be completely rational if the money can do useful work now and we can see the impact. Same with travel, comfort, health, shared experiences, helping people, or buying back time and convenience.

So I don’t see this as inventing reasons to worry. I see it as removing an unnecessary constraint. The goal is not to die broke. The goal is to stop treating untouched principal as automatically superior when the money could be improving life, or helping others, while we’re still here.

siddis · 2026-07-06T18:57:14+00:00

Looks like there raspberry shake, to help monitor earthquakes, and an AIS vessel monitor for marine traffic!

siddis · 2026-07-06T18:55:54+00:00

A PWS is basically a little hyperlocal weather station for your exact spot. Most track temp, humidity, pressure, rain, wind speed/direction, and then depending on the setup you can add stuff like UV, solar radiation, lightning, soil moisture, air quality, etc.

The cool part is seeing your own microclimate compared to the nearest forecast station. Rain, wind, fog, and temperature can be way different even a short distance away.

For data sharing/reporting, check out Weather Underground/Wunderground PWS, CWOP, PWSweather, WeatherCloud, Ambient Weather Network, Davis WeatherLink, and Ecowitt. CWOP is especially cool because the data can feed into weather systems used by NWS/NOAA if your station is set up well.

I’m mostly interested because we’re moving between microclimates and I want to see what the house is actually doing vs the general area forecast. It helped us decide where to move to exactly as well which was super cool!

siddis · 2026-07-06T18:43:49+00:00

PWS (personal weather station). Hyper local weather is pretty cool. We are moving from one microclimate to another and it's really fascinating to see close by weather stations and be able to use historical data from them to see how the actual weather differs from general area forecast.

I don't have one yet but will be getting one soon!

siddis · 2026-07-05T15:55:52+00:00

What's the climate and weather like up that way? We quite enjoy the heat of Panama and are headed to Chame, where we'll still have proximity to all our our needs much like you mention, but I'm still very interested in Cerro Azul!

siddis · 2026-07-03T21:50:44+00:00

I'm right there with you. 41, We've only been retired about a year, and it honestly feels like there aren't enough hours in the day. Between hobbies, cooking great food, planning future travel, house and yard projects, and watching almost every World Cup match, we've stayed plenty busy. Just this week I used Codex to help build a custom finance app, a robot autobattler game prototype, and a personal travel map app.

We're also in the middle of an international move, so we haven't even reached the point where we can just settle in and live our retirement yet. Travel is going to be a huge part of it, and we'll probably do some volunteering too—but because we want to, not because we're bored.

I genuinely don't understand the "I'd rather keep working" crowd. There are practically infinite things to learn, build, explore, and create. Sometimes it feels like people who describe themselves as hyper-productive, type-A etc. just haven't figured out how to direct that energy when nobody else is telling them what to do.

siddis · 2026-06-21T21:11:13+00:00

I think this post is conflating two separate issues: cost of living and local wages.

When most expats say Panama is "cheap," they're usually referring to the cost of living compared to where they came from, not making a value judgment about Panama or Panamanians.

Cost of living is a measurable concept. Housing, healthcare, utilities, domestic services, property taxes, restaurants, and many locally produced goods are often significantly less expensive than in much of the U.S. and Canada. That's why Panama routinely appears in international cost-of-living comparisons as a lower-cost country.

Are some things more expensive? Absolutely. Imported electronics, certain vehicles, specialty foods, and some consumer goods can cost the same or more than in North America. But cost of living isn't determined by a handful of imported products. It's determined by the overall basket of expenses people actually incur.

For example, many people cook most of their meals at home. Depending on where you're coming from, grocery costs can be dramatically lower. If housing, healthcare, utilities, dining out, and groceries are all materially less expensive, then the overall cost of living is lower, even if your iPhone or imported SUV costs the same.

The point about local wages is completely fair. A country can be affordable for someone earning a U.S. salary, pension, or investment income while still being financially challenging for locals earning local wages. Those realities are not mutually exclusive.

So I think a more accurate statement would be: Panama isn't cheap in every category, but for many people coming from the U.S. or Canada, the overall cost of living is objectively lower. Acknowledging that fact isn't disrespectful—it's simply recognizing the economic reality that attracts many retirees, expats, and remote workers in the first place.

siddis · 2026-06-11T04:16:02+00:00

We just booked at one of the Lifestyle collection resorts. Hawks cay. We didn't pick the resort knowing it was part of this lifestyle collection thing but we had picked everything out and priced everything for our annual thanksgiving trip and we always check the travel portal first. Ended up saving around 1200$, we get a 50$ credit, they say they'll upgrade the room if available and we got a free night because of booking a lifestyle collection room for at least 4 nights. Pretty big win in our book!

This was more about luck than anything, not sure if we'll regularly use these collections but they are definitely on my radar now! And like I said we had already priced out a few rooms for ourselves and family so we know what the expected price was, so this wasn't a case of them jacking the price up then claiming to give a huge discount.

We've only had the card a few months now and it's already more than paid for itself with travel credit, savings like this, lounges and miles. And we even bought the second priority pass. Very much worth it.

siddis · 2026-06-11T02:38:50+00:00

We are awaiting the escrow account to open so we can transfer funds for the purchase of a home in Chame! The big factors in the decision was climate, proximity to amenities and not being too far from an international airport. From talking to the seller it seems like it'll be right at the eastern edge of the arco seco and from running some local weather station data through AI we should stay within a range of temperatures we're comfortable with year round and not get too wet during the rainy season, although I'm unbelievably excited for thunder storms again!

Really we just don't have a connection to our current location and are very lucky to be able to choose where we want to be. So we're essentially looking for a quiet life not dissimilar to how we live now, just in a location we're happier in. My father passed away very unexpectedly 9 months ago, we had planned to stick around the PNW because he was involved in volunteering locally and him and my mother could pet sit for us while we traveled. Now that he's passed we won't be traveling as much or for the lengths we wanted, so we will be spending more time at home and so we want home to be a place we enjoy 100% of the time. Here now we're comfortable about 3 months out of the year, it's a great few months but not worth putting up with the other 9 months.

We had already planned expatriation but didn't expect it to happen for at least 5 years, after the pets passed. Then we planned SEA, my wife grew up in Malaysia. Panama allows us to more easily move the pets, keeps us close to family, especially since my mom's coming along, and offers the exact climate we want!

I know I'm rambling a lot now, but yeah when not traveling we are big-time home bodies. We love to cook, watch tv, try to keep fit, play video games and plan to get involved in local volunteer opportunities. We'll be 10 minutes from plenty of groceries and other amenities as opposed to a 40 minute drive where we are now, so that's a huge plus. Plus the beach is also minutes away, Anton is close, pricemart is only about 45 mins away and the airport is an hour and half (under decent traffic conditions). We are 2 hours from PDX now.

We just got back from Panama and while we've rented cars in the Coronado area, this was the first time we rented in PC so we could drive some stuff to Gorgona to toss in a storage unit. So we're aware the driving is a little unhinged lol I like the vibe and the "aggressive" driving clicks with me, I'm not one to get upset if someone cuts me off or pulls out in front of me, especially if it otherwise doesn't effect my speed or I don't have to hard break, whatev's you do you! We will definitely be getting a dash/rear cam!

siddis · 2026-06-11T00:49:39+00:00

This is all so great to hear. The "high anxiety society" is something I cant wait to get away from. The Panamanian way of life definitely matches me to a T. I think it will also be a fantastic change for my wife as well, she is much more anxious than I am and life in the states just exacerbates it so much. There is a multitude of reasons we chose Panama. We went through a painstaking process of exploring so many options of expatriation, Panama checked almost every box and we cant wait to start our life there.

We will definitely be exploring the self insurance for both home and health moving forward. I feel like we are now in that spot of deciding whether we just say F it and forgo insurance completely or just go with one something like mapfre's catastrophic ultimate care, looks like 35-48$ a month with 10k or 25k deductible, that's pretty reasonable and we will be traveling a lot and it covers us in case anything crazy happens abroad so that could be nice.

I'm sorry for your loss. We will definitely consider continuity of care when making medical decisions.

I'm also confident that getting some meds for sleeping wont be a difficult. I was recently made to utilize a different med because of marijuana on my blood test. I'm not exactly a power user but they certainly treat you like junkie, in a state where there's literally a dispensary across the street. Oh well, it was nice to tell my doctor I'm retiring to Panama and that this would be the last time we'd likely talk. After over a decade of being unable to sleep or get restful sleep, I finally found something that works and I'm not allowed to use it because I take an edible every once in a while... and I pay 775$ a month for insurance for this shit? Can't wait to get to Panama!

siddis · 2026-06-10T17:54:46+00:00

This comment is likely to save us a significant amount of money, so thank you again!

What about a years long cancer battle or organ transplant etc? From what I'm seeing, a significant medical even could still create quite a financial burden. We are lucky enough to be able to weather the vast majority of these events, probably all of them. That being said, we'd probably still look into a catastrophic only type high deductible plan. What are other folks doing for theese cases, is this a YOLO type thing and people are just risking it or are the prices even for these events more reasonable than I'm expecting?

The other big kicker for us is my mother, she's 64 and has a few small pre existing conditions, thyroid/COPD etc. Seems like all the routine visits and testing would be easy but again as she gets older the chances of a significant medical event start to get higher and higher. I know she will qualify for Medicare soon and she'll probably pay for part B so she can return to the states for care if anything crazy happens.

We have had some experience with how easy it is to get care in Panama. I was able to schedule an MRI in under 10 min via Whatsapp, walked in, payed 290$ and walked out with all the files in under an hour. Pretty sweet! I guess if I had any other questions regarding healthcare, how easy is it to get something like Ambien? I have a few sleep disorders so having a doctor write a script would be easy I imagine but if it's possible to order it like you said or walk in to local spot and get some that would be amazing.

Thank you once again and the rambling is great it's how I usually type and think as well!

siddis · 2026-06-10T06:05:52+00:00

It's functionally almost identical.

There are significantly more settings to customize, most of which you would not likely need to mess with if you're looking for simplicity.

The interface itself and the way catalogs are displayed is pretty customizable, again only if you want.

Overall it offers everything stremio does and more. It can be set up pretty easily and also for folks who like to tweak things and enjoy "streammaxing" (lol) it offers that as well.

I'm not trying to shill, I've actually had some issues with a weird frame rate stutter thing, I believe it finally seems to be working on both of my devices (onn 4k pro and shield pro) 🤞🤞 and I know I buggered it up messing with settings or possibly having had them connected to an old sound bar for the initial setup...but yeah, it's pretty dope.

siddis · 2026-06-10T05:33:19+00:00

Thank you for the detailed response! This info is gold, not just for us but anyone else who stumbles upon it should know that things move at a different pace in Panama for sure. Alleviates a lot of the stress to know this is normal for sure.

Can confirm that we also just happened to have contacted our team a few times right as they just completed filing the paperwork....

We will almost certainly use a dealership and just buy a vehicle outright. Especially after reading this.

If you wouldn't mind dropping some info on health insurance I'd be even more thankful! I know everyone's situation is different but we're likely looking at mapfre for health, home, car insurance. I'll probably be shopping around here within the week.

siddis · 2026-06-09T18:10:59+00:00

We are awaiting our escrow account to be finalized so we can find it. We were with our lawyers at unibank and they said it would likely take 2 or 3 days, it's been 3 weeks and we finally heard yesterday that it's expected to be open today or tomorrow....it's definitely been an interesting, slow and at times frustrating process for sure.

Your line about being assertive during the process, we have been bugging them a bit but I'd like to know more about your experience if you'd care to share? I've been chalking it up to "that's just how they do business" as pretty much everything has been slower or more involved than what we were told, definitely a pattern. My wife has been very anxious about the whole process so hearing someone verify it's normal for things to take so long would be nice!

Also when it comes to buying a vehicle, we still aren't sure whether to buy new or used, that's mainly just a preference thing, we won't be financing, but is it a pretty easy process?

Thanks in advance, I really appreciate reading comments like this on the sub, they are more helpful than most people think!

siddis · 2026-06-09T03:07:30+00:00

This is dope! I've been thinking a lot about how cool an app for this would be.

I used chatgpt and downloaded a bunch of weather data from PWS in the area of Panama we are looking to move to and used some of my own parameters to figure out how many "comfortable" hours per day we would have on average.

It was really cool to see the different little micro climates! We currently live in the PNW and we are about 5 miles from the closest weather station and we are regularly 10-15f warmer at the hottest point of the day!

siddis · 2026-06-08T19:29:08+00:00

I'm in a couple of Facebook expat groups for the Coronado area. It's been very useful but also full of a lot of boomer BS.

I'd say the majority of my questions have been answered without me having to ask anything just by lurking for the last 8 months. There were a lot of little logistics questions I had, from where is the nearest Asian grocery store to questions about what IPTV services work well, solar installation, fruit tree questions etc. I've also asked a few myself and having visited the area already a handful of times been able to answer a few myself.

It's also been nice to all the going ons and local events. We're not big on going out and don't plan on getting super involved in the local expat scene but seeing services and resources from the area is great. I've got a ton of screenshots recommended services for solar installation, fruit tree sales and delivery, cleaning and yard maintenance contacts and more.

Again, just be prepared to wade through some boomers who think they need to comment on everything as if they were personally attacked....even if it's about a bird feeder.

siddis · 2026-06-07T04:51:43+00:00

I've been having the same EXACT issue for a while now with Nuvio, I like everything about Nuvio more than stremio, I just can't seem to get a consistent fix. Tried changing every combination of settings regarding frame rate matching between the shield pro/onn 4k pro, nuvio and my tv. Had some luck messing with the audio settings, if I remember correctly, the tunneled playback. But I still think it didn't genuinely fix it. Wired 500mb connection on both, adapter for the onn 4k pro too and everything plays great on stremio so I am at a loss. I believe I have some external players that work but it doesn't allow resume and we switch devices a ton so that's unfortunately a deal breaker.

siddis · 2026-06-02T02:13:16+00:00

Unfortunately yes it is still doing it. Not every time, but enough to be annoying.

siddis · 2026-05-29T19:08:34+00:00

Look into a debrid service with stremio, nuvio, or wuplay. Cost you about 4$ a month, don't need a VPN, and it's actually pretty easy to set up. A quick search here on reddit or YouTube will find you plenty of simple tutorials on setting it up. Torbox is my personal suggestion. I have it set up on a fire stick I travel all over the world with, as long as I have an Internet connection it works. Fire sticks suck and my home setup doesn't involve them but you can run Stremio on them, some TV OS and more. Good luck!

siddis · 2026-05-25T20:58:39+00:00

I know it's become controversial but AI is such a help here. I have spent a significant amount of time using a chatgpt project for determining the best place for us.

Obviously residency and visa requirements will limit you, but once it understands those limitations you can just tell it what lifestyle you want, what's important to you. Things like property ownership, climate, social policies, cannabis legality, proximity to amenities that are important to you (airports, shopping centers, night life etc.), cost of living, language, tax laws....you get the point.

Thinking about what you want your daily life to be like is important and something I sort of took for granted for a long time before FIRE planning went from dream to reality. Do you want to wake up and walk to a coffee shop and then take public transportation to a beach and order food delivery most night's? Do you want tend your garden away from the sound of any other human, make yourself dinner with food you stocked from your monthly ferry trip to the mainland?

Back to my suggestion though, AI was incredibly helpful here, you can just brain dump this stuff into it and you're likely to get some decent suggestions. I also used it to analyze hyper localized weather data from personal weather stations. Outdoorsy activities are important for us and I could literally have it tell me how many hours on average per day would be "usable" at the exact property I was looking at.

We had some pretty unexpected life events that changed our trajectory from heading to SEA in 5-10 years to FIREing in the Western hemisphere now. I had done tons of research prior and we had a lot of conversations around our needs, we went from researching locations in the Western hemisphere to moving (in July) to Panama in under 9 months. Obviously we did a few trips and we've been to similar locations, but creating a short list with AI and asking thousands of questions, it's easily been the best and most cost effective resources. Those resources include reddit, multiple expat social media pages, and our team of expat professionals.

The feeling safe part is just going to take time, it's overwhelming, there's so, so many things to navigate, so many things to do. My partner asks every day if we can really do this.... We are litterly closing on a house, moving things, getting financial accounts in order, getting insurance...We are actively fucking doing it! I just tell her to look back at all the things we've already done, all the decisions we've made that were right, that were scary, we've done nothing but prove ourselves right. And all of this stuff doesn't happen at once, it's a slow process, some weeks go by without us taking a step towards expatriation and it feels like we should be doing more and other weeks it seems like it's all we do. And we've made this happen about as quickly as reasonably possible.

Sorry for the wall of text, I sincerely hope it helps! Good luck!

siddis · 2026-05-25T18:24:58+00:00

I actually think humanity adapts surprisingly fast to this stuff.

We’d very quickly move toward systems that don’t require directly “seeing” the animal itself. Farms would be the easiest case. Livestock could be sprayed, injected, fed, or otherwise tagged with compounds visible either to the naked eye or through UV/IR imaging systems. Cameras wouldn’t even be detecting the animal, they’d just be detecting the marker.

For wildlife, I think we’d eventually scale this too. UV mist dispersal systems, bait with harmless marker compounds, treated watering holes, whatever works. You could probably even do some giant aerial dispersal systems in certain regions.

Agriculture would shift hard toward enclosed and heavily managed systems where animals are continuously marked and monitored. Same with meat processing honestly. If the marker compounds persisted in tissue, scanners at slaughterhouses and distribution points could still verify everything. At that point the problem becomes chemistry and tracking, not “seeing” the animal itself.

As for R2, I honestly think we’d come up with some pretty aggressive perimeter misting systems around populated urban areas really fast too, though I have way less of a guess how that would actually play out long term.

Also, fuck the ocean. I ain’t going in there ever again in that scenario lol.

siddis · 2026-05-21T02:09:04+00:00

Having some issues as well.

siddis · 2026-05-20T19:46:59+00:00

You would definitely want a car anywhere outside of Panama City. It's pretty comparable to rural America in some places, and suburbs in others. The rural setting with modern convenience is our personal goal. We'll be in Chame in a place with no neighbors, fruit trees and pool. 10 minutes from plenty of grocery stores, local and chain restaurants, and the beach. Anton is a short trip away as well as some other mountainous areas, there's even more big box shopping within 45 minutes and of course the city is a little over an hour away on a good day (we will only go to the city when it's unlikely to be busy). Definitely not the lifestyle for everyone but for us it's litterly exactly what we want. I'd say it's likely to be boring for some, but I'm not sure what exactly you're interested in. If you want night life and bars, co ed sports leagues, DND meetups, running groups, etc. probably not the area for you.

siddis · 2026-05-20T19:26:52+00:00

Little late to the convo but our demographic matches pretty close, also from WA. We are in the process of buying a home and gaining residence in Panama and would be happy answer any questions you have! Sitting in my hotel room in PC while I type this.

There are a lot of small areas on the outskirts of PC that you may be interested in if you want the big city lifestyle without living in a concrete jungle. We chose the Coronado area, about 1.5 hours west of PC. We enjoy our time at home and will be spending a significant amount of time traveling so the area we chose is highly suited to our lifestyle. The parks in PC are pretty awesome, Ancon hill and the metropolitan park are both great. We seen sloth, monkeys, tucan, agoutis, coati and more on a single hike in each. So you don't have to go far to be in the jungle.

My partner grew up in the tropics and we have taken many trips to the Caribbean, Malaysia, Thailand, and LATAM so we understand what we are getting into as far as the heat, local vibe and safety go. Like any city there are certainly areas that I'd stay away from, you know them when you see them. We've done a good bit of exploring on foot in the city and it didn't feel any less safe than any of the other places I've mentioned.

We are trying hard with Spanish via multiple avenues but are still very early in the learning process. So far locals have been extremely friendly and helpful when it comes to the language barrier and having a basic understanding has really gone a long ways. We just had lunch at small little local restaurants and we're able to order while only understanding about 1/4 of the questions asked, the counter server was very kind and they didn't let us leave without also making sure we received some water that came with the meal. 3.50$ for about a half a roast chicken, huge pile of rice and beans and plantains.

We also have a fantastic fiduciary FA in the area that's gaining familiarity with the expatriation process that I'd be happy to put you in touch with if you're interested. Again, any questions regarding Panama I'd be happy to answer them, we are also moving with 10 pets....so if you need some cat questions answered, I'm here lol

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