Hang on Bismarck, you have to include me. Well okay I’ll do the pizza and stuff. You be the old geezer sleeping at the bar 
Well if everybody is going to the east coast, then I’m setting up shop on Penghu. I’m going to grow a tree over there.
It’s cheap up north in Sweden, you can find places for as little as NT$50,000 if you’re lucky, as long as you don’t mind having a place north of the polar circle in a little village you’ve never heard about 
Here’s an example of a nice place, albeit a bit more expensive net.sfd.se/webpack/wpBildLista/D … 1062089060 :roflmao:
Only good thing is that you get 1,842 m² of land to go with it…
Here’s another find svenskfast.se/Pages/ObjectVi … rer=hemnet a mere NT$560k… at least you got a lot of building for your money…
Yeah I notice prices drop drastically from Gavle onward. I actually have put offers on a few places and I am waiting to hear back. I like those small tiny swedish houses on big hunks of quiet land. It would be heavenly for my crazy old years.
You want cheap though, on a whim I bought 2 Km2 of land just outside of Tbilisi with gorgeous views for around 3,000$ USD. It can get plumbing, has so many nice trees, and backs up to the mountains. Hopefully it doesn’t get stolen while i am gone.
[quote=“djlowballer”]Yeah I notice prices drop drastically from Gavle onward. I actually have put offers on a few places and I am waiting to hear back. I like those small tiny swedish houses on big hunks of quiet land. It would be heavenly for my crazy old years.
You want cheap though, on a whim I bought 2 Km2 of land just outside of Tbilisi with gorgeous views for around 3,000$ USD. It can get plumbing, has so many nice trees, and backs up to the mountains. Hopefully it doesn’t get stolen while I am gone.[/quote]
Good Lord! 
You meant that Georgia? I thought you meant Georgia, US.
Still… 
Pretty cheap for a good patch of land…
Taiwan is No Country for Old Men.
Apart from my personal problems with humidity, 30-33 degrees most of the year, and too many earthquakes, the mentality here is on the whole unfriendly to elderly people: the lack of courtesy, the crazy traffic with total lack of respect for pedestrians, the scam artists …
That’s why I’ve been looking around at Spain - so far only on the Internet because retirement is still more than a decade away.
Greece would be my favorite country, but it also has earthquakes, and spending 2 weeks on an island might be fun, but would get boring quite fast for any longer - especially after living in 3-million pop. metropolis Taipei.
If Spain doesn’t work out, there’s always the old Yugoslavia: Montenegro is the in-place now, but a bit too far from the rest of the world. Croatia would be better, closer to Italy, but already popular for the past 10 years or so.
For those of you interested - CNN had a report recently saying Americans were moving in droves to Latin America, especially Ecuador. It’s not my thing because I don’t believe it could be any better than Taiwan, and crime might be worse, but who knows.
Sweden, BTW, sounds too expensive and too cold for me, and Georgia smells like Russian tanks. But that’s just me. Who knows, you might find real happiness there, it’s the new frontier.
Shimonoseki … why? No idea, but it SOUNDS cool.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimonoseki,_Yamaguchi
Oh hey, thought the name rung a bell, thats where a defeated CHINA gave away Taiwan and Penghu to Japan .
By the time most of us retire Taiwan will be Only a Country of Old Men.
[quote=“enzo+”]Taiwan is No Country for Old Men.
Apart from my personal problems with humidity, 30-33 degrees most of the year, and too many earthquakes, the mentality here is on the whole unfriendly to elderly people: the lack of courtesy, the crazy traffic with total lack of respect for pedestrians, the scam artists …[/quote]
I’ve always thought life would be really hard for anybody confined to a wheelchair in Taiwan. There’s so few handicap accessible places. If you’re old and don’t like to climb stairs or weave around scooters on your walks, that’s also a problem.
Other than that, it’s not a bad place to live as a retired person. Life is very simple here, apartments are super easy to maintain, decent health care, and relatively low cost of living.
Despite that, I’m hoping to retire in the US instead of Taiwan, provided I have the budget for it. I still may end up back in Taiwan, however. Many people are drawn back to Taiwan after they leave. I do wonder, though, how much of Taiwan’s draw for those returnees is due to financial reasons.
[quote=“bismarck”][quote=“djlowballer”]Yeah I notice prices drop drastically from Gavle onward. I actually have put offers on a few places and I am waiting to hear back. I like those small tiny swedish houses on big hunks of quiet land. It would be heavenly for my crazy old years.
You want cheap though, on a whim I bought 2 Km2 of land just outside of Tbilisi with gorgeous views for around 3,000$ USD. It can get plumbing, has so many nice trees, and backs up to the mountains. Hopefully it doesn’t get stolen while I am gone.[/quote]
Good Lord! You meant that Georgia? I thought you meant Georgia, US.
Still… Pretty cheap for a good patch of land…[/quote]
Yeah, all the foreigners I spoke with going to an in Georgia all have started buying up hunks of land because it is so damn cheap. Even houses are not that bad. I looked at a flat in Zestaphoni, 4 bedroom 2 bath, 2 balcony, good views for only 8,000 USD. The way I think about it is, the country may be poor now but it has been getting better since the new administration did his purge of corruption. By the time I retire(40 years) it may well be a fairly developed country. If not I still have my fortress of untouched wilderness.
Think about your decision of retirement.
It sounds great to get a nice B&B and do the thing.
Get up at 6 am am cook the breakfast for some groggy furriners or even the earnest local tourists. Serve them well and start making lunch. Serve it well and clean up. Then you can start with dinner. Serve it well to keep the kudos up top. Then you go to bed at after midnight and do it all over again.
This does not sound like retirement to me. I want a decent place with a well equiped kitchen on a beach view on the S.E. coast and my friends are welcome but to make money and do it right, you will work longer and harder than you have ever done in non-retirement.
I plan on working til I absolutely can’t work anymore, but the catch is I will be doing a job I love (by this I mean I find out what I am gifted at, and move towards that direction) by the time I get that old. If you hate your job and it feels like a daily grind and you think there’s more to life than that, then you should probably change your career. You might have it all figured out as to how much you’d need to retire but things do change and there’s nothing to stop a hyperinflation from making your savings next to worthless. I have seen retirees spend their day watching TV 15 hours a day and I just wonder if they have already died. By the way the ROC military gives very good pension (I am sure the US is similar too, correct me if I am wrong) where the government pays you something like 60% of your monthly salary (which is quite high if you are an officer) for the rest of your life, on top of free medical care at any veteran’s or military hospital, if you have served over 20 years in the military. My dad has this kind of pension by the way, which I am sure it’s something everyone dreams of. But think about this: Say if you retire early (which is what many Generation X people want) by making loads of money, then you sit around and do nothing, might seem fun at first but over time it just becomes boring. Then what happens is you either watch TV all day and waste away, or get yourself into trouble (like what happens with unemployed, but welfared people in Europe).
If you need a job and/or a boss to make your life complete you should just off yourself now. I enjoy the work I do now immensely, but I still dream of the day I don’t need to work. The day I can have total freedom to do anything I wish in the day. The day where getting out of bed is a choice and not a requirement.
[quote=“Enigma”]Think about your decision of retirement.
It sounds great to get a nice B&B and do the thing.
Get up at 6 am am cook the breakfast for some groggy furriners or even the earnest local tourists. Serve them well and start making lunch. Serve it well and clean up. Then you can start with dinner. Serve it well to keep the kudos up top. Then you go to bed at after midnight and do it all over again.
This does not sound like retirement to me. I want a decent place with a well equiped kitchen on a beach view on the S.E. coast and my friends are welcome but to make money and do it right, you will work longer and harder than you have ever done in non-retirement.[/quote]
B&B. Not a B&B&L&D. They can find their own bloody lunch and dinner. It’s not a hotel. Plenty of them about. And who wants to base your entire business on foreigners (groggy or not)?
And it should be something you enjoy and choose. Not something you hate and are forced into. For me, it’s the former, not the latter. And I want to be here. No where else.
95%+ would be local tourists, not foreigners. You can always hire local help to do the labour…it’s not that difficult to do in Taiwan.
Exactamundo, my good man! 
[quote=“Mucha Man”]Check out this. Roman and Emily have already between you all to the punch.
Nice memorable URL they got there. Next time I’m in Taiwan-Taitung I’ll have to check it out.
Sounds horrible. 
Guilty.
Almost none, in my case.