The Long Way South: Retiring from the United States to South America — Nine Countries, Honestly Compared (The Check-This-Yourself Guides Book 10)

Nine countries. One honest chapter each. No brochures. You ran the numbers and did not like the answer. Or you looked at one February forecast too many. And you started asking the question you would have called ridiculous ten years ago: what if I just left? The Long Way South is the guide for Americans thinking seriously about South America — Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Bolivia. It is not a brochure. Nobody paid for placement. If a country has a crime problem, it says so. If a "paradise" costs more than Tampa, it says so. And there is a whole chapter that tells you not to go somewhere. Inside you will find: Why Medicare does not travel, keeps billing you anyway, and punishes you for cancelling it Social Security abroad, including the thirty-day rule almost nobody explains correctly The altitude chapter no other retirement guide writes — and why Cuenca, Quito and Bogotá are a cardiology question before they are a real estate question The one structural advantage South America has over Portugal and Thailand: you stay in your own time zone Published residency thresholds for every country, including the two that publish no figure at all and the one where credible sources flatly disagree Real monthly budgets for a couple, country by country What the nine-hour flight actually costs you on the night your daughter calls at four in the morning Why Argentina's famous two-year passport is currently the least settled rule in South America Four worked retiree profiles, from a widow on Social Security alone to a man whose stents chose his country for him The chapter on why most people go home within two years — and how not to be in it Every chapter ends with a Check This Yourself box naming the authority that publishes the real answer, because immigration rules change and a book is a map, not a permission slip. Written with wit, checked with care, and honest about what it does not know. This book gives no tax or financial advice and says so plainly — it hands you the twelve questions to take to a professional instead.