Should You Keep Medicare Part B If You Retire Abroad?
The 10%-per-year permanent penalty vs. premiums for coverage you can't use — worked math so you decide with real numbers.
Read the guide →Real costs, real cons, real math — Social Security, Medicare, taxes, and what countries actually cost. No paradise hype.
Social Security abroad, the Medicare Part B keep-or-drop decision, and retiree taxes — in plain English, with the actual rules and penalties spelled out.
Country guides with all-in monthly budgets — rent, healthcare, visa fees, tax drag — and a cons chapter for every single one. The downsides other sites skip.
The $39 Pack turns the guides into a workbook: your benefit math, your budget, your visa checklist, your timeline. No $79–99/yr auto-renewing membership.
Every guide ships with sourced, date-stamped figures and the cons chapter the brochures skip.
The 10%-per-year permanent penalty vs. premiums for coverage you can't use — worked math so you decide with real numbers.
Read the guide →Citizen vs. non-citizen rules, the nine restricted countries, and a walkthrough of the SSA's Payments Abroad screening tool.
Read the guide →The Windfall Elimination Provision was repealed in January 2025. Most existing guides are now wrong — this one isn't.
Read the guide →An all-in monthly budget with methodology, plus a full cons chapter: bureaucracy, rising housing, the language reality.
Read the guide →Line-item budget with a 15% safety buffer — and we correct the myth some competitors spread about US–Mexico totalization.
Read the guide →The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion doesn't touch pension, Social Security, or IRA income. What actually applies to retirees.
Read the guide →The 30 countries that have them, the big ones that don't — including Mexico — and what it means for your credits.
Read the guide →We're a small team of researchers and editors obsessed with one thing: telling the truth about retiring abroad, in plain English, for Americans 50+. No individual personalities, no guru, no "I've lived in 14 countries" bragging — just carefully sourced answers to the money questions that actually decide whether the move works. Every figure is dated and sourced; where we'd need a professional's judgment, we say so and point you to one.
It's the opposite. Those budgets exist — International Living's own $79–99/yr membership sells them — but they rarely include healthcare, visa fees, and taxes. Our cost tables include all of it, and every country guide carries a cons chapter covering the things the brochures skip.
Generally, no — Medicare coverage ends at the border. The hard question is whether to keep paying Part B premiums anyway, because dropping it and re-enrolling later means a permanent 10%-per-year late-enrollment penalty. Our guide walks through the math with real numbers.
US citizens can in most countries, but nine countries have payment restrictions and non-citizens face a six-month absence rule. Our plain-English guide walks through the SSA's own screening tool so you get a definitive answer for your situation.
Yes — US citizens owe tax on worldwide income wherever they live. And the famous Foreign Earned Income Exclusion covers earned income only: it doesn't touch pension, Social Security, or IRA income. Our tax guide is written for retirees, not digital nomads.
No. It's a one-time $39 USD purchase with instant download and a 30-day guarantee — not an auto-renewing membership. See what's inside.