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The 60 -year -old Jack Stone moved to Portugal last year, mainly due to the cost of retirement in the United States.
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Stone thought that relocation would help reduce the large expenses in the US: Health and transport.
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She does not plan to move back to the United States and hopes to sell her home to Maryland.
60 -year -old Jack Stone sold his belongings and moved from Maryland to Portugal with his cat olive last year – without plans to return.
This may not be her last relocation, but the US is also not in her future due to fears of retirement.
Stone was worried about what aging in the US would look like. She estimated that they would need at least $ 2 million to live comfortably as a pensioner in their home in Maryland with health and aging care.
“I realized that even if I had social security, I would not be able to survive in the United States,” Stone told Business Insider. “Mathematics wasn’t there.”
After visiting Portugal in 2023 and began the visa process shortly thereafter, she moved abroad last August. Stone said he wanted to make the change while she was still relatively young. She moved to Portugal on a long stay visa and has a remote work in the United States as a clinical analyst at a technological services company. While she is still with the same employer and earns six digits a year, she said she is now in the role of contractor, so she has not paid a break or 401 (k) through her employer. She has also started a coaching business to help people plan a move abroad.
Stone, who now has a residence permission, said there are not many retirement savings because she has started saving at her 50s. She said it would not matter if she saved earlier because she dropped out of high school and did not receive her first “real salary” for the rest of her life.
“I returned to school like a 38-year-old with GED and a third grade mathematics level,” Stone said. “I finished at 43 and that was the first time I made more than $ 7 per hour.”
There is no perfect number for retirement savings, because some people can work longer, live longer, move with family, or have different levels of lifestyle and health needs. AARP article says people need about 80% of their income before retirement to maintain their lifestyle, and the northwestern Mutual has discovered year after year, adult adults think they will need over $ 1 million to retire comfortably. Fidelity Investments found that the average balance of 401 (K) for 60 to 64-year-old children was $ 246,500.
“I want our country to keep its promise to its people and not prefer billionaires,” Stone said, adding, “I was pulling out of charges and I’m still terribly short. And 40 years ago it wouldn’t be.”
Do you have a touching or retirement history? Contact this reporter at mhoff@businessinsider.com.
Moving to Portugal reduced Stone’s medical and transportation costs
Stone said in a Tiktok video that she decided to move abroad because she thinks that if she removed the cost of transport and healthcare, she would have a greater chance of living comfortably while old.
“And that’s true. I have to tell you that removing these two things from the equation made a huge difference,” Stone says in the video.
Stone told the Be that it saved more money than when she was in the US. She sold her car because she didn’t “want a car lifestyle.” She pays for a subway pass of 40 euros a month. In Tiktok’s video, she said she wanted to make sure she lives somewhere with good transport until she is old, so she doesn’t “close up”.
While the cost of electricity is similar, it spends less on recipes, groceries, the Internet and its phone. She pays 89 euros per month for private health insurance without deduction to reach or out of pocket expenses. She said she was hiring her home in Maryland, which has been a little over a few years old and bought a loan for veterans, but she hopes to sell it.
She said in Portugal there is a standard value added tax of 23%. “Even with that, my grocery bill is 30% less than what it was,” Stone said, adding that the percentage is already folded in the price shown to consumers, so she doesn’t really think about it while she is shopping.
Stone misses some things for us but does not look back
This is not the first time the stone was outside the United States. Stone, who was previously in the military, lived abroad after September 11. It has also lived in different US states.
“So I’m very comfortable with the change,” Stone said. With this comfort, she found the assimilation of Portugal easily, but she lacks snow winters in the United States and believes that the United States has so much beauty. If she eventually left Portugal, she thinks it would be to move somewhere except the United States.
“I lived a very full, lucky life and I had to play in all the most amazing conditions in the mountains and everywhere there,” she said. “Sometimes I only deal with what was my life as a child and grow up.”
But Stone is pleased with her move. She is glad to travel in Portugal and balance her job, including accepting coaching calls for her new business with social activities. “I just like to go out through my door, get on the subway, cross the river and meet a local meeting group,” Stone said.
In his video, Tiktok Stone wanted to send a message to other Americans who worry they would not have enough to retire. “Most of us played the game and followed all the rules, and we come out briefly,” she said, adding, “It’s never too late. You have options, you are alone and you have done nothing wrong.”
She recommends that people who are interested in trying a new country to talk to their employer whether it is possible, as it is. She added that people should not accept everything they own in their new home.
Stone also offers Americans who are considering a pre -visit abroad, especially if they have not traveled out of the country before and not expect the country to be like the United States.
“The whole point of moving somewhere else is to live their way of life,” Stone said.
Read the original Business Insider article