Retire Early Abroad: Cut 10 Years Off Your FIRE Timeline
Bali, Indonesia. Photo by Darren Lawrence on Pexels.
Reading time: 12 minutes
Disclaimer: I am not a financial adviser, and this content is for informational and educational purposes only. Please consult a qualified financial adviser for personalized advice tailored to your situation.
How Retiring Abroad Can Accelerate Your Path to Financial Independence
A Quick Recap: The Financial Independence Calculator
In a previous post, we introduced our new Financial Independence Calculator (optimized for PC; mobile phone users, please follow instructions for best experience), designed to support your plan for early retirement with data-driven insights. The calculator estimates how long it will take to retire by analyzing your savings rate, investments, and expected returns. It calculates your financial independence number–the total amount you need invested to retire securely based on your current and expected spending, and how long it will take you to get there based on average returns. What sets it apart from other FI tools is that it also provides you with alternative FI timelines depending on whether you decide to retire to lower cost of living (COL) countries.
In today’s post, we will guide you through how to use our Financial Independence Calculator with a real-world example, and, towards the end of the post, I will share the output of applying the tool to our personal situation, including a set of appealing countries we could already decide to retire to today.
A Real-Life Example: A US-Based Family Pursuing FIRE
We will present an example based on a US case study, given that US readers represent by far the largest viewership share in my blog. For non-US friends, though, don’t fret: these high salary numbers don’t really mean much by themselves, unless they are accompanied also by a high savings rate. And, in my experience, most high income earners tend to struggle with this no matter where they are based.
Let’s look at a hypothetical US household on their FIRE journey that discovered the concept of financial independence through a colleague in their mid-twenties, and, after some introspection on what matters most to them and reading some life-changing books on personal finance, saved and invested aggressively over 8 years in their twenties and early thirties.
However, kids soon came into the picture, reducing their savings rate and slowing down their path to FI. At age 45, both partners in this US household currently earn a combined net income of $120,000, which is roughly twice the median after tax salary in the US. Their expenses have finally stabilized to $84,000 per year and they have managed to accumulate a solid net worth of $650,000 through consistent investing.
As observed in the output of the FI tool below (Figure 1), and assuming a 7% real return on investments and a 4% safe withdrawal rate (SWR), a key metric in FIRE planning, this family still needs about 13 more years of work before reaching financial independence. With their 30% current savings rate, it will still take them a while to get to their FI number of $2.1 M (following the 4% rule of thumb–25 times their annual expenses).
Figure 1: Applying our Financial Independence Calculator to the example above. The tool is optimized for PC; mobile phone users, please follow instructions for best possible experience.
Strategies to Reach Financial Independence Faster
Having the ability to retire at 58 can still be considered a huge success. But let’s assume that, like many others in the workforce, both workers are experiencing burnout at work and would like to accelerate this timeline.
These are many options they could consider at this point. Here are four actionable strategies to reach financial independence faster:
1) They can increase their savings rate by either increasing their income or reducing their expenses. Depending on how aggressively they do this, they could likely shave off another 2-3 years. But, assuming they have already optimized their expenses as much as possible, or simply find it difficult to do so with kids in the picture, this first option could certainly be challenging
2) They can explore using more aggressive safe withdrawal rates (e.g., starting with a 5% SWR with guardrails), which could reduce their financial independence timeline by 2.5 years. By using a 5% SWR, their FI number would go down to $1.68M, a substantial decrease from the original $2.1M. This approach, however, means being flexible with your retirement spending, and being disciplined at aligning their yearly spending with the ups and downs of the stock market and their portfolio returns
3) They can explore the possibility of pursuing Barista FIRE, which we discussed last week. If they are experiencing substantial burnout and dread the possibility of staying in their current jobs for another 13 years, they could transition to part-time work, reducing stress while maintaining a base income that allows them to cover a substantial share (but not all) of their expenses, while already enjoying many of the benefits of financial independence.
4) Finally, they can consider the possibility of taking advantage of geographic arbitrage and moving abroad in retirement to more affordable countries for early retirement. Our Financial Independence Calculator provides the user with this information. The remainder of this blog post will focus on this fourth option.
Can I retire early in another country? Which are the best countries for Geoarbitrage?
Let’s assume that the family is comfortable and even excited with the prospect of leaving the US. For some, this may just be a result of wanting to retire earlier and escape the rat race, while others may find the current political landscape very challenging. Whatever the reason may be, the key question is the following: how much earlier could this household retire by considering different countries?
This is exactly the question our new Financial Independence Calculator addresses. It considers cost of living (COL) data from over 106 different countries (Numbeo, 2025) to calculate whether it is possible to retire in different locations.
Let’s continue using the previous example. We saw that it would take the family almost 13 more years of grinding to make it over the finish line. But, as observed in the map of Figure 2, their exact financial situation looks very different if they are open to considering other countries for retirement.
Figure 2. Applying our Financial Independence Calculator to the example above. Map displaying the timeline to FI (years) across 106 countries.
Indeed, with only 2 more years of work they would be able to retire in 36 countries of the Numbeo dataset, including popular destinations such as Indonesia, Philippines, or Malaysia. With just one more year of saving, destinations like Thailand and Mexico become feasible too. Any of these choices means potentially reducing your working career by a decade while maintaining a comparable or even higher quality of life in retirement!
The tool also provides this information on a tabular format: to illustrate, see Table 1 at the end of this post, where the timeline to FI is displayed for 53 countries within reach of the 3-year time mark. It also displays the relative cost of living (%, relative to user’s country, in this case the US) and how the retirement expenses are adjusted. If you are interested in more expensive countries please feel free to play around with the tool.
Table 1: Timeline to Financial Independence (years), following the household’s example above. Displayed are countries where early retirement could be achieved within the next 3 years (as opposed to 13 years in the US). The additional 53 countries of the dataset are not presented in this table, but can be found in the tool.
| Country | Relative COL (%) | Adjusted Retirement Expenses ($) | FI Timeline (years) |
|---|---|---|---|
| India | 24.1 | 20265.2 | 0 |
| Libya | 22.3 | 18718.2 | 0 |
| Algeria | 28 | 23513.8 | 0 |
| Bangladesh | 23.4 | 19646.4 | 0 |
| Nepal | 26 | 21812.2 | 0 |
| Pakistan | 20.6 | 17326 | 0 |
| Egypt | 22.5 | 18872.9 | 0 |
| Russia | 29.1 | 24442 | 0.1 |
| Tunisia | 30 | 25215.5 | 0.3 |
| Paraguay | 30.6 | 25679.6 | 0.4 |
| Iran | 30.9 | 25989 | 0.4 |
| Kosovo | 31.9 | 26762.4 | 0.5 |
| Ukraine | 31.5 | 26453 | 0.5 |
| Indonesia | 31.5 | 26453 | 0.5 |
| Brazil | 32 | 26917.1 | 0.6 |
| Belarus | 32.8 | 27535.9 | 0.7 |
| Morocco | 33.7 | 28309.4 | 0.8 |
| Colombia | 33.3 | 28000 | 0.8 |
| Uganda | 33.5 | 28154.7 | 0.8 |
| Iraq | 33.5 | 28154.7 | 0.8 |
| Kyrgyzstan | 34.8 | 29237.6 | 1 |
| Uzbekistan | 34.6 | 29082.9 | 1 |
| Vietnam | 34.8 | 29237.6 | 1 |
| Kenya | 35.2 | 29547 | 1.1 |
| Philippines | 35.2 | 29547 | 1.1 |
| Kazakhstan | 35.7 | 30011 | 1.2 |
| North Macedonia | 36.6 | 30784.5 | 1.3 |
| Malaysia | 37 | 31093.9 | 1.4 |
| Ecuador | 37.4 | 31403.3 | 1.4 |
| Bosnia And Herzegovina | 37.4 | 31403.3 | 1.4 |
| Peru | 37.8 | 31712.7 | 1.5 |
| Azerbaijan | 37.6 | 31558 | 1.5 |
| South Africa | 39.8 | 33414.4 | 1.8 |
| Sri Lanka | 39.6 | 33259.7 | 1.8 |
| China | 40.9 | 34342.5 | 2 |
| Venezuela | 41.6 | 34961.3 | 2.1 |
| Georgia | 41.6 | 34961.3 | 2.1 |
| Ghana | 41.3 | 34651.9 | 2.1 |
| Moldova | 41.8 | 35116 | 2.2 |
| Romania | 42.7 | 35889.5 | 2.3 |
| Zimbabwe | 42.5 | 35734.8 | 2.3 |
| Dominican Republic | 43.3 | 36353.6 | 2.4 |
| Thailand | 43.6 | 36658.5 | 2.5 |
| Poland | 45.8 | 38448.6 | 2.8 |
| Hungary | 46.6 | 39138.1 | 2.9 |
Beyond Cost of Living: What Else Should You Consider When Choosing a retirement destination?
The information on changing FI timelines across countries becomes very powerful when used in combination with our complementary Retirement Relocation Tool (Screenshot below in Figure 3), which provides information on how potential retirement destination countries compare with each other across a whole range of variables: safety, healthcare, political stability, pollution, climate, english proficiency, openness, natural scenery, and natural disaster risk. We covered this tool in detail here. The tool dynamically plots different countries against cost of living (y axis) and a retirement suitability index that scores countries on expat-friendly metrics (x axis)–composed of the mentioned variables. As per the instructions, you can use sliders to decide on the importance of each variable for finding your suitable retirement destination.
Are you torn between retiring to popular retirement destinations such as Spain, Portugal, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Mexico, Uruguay, and many others? Understand first, how the timeline to FI changes across these different destinations, and, secondly, how the different countries rank across other important variables unrelated to cost of living.
Figure 3: Retirement Relocation Tool. Which countries represent the best options for early retirement, considering safety, healthcare, and many other variables typically considered to determine a country’s suitability?
Our Personal FI Journey and Retirement Options Right Now
As promised, we will now share what our timeline to FI looks like at the moment. This was discussed in further detail in previous posts, which covered both the challenges of pursuing FI in Germany and the challenges of reaching FI while raising a family.
Entering our personal information in the Financial Independence Tool, we are currently 6.4 years away from FI (using a 5% SWR + guardrails). Our current savings rate (after kids) has stabilized at around 38%. This is substantially lower to the savings rate we managed in the earlier years, but still relatively high.
If we considered relocation to a lower cost of living (Figure 4), we’d be financially ready to retire in 32 countries right now, including Malaysia, Philippines, Colombia, Vietnam, or Indonesia, and we’d be not too far away from retiring in Thailand (<1 year), Greece (<3 years) or Spain and Portugal (<3.5 years).
Figure 4: Applying our Financial Independence Calculator to our situation. We could already retire in 32 different countries in the dataset, including Malaysia, Philippines, Colombia, Vietnam, or Indonesia.
Please let us know in the comments below what this map looks like for you! Where could you already (or in a few years) retire to? Have you thought of any other alternatives to the 13-year grind beyond the four strategies we presented in today’s post?
Figure 5. Lisbon, Portugal. Portugal is a popular destination for retirees and scores very highly on our Retirement Relocation Tool. Photo by Vita Marija Murenaite on Unsplash.
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