helping kids and elderly

International Living: Finding Your Purpose Overseas With Dan Prescher And Suzan Haskins

TWS 33 | International Living

 

Living and retiring abroad can change the way you look at the world and even help you find your true purpose in life. Today, Patrick Donohoe talks about living life abroad with Suzan Haskins and Dan Prescher, the authors of  Live Richer, Spend Less: International Living’s Ultimate Guide to Retiring Overseas. The internet has shaped the way people travel and view the world. Dan and Suzan share their guidelines in choosing their next adventure and their experiences living in different countries and communities. They also explain how retirees are driven to join their charities and live abroad at the same time.

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International Living: Finding Your Purpose Overseas With Dan Prescher And Suzan Haskins

I have the pleasure of being with Suzan Haskins and Dan Prescher. It’s so awesome to have you guys on. I appreciate you taking the time. I understand you came back from a pretty tropical place into the Midwest. I’m assuming you guys are from Omaha, Nebraska.

I’m born and raised in Omaha. Suzan only raised her son here, so it’s not from around here.

No, but enough years. I moved here when I was 21. I guess I’m basically a Nebraskan by now.

Warren Buffett calls it home.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

As far as your accolades and your history and what you’ve done, it’s incredible that you’ve had this extensive career doing what you do and writing about what you write about. I’m excited to have this interview. Let’s start out with those rapid-fire questions so we can get an idea of who you guys are and what you’re about. The first one is before your professional life, who was a role model to you, someone that you looked up to or inspired you?

I can tell you that strong independent women have always been my role models. Before my professional career, I would have to say those teachers that I had back in high school. I had a history teacher in Middletown, New Jersey that taught me how to write, which is what I’ve done all of my life and taught me to love history and travel, which has taken me far. I would say she was probably one of my most important role models, as well as some of the language teachers I had, which has also been a great thing to have been able to actually use. The United States as a place where we don’t often speak two languages. To be able to have that background has been a good thing.

For me, it’s probably Jimi Hendrix or Joe Pass, two guys who dedicated their lives to learning their instruments and took that field of knowledge as far as anybody has ever taken it. I’m not a good guitar player myself. I’m a barely passable musician, but those guys were masters and I like the idea of mastery. I like the idea of dedication and mastery and those guys mastered something cool.

The principle of mastery, especially seeing masters and experiencing masters, there’s nothing like it. Second rapid-fire, what superhero, fiction or non-fiction or icon in history do you most resonate with?

There is no end to opportunities towards helpings kids and the elderly. Click To Tweet

My superhero right now is Ruth Bader Ginsburg and I hope that she keeps going and keeps working. It looks like she is going to keep working until the day she drops dead, which is probably what I will do too, so she’s a living superhero for me.

Mine, historical and superhero and comic book, you name it and he’s been at all, is probably the historical Buddha. I’m fascinated by his life. There’s been a lot of work done lately to peel back those layers of religiosity that got layered onto his life. His original life and original message is compelling for me and it informs everything. There’s nothing that it doesn’t apply to for me when I think about it. That would be Gautama.

A third one, what charitable causes do you guys support?

My favorite is an organization called Helping Kids in Ecuador. We lived in Ecuador for many years and got to participate in some of their fundraisers and hear them talk. I’ve followed the work that they have done. I will probably tear up when I talk about it because they are changing kids’ lives. These are kids who cannot afford simple life-changing surgeries. Eye surgeries, cleft lip and cleft pallet surgeries that make a tremendous amount of difference and these families can’t afford it. This organization is helping them pay for these surgeries. That’s my favorite charity.

I’m with her. The volunteer opportunities for expats who move abroad, we’ve lived in that society, that demographic that know you for almost two decades now. You can volunteer for anything but volunteering on the ground where you’re at to help the kids that live in that community or the elderly just to help the community. There is no end to the opportunities to do that. It’s whatever helps the local communities.

It’s amazing the idea of contribution and charity. There’s giving money, but then there’s actually the activity and the experience of it, which there is a stark contrast.

It takes organization, it takes time. Money, that’s fine. They need money but the time, the organization, the effort, the cooperation, making it happen, that’s the value of it.

Final one, if there was one attribute that you could impress on your kids, your grandkids, the world, this audience, what would that attribute be?

TWS 33 | International Living

The International Living Guide to Retiring Overseas on a Budget

Tolerance. First of all, one of the things that we have seen in our travels is that we all want the same things. Everybody, no matter where you live, no matter what religion you are, you want your kids to be healthy, happy and you want a safe place to live. For me, to be tolerant of other people and to understand that similarity is probably the most important thing. The other thing that I’ve always impressed upon our kids is to be debt-free, if you can, to not have credit card debt and all of that stuff and simply to be a good person.

I would only add to that curiosity in the sense of ongoing curiosity. If you get to the point where you think you’ve got it all figured out and you’re running on your biases, you’re missing most of what’s going on in the world. I think that’s one of the great things about the expat lifestyle that we’ve been living. You have to be curious all the time to figure things out. Everything is a challenge. Everything takes a little bit of out of the box thinking and that keeps you young. It keeps you going all the time. If you’ve got it all figured out and you’re just resting on your morals, you’re done. You stop.

It’s amazing how complementary those two attributes are. Tolerance is stepping back and trying to see another way of looking at things. There’s only one way of looking at things, but the curiosity behind looking at something different can be a huge window to tell the opportunity to learning to grow. To me, it’s amazing. Thank you, guys, for answering those questions. The reason why we ask them is to give the topic at hand some context where you are coming from. I think this is going to be intriguing. The reason why I wanted to have you guys on is because international living has been around for about 40 years now. Correct?

40 years this year, 2019.

It’s an opportunity because of the tagline of your book, which is How to Live Well in $25,000 a Year. Plus, I know you have a new book, but that the idea though is that there are lifestyles that people can live in their retirement. Those years, they’re actually possible. If we look at just the typical retirement planning, it’s very inadequate for the lifestyle that people want to live and people are getting stressed out about it. The atypical way of approaching the future, this is a perfect example of it. Would you guys speak to what your mission has been, what you’ve been trying to communicate to people for the better part of 40 years in regards to the opportunities that exist internationally for people to live out golden years or maybe even before? I know there’s a lot going on with the Millennial generation, even next generation where they’re going international, living international and it’s evolving too. Over the course of 40 years, I can imagine that your experience being on the front lines has been motivating and inspiring. It’s more acceptable now than it was 40 years ago.

I think that’s the biggest change. You’re right. When international living started, the demographic was people who wanted to make fixed incomes go as far as possible. That was the old-style retirement, “I got my pension, I got my Social Security. I want to live the life I want to live. How do I make that fit my lifestyle requirements?” The answer was just to move to a place where things cost less and the weather is better. You skip the heating bills, you skip the air conditioning bills. You pay lower property tax, you may get free medical care with the national health service. It’s like lifestyle arbitrage. If you can suddenly move someplace where your cost of living is cut in half or more, it doubles the value of your resources. For 40 years, that’s been the message.

There are dozens and dozens of places around the world that are happy, healthy, safe places to live that costs less. That’s not such a novel idea anymore. The internet has changed everything. You can talk to people in real time who are doing that in Panama City, Mexico City, in Belize, Malaysia, Chiang Mai, you name it. There are people around the world who are doing exactly that. We talk to them every day. We’ve been living that life. That was the value proposition when we first started out. Now it applies to more people than ever. It applies to people with families. It applies to young singles, it applies to single females who are past retirement age but want to have the adventure that they always wanted to have. All of those people can find a benefit in that lifestyle.

What questions have been like over the years in regards to that atypical way of thinking? I’m assuming some have been the same, but they’ve probably changed over the years. What are those questions from your audience and readers like?

The big question is often is it safe.

I think that’s the biggest concern. People always want to feel that they will be safe in the place that they live, as I alluded.

Everything takes a little bit of out-of-the-box thinking, and that keeps you young. Click To Tweet

It’s human nature to be content with the devil you know, even if statistically the place where you’re living is not that safe compared to other places, you know it. You feel better, there’s a comfort zone there. Moving abroad is a lot about moving out of your comfort zone and being comfortable with that. It’s being comfortable with being challenged, having that adventure. “Is it safe?” is a question we can easily answer. Yes, it is.

We wouldn’t write about places that we didn’t feel were safe, that we wouldn’t feel comfortable if our mothers came to visit us or our grandkids. That is not an issue. I think more and more people have been traveling in our generation and the generations that follow just with modern technology, as many people weren’t traveling 40 years ago as they are now. A lot of people are comfortable with the idea of at least exploring living overseas. It comes with a lot of intimidation. They think that maybe it’s not as easy as we make it sound. Maybe it’s in our personal nature where we’ve never been uncomfortable. We’ve lived in seven different communities in four different countries over the last twenty years, so we’re very comfortable with picking up stakes and moving on. Not everybody is. People are creatures of habit, like Dan said.

That’s a great point to make too. Moving abroad at any time in life is not something that most people will do. Most people stay right where they are and that’s fine. If you’re happy there, if you’re comfortable there, if it has everything you need, if you don’t want to go anywhere, that’s great. Even if you try an international lifestyle, if you move somewhere and find out it’s not for you, you’re the wiser for it. It’s not a pass-fail thing. You learn from it. You take your experiences, you go back home and you carry on and you’re smarter. I think the safety factor, the ‘Will I be comfortable?’ factor, ‘Will I be welcomed in this community?’ is always a big question.

People want to know that they’re going to be able to find their tribe of like-minded people, that they won’t feel lonely. That’s one of the biggest, saddest things in the world right now, the lonely feeling that a lot of people have, especially when they retire right here in the United States. People are treated a little bit differently in many of these countries where we write about. The elderly are looked up to and revered for their life experiences. Being included in community events and having people put you at the front of the line in banks and hospitals, it’s not something you’re necessarily used to if you live in the US, but you are when you go overseas. Many of these places now have growing expat communities and the expats who live in these places tend to be welcoming, gregarious people and they welcome you in. You don’t have to worry about being the wallflower. Even if you’re not a Type-A personality, you will still find plenty of things to do. We like to say that your social calendar will be much fuller when you live overseas than it likely will be if you stay where you are.

What are some common things you see people do? What’s something that they would have to do to go from this desire to have a degree of certainty associated with those years, which is being in the same community, having stability as far as knowing who friend groups are, knowing where income is coming from, knowing that income can actually stretch to support the lifestyle. What are some things that people do to go from that state to this new belief that international living somewhere else where I have a social group, where there is that appreciation? There are opportunities to serve, there are opportunities to live in a nice warm weather and beautiful location. What are some things that they do consistently that gets them to make the shift?

Research, for one thing. The internet has changed everything and allows us to find out anything instantaneously. Via Facebook groups, you can actually meet people living in these different communities that we talk about. It’s not the scary thing that it used to be. There are books like ours that people can read about. You can come to a conference with international living hosts and 5 or 6 places around the world every year. You can meet those like-minded people and get your support group.

You can assemble a support group before you even think about moving abroad. Even if you’d never move abroad, those people will still be your friends. They’ll be Facebook friends, they’ll be online friends, but the internet has changed everything in that respect. The other thing is to get boots on the ground and give it a try. As we say, if you get to a place like Cotacachi or Córdoba or any place that you might want to try out and you find out that you don’t feel right there, that’s something immediately you get a gut feeling. If you do get that warm glow and you meet the people there, you start to participate in the activities, we recommend spending as long a period as you can on that first trip to find out what it’s like to actually live there instead of just being a tourist. If you need to find out where you can get your mail, how to hook up your utilities, whether or not the local bank will accept a direct deposit of your Social Security check, those are things that will make a difference in your quality of life once you move there. That’s what you need to find out.

This might be an off the wall question or statement. I haven’t experienced it personally, but it’s experiencing it through the relationships that I have. When a person goes from working years until they get into retirement years, there’s a change as far as the meaning they have for themselves and what they do. When you look at a career, whether a person likes it or not, they’re making a difference. There is meaning there. They’re contributing. They’re paid for it. They’re creating some value and then going right through these years where they’re not doing that anymore. People seek or are seeking meaning and that’s why they moved to retirement communities or they go on service missions or they do something else. What are opportunities or have you seen examples of what you’ve seen where a person is able to take their skillset that they established over a 30, 40-year career and move abroad and then do something to continue finding meaning, growing, contributing and so forth?

TWS 33 | International Living

Live Richer, Spend Less

There are people who want to retire and primarily move overseas for financial reasons. They may end up doing the exact same things they would do if they stayed at home. For instance, they like to watch their movies or stay home and cook. By and large, I think that people who move overseas and retire overseas in the first place, have an adventuresome spirit. They get together, they travel. They go and explore new places. They go to little villages. They end up seeing a need that the local community has. As we were talking about, we’ve seen people start animal rescue missions. We’ve seen them start soup kitchens to feed the elderly in a community, teach kids English so that they’ll be able to work in a tourism industry in their own country or go abroad. English is the universal business language, of course. They’re giving these little children in a remote village somewhere an opportunity that they might not otherwise have. We’ve seen people start businesses, they see niches that need to be filled in their community.

One friend of mine started a business where she makes aprons and potholders. She hires the local women as seamstresses, she’s been able to give them jobs and her stuff is now in museums all over the world. She’s from Mexico and her stuff is very Mexican-flaired and it’s being sold in these fabulous museums all over the world. She’s making a huge difference. We have story after story like that of people who are finding things, whether it’s something they’re doing that they never thought they would do, paddling down the Amazon or something or they’re starting these cottage industries.

It’s a two-edged sword and you’re right. People who have worked at a particular skillset all their lives and decide to retire often decide to retire because that job may have defined them as a person and it may have paid the bills, but it didn’t satisfy their curiosity about life. They want to go out and find out something new there. There’s a big world out there. On the other hand, people may be so happy and so well-defined by what they do that they take that job with them and the internet has changed all of that. If you want to work from abroad, there’s almost nothing you can’t offer online. If you have a valuable skillset that another person won’t pay you for, you can do that from anywhere on the planet where there is an internet connection.

You guys teach about that and talk about that in your publishing business?

Yes. International Living has a couple of three email letters and one of them is called Fund Your Life Daily. With that, there are all kinds of ideas shared about how to make a living overseas, whether it’s on the internet or in a bricks and mortar business or in a consulting role or something like that. We have all sorts of things that we’re seeing. Many years ago, people were retiring overseas. Now they’re becoming younger and younger when they do that. There are digital nomads, there are ways to make a living when you’re anywhere in the world, like Dan said. We have all kinds of little niche avenues and rivers in International Living that can help people no matter what they’re looking for.

There’s an article that came out and there’s this interesting dynamic with longevity and life expectancies. In the US, life expectancies are actually going down. At the same time, they should be going up based on the understanding of health and the principles of longevity. What they see is among teens, Millennials, there’s drug abuse, prescription medication abuse and suicide. Also, there’s interesting statistics in regards to longevity. When a person stops working and contributing, life expectancy does go down. That’s what’s what I find fascinating about the idea of international living is it offers a different environment, but it’s an environment that creates that spice of life. It creates all these different experiences that are possible with a peer group. It also provides opportunities to continue to provide value, give value, which brings a ton of meaning. That’s where I look at it from the practical standpoint. You have the financial side of things. You have how far your dollar can go or your money can go, the lifestyle that you can live. It goes way beyond that. That’s just my opinion and my perspective based on information I’ve gathered. Would you speak maybe to that and how there’s been an evolution over the 40 years as far as why a person will go international?

Many years ago, retirement was a different thing. If you made it to 65 in your chosen profession, you were used up, you were done. If you were in manual labor, if you’re a farmer, if you worked in a plant, almost anything you did by the time you were 65, 40 years ago would have sapped your valuable years. Now people live a decade, 2 decades, 3 decades past what traditional retirement is actually structured for and they’ve got to figure out what to do with that time. If you’re going to live another 30 years, you can’t sit in a rocking chair. You can’t play golf for 30 years. You’ve got to do something. The people that discover moving abroad are selected to be the people that know there’s more out there no matter what I decided to do. If I decide to do nothing, just live on my Social Security. If I decide to do it in Chiang Mai or if I decide to do it in Cuenca, Ecuador, my life is going to be a lot more interesting and a lot more challenging. I’m going to have to wake up and open my eyes to make sure that I know where to go to get a cross-headed screw or the right plumbing fixture or to get 500-thread count sheets if that’s what I want. I’m going to have to figure those things out. That keeps you young, that keeps you going in our experience.

You can make a Social Security payment that you qualify for it. 65, 67 or 70, go another twenty years in the right place with the right economy, but you’ve got to find something to do while you’re there. Life abroad gives you something to do. It makes you pay attention. We’ve seen it time and time again. People move abroad and their blood pressure goes down, their weight goes down, their eyes brighten up. They start learning the local language. They acquire another skill or 2 or 3. They move to another place. They don’t just move to Cuenca and quit. They moved to Cuenca and figure, “Maybe Ek’ Balam is a nice place.” We know somebody who made that move. It keeps him young.

A lot of people do tell us that they feel healthier once they move overseas. It’s not like there’s the fountain of youth or some magic potion or anything, but most people tend to move to a place where the climate is more suitable, where they can be outside in the fresh air every day, day in, day out. They walk more. A lot of the folks that we know who are retiring overseas give up their car because they live in a walkable community. That’s one of the things about the United States is you have to have a car to get from one place to another. In many of these places around the world, communities are set up to be walking communities. You might have a little tienda next door right down the street where you go to get your eggs and your bread and you carry it home with you. You don’t need a car. People tend to be more active and healthier overall, get more vitamin D naturally. Fruits and vegetables aren’t carted in from halfway around the world. They’re grown right there and pulled out of the ground that morning or the day before and sold in the farmer’s market. You’re eating healthier, you’re more active and you tend to have a more engaging lifestyle, I think.

As we conclude, this has been fascinating and I’m so grateful for your time and your insight into this. I would say it’s a huge opportunity, which obviously has been around for a long time. In this day and age, there are so many benefits that can come from the education that you’re providing. This is something that’s on my mind. What are you guys focused on right now? What are some of the topics, the themes? It sounds like you just came from a conference that you held. What are some of the focuses now, themes and things you’re consistently seeing that you think would be important for the readers?

The safety factor is always a questions when it comes to traveling and living abroad. Click To Tweet

We’re going through something that a lot of retirees are going through. We’re not technically retired. We’re still happily working and we will until we drop. We’ll probably die in the harness, but we’ll be old when that happens. We’ve got grandkids and family stuff going. I think we mentioned being a part-time expat is now a much more viable option than it used to be. If you want to come back and be with family and friends, if you’ve got grandkids whose lives you want to be a part of, if you want to try several different places and keep a home base, the roaming retiree, a serial relocator we call them, something that’s completely possible. It used to be that once you got to 65 or 67, you got your Social Security, you found that place where you could live cheap, you went and laid in the hammock and you had your 5 or 6 great years and that was it. There are two or three different life stages after that now. Finding ways to do that, to change, to go with the flow, those are huge topics for us right now and huge topics for the people that we deal with.

Another trend we’re seeing is that a lot of people aren’t coming back. They are aging for the rest of their lives in some of these places where they’ve made their homes. The world is moving forward a pace right now where assisted living centers that they did not have in Mexico, in Costa Rica and Panama. Some of these countries are now becoming the vanguard. We know people who, when the time comes for them, transition into an assisted living center that is a fraction of the cost here in the States. They’re choosing not to come back. The point is there are so many options out there that makes sense depending on your personal wish list.

That raises a great point. In the United States, we’re huge on quality of life, but we’re not big on quality of death. It’s something we don’t address. There are expats living lives out there now who have fought ahead to the end of their own lives and how they want to do it and how they want to manage it. It is more doable and more manageable in some of the countries that we’ve lived in than it is in the United States, no doubt.

I know that there are report after report that talk about how much money is spent in the last couple of months of a person’s life just to hold on. I look at it again as the experience of life and the meaning that comes from that is what I believe people are after. My wife is from Mexico and we spend a lot of time down there, but we’ve also been privileged to travel the world. Although I love where I live, I can appreciate it as different than other places. I love other places too. It’s been interesting to see how much travel has changed over the course of years because I didn’t go anywhere. I went to the outer banks and the Poconos when I was growing up. Driving right now, people are used to going to Europe, South America and in Mexico. I look at retirement and how much pioneers like yourselves have helped to develop the support system and the information of how to do it the right way so that it’s not an experiment, it’s an experience.

There are plenty of people who have done it and there’s plenty of information out there for anybody who wants to do it.

Talk about ways in which the readers can engage with you guys. The newsletters you’re writing, the events that you’re putting on. What’s the best way to connect with you?

Because the internet has changed everything, we’ve become an internet-based business. At InternationalLiving.com, almost everything we produce is available. It’s a one-stop shop. It’s broad and deep. Once you get in there, you can pick a specific country to research. You can pick earning money after retirement. You can look about healthcare options, visa options. The place to start the research, as with almost everything right now, is the internet. Start at InternationalLiving.com and work out from there. If you still need hard copy, we’ve still got hard copy for you, but it’s all available online.

We have two books that we’ve written on the subject of moving, retiring overseas. They’re available at Amazon.com, from International Living. The last one is that LiveRicherSpendLess.com. You can see what the book is all about and if it interests you, pick up a copy.

We’ll make sure that they reach out. It’s one of those topics that I think people are aware of because of your history. It’s in a centralized location, you could probably find 99.9% of it.

We also work the conferences that we have. We have five conferences a year, possibly six. Those conferences are listed on the website as well. It’s a great way to get boots on the ground. If you want to try it, you want to see what it’s like and talk to some like-minded people, it’s a great way.

You can come to a conference and then usually there are some tours offered before and after the conference if you want to go out and see the area, meet some of the expats, see what housing options might be available to you. These conferences are another great way to find your tribe and see if a place is for you.

This has been a great interview. I appreciate what you’ve done and we’re going to get the word out. There’s another group that I’m involved with that I believe that this would be applicable to because it’s one of those topics that to me that’s common sense. Common sense is no longer common, it seems like, and so that’s where I look at with how things have evolved and how safe things are and how much money can be stretched in different environments. It’s amazing. It gives people hope, but there are those few psychological hurdles they need to get over. You guys have tackled that.

You need to break out. You need to have a sense of adventure. You need to realize that it’s not jumping off a cliff. It’s a learning experience. Even if it doesn’t work out the way you planned, very little works out the way you planned. Life is what happens while you’re busy making plans. You’ll just be better for it.

Thank you again for your wisdom.

Thank you very much.

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About Dan Prescher

TWS 33 | International LivingDan Prescher was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, and is a graduate of the University of Nebraska at Omaha and the University of Iowa with degrees in Journalism and Creative Writing. He and his wife and co-author, Suzan Haskins, joined International Living in 2001, writing about their lives in Quito, Ecuador.

From there they moved to Mexico in late 2002, and in 2006 they moved on to Panama and then Nicaragua before returning to Merida in Mexico’s Yucatan state, where they renovated a colonial home. They also lived for eight years in in Cotacachi, Ecuador. In addition to these locales, they have explored dozens more expat havens around the world, including locations in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Belize, Costa Rica, Honduras, Ireland, France, Thailand, and beyond. They are currently residents of Mexico.

Dan is now a Senior Editor with International Living. As well as regularly writing about his experiences as an expat living overseas, he produces most of the company’s podcasts for www.InternationalLiving.com and serves as master of ceremonies for IL’s seminars, conferences, and other events held around the world. He and Suzan have produced in-depth webinars on several of the most popular expat destinations. Dan has been interviewed about living and working overseas for articles appearing in The New York Times, Fortune Magazine, Kiplinger, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNN, USA Today, The Business Times, CNBC, The Globe and Mail, Chicago Tribune, MSN, PBS NewsHour, AARP, and more.

In 2014, Dan and Suzan co-authored their first book, The International Living Guide to Retiring Overseas on a Budget, which quickly rose to the #1 spot in its category on Amazon. Following that success, the Haskins/Prescher team wrote an even more detailed guide to life abroad, called Live Richer, Spend Less: International Living’s Ultimate Guide to Retiring Overseas.

You can purchase it at LiveRicherSpendLess.com or at Amazon.com.

About Suzan Haskins

TWS 33 | International LivingSuzan Haskins hails from the great American Midwest, where she earned a degree in Journalism from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and spent nearly 25 years working in corporate advertising and marketing. Finally, in 2000, she said “not another winter in Omaha” and began looking for a way to live where the climate and scenery were better and lie moved at a slower pace, allowing her to do more of the things she had always wanted to do.

An International Living subscriber, she started pestering the company for a job. In 2001, the company hired Suzan and her husband, Dan Prescher, to write for them at InternationalLiving.com from Quito, Ecuador. From there, they moved to Mexico in late 2002 and in 2006 they moved on to Panama and then Nicaragua before returning to Merida, in Mexico’s Yucatan state, where they renovated a colonial home. They also lived for eight years in in Cotacachi, Ecuador. In addition to these locales, they have explored dozens more expat havens around the world, including locations in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Belize, Costa Rica, Honduras, Ireland, France, Thailand, and beyond. They are currently residents of Mexico.

Suzan is now Senior Editor for International Living, where she contributes editorial essays and speaks at conferences worldwide on the topic of retiring abroad.

In 2014, she and Dan co-authored their first book, The International Living Guide to Retiring Overseas on a Budget, which quickly rose to the #1 spot in its category on Amazon. Following that success, the Haskins/Prescher team wrote an even more detailed guide to life abroad, called Live Richer, Spend Less: International Living’s Ultimate Guide to Retiring Overseas.

You can purchase it at LiveRicherSpendLess.com or at Amazon.com.
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