Retiring Overseas Soon To Be Esoteric

As a young kid I grew up in Perugia Italy, a little town located in the province of Umbria. Umbria is a place made famous for food wine and Etruscan architecture. It was also the place that my father and brother chose to study veterinary medicine. Today both are doctors each with their own practice and my sister and I have gained a wealth of memories.

My mother was born in Sicily in a little town called San Fratello. The town was ancient when I visited there in the late seventies as It had no running water and an agrarian population that subsided by raising farm animals and growing food crops. My personal favorites, were grapes, figs, olives, prosciutto, and lots of wine.

This life was very unique, especially when compared to the grandiose lifestyle back in the United States. America being relatively new had large streets, and great big skyscrapers in every city. Italy was tight, and catered to the ancient Roman lifestyle of horse drawn carriages. Today the eco-friendly population has adapted modern day automotive technology to cater to the tight cobblestone streets that are the signature of the Roman antiquity. The photo below is of a 500 the car we used as a family back in the late 70's.

My mother and father had grown very fond of Italy as a result of their wonderful experiences, and today, have thought about retiring there. They are both already in their retirement years and have found themselves struggling to reallocate their assets in order to achieve their retirement objectives.

Like countless others they have had difficulty selling their business real-estate, have lost substantial sums of money in the market post 9/11 and today were once again reminded that America's falling dollar is making my mothers birthplace more unattainable. The reality is, that only those people who are capable of incurring such staggering losses, like the super rich, will have access to an overseas retirement.

All too many people and businesses have already fled the country, some businesses like Pfizer in Groton Ct. cannot flee fast enough as they have recently accelerated the closing of their plant. America has fallen upon hard times for reasons that few people understand or really know, but put simply our country has borrowed more than it could afford to pay and is now suffering the dire consequences.

As our nation continues its march toward a recession, or possibly a recession or worse, we all pay. We pay for our leaders mistakes at the gas pump, when we travel to other countries, when we sell our home, when we buy food, when we go to collect our social security, when we buy a car, pay our Dr's bill, or collect our 401K's and IRA's.

The most horrible position a nation can be in is where we are headed now, "Stagflation" a condition where a stagnating economy and inflation co-exist. This is the hardest condition for our leaders to cure because adjusting interest rates, and manipulating the money supply no longer work after a certain point. To put this into perspective imagine a see-saw where you fix one end of the problem and the other end gets worse and vice versa.

The next six months will determine what we as individuals will need to do to realign our lives for the new America. Should the economy continue to deteriorate then we will need to compensate in advance to prepare for a prolonged period of harder times. I will comment more on this as the new CPI or inflation figures emerge.