Where should you retire? One expat asks why belonging, purpose and curiosity may matter more than tax, weather or a cheaper cost of living.
I have been asking myself recently: where do I want to retire? It started with: where do I want to die?
Not because I have any urgent need to leave. I don’t. I have a home in Dubai. I have work, friends, family and a life that still feels full of opportunities. But this question needs an answer.
It arrived in a quiet moment, driving home from a meeting. It’s part of the longevity journey, surely.
Dubai has been home for many years and perhaps living here has made the question more complicated rather than less. I already know what it means to make a life somewhere different from the place you came from, having followed my husband throughout his military career.
I know that home can be something you choose and build, rather than somewhere you simply inherit. Perhaps that is why I find myself wondering: where to next?
I have spent hours looking at maps. I have even had my astrocartography map done. I’ve read about healthcare systems, compared the cost of living and studied visa requirements. All sensible things to investigate. But eventually research reaches its limit.
I have visited many European countries and wondered whether the slower rhythm of life would suit me or suffocate me. I have friends building their dream homes in Cyprus, Portugal and Greece. I don’t think I’m ready for that.
And perhaps that is the problem with trying to find your future on a map. A place can tick every box and still not feel like somewhere you belong.
What Am I Actually Looking For?
So I have started asking myself a different question. What do I actually want?
The honest answer is not a place. It is a feeling.
I want to wake up somewhere that still asks something of me. Not just a beautiful view, good weather or lower bills. I want to feel that my presence matters. That I am part of something. That people know my name.
I want to walk to the market and buy food that was grown nearby. I want to sit in a café long enough for somebody to know what I am going to order. Most of all, I want to live somewhere that invites participation, not just occupation.
I am not looking for perfection. Every place has its frustrations, its bureaucracy, its unwritten rules and difficult days. And wherever you go, you take yourself with you.
Nor am I looking for an expat bubble. I have lived abroad long enough to know the difference between residing in another country and becoming part of it.
If I move again, I want something more than a change of address. I want a different rhythm. Perhaps even a different version of myself.
Who Do I Still Want to Become?
Maybe the question isn’t really where I want to retire. Maybe it is who I want to become.
The place I choose will inevitably shape the person I become there: the people I meet, the things I do with my days, the conversations I have and even the silences I keep.
That is a much harder thing to put into a spreadsheet.
We spend so much time talking about retirement as a financial calculation. How much will I need? What will my house be worth? Where is tax-favourable? What does healthcare cost?
All sensible questions. But perhaps there are other calculations we should be making too. Where will I make friends? Where will I remain curious? Where will I feel useful? And where might an ordinary Tuesday morning still feel interesting?
The Big Question Behind Retirement
The more I have thought about this, the more I have begun questioning the word itself. Retirement.
We tend to define it by what stops. Stop working. Stop commuting. Stop answering to somebody else. Slow down. Step back. Maybe put on weight?
But I am not sure that is what I want at all.
I don’t want to retire from life. I want to decide more deliberately how I participate in it.
And once I started thinking about retirement that way, Where Would I Go? became only the first question.
Would I still want to work—not because I needed to, but because there was something I still wanted to do?
What would give me a reason to get out of bed when deadlines and obligations disappeared?
Who would I spend my life with?
How much would actually be enough?
What would home mean?
And perhaps the biggest question of all: what do I still want to become?
I don’t have answers to those questions. Perhaps that is the point.
There cannot be a single formula for getting retirement right. We are not the same people. Why should our retirements be?
Still Looking
I am not making any decisions yet. For now, I am visiting places. Walking streets. Sitting in cafés. Listening and watching.
I am talking to people who have already made the move. I want to know not just what they gained, but what they lost. What surprised them. What they miss. What they wish somebody had told them before they packed their lives into boxes.
And I always want to ask the same question: would you do it again?
Because I am beginning to suspect that the best place in the world to retire doesn’t exist. There is only the place that is right for you.
I know a few things about mine already. I want life to retain some adventure, even if the adventures become smaller. I want to remain curious. I want to keep meeting people who change my mind about things. I want to wake up with somewhere to go and something still to discover.
Perhaps that is what retirement means to me now. Not stopping. Not disappearing. Not retreating from life. Choosing, deliberately, what the next part of it might look like.
I still don’t know where that will be.
I am still looking.
But perhaps I finally understand what I am looking for.
