Reflections on a Week in L.A. and A Scoring System to Choose My Retirement Spot!

So I was fortunate enough to get a free trip to L.A. courtesy of some expiring points and a gracious hosting from my friend David. And was able to meet up with several folks living in the area or in from out of town....and it was glorious! I love my little monster, but I also really loved having a little break! lol

At the end of the day, L.A./California is the same: much better weather, higher prices, lots to do. It remains one of my favorite "great place to visit but wouldn't want to live there" places - mostly due to the car culture.

Anyway, catching up with friends, and all of us being of a certain age, of course there was much discussion of retirement with me "recruiting" folks to move abroad with me. I then realized my OCD was nagging me to come up with a more "objective" way to measure my subjective opinions of the places I've lived and what I should chose. So I hit on the idea of a "GPA" system where I converted the letter grades I've given each country in 10 categories to an overall GPA.  The results should not surprise anyone - altho even I was surprised at (spoiler alert!) how very low the U.S. ranks.

The areas I scored: Weather, Safety, Cost of Living, Food, Infrastructure, Health Care, People/Social Opptys, Culture, Flora/Fauna, and Location.  I have lived at least 3 months in 8 countries now, and 3 of those I would not consider for retirement: Kazakhstan, Lesotho, and Montenegro; the frst two for similar reasons: isolated/not near travel options and still a bit too "under-developed" for my taste. Montenegro COULD be a possibility, but the combination of hot summers and increasing costs means probably no.  So that leaves the U.S., China(!), Mexico, Ecuador, and Portugal. The U.S. only coz it's my "home country" and there COULD be circumstances that compel me to end up here, but I hope not.  And yeah, China is a long shot, too, but there's still a draw for me.

ANYWAY, here's the GPA for each of those countries based on my grades in the 10 categories:

Portugal:  3.47

Ecuador:  3.33

Mexico:  2.83

China: 2.72

The U.S.:  2.13

Portugal scored high in food, infrastructure, health care, and culture with no grade below B+.  Ecuador scored high in weather, health care, costs, culture, and flora/fauna, with C/C+ scores for location and social (this latter would probably be better in Cuenca which I will check out sometime in the next year or two).

Mexico scored high in Safety and Costs, but lower in infrastructure, flora/fauna, and social (again, with more effort, this could be higher). China scored high in safety, food, and culture, but lower in weather, health care, and people (they're VERY different from Americans, lol).  

Finally, the U.S. did score high in food and culture, but miserable of course in health care and cost of living, while also not great in weather, infrastructure, and the people.  At the end of the day, I would only "CHOOSE" to retire in the U.S. if I could live in San Francisco, Seattle, or Portland.  And as for China, it'd have to be Hong Kong or Shanghai.

Finally again, I do still have a few other places to check out: Medellin, Colombia; Estonia or Latvia; Spain; and then Poland or Romania. But at the end of the day, Portugal remains the goal with Ecuador being a MORE than adequate backup option.