Where your money actually goes further.
Twelve places, ranked against the budget and the life you told us about — with the source and the date behind every figure, so you can check any of it.
What you told us
- USD $3,200 / month
- Comfortable, not luxury
- Warm and dry
- Ongoing prescription care
- ≤ 6h flight to family
Your twelve, ranked
Ranked on how far USD $3,200 goes after housing, utilities and routine healthcare — then adjusted for the climate and travel time you asked for.
The widest gap between your budget and local cost of any place we hold. Warm all year, an established English-speaking community, and IMSS enrollment is open to residents.
Spring-like year round at 1,200 m, and the Pensionado program gives statutory discounts on medical care and transport. Longer flight home than Ajijic.
Mild dry summers and access to the public health system after residency. The residency and tax rules are in transition, so we have withheld those two figures.
Included because staying put is a real option: no visa, no currency risk, Medicare works. It is the highest-cost place on your list and still inside your budget.
Ajijic, Jalisco
Every figure we hold for this town, with its publisher and its date.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| 1-bedroom rentobserved asking · center · p25–p75 | USD $610 – $840 / month MXN $11,200–$15,400 · converted at 18.35 MXN/USD, Banxico, 2 Sep 2026 · captured Jul 2026 142 listings |
| Buy priceper m² · min–max | USD $1,300 – $2,200 / m² USD $121–$204 per sq ft · first-hand observation, researched 1 Jul 2026 ExpatAlmanac observed |
| Electricity250 kWh/month · residential tariff | USD $25 – $70 / month CFE domestic tariff · researched 1 Jul 2026 ExpatAlmanac observed |
| Private GP visitone consultation | USD $22 Published consultation price, three clinics · read 12 Aug 2026 ExpatAlmanac observed |
| Temperaturewarmest / coldest quarter mean | 74° / 64°F · 23° / 18°C CHELSA V2.1 climate normals, 1981–2010, at ~1 km — computed over the town's own footprint, not a single grid cell. CHELSA |
| Homicidedeaths by assault, Chapala municipality | 23.1 per 100,000 a year 95% interval 17.9–29.4 · pooled 2020–2024 · higher than 33% of Mexican municipalities with 10 or more · INEGI, Estadísticas de Defunciones Registradas, with CONAPO population INEGI |
| Monthly transport pass— | No data — Chapala has no integrated pass. We show nothing rather than substituting a taxi or fuel estimate. |
Your top three, side by side
Your top match beside the next two, figure for figure: the quickest way to see what you would trade.
| 01AjijicMexico | 02BoquetePanama | 03AlmancilPortugal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fit | 5 / 5 | 4 / 5 | 3 / 5 |
| Estimated monthly | USD $1,840 | USD $2,050 | USD $2,410 |
| 1-bedroom rent | USD $610–$840 | USD $700–$950 | USD $1,050–$1,400 |
| Electricity, 250 kWh | USD $25–$70 | USD $40–$55 | USD $55–$80 |
| Private GP visit | USD $22 | USD $25 | USD $45 |
| Warmest / coldest quarter | 23° / 18°C | 21° / 19°C | 24° / 13°C |
| Homicide, per 100,000 a year | 23.1 | 9.8 | 0.9 |
| Flight to family, estimated | 4 h | 6 h 30 min | 9 h |
| Residency for a pensioner | Temporary resident | Pensionado | Withheld, in transition |
| Monthly transport pass | No data | No data | USD $45 |
Figures only, to compare at a glance. Every figure here has its publisher in the appendix (page 07), and the top match's are dated one by one on page 03.
What this report will not tell you
The gaps are part of the answer. Each of these is a decision, not an oversight.
A range placed beside a median
Where we hold only a price range for one town and a median for another, they do not share a row. A median and a 25th-to-75th-percentile band are different statistics, and side by side the narrower one reads as "less variable" when it has only been computed differently. Each place supplies a median for that row or it shows "no data".
Police-recorded crime, across borders
Each country's police count different offences under their own law, with different reporting rates — Mexico's SESNSP, the US FBI's UCR, Spain's Balance de Criminalidad and Portugal's RASI, for example, and every other country we cover. Even the direction of a difference between them is unreliable, so police figures are never set against another country's. Homicide is compared instead from registered deaths, which every country codes the same way (ICD-10 X85–Y09).
Portugal's residency and tax position
NHR has ended, IFICI excludes pensioners and the nationality timeline moved to ten years. Portugal's cost, healthcare and climate figures are stable and published above; the two figures that are moving are withheld until the position settles rather than published and quietly revised.
An overall score
We do not publish a single "retirement score". The weighting behind one cannot be checked, and the number outlives its caveats the moment somebody quotes it. The fit meter on page two ranks against your stated inputs and shows you which ones drove it.
What to do with this
Before you book a scouting trip
Check the residency income threshold for your top two against your actual pension statement, not against your gross. The threshold is a net monthly figure in both Mexico and Panama, and consulates apply it differently — our per-consulate tracker records the variance we have observed.
Before you sign a lease
The rent figures above are asking prices from current listings, not signed rents. In Ajijic the gap between asking and agreed has been consistently 8–12% in the sample we hold. Budget from the upper bound and treat anything lower as a win.
What changes this shortlist
A USD $400/month change in budget moves four places on and two off. A requirement for specialist cardiology narrows it to five. Re-run the report whenever your inputs change — that is what the subscription is for.
Sources and method
Every publisher behind this report, with what we took from each.
- 01INEGI — MexicoEstadísticas de Defunciones Registradas, registered deaths by assault (ICD-10 X85–Y09), 2020–2024, by municipio; CONAPO mid-year population. The homicide figure.
- 02BanxicoMXN/USD reference rate, read on the day the report was generated.
- 03CHELSA V2.1Climate normals 1981–2010 at ~1 km — warmest- and coldest-quarter means, computed over the town's footprint.
- 04US Census — American Community SurveyTable B25031, median gross rent by bedrooms, 2023 5-year. The US rent figure in every comparison row.
- 05US EIAState residential electricity averages, Jun 2026.
- 06SSA — United StatesBeneficiaries paid abroad, Dec 2025. Used to choose which countries we cover at all.
- 07ExpatAlmanac field observationDated first-hand pricing; each figure states where and when it was observed.
- 08Listings samplesAsking prices with the sample size and capture month stated on every figure.