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Move & retire

USA

No retirement route, and healthcare is the whole conversation.

4/4
ingredients confirmed
Every ingredient this page asks for has a figure and a source.
Living
~$3,800/mo
Couple, all in. Compared at country level, so capital cities and large metros run higher. The price level behind it prices the basket residents buy, and a foreign renter cannot reach the cheap end of local housing — poorer countries may still sit too low here.
Safety
Low for a rich country
Ranks 134th of 163, far below every other high-income country here
Residency
No retirement route
Employment, close family or the diversity lottery. Employment-based queues are backlogged by years or decades for some countries of birth
Healthcare
Excellent care, brutal cost
Out-of-pocket spending is 10.9% of current health expenditure here (World Bank, 2023, CC BY 4.0) — ahead of most countries on this site. It is the clearest case of why the figure is quoted and not scored: it counts only what insured people pay, so premiums and the uninsured fall outside it entirely.

More is being checked.

Where these figures came from

One row per ingredient. Open any of them for the source, how far we trust it, and when we last checked.

Living~$3,800/mo

Pathoff judgement directed by evidence, not computed from it: the country’s position comes from the World Bank household consumption price level for 2024 (1.000 of the United States, CC BY 4.0 — the ICP benchmark carried forward annually by the World Bank’s own method); the US reference budget is ours. See the Pathoff method, section 12.

Couple, all in. Compared at country level, so capital cities and large metros run higher. The price level behind it prices the basket residents buy, and a foreign renter cannot reach the cheap end of local housing — poorer countries may still sit too low here.

Confidence
made by us from the source
SafetyLow for a rich country

Global Peace Index 2026: rank 134 of 163, score 2.535. Converted by the Pathoff GPI formula (GPI in lib/scoring.ts)

Ranks 134th of 163, far below every other high-income country here

Confidence
made by us from the source
ResidencyNo retirement route

Pathoff outcome rubric (the Pathoff method, section 10-4), residency band "Hard, and partly out of your hands": No retirement route. Employment, close family or a lottery, and employment queues turn on country of birth rather than on anything the applicant controls.

Employment, close family or the diversity lottery. Employment-based queues are backlogged by years or decades for some countries of birth

Confidence
made by us from the source
Rule
No change known to us
Last checked
Never against a source
HealthcareExcellent care, brutal cost

Pathoff healthcare rubric (the Pathoff method, section 13-2), band "You buy your own, and the cost is the risk": Clinical quality is among the best anywhere, and that is not what this band measures. Access turns on what insurance you hold: premiums, deductibles and coverage gaps make the cost unpredictable, and before public retirement-age coverage a foreign resident carries that risk themselves.

Out-of-pocket spending is 10.9% of current health expenditure here (World Bank, 2023, CC BY 4.0) — ahead of most countries on this site. It is the clearest case of why the figure is quoted and not scored: it counts only what insured people pay, so premiums and the uninsured fall outside it entirely.

Confidence
made by us from the source
Rule
No change known to us
Last checked
Never against a source

What it is like here

There is no passive-income or retirement visa. Permanent residence runs through employment, close family or an annual lottery, and for some countries of birth the employment queue is measured in decades rather than years. Layer on that healthcare before public retirement-age coverage is a private-market problem with costs unlike anywhere else in this list, and the arithmetic that works in Portugal simply does not apply.

How the process works

1

Find a category you fit

This is the whole problem. Without employment or a close family relationship there is usually no route at all.

Timing not confirmed
2

Check the queue for your country of birth

Waiting times in employment categories depend on where you were born, not where you live, and the published cut-off dates move unpredictably.

Timing not confirmed
3

Price health cover before you commit

Model the premium and the out-of-pocket maximum at your actual age. It changes the affordability answer more than rent does.

Timing not confirmed

Where people settle

Southern California / New Jersey
Largest Korean communities and the deepest support networks

Open any ingredient above to see where its figure came from, how far we trust it and when we last checked. Nothing here is a substitute for the official source. Last reviewed 2026-09-03.

Photograph of USA, licensed Pexels License, via Pexels.