The Retirement Decision More Americans Are Making in 2026 That Their Financial Advisors Did Not Suggest

Most people who sit down with a financial planner walk out with a spreadsheet full of withdrawal rates, Social Security timing charts, and Medicare enrollment deadlines. What they rarely walk out with is a conversation about leaving the country entirely. Yet that is exactly what a growing share of American retirees are doing in 2026, often quietly, and often without their advisor’s blessing or even their advisor’s awareness until the paperwork is already signed. This isn’t a fringe lifestyle choice anymore. It’s showing up in Social Security data, immigration statistics, and expat housing markets from Lisbon to San Miguel de Allende. Understanding why so many retirees are choosing this path, and why the financial planning industry has been slow to catch up, says a lot about where American retirement is actually headed.

A retirement plan that goes off script

Traditional retirement planning assumes a fairly predictable shape. You save through your working years, meet with an advisor who models a 4 percent withdrawal rate, and settle into a home somewhere in the United States, usually the one you already own. The number of Americans who want to retire abroad is on the rise, having more than quadrupled since 1974, according to Realtor.com. That is not a rounding error. It’s a structural shift in how people picture their later years.

Roughly 17 percent of Americans aged 55 and older would like to leave the country and settle somewhere else, up from 4 percent some 50 years ago. Some of that interest is aspirational and never turns into a plane ticket. Still, enough of it is converting into actual moves that the trend has become impossible for the financial industry to ignore, even if most advisors still treat it as an afterthought rather than a core planning scenario.

Why advisors rarely bring up leaving the country

Financial advisors are trained, licensed, and often legally restricted to operate within US tax and securities law. Cross border retirement, with its foreign tax treaties, currency exposure, and international healthcare systems, sits well outside the scope most advisors are equipped or willing to touch. It’s not that they think it’s a bad idea. It’s that they simply don’t have the specialized training to guide someone through it responsibly.

That leaves a gap. Retirees interested in this path often end up piecing together information from expat forums, relocation consultants, and general research services rather than the person managing their nest egg. The US taxes its citizens on worldwide income, meaning that tax treaties and other mechanisms are vital to avoid double taxation on retirement income. Navigating that correctly usually requires a specialist most mainstream advisors simply are not.

The healthcare equation nobody’s 401(k) accounts for

Healthcare costs sit at the center of this decision for a lot of retirees, and the math is not subtle. The average US 65 year old couple needs approximately $315,000 saved for health care throughout retirement, not including long term care, and should expect 10 to 15 percent of their annual retirement income to go toward medical expenses. That figure alone reshapes how people think about where their money will go the furthest.

Private insurance in the US only adds to the pressure. Private health care is cheaper abroad than in the US, where average annual International Private Medical Insurance premiums run around $18,000 per person. The catch that few advisors spell out clearly is that Medicare coverage won’t work if you move to a foreign country, so the quality and cost of healthcare where you end up becomes paramount. That single fact reshapes the entire calculation for anyone considering the move.

Making the dollar go further

Cost of living arbitrage is the plainest financial argument for retiring abroad, and it holds up under scrutiny. The average retired US household spends around $5,000 a month to live, while the average Social Security check was just $2,005.05 as of June 2025. That gap between income and expenses is exactly what pushes many retirees to look elsewhere.

Some destinations make the math especially favorable. Mexico offers the lowest average healthcare costs among the top ten expat destinations, running about 60 percent less than US prices. Retirees who relocate often describe a similar pattern of relief once they see their monthly budget shrink in ways that saving harder at home never quite achieved.

A quieter kind of vote of no confidence

Money is not the only driver. There’s also a broader unease with domestic institutions that shows up consistently in the research. Across demographic groups, Americans with lower confidence in institutions such as the government, judicial system, military, and integrity of elections are consistently more likely to express a desire to leave the country. That is not something a financial advisor is trained, or frankly authorized, to weigh in on.

It also helps explain why the trend has accelerated recently rather than staying flat. Last year the US experienced something that hasn’t definitively occurred since the Great Depression, with more people moving out than moving in. Retirees are a meaningful part of that outbound flow, even if they rarely make the headlines the way younger emigrants do.

Where the moving vans are actually headed

The destinations tell their own story. The best countries for Americans to retire include Spain, Portugal, Costa Rica, Uruguay, and Mexico, based on factors like healthcare access, safety, and overall cost of living. Portugal in particular has become something of a magnet, with entire neighborhoods in Lisbon now dominated by American accents.

Rankings shift year to year, and 2026 brought a notable change at the top. The International Living index picked Greece as the top locale for 2026, jumping ahead of longtime European favorites Portugal and Spain. For retirees weighing visa accessibility against income requirements, Costa Rica sits on the lower end with a minimum monthly income requirement of just $1,000, making it one of the more attainable options for people without deep savings.

The tax paperwork your advisor won’t handle

Retiring abroad does not mean escaping the IRS. Americans remain on the hook for domestic filing regardless of where they live, though there are tools that soften the blow. For tax year 2026, the maximum foreign earned income exclusion is $132,900 per person, which matters for anyone still doing part time consulting or remote work from overseas.

There’s also a reporting obligation that surprises a lot of new expats. Retirees abroad need to report foreign accounts to the US Treasury annually via the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, known as FBAR, if their total value exceeds $10,000. Missing that filing carries real penalties, and it’s precisely the kind of detail that falls through the cracks when a domestic advisor isn’t tracking international compliance.

One couple’s math, and the numbers behind it

Individual stories tend to make the trend feel less abstract. Jeff and Joch Woodruff relocated to northern Portugal after a long visit convinced them the move made sense, following years of trips and conversations with people already living there. Their monthly budget after the move dropped to nearly one fourth of what they had spent living in California.

Their situation is not unusual once you look at the broader numbers. Roughly 700,000 Americans currently receive Social Security benefits abroad, a figure that has risen more than 20 percent over the past dozen years. Meanwhile, a record number of approximately 150,000 Americans relocated abroad in 2025 alone, suggesting the pace is only picking up.

The risks that don’t show up in a retirement calculator

None of this is without downside, and it’s worth saying plainly. Currency swings can erode a fixed income overnight, visa rules can tighten with little warning, and distance from adult children and grandchildren is a cost that no spreadsheet captures well. Costs are rising at home, healthcare is going through the roof, the dollar is declining against major world currencies, and the very definition of retirement is being rewritten, which cuts both ways depending on how the dollar performs against the currency of a chosen destination.

Popularity itself can also become a problem. As American retirees cluster in the same handful of cities, rents rise, local resentment builds, and some governments respond by tightening the very visa programs that made the move appealing in the first place. Anyone weighing this decision needs to treat it as a long term bet on a foreign country’s policy stability, not just a one time lifestyle upgrade.

Rethinking what a retirement plan should actually include

The traditional retirement conversation, built around withdrawal rates and Social Security claiming ages, was designed for a version of retirement that assumed people would stay put. That assumption no longer holds for a meaningful share of Americans, and the industry that advises them hasn’t fully adjusted. Retirees who are serious about this path are increasingly building their own team, pairing a domestic advisor with an international tax specialist and an immigration consultant, rather than waiting for one person to cover ground most were never trained to cover. The bigger lesson may be less about geography and more about ownership. Retirement planning has always been described as personal, but for a growing number of Americans in 2026, that personalization now includes decisions their advisors never put on the table at all.