[Market Watch] Mary Taft lives with her two daughters, seven cats and two dogs in a mansion in Panama ‐ and she wouldn’t have it any other way.But the former teacher and school administrator didn’t always know that a Panamanian retirement was in store for her. Indeed, as she consulted about where to move with her two adult daughters, dozens of spots were on the table. "We had this blue sky conversation ‐ where can we all go and live together," the 63-year-old former Springfield, Mass., resident says. "Canada was out because it was too cold. We wanted the tropics because we were sick of winter. We ruled out Asia because it was too far and the language barrier, Australia was too expensive."
The Spanish speaker had been to Latin America numerous times, and her older daughter, a musician, worked a lot in Brazil, so they began looking around there. They ruled out Belize because of a "lack of infrastructure," and Costa Rica because of its expense and "poor track record with health care," Taft says. But Boquete, Panama ‐ a lush, mild-weather town in the Panamanian highlands that’s popular with expats ‐ checked nearly all their boxes.