Is retiring with $300,000 in a savings account enough to retire in another country?

Im planning to retire in the Phillipines and was wondering whether 300,000 is enough to last me the rest of my life. Its will be in a savings account, so there will be some sort of income. Im 23, but planning my retirement when Im 45,50ist. Also do i need a US adress if my bank is the bank of america?

Public Comments

1. $$'s are not worth what they used to be .. however if you can choose a low cost country $300,000 at todays value should be enough. In 25 years inflation will have eroded the value of the $$ even further and countries like Philippines will have improved their standard of living (indeed they may even have started to impose entry restrictions to limit immigration in that time) .. So all you can do now is save like mad and check your options every 5 years or so .. You can be 100% sure that any bank restrictions will change in 25 years .. (BoA might even have gone bust :-) )
2. Your question is too generic and it is impossible for anyone to give you a complete answer. Will you have a pension? Will you receive Social Security? Will you have any other sources of income? How many people will you the 300k be supporting (spouse? children? parents?)? Which country do you want to move to (The cost of living in countries like India and China will likely rival the US in 30-50 years)? Is the $300k the nominal or real value in 20-30 years? What is nominal value? $300k today is "nominally" the same as $300k in 25 years. $300k in 25 years has a much lower "real" value than the same $300k today. An easy way to understand this is to look at the cost of living today (house, food, gas, movie tickets, etc) compared to the cost of the same items during your parents early years. $300k in 25 years will probably have the purchasing power of ~$127k today (given an inflation/discount rate of 3.5%). As you can see $300k in 25 years is probably worth less than half the value of 300k today. So again, I must ask, will you have $300k in 25 years or the equivalent of $300k today in 25 years (nominal vs. real value). All this is ignoring any currency fluctuations/changes. Most of today's emerging markets (India, China, Brazil, etc etc) will likely get a lot more expensive compared to the United States in the next 20+ years. Why? Industrialized countries tend to get more expensive. The "cheap" third world countries will likely be comprised of a new list of countries. So anyways to answer your question.... $300k in 25 years will probably not suffice to cover a 30-40 year retirement. In fact I doubt it will last you 20 years, unless you live VERY frugally. If you have other sources of income, you might manage. It is very hard to figure out the cost of living in 25 years let alone the cost of living in another country. Unless you want to be on an extremely restricted budget, you will want to save more than 300k. Finally, you should be able to maintain a Bank of America (BoA) account from any country. I do not know about any account creation restrictions with BoA, but even if they have the aforementioned restrictions, there should be none once you create the account.