Fortune Magazine
Paradise Found: Where To Retire Abroad>

Boquete, Panama - Janet 51 and Newton Osborne 68.
The Osbornes had been thumbing through retirement community brochures from all over the U.S. when Newton, a professor of obstetrics at Howard University, considered the possibility of retiring in Panama--the country where he was born. "There are certain advantages to Panama," says Osborne, who has lived in the U.S. for 45 years and is planning to retire in the next few months. "I won't have to shovel snow, and I won't have to pay property tax for the next 20 years." So in 2001 he took a trip to visit both a coastal and a mountain community. He chose the latter and brought Janet to Boquete a few months later to look at property. They purchased a lot on a hill overlooking a golf course and have built a three-bedroom white-stucco house with a red-tile roof (total cost: about $250,000). "You can hear the sound of rivers here," says Janet. "It's very peaceful."

AARP
Panama Ranked 4th In The World To Retire

According to a recent article written by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), Panama ranks 4th among the top 15 world locations for a home away from home citing first-world infrastructure of roads, business services, exceptional medical care and telecommunications.

Los Angeles Times
In Panama, American Retirees Finding More Paradise For Less

(Boquete, Panama) “Golf course manager John Sutton had enough of lawyers, telemarketers, and the US government. SO the San Diegan and his wife took early retirement, sold everything they owned, and moved to Panama. The Suttons, who bought a house here last summer, exemplify the wave of American retirees who want to get away from it all – far, far away. Each month, about 20 new ones turn up in the remote coffee-growing town in the mountains of western Panama, buying houses and starting new lives. It is the latest hot spot in Central America, a region that over the past decade has attracted increasing numbers of US retirees. ‘Boquete have us the opportunity to have a great, comfortable lifestyle,’ says Sutton, 50, who with his wife, Dinah, had put $5,000 down on their new house without seeing it. Other US retirees are making similar moves, attracted by Panama’s favorable tax treatment of foreigners, the relatively low cost of living, lush surroundings, and the eternally mild climate.”