Basic Cost Calculator for Foreigners Retiring in Russia
Disclaimer: The following has been edited and modified from its original version for the ESW Patreon. This article does not constitute retirement planning or financial advice, but rather tips that may be used as starting points for Westerners considering a move to Russia ahead of a planned retirement in the RF. Always do your own research and be prepared to consult a professional.
-- James Smith
Editor-in-Chief and Publisher, ExitStrategy.World
October 14, 2024
Russia is becoming more popular as a dream destination for estranged Westerners, who increasingly don’t feel at home with the aggressively woke materialist direction their homelands are going. Russia's powerful culture, 1,200-year history and focus on traditional family values, as well as longstanding traditions of Orthodox Christianity, certainly feel compelling to a lot of people. Post-SMO Western propaganda depicting economic and diplomatic isolation for Russia increasingly looks absurd, as Russia hosts the BRICS+ Summit one week from today in Kazan, with NATO member Turkey, Azerbaijan and multiple nations from the Global South including from the Americas (Venezuela, Colombia) clamoring to join the multipolar bloc.
As for depictions of Russia as a depressing wartime hellscape, a whole generation of vbloggers is showing Westerners the truth: Russia offers an advanced technological society, clean orderly cities, low crime, low unemployment and homelessness coupled with affordable prices for food, housing and health care. Not to mention the beautiful women, beautifully diverse nature, historic monuments and more than 190 ethnic cultures with a rich Eurasian mélange of cuisines. Taken together with remarkably low taxation for self-employed entrepreneurs and business owners, these factors make Russia a VERY attractive destination.
Photo credit above: A man in his mid-60s walking outdoors amid Russian spring greenery
Uploaded to iStock by Sergey Dolgikh Sept 2024 iStock photo ID: 2173226525
Still the question remains: even if you could work for a few years accumulating assets, how much money would you really need to retire in Russia? Well that definitely depends on the desired lifestyle. Embarking on this journey to evaluate and come up with some sort of number, we will be exploring two distinctly different approaches to said lifestyle.
Before we dive in though, dear reader, a little disclaimer: all numbers here are correct, but they’re also all wrong! The general projection and conclusions will be mostly solid, but your actual specific situation remains unique. So even though you can keep these numbers in mind as a good guideline and approximation, it never hurts to also research and find out things for yourself. Some readers will look at the more affluent retirement numbers and sigh, while others will suggest that the proposed budget lifestyle is still far too low in expenses.
Everyone's situation is different, and the main assumption here is a source of retirement capital in savings and investments, the sale of a modest small business, or the median-priced single-family home in the U.S. (approximately $400,000), Canada or Western Europe. How best to transfer your retirement capital to Russia using crypto stable coins is a topic for another day, as is the topic of selling a business in the Collective West in order to acquire a profitable business in Russia. But we do have some upcoming business case studies to share (watch this space).
Define What's a Comfortable Lifestyle in Russia For You
Talking about lifestyles we decisively exclude all sorts of extremes. The high-class millionaire lifestyle is expensive in any country. Those who can afford it, may retire in Russia and basically lead the very same lifestyle they have always had--though Moscow certainly isn't cheap by global standards, it's not London, LA, New York or Hong Kong either. And on the other side of the spectrum, for those who have been barely scraping by, retirement in the U.S., let alone relocating to retire in another country, is hardly a consideration.
So with that in mind, first we’re looking at what we have termed a ‘comfortable lifestyle’ - not necessarily lavishly rich, but solidly upper middle class, that is the way of life about 20% to 30% (the parameters are highly debatable) of the Russian population enjoys.
Going out for dinner to a classy place once or twice a week, getting takeout and meal deliveries when you don’t feel like cooking, taking short trips to museums, theaters, theme parks, cinemas, exhibitions and the like every month.
