Retire in Asia

Living abroad can be genuinely life-changing, and for a growing number of retirees it's a realistic, affordable, and rewarding way to spend this stage of life. People build rich routines, make real friendships, find better weather and better healthcare value, and end up grateful they made the move. That's the outcome this site is built to help you reach if you decide to retire in Asia.

The thing that makes that outcome more likely is a realistic picture of what you're actually moving into. A lot of the media covering retirement abroad is essentially a highlight reel: the upside without the trade-offs, the lifestyle without the paperwork, the price tags without the asterisks. Promoting the good parts and ignoring the important details (and potential downsides) sells a life that doesn't exist and leaves prospective retirees under-prepared.

A lot of content also tends to skip over the cultural context of these countries and how it shapes day-to-day life: interactions with institutions, neighbors, landlords, and the unwritten rules that determine whether things go smoothly or not. Understanding that context is often the difference between settling in comfortably and feeling like a permanent outsider.

Retire in Asia's goal is straightforward: give you the full picture — the good, the not-so-good, the hard, and the boring administrative parts — of retirement destinations in Asia so you can make better-informed decisions, prepare properly, and give yourself the best possible shot at the life you're hoping to build. We believe the honest versions of these countries are the most useful ones.

Retire in Asia is founded by Blair Cummins, a long-time world traveler and expat who has been living in Asia since 2019. Blair started a business in Taiwan and lived there through the COVID-19 years. In Southeast Asia, his journey has taken him to every country Retire in Asia covers: Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia — including parts of these countries that are off-the-beaten-path.

Running a business through a pandemic, moving between countries, dealing with visas, banks, healthcare and the everyday mechanics of life abroad is what Retire in Asia draws on.

Before leaving the United States, Blair spent his career as an entrepreneur in California, where he founded a couple of technology startups and joined several others as an early employee. He's the son of an anthropologist, with a lifelong passion for travel and understanding how other cultures actually work. Between the two, he approaches a country with deep curiosity: how does this place really function, and what does that mean for foreigners visiting and living in it?

Retire in Asia makes money primarily from sales of our country guides. We also offer limited, narrowly-scoped consulting services related to country selection and the practical realities of life abroad.

We do not offer courses, coaching, mentoring, or financial, tax or legal advice. We also do not promote investment opportunities or real estate developments. None of our offerings is subscription-based.

We strongly recommend that prospective retirees seeking personalized advice about financial, tax, legal and property matters retain qualified, licensed counsel. We also suggest that they approach with caution one-path-fits-all retirement solutions, plans or blueprints, which are commonly sold online as subscriptions and often contain upsells for significantly more expensive products and services.

In the future, we may offer paid directory listings to help retirees connect with relevant service providers, but those will always be disclosed and service providers will always be screened to ensure that they are licensed (where appropriate) and meet our standards.

Editorial content is never and will never be influenced by payment from a third party.

Every visa rule, income threshold, and tax figure on this site is based on a primary source, such as the issuing government, the relevant ministry, or the published law. Where official sources conflict or are out of date in practice, we note that explicitly.

Every country guide provides access to an online companion that's updated as the rules change, so what you bought doesn't go stale. Where this site's tools read from our underlying database of visa rules, updates are made promptly, not when we publish the next edition. Most importantly, if we get something wrong, we want to know and we'll fix it.

Editorial inquiries, corrections, and press go to info@retireinasia.com. Speaking, syndication, and partnerships go to the same address with a clear subject line.