If the retire-early math says you're five years out, there's a lever that can collapse the timeline to about twelve months: change countries. The United States is the best country in the world to make money. Europe, in my opinion, is the best region in the world to spend it.
This isn't armchair theory. Our family has traveled to 40+ countries and spends 3 to 4 months abroad every year, and members of our community have made the full move: Spain, Portugal, Singapore, Taiwan, all living well on US-based income. Here's the math that makes it work.
The Cost Side: Your Budget, Roughly Halved
It's probably not out of the question to cut 50% off a monthly retirement budget by living in the right country. Housing is the obvious piece, but the quiet line items are where the halving actually happens: healthcare at cash prices (real bills from our trips here), produce from weekly markets instead of supermarket chains, one car or none, and the disappearance of a dozen American subscription-and-insurance charges you stopped noticing years ago. Families we know who track it carefully report that months abroad routinely cost less than the same months at home, before counting the tax benefits.
Quality of life doesn't drop with the budget; in much of the world it rises. That's the part nobody believes until they've stood on a terrace in Kotor, Montenegro doing the mental math on what their US suburb costs. We've been back to Montenegro more than once, and we've seriously considered house shopping there.
The Tax Side: The FEIE
The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion lets Americans abroad exclude a large chunk of earned income from federal income tax: the figure adjusts annually, and for 2026 it's $132,900 per person, so a married couple can exclude over $265,000 a year. The headline requirement for the physical presence test: at least 330 full days outside the US in a 12-month period. There's also a foreign housing benefit on top of it (the 2026 housing limitation is $39,870).
The fine print matters: the exclusion covers earned income (a salary, active business income), not rental cash flow or capital gains, and the 330-day requirement is stricter than it sounds (count your travel days honestly, including the flights). Which means the FEIE pairs beautifully with one specific profile: the location-independent business owner. If you built the recurring-revenue business that pays you an active income from anywhere, moving abroad can wipe the federal income tax on a quarter million dollars of it while your rentals keep doing their thing back home. If you're living purely on passive income, the win is mostly the cost side, which is still a very large win. Either way, this is CPA territory before it's plane-ticket territory: state taxes, self-employment tax, and entity structure all interact with it.
The Insurance Kicker
When we leave for 4 to 6 months, we cancel our US health plan and carry a worldwide policy for about $90 a month that covers every country except the United States. Full-time expats do the same thing permanently. It says something that the affordable global plan's only exclusion is the country we're from.
How to Test It Without Moving
You don't have to sell the house and commit. Run the experiment as an extended trip first: a one-month trial run, then a full season, with the house, phones, and logistics handled. Track what you actually spend against the same month at home, in a spreadsheet, honestly.
Do it in the shoulder season, live like residents rather than tourists (markets, monthly rentals, local SIM), and give one location enough weeks to show you its real rhythm. Several families we know ran that experiment intending to come home, and the spreadsheet talked them out of it.
I'm not a CPA, and this isn't tax advice. The FEIE has strict qualification tests and interacts with state taxes, self-employment tax, and your entity structure. Talk to a professional who works with expats.
