The four levels of life
Each level means living like a share of the people in that country: Comfortable like the top 20%, Refined the top 10%, Exclusive the top 5% and World-class luxury the top 1%. Levels are local. The same money can buy a higher level in one country and a lower level in another.
Where the monthly spending comes from
We start with household surveys from the World Bank. They show what people at each level spend or earn in each country. Surveys miss the top of the income range, so we compare each figure with tax-record income data from the World Inequality Database and with published guides for retirees from abroad. The final figure is never lower than the survey.
In a few countries, local spending is below what a foreign household lives on. There, the lower levels follow the retiree guides instead of local households. For places with no household survey, such as many small islands, we start from prices in cost-of-living sources and retiree guides. We build the higher levels from the typical gaps between levels in countries that have surveys. These countries show fewer stars.
Spending assumes you rent your home.
How household size changes the number
More people cost more, but not in a straight line. We scale spending by the number of people raised to the power of 0.7. A couple costs about 1.6 times one person. Five people cost about 3.1 times.
How the money is used
The plan spends your money down to zero over the years you choose. If you choose the rest of your life, the plan shows the amount whose interest alone pays for your spending, so the money itself is never spent.
The money sits in government bonds that keep up with prices. Each country has two choices, and we use whichever needs less money. One is the country's own government bonds. The other is US inflation-linked Treasury bonds, at 2.91% a year above inflation (the 10-year rate on September 29, 2026), with a 3% cost each time money is exchanged into local currency. That cost does not apply in places that use the US dollar. Where a country has no local government bond we could use, we use the US bonds.
Prices rise until the year you move, at 3.4% a year, so moving later needs more money on the first day.
Tax
Tax follows the type of bond. Interest on US bonds is taxed at a US federal rate worked out from the 2026 tax brackets, single for one person and married filing jointly for two or more, plus the 3.8% investment income tax. The rate depends on how much interest your spending produces. Interest on a country's own bonds is taxed at that country's rate, which is zero where there is no tax on this income. Both the interest and the yearly inflation adjustment on the principal are taxed each year. US state tax is not included.
The workbook covers plans of 20, 25 and 30 years. For 35 years, 40 years and the rest of your life, we extend the tax estimate with the same model, so those figures are less exact. Local tax rates are first estimates for most countries and have not all been checked.
How sure we are
Each country gets a score from five parts: the income data, the bond yield, inflation, the tax rate and household size. We turn the scores into stars. Stars are relative. The country we are most sure about gets five stars and the least sure gets one. Five stars does not mean certain.
What we have not checked
We have checked whether a foreign resident can buy the country's own government bonds only for Mexico. Treat the local-bond figures for other countries as a guide until that is checked. Figures are estimates for planning, based on public data as of October 2026.
Sources
World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform; World Inequality Database; national statistics offices and central banks; the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook for inflation; open.er-api.com for exchange rates; US Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED) for bond yields; Internal Revenue Service 2026 tax tables; Numbeo and other cost-of-living sources and published retiree guides for places with no household survey.
Photographs
Photographers and sources are on the Photo credits page.