Queer Money®: How Gay People Do Money

Is Ajijic retirement hot?
Puerto Vallarta gets most of the attention when gay men talk about retiring in Mexico.
But what if the perfect gay vacation destination isn't the perfect gay retirement destination?
We're currently in Ajijic, Mexico, extending our Mexican residency from one year to three years and seriously considering spending the first four months of our move to Mexico right here.
So we're asking:
Is Ajijic retirement hot?
In this episode of Queer Money®, we're sharing 5 reasons Ajijic has become one of the most interesting retirement destinations in Mexico for us, plus 3 reasons it might make you say absolutely not.
And we're doing it from Ajijic based on what we're actually experiencing.
🌈 Why Ajijic has our attention:
🏳️‍🌈 It's surprisingly gay. Ajijic has an active LGBTQ+ community that feels less focused on nightlife and more focused on building friendships and community.
It's an easy soft landing in Mexico. A large immigrant community, English-speaking services and established infrastructure can make moving abroad considerably easier.
🏥 Healthcare is accessible. Ajijic has local hospitals, specialists, labs and dental care, with even more options available nearby and in Guadalajara.
💰 Our money goes further. Ajijic isn't bargain-basement cheap anymore, but compared with many places in the U.S., everyday expenses can still feel considerably more reasonable.
🌴 It's retirement hot, not necessarily vacation hot. Puerto Vallarta may win for beaches, nightlife and vacation energy. Ajijic may win for community, everyday living and building an actual life.
But Ajijic isn't retirement paradise for everyone.
Those charming cobblestone streets can become a serious mobility issue. The large immigrant population can make it easy to stay inside an English-speaking bubble. And traffic on the Carretera may test your retirement zen.
So would we retire here permanently?
We're currently about a 7 out of 10.
But we're also planning to spend the first four months of our move to Mexico here, which probably says more than the score.
Because the real test of a retirement destination isn't:
“Did I have a fabulous vacation there?”
It's:
“Could I actually enjoy Tuesday there?”
If you're considering retiring or moving abroad, get the Queer Money Retire Abroad Planner & Calculator here.
Retire by design, not by default.

🏳️‍🌈 How We Help the Queer Money Community
Free Guides
📊 10 Vital Retirement Numbers
🌎 Retire Abroad Checklist

Calculators & Planners
🏳️‍🌈 Queer Money Retirement Calculator
✈️ Queer Money Retire Abroad Planner & Calculator
📈 Retirement Readiness Review
Mentioned in this episode:
It's time to create your retirement abroad plan
What if your retirement plan included a backup plan outside the United States?
The Optimize Portugal Golden Visa Fund may give you the opportunity to invest existing IRA assets while also pursuing residency in Portugal for you and your family.
That could mean greater flexibility, access to living and potentially working in Portugal, and a pathway to spending more time throughout Europe.
Your retirement savings may be able to do more than fund your future. They could help expand where that future happens.
Click the link below to learn how the fund works and request additional information.
Get Your Portugal Golden Visa Here!
Optimize August Ad 2
With political uncertainty growing in the U.S., now is the time to build your Plan B.
The Optimize Portugal Golden Visa Fund may let you invest existing IRA assets while pursuing Portuguese residency for you and your family.
Don’t wait until you need an escape plan to create one. Click below to learn more and request information.
Get Your Portugal Golden Visa Here!

Where should you actually retire abroad? Maybe you should stop vacationing there first.
Seven days of hotels, restaurants, sightseeing and cocktails tells you whether you like a vacation destination. It doesn't tell you whether you'd enjoy buying groceries, finding a doctor, navigating public transportation and doing absolutely nothing on a Saturday there.
And it definitely doesn't tell you what it feels like to live there as a gay person when Pride isn't happening.
In this episode of Queer Money®, we're ranking the 5 best gay-friendly countries for slow travel, especially for Americans who may secretly be test-driving their future retirement.
We started with more than 40 countries recommended by experienced slow travelers and put them through the Queer Money Slow Travel Test: LGBTQ+ friendliness, staying power, ease of everyday life, healthcare access and the ability to experience multiple potential retirement lifestyles.
And our #2 country surprised even us.
🌈 The Top 5:
🇦🇷 #5 Argentina – Buenos Aires gives you world-class city life, while Mendoza, Córdoba and Patagonia let you test completely different retirement lifestyles.
🇧🇷 #4 Brazil – Rio, São Paulo and Florianópolis offer incredible variety, with visitor stays potentially reaching 180 days and retirement residency options for qualifying retirees.
🇹🇭 #3 Thailand – Bangkok, Chiang Mai and the southern beaches combine affordability, healthcare, infrastructure and a huge international community.
🇨🇱 #2 Chile – The surprise of the list. From Santiago to wine country, beaches and Patagonia, Chile offers enormous variety plus surprisingly strong LGBTQ+ protections.
🇪🇸 #1 Spain – Madrid, Valencia, Málaga, Gran Canaria, northern Spain and, yes, Sitges. World-class transportation, healthcare, LGBTQ+ acceptance and dramatically different lifestyles make Spain our best country for slow-traveling your way toward retirement.
💡 Takeaways from this episode:
🏳️‍🌈 Why LGBTQ+ laws AND public acceptance matter when test-driving a retirement destination
🛂 How long Americans can potentially stay in each country before pursuing residency
🏥 Why healthcare access needs to be part of your test drive
💰 Why your vacation budget isn't your retirement budget
🌎 Why staying somewhere during its less-fabulous season can tell you more than visiting during perfect weather
🏠 Why you should rent in a real neighborhood instead of living in a hotel

Before choosing your retirement destination:
Stay at least one month. Live where residents actually live. Track what normal life costs.
Then ask yourself:
Would I still love this place if I weren't on vacation?
If the answer is yes, make the next step easier with the Queer Money Retire Abroad Planner & Calculator.
Retire by design, not by default.

🏳️‍🌈 How We Help the Queer Money Community
Free Guides
📊 10 Vital Retirement Numbers
🌎 Retire Abroad Checklist

Calculators & Planners
🏳️‍🌈 Queer Money Retirement Calculator
✈️ Queer Money Retire Abroad Planner & Calculator
📈 Retirement Readiness Review
Mentioned in this episode:
Optimize August Ad 2
With political uncertainty growing in the U.S., now is the time to build your Plan B.
The Optimize Portugal Golden Visa Fund may let you invest existing IRA assets while pursuing Portuguese residency for you and your family.
Don’t wait until you need an escape plan to create one. Click below to learn more and request information.
Get Your Portugal Golden Visa Here!
It's time to create your retirement abroad plan
What if your retirement plan included a backup plan outside the United States?
The Optimize Portugal Golden Visa Fund may give you the opportunity to invest existing IRA assets while also pursuing residency in Portugal for you and your family.
That could mean greater flexibility, access to living and potentially working in Portugal, and a pathway to spending more time throughout Europe.
Your retirement savings may be able to do more than fund your future. They could help expand where that future happens.
Click the link below to learn how the fund works and request additional information.
Get Your Portugal Golden Visa Here!

Why moving abroad doesn't automatically make you worldly.
You can move abroad, lower your cost of living, enjoy better weather and healthcare, and still be a terrible expat.
Because moving abroad doesn't automatically make you worldly.
Sometimes it just makes you an American with a cheaper margarita. 🍹
As we prepare for our own move to Mexico, we're thinking more about something that doesn't get nearly enough attention in the retire-abroad conversation:
Retiring abroad isn't just about what another country can do for you. It's also about how you show up once you get there.
In this episode of Queer Money®, we're counting down seven behaviors that can turn otherwise well-intentioned Americans into bad expats, from refusing to learn the local language to surrounding yourself entirely with other Americans to expecting your new country to operate exactly like the United States.
And yes, we're checking ourselves against this list, too.
🌈 Takeaways from this episode:
👋 Why something as simple as greeting people in their language matters
How moving abroad without ever leaving your American bubble defeats much of the purpose
🏘️ Why living behind the gates can prevent you from ever actually becoming part of your community
🗣️ Why you don't need to become fluent, but refusing to learn the language isn't cute
💰 Why supporting local businesses should be part of enjoying your new country's lower cost of living
🌎 Why cultural differences aren't problems that need American solutions
💸 And our potentially controversial #1: wanting all the benefits of your new country without accepting any responsibility for supporting it

All seven mistakes come down to one bigger problem:
Bad expats treat another country like a product.
What's the price? What's the visa? What's the weather? What's in it for me?
Good immigrants start asking different questions:
How do I belong here? How do I participate?
How do I understand the culture?
And what can I contribute?

We're becoming immigrants ourselves, and we're absolutely going to screw some of this up.
The goal isn't perfection.
It's participation.

🏳️‍🌈 How We Help the Queer Money Community
Free Guides
📊 10 Vital Retirement Numbers
🌎 Retire Abroad Checklist

Calculators & Planners
🏳️‍🌈 Queer Money Retirement Calculator
✈️ Queer Money Retire Abroad Planner & Calculator
📈 Retirement Readiness Review
Mentioned in this episode:
Optimize August Ad 2
With political uncertainty growing in the U.S., now is the time to build your Plan B.
The Optimize Portugal Golden Visa Fund may let you invest existing IRA assets while pursuing Portuguese residency for you and your family.
Don’t wait until you need an escape plan to create one. Click below to learn more and request information.
Get Your Portugal Golden Visa Here!
It's time to create your retirement abroad plan
What if your retirement plan included a backup plan outside the United States?
The Optimize Portugal Golden Visa Fund may give you the opportunity to invest existing IRA assets while also pursuing residency in Portugal for you and your family.
That could mean greater flexibility, access to living and potentially working in Portugal, and a pathway to spending more time throughout Europe.
Your retirement savings may be able to do more than fund your future. They could help expand where that future happens.
Click the link below to learn how the fund works and request additional information.
Get Your Portugal Golden Visa Here!

Why Haven't You Retired Already?
We keep doing retirement reviews with gay men who have more than enough money to retire... yet they won't.
One couple we recently worked with is on track to have nearly $3 million in just a few years. Our biggest takeaway for them wasn't, "You need to save more."
It was:
You're working too hard and too much and playing too little.
So if the math says you can retire, why does your brain keep saying you can't?
In this episode of Queer Money®, we're challenging some of the biggest ideas the financial industry has sold us about retirement: that retirement is a number, that you'll never have enough and that retirement shouldn't start until 65.
Because after decades of saving, investing and building financial security, some gay men discover an unexpected problem:
They've learned how to accumulate wealth, but they haven't learned how to use it to create freedom.
🌈 Takeaways from this episode:
💰 Why your paycheck can feel safer than your portfolio, even when the retirement math works
🧠 How being a "good saver" can become so intertwined with your identity that spending your retirement savings feels irresponsible
📉 Why learning how to decumulate money can be just as important as learning how to accumulate it
✈️ Why your go-go years may be the time to intentionally spend MORE, not less
⚠️ Why trying to create a completely risk-free retirement could create an even bigger risk: waiting too long to enjoy it
🏳️‍🌈 How to determine whether you actually have "enough" without relying on a magical $1 million, $2 million or $5 million retirement number
💵 How creating a retirement paycheck can make leaving your career feel less terrifying
📋 Why you should create your bad-news plan before the market drops, healthcare costs rise or life throws you another surprise

Here's the uncomfortable truth:
You can always make more money. You can't make yourself 55 again.
Retirement confidence doesn't come from eliminating every possible risk. It comes from knowing what you'll do when something changes.
And at some point, if your assets are growing, your spending is manageable, you have future income and your plan can survive imperfect markets, continuing to work becomes a choice rather than a financial requirement.
If you've saved a lot of money but still can't confidently answer, "Can I retire?", that's exactly what our Queer Money Retirement Readiness Reviews are designed to help you figure out.
Schedule your Queer Money Retirement Readiness Review
Retire by design, not by default.

🏳️‍🌈 How We Help the Queer Money Community
Free Guides
📊 10 Vital Retirement Numbers
🌎 Retire Abroad Checklist

Calculators & Planners
🏳️‍🌈 Queer Money Retirement Calculator
✈️ Queer Money Retire Abroad Planner & Calculator
📈 Retirement Readiness Review
Mentioned in this episode:
It's time to create your retirement abroad plan
What if your retirement plan included a backup plan outside the United States?
The Optimize Portugal Golden Visa Fund may give you the opportunity to invest existing IRA assets while also pursuing residency in Portugal for you and your family.
That could mean greater flexibility, access to living and potentially working in Portugal, and a pathway to spending more time throughout Europe.
Your retirement savings may be able to do more than fund your future. They could help expand where that future happens.
Click the link below to learn how the fund works and request additional information.
Get Your Portugal Golden Visa Here!
Optimize August Ad 2
With political uncertainty growing in the U.S., now is the time to build your Plan B.
The Optimize Portugal Golden Visa Fund may let you invest existing IRA assets while pursuing Portuguese residency for you and your family.
Don’t wait until you need an escape plan to create one. Click below to learn more and request information.
Get Your Portugal Golden Visa Here!

We're moving €500,000 of our retirement investments out of the United States and into Portugal.
Yes, the investment can potentially qualify us for Portugal's Golden Visa. But here's the part that may surprise you:
If Portugal eliminated the Golden Visa tomorrow, we'd still make the investment.
Why?
Because we're increasingly uncomfortable having so much of our financial future tied to one country, one currency and one economy.
In this episode of Queer Money®, we're getting personal about our own retirement portfolio and the three reasons we're investing in the Optimize Portugal Golden Opportunities Fund, plus the one reason we absolutely wouldn't.
Portugal's market returned approximately 37% in 2025 versus roughly 17% for the U.S. market, and through the period discussed in this episode, Portugal continued to outperform the U.S. The fund we're investing in returned 25.1% in 2025 and reported a 13.6% annualized return since its 2021 inception.
Of course, past performance doesn't guarantee future returns.
But performance is only part of our decision.
💡 Takeaways from this episode:
Why we believe the investment needs to make sense even without the Golden Visa
📈 What we're actually buying inside the Optimize Portugal Golden Opportunities Fund
💶 Why another country, currency and economy can provide diversification to our heavily U.S.-focused portfolio
🌎 Why we're paying attention as some global pensions, institutions and central banks reconsider their exposure to U.S. assets
🏳️‍🌈 How a qualifying €500,000 investment may provide another path toward living in Europe through Portugal's Golden Visa
💰 The math behind how €500,000 earning the fund's historical 13.6% annualized return would equal approximately €68,000 per year before taxes
⚠️ The risks of concentrating money in a relatively small foreign market
🚫 And the one reason we wouldn't make this investment: We would never invest €500,000 simply to get a visa if we thought the underlying investment sucked.

We're not abandoning America.
We're trying to stop making America our only financial plan.
For us, wealth is increasingly less about accumulating more stuff and more about accumulating choices, options and freedom.
Optimize Investment Partners sponsors Queer Money®, and we're personally investing in the Portugal Golden Opportunities Fund strategy discussed in this episode.
This episode is for financial education only and isn't investment advice. International investing involves risk, including market, concentration and currency risk, as well as additional tax and reporting considerations. Past performance isn't indicative of future results.
Want to learn more about the Optimize Portugal strategy, its holdings, performance, risks and the €500,000 Golden Visa route?
If you're curiouse about Optimize Investment Partners to request more information directly from their team here: https://bit.ly/PGOF-2
And if you're considering retiring or moving abroad, download our FREE Queer Money Retire Abroad Checklist below.

HOW WE HELP FOLKS IN THE QUEER MONEY COMMUNITY
Free guides
Queer Money Kickstarter:
Queer Money 10 Vital Retirement Numbers
Queer Money Retire Abroad Checklist

Calculators, planners and services
Queer Money Beginner’s Guide
Queer Money Retirement Calculator
Queer Money Retire Abroad Planner & Calculator
Queer Money Retirement Readiness Review

Mentioned in this episode:
Optimize August Ad 2
With political uncertainty growing in the U.S., now is the time to build your Plan B.
The Optimize Portugal Golden Visa Fund may let you invest existing IRA assets while pursuing Portuguese residency for you and your family.
Don’t wait until you need an escape plan to create one. Click below to learn more and request information.
Get Your Portugal Golden Visa Here!
It's time to create your retirement abroad plan
What if your retirement plan included a backup plan outside the United States?
The Optimize Portugal Golden Visa Fund may give you the opportunity to invest existing IRA assets while also pursuing residency in Portugal for you and your family.
That could mean greater flexibility, access to living and potentially working in Portugal, and a pathway to spending more time throughout Europe.
Your retirement savings may be able to do more than fund your future. They could help expand where that future happens.
Click the link below to learn how the fund works and request additional information.
Get Your Portugal Golden Visa Here!