What actually made you choose your destination over other options?

Fully logical for me — I made an actual spreadsheet comparing cost of living, visa difficulty and job market across four countries. Slightly embarrassing in hindsight but it worked.

We chose based on healthcare quality and climate, purely practical retirement considerations rather than anything romantic.

gut feeling here too, visited for a wedding and just never left mentally after that

Job offer came first and the destination was basically incidental to that — no grand plan, just where the work was.

Following, curious how many people actually planned this properly versus just followed a feeling like I did.

Company relocation, so the choice wasn’t really ours — though we did negotiate for this specific city over the other option they offered, based purely on schools.

Cost of living was the deciding factor for me, plain and simple, everything else was secondary.

OP here — genuinely reassuring how split this is. Makes my gut-feeling decision feel a lot less reckless in retrospect.

Visa ease, unglamorously. I looked at where I could actually get in without a fight and worked backwards from there.