3 Social Security myths that trip up Americans who retire abroad
Ask enough people about retiring abroad and someone will swear it means saying goodbye to your Social Security check the moment you leave. It’s one of the most repeated myths out there about affording life outside the US, and it’s mostly wrong. Mostly.
The real catches aren’t where most people expect them, and one of them has nothing to do with Social Security at all. Here’s what’s actually true, myth by myth.
1. Moving abroad cancels your Social Security check
This one’s just false. If you’re a US citizen who’s earned the standard 40 work credits — roughly a decade of paying into the system — the Social Security Administration keeps depositing your check no matter which country you call home. There’s no re-enrollment, no penalty for leaving, and no clock that starts ticking the moment you land in Lisbon or Chiang Mai.
So where does the myth come from? Probably confusion with everything else that does get complicated once you move abroad: taxes, banking, healthcare. Social Security itself isn’t one of those things, and it’s honestly one of the easier parts of the whole plan.
2. Every country is fair game, no exceptions
Close, but not quite. US Treasury rules flatly block sending payments to anyone living in Cuba or North Korea, full stop, no workaround. Seven more countries — Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan — come with a real catch: you have to show up in person at a US embassy or consulate periodically, or the payments get held until you do.
None of that touches the places Americans actually retire to in real numbers, like Mexico, Portugal, Thailand, or the Philippines. But if your retirement plans happen to involve one of those seven specific countries, budget in an embassy trip. Yes, really.
Psst — thinking about actually doing this? I put everything I know about leaving the U.S. for good into one no-fluff guide: visas, jobs, country picks, the works — grab it here.
3. Medicare comes with you if you keep paying premiums
Busted, and this is the one that actually catches people off guard. Medicare generally stops covering anything the moment you leave the 50 states, DC, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. There’s a small handful of narrow exceptions, like a medical emergency crossing between Alaska and another state where a Canadian hospital happens to be closest, but a routine doctor visit in Portugal isn’t one of them.
That means the premiums you’re still paying back home aren’t buying you anything overseas. Anyone planning to retire abroad needs a real plan for local healthcare or private international insurance, not a hope that the Medicare card in their wallet still works.
One more thing worth knowing if you’ve spent years working outside the Social Security system, whether that’s a foreign job or a pension earned abroad: the penalty that used to shrink your check for it, the Windfall Elimination Provision, got repealed at the start of 2025. The Social Security Administration has already sent retroactive payments to millions of people it affected, some worth hundreds of dollars a month more.
So no, moving abroad won’t quietly cut you off from Social Security. It just comes with a shorter, weirder list of catches than most people expect, and it’s worth knowing them before you book the one-way flight, not after.
