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Hello,
My name is Trina and I'm possibly interested in your request above. Willing to discuss more if the offer is still available. Send me an email to tysgem7@gmail.com. thx Trina
NY, NY resident - currently 5pm EST. 🙂

It's hard to go wrong RLBarker, there are so many great options that you're better off deciding which country you'd love to spend time in and then zeroing in on towns within that country with good language programs.

That said I think Panama, where I live, is a great option. There's a Spanish school in the capital's colonial sector, Casco Viejo, that gets great reviews and the owner has spoken at IL Event in Panama so we know the school is real (IL's annual Fast Track Panama conference), see https://cascospanish.com/.

Many say the easiest Latin American Spanish accent to learn in is Mexican or Colombian. I find the accent in Panama City to be very straightforward, it's not sing-songy but rather more like newscaster accents.

Outside of Panama City if you get into rural parts you will find that people speak a bit differently (clipping words/omitting the end syllable, for example) but this is true in much of Latin America (easier for learners to understand "posher" accents in cities versus rural parts)

If you love countries like Argentina and Uruguay then that's a quite different type of Spanish so you'd maybe want to go to a school that can teach you Rioplatense Spanish. And if you fancy spending a lot of time in Spain, same thing - it's a quite different version Spanish, probably best to study it in Spain itself.

~IL Panama Editor Jessica Ramesch

Hi Debra,

The short answer to your question is yes, I do think that a single can live in Portugal for $1,600, which at the current exchange rate is around €1,485, depending on your lifestyle.

Your largest expense will be rent, unless you plan to purchase a property outright. Depending on where you choose to live, rent prices vary. Lisbon, Cascais, Porto, and the Algarve are the higher-priced areas.

Check out the mid-sized city of Caldas da Rainha, one hour north of Lisbon, which should have some affordable housing options.

To give you an idea of what you can expect to pay for rent, I suggest searching on the property website idealista.com. You can change the filters to location, number of bedrooms, city center, etc…

Here you will see terms like T1, T2—the T stands for apartment and the number indicates how many bedrooms. If the T is replaced with a V, it’s a freestanding house.

You would probably want to live in a small community so there is no need for you to have a car, as gasoline is expensive—currently as much as $7.75 a gallon.

As part of the resident visa for Portugal, you would need to carry private health insurance, which will add to your budget. Depending on your age and health condition, the prices of insurance will vary. But you will also have access to the public healthcare system to use if necessary, which will help keep your medical costs down.

You can find more information about the cost of living in Portugal in Chapter 6 of the Escape to Portugal guidebook—available on the IL Bookstore here.