Passport is a planning tool, not financial, tax, or immigration advice. Estimates are deliberately rough, healthcare figures especially will keep improving, and you should verify taxes, visa rules, and insurance with qualified professionals before acting on anything here.

Some retirees move abroad to stretch their savings; others simply want to live somewhere they love and confirm they can afford it. Passport models either as a brand-new plan: it starts from your current plan, applies a destination's cost of living, taxes, and healthcare over the years you're abroad, and hands you back an ordinary plan you can compare against the original. Your current plan is never touched.

Because the result is just a normal plan, everything else in the app works on it automatically - the Dashboard, the year-by-year table, and especially Compare Plans, which is where you read off the difference the move makes.

Finish your plan before you use Passport. Passport duplicates your current plan into a new, separate plan and applies the destination's changes to that copy. The copy reflects your plan as it is at that moment - later edits to your original don't flow into it. So complete your plan first, and pay particular attention to your expenses, since Passport scales those to the destination's cost of living. Anything you haven't entered yet won't be carried over, and you'd be comparing the move against an incomplete baseline. If you change your plan afterward, it's simplest to delete the Passport plan and generate a fresh one.

What Passport does and doesn't model

The one thing we don't fudge is whether the destination taxes your US retirement income - and we tell you plainly when it might. Most destinations are territorial - Panama, Costa Rica, Belize, the Philippines, and the Dominican Republic don't tax US Social Security, pensions, or retirement-account withdrawals at all. Mexico is different: it's residence-based, so a Mexican tax resident can owe Mexican tax on some US retirement income. Passport models the US side either way (state tax ends, federal unchanged) and spells out Mexico's tax nuance rather than pretending it away - see the destination page and the note below. Everything else (cost of living, healthcare) is an estimate you can edit.

How the tax modeling works (and where Mexico differs)

For every destination, Passport ends your US state income tax while you're abroad (you establish non-residency) and leaves your US federal tax unchanged - you remain a US taxpayer on worldwide income. For the territorial destinations that's the whole story: they don't tax your US retirement income, so there's nothing else to model.

Mexico is the exception. It taxes its tax residents on worldwide income, so a Mexican tax resident can owe Mexican tax on pension, IRA/401(k), and investment income (US Social Security is protected by treaty, and Temporary Residents are generally exempt for their first few years). US foreign tax credits usually keep this from being true double taxation, and most retirees pay little or none - but it isn't guaranteed zero. Passport does not put a Mexican-tax number in your plan; it flags the situation and points you to professional advice if you'll become a tax resident with substantial income. We would rather tell you the number is uncertain than invent one.

What Passport changes

• Cost of living - your recurring expenses during the abroad window are scaled to the destination's level. Most categories use a single blended factor; a few (housing, utilities, groceries, and so on) use category-specific factors where the destination clearly differs.
• State tax - a Timeline relocation event moves you to the destination for the window, so state income tax drops to zero while you're abroad. When you return, tax resumes in whichever state you chose to return to (your current state by default, or another - handy for modeling a move to a no-tax state). Your federal tax does not change - retirement income is still fully taxable by the US.
• Healthcare - US healthcare costs during the window are replaced by a single private-insurance figure estimated from the destination's age bands. You can keep or drop Medicare (see below).
• ACA marketplace - if your plan uses ACA coverage, it ends the year before you leave.
• Suggested expenses - destination-specific costs the move brings (flights home, residency renewals, and so on) are offered as checkboxes and added as ordinary expense rows.

Simplified periods vs itemized categories

If your plan uses the simplified go-go / slow-go / no-go periods (a single "All categories" figure per period) rather than itemized categories, Passport applies the destination's overall cost factor to whichever period or periods fall within your time abroad - so you get the average cost reduction rather than a category-by-category one. Only the periods overlapping the window are adjusted; periods before you leave or after you return are left untouched. Itemized plans get the finer per-category adjustments (housing, groceries, and so on) instead.

Adjust the new plan to match your move

Passport handles cost of living, taxes, and healthcare, but a real move usually brings other changes it can't guess: expenses that no longer apply (US home maintenance, a second car, a club membership), selling or renting out your home, selling other assets, or income that starts or stops. Because the result is an ordinary, fully editable plan, the cleanest approach is to open it after creating and adjust those pieces - trim expenses that won't follow you, add a home sale or windfall, update income, and so on. This is left to you on purpose: what actually changes depends on decisions only you can make.

The wizard, step by step

• When - pick the age you move and the age you return (or choose to stay permanently), plus the state you return to. The return state defaults to where you live now, but you can choose a different one - for example, coming back to a state with no income tax. This is also where the visa eligibility check appears (below).
• Healthcare - choose whether to keep or drop Medicare, review the estimated private-insurance cost, and pick which suggested expenses to include. If your plan uses a single spending figure rather than itemized categories, you'll also be asked what portion of it is healthcare, so it can be swapped for the abroad insurance cleanly.
• Review - name the plan and confirm. Passport creates it and switches you to your Plans list.

Visa eligibility check

Residency programs set a monthly income threshold, but they differ in what income counts. Some (Panama's and Costa Rica's Pensionado) require a guaranteed lifetime income - Social Security and pensions only, no matter how large your portfolio. Others accept more: Belize's QRP counts other foreign income such as investments, and the Philippines' SRRV can be met with a qualifying bank deposit instead of pension income. Passport checks your projected Social Security plus pensions at your departure age against the program's threshold. That's a conservative measure: for programs that also accept portfolio income, you may qualify even if this check falls short. The check is advisory either way - a shortfall warns you but doesn't block creating the plan.

Keeping vs dropping Medicare

Medicare does not cover care outside the US, so while abroad you rely on private insurance either way. The choice is only about your US Part B enrollment:

• Keep Part B - you keep paying US premiums while abroad. You pay for both, but there's no penalty when you return. This is usually the right call for a multi-year stay.
• Drop Part B - you save the premium while abroad, but Medicare adds a permanent late-enrollment penalty (10% of the base premium per year without coverage) when you re-enroll on return.

After you create the plan

Open Compare Plans from the Plans page and compare the Passport plan against your original to see the effect on your ending balance, success rate, and year-by-year cash flow. Everything is editable - the generated plan is yours to refine like any other.

One destination at a time

Passport models a single destination for a single period. It does not stack - you can't take a plan Passport already generated and run Passport on it again for a second country. The two moves' relocation timing and Medicare coverage would conflict, so this is blocked. To compare destinations, create each one from your original (non-Passport) plan and compare them.

Access

Passport is a Plus feature. Reach it from the Create with Passport button on the Plans page - it's a way to create a new plan, so it lives alongside Duplicate Current rather than in the sidebar.