Six retirement routes set four different kinds of money test

Six countries set money conditions on a route for retirees. Read against what each authority publishes, those conditions are not variants of one requirement. Some ask for capital placed as a deposit, some for a balance held in a named kind of account, some for money transferred into the country every year, and some for a sum that must be received. Three of the six combine two.

Four kinds of condition

The grouping that follows is this article’s own; no authority among the six classifies its requirement this way.

A deposit is placed with a bank in the country and stays the applicant’s. A balance must sit in a particular kind of account and be proved by a deadline. A transfer must cross the border each year. The fourth kind fixes a sum that has to be received, worded as means of subsistence in Portugal and as a lifetime pension in Colombia.

Setting the amounts out alongside one another is not the same as setting them on one scale. Reading Indonesia’s USD 50,000 balance, the Philippine USD 15,000 deposit for a pensioner aged 50 or over, and the USD 24,000 a year Belize and Mauritius require to arrive as points on a single measure would rank obligations that are not of one kind. No exchange rate is used, because converting the figures would produce an order that no source states.

The deposit: the Philippines

The Philippine Retirement Authority publishes the SRRV Classic deposit table. For an applicant with a pension it is USD 15,000 at 50 or over and USD 25,000 between 40 and 49. Without a pension the same ages carry USD 30,000 and USD 50,000. Each additional dependant adds USD 15,000.

One feature on the Philippine page was not examined for the other five routes. The Authority describes the option as one for retirees “who may opt to use the Visa Deposit/Requisite Dollar Time Deposit for investment purposes allowed under the SRRV program”.

The balance: Indonesia

Indonesia’s five-year second-home visa, code E33E, is for applicants aged 55 or over. The Directorate General of Immigration’s page requires a commitment to keep at least USD 50,000 in the applicant’s own account at a state-owned bank, and that the commitment be met and reported to the issuing office within 90 days of entry, with proof of ownership of the funds.

The money never leaves the applicant; the requirement fixes the kind of account it sits in and the date by which it must be shown.

The agency’s page does not cite the ministerial regulation behind the code, and this article did not locate one. Everything in this section is what the agency publishes.

The transfer: Belize and Mauritius

Belize’s Retired Persons (Incentives) Act requires a written undertaking to deposit, for his own use, in a financial institution in Belize, either two thousand dollars by the fifteenth of each month or twenty-four thousand dollars by the first of April each year.

Mauritius requires an initial USD 2,000 into a Mauritian bank within 60 days of the permit issuing, and thereafter USD 24,000 annually or USD 2,000 per month.

The same pair of figures appears in both. This article establishes no connection between the two texts. They are recorded side by side because both belong to the same kind of condition; neither is evidence about the other. The Belize figures sit in an Act that came into force on 24 April 1999; the 2023 amending Act, as read for an earlier article in this series, contains no provision replacing section 3(1)(c), and no consolidation incorporating that amendment was found. The Mauritian figures are those of the schedule consolidated to 9 August 2025; the consolidation of 25 July 2019 set the monthly figure at USD 1,500.

The sum that must be received: Portugal and Colombia

Neither source read here sets a capital figure — not the Portuguese ministry’s subsistence page, and not article 77(1) of Colombia’s resolution.

Portugal’s subsistence test takes the guaranteed minimum monthly wage as its reference, €920 in 2026, set by Decreto-Lei n.º 139/2025. It is counted net of social security contributions and scaled per head: 100% for the first adult, 50% for each further adult, and 30% for each child under 18 and each dependent adult child.

Colombia’s Visa M Pensionado requires a lifetime monthly pension of not less than three times the statutory monthly minimum wage. As the consolidated decree read on 20 September 2026, that wage is 1,750,905 pesos for 2026; three times it is 5,252,715 pesos a month, a multiplication this article performs rather than quotes.

A threshold written as a multiple of a wage moves when the wage moves, with no immigration instrument amended. Colombia’s rests on less settled ground again: the decree fixing the 2026 wage states that it applies transitorily, and until judgment is given in a nullity proceeding it names. Whether judgment has since been given was not established here.

Where a second condition sits behind the first

Three of the six combine two conditions. In two of them the pairing is an income condition alongside a capital one.

On the Philippine page, beneath the deposit table, is a requirement of “proof of lifetime pension of at least USD 800.00/month for single applicants and USD 1,000.00/month for applicants with dependents” — a condition this article reads as reaching the pensioner branch of the table rather than the non-pensioner one. Indonesia’s E33E carries the USD 50,000 balance and, separately, proof of income or an allowance of at least USD 3,000 a month.

Belize is the third, and its two limbs have moved apart. The 2023 amending Act widened the income limb to accept a pension, an annuity, social security, home equity, an inheritance, a reverse mortgage, personal savings, retirement contribution plans, “or any other means of retirement income”. The transfer limb in section 3(1)(c) was not among the provisions that Act replaced.

What this does not establish

This compares money conditions, not procedure: document lists, fees and processing practice were not examined, and no route was reviewed in full.

No country is ranked and no route called cheaper: no agency publishes a ranking of places to retire.

Two further limits, beyond those stated where they arise. The Portuguese law read was the text as enacted in 2007, not a consolidation. And Colombia’s proceeding after 19 February 2026 was not established: the consolidated decree carries no annotation, but a consolidation can lag.