Spending your retirement drinking cocktails on a sunny beach is something many people dream about, but few people see it as something particularly feasible. Yet, what if it isn’t only realistic but is outright easy, convenient, and affordable? You can find all of these perks in Greece.
And this is also what makes Greece one of the most popular destinations for Westerners to retire to.
If you are thinking about retiring here, this article is for you. You are going to learn the whole process to help you move from your home country to Greece, including pros and cons, visa options, where to retire, cost of living, and more.
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Contents
Why Retiring in Greece?
When choosing a country to retire to, you can’t just buy a flight ticket and go there, hoping that the country is going to be your perfect retirement destination. In fact, it’s a lot more complicated than that. The whole experience you get is going to be totally different between traveling there and retiring there.
Greece has long been one of the top picks for Westerners to retire to for many reasons, such as endless golden beaches, relaxed lifestyle, great healthcare, low crime, and affordable living costs. In fact, as per the Annual Global Retirement Index for 2024, Greece is ranked #7 as one of the best places to retire.
In this section, we will show you detailed pros and cons of retiring in Greece.
Pros
Mediterranean Climate
If you want to retire somewhere warm but not too damp and tropical, Greece can be a perfect destination. Greece has warm, sunny, and pleasant weather throughout most of the year thanks to being next to the Mediterranean Sea. While it occasionally snows in the winter, it’s quite short and not that cold compared to other parts of Europe.
Because of this, by retiring in Greece, you can enjoy warm weather and outdoor activities almost throughout the year. This can include daily walks in the park, hiking, sunny beaches, waterfalls, mountains, and much more. It can be simply said that you have the full freedom and opportunity to go out whenever you want to without being hampered by bad weather.
If you prefer a peaceful retirement, you can retire to a smaller Greek town or a coastal island where you can find a serene, quiet, and relaxed environment.
Affordable Cost of Living
The lower comparative cost of living is a huge reason to retire in Greece. The overall costs of living in Greece, from accommodations, food, groceries, utilities, and more, are quite lower than most Western countries.
While Greece isn’t as cheap as countries in Southeast Asia like Thailand, or some other Eastern European countries, Greece is still a part of the EU and a Schengen area country that is well developed.
To make it attractive for retirees in terms of living costs, Greece has special offers for retirees giving discounts for almost everything in the country. To give you an idea, a retiree gets a 20%–25% discount on many things, including the Hellenic Train system, ferries, restaurants, entertainment venues, museums, tourist attractions, utility bills, and more.
Foreign retirees also get a special 7% flat tax rate when bringing foreign-earned income into the country.
Good Healthcare
Greece’s healthcare is arguably one of the perfect middle grounds between affordability and high quality. Greece’s hospitals and healthcare professionals are on par with what the West offers, yet the treatment costs in the Mediterranean country are a fraction of what many people pay in the US or other Western countries.
In fact, Greece is also a popular medical tourism country where people travel here to get surgeries or elective treatments, such as cosmetic surgeries or dental procedures.
Friendly Locals
Mediterranean cultures are typically famous for being incredibly friendly, helpful, and outgoing, and this goes double for people in Greece. The country has a great attitude toward tourists, but friendliness is also just a part of Greek culture. Greek people are notoriously hospitable toward their neighbors and toward newcomers in general.
Greeks are often compared to Thai people in how welcoming they are to foreigners. In that sense, Greece is very much the Thailand of Europe. Although this hospitable attitude can be a bit startling at first – especially if you come from a country like the US where people are used to being more distant with each other, you will get used to it eventually.
Greek people aren’t just laid back when it comes to welcoming foreigners – they are laid back in general. Much of Greek day-to-day culture prioritizes rest, relaxation, and a focus on enjoying life. This is a great attitude to have around you if you go to Greece to enjoy your retirement.
Excellent Mediterranean Cuisine
Greek cuisine is one of the best combinations of healthy and delicious. It is similar to retiring in Mexico in this regard. Mediterranean cuisine, in general, is famous for being both exquisite and good for your health, but Greek food stands above the rest.
This includes:
Salads, appetizers, and healthy main dishes such as:
- Dolmades – pockets of grape leaves stuffed with rice, herbs, mushrooms, and sometimes meat
- Spanakopita – flaky spinach pie, often with cheese
- Moussaka – eggplants, tomatoes, and potatoes arranged with beef or lamb meat and finished with creamy béchamel sauce
Freshly caught seafood, such as:
- Simiako Garidaki – freshly caught shrimps crispy-fried with olive oil
- Bakaliaros – golden or crispy cod fritters, usually accompanied with a garlic dip
- Kalamarakia Tiganita – squid tentacles or rings, freshly caught in the morning and fried to a crispy brown
Delicious desserts, such as:
- Lemon Bougatsa – low-fat, sweet, and perfect for sharing
- Karythopita – spiced walnut cake
- Loukoumades – Greek doughnut-like pastries
And much more, all of which is easily available and affordable.
Live in the Cultural Epicenter of the “Old World”
Greece is famous as “the oldest democracy in the world,” as well as one of the first major European civilizations, and there are a plethora of amazing cultural and historic tourist sights to explore in almost every Greek city, town, and village. From ancient temples, mausoleums, hippodromes, fortresses, and statues, to entire city blocks from the pre-Christ times preserved to an astonishing degree in the centers of modern Greek cities, such as Athens and Thessaloniki.
Traveling Opportunities
Greece is also conveniently close to both the Middle East and northern Africa! Greece offers excellent travel opportunities to many fascinating tourist destinations outside of Europe. From Greece, you can easily spend a week in Egypt to explore the pyramids of Giza, with the flight being less than 2 hours.
If you don’t like flying, Greece also has lots of great ferry options, which is a very convenient (and low-cost) way to visit Italy, Turkey, Israel, Cyprus, Malta, or any Greek island, such as Corfu, Rhodes, Crete, and others.
Cons
Cumbersome Bureaucracy
A clumsy bureaucratic process is one of the issues of retiring in Greece. It can be incredibly slow and annoying to deal with.
To give you an idea, many government offices in Greece are not centralized or even digitalized yet. As such, you may need to make multiple trips to a particular office to bring more and more paper documents, wait for paper documents to be delivered from one office to another, or – most annoyingly of all – be constantly and repeatedly redirected from one office to another and back again.
Fortunately, the visa and residency processes are relatively streamlined and easy to go through.
Language Barrier
Most young people in Greece do know decent English, as is the case almost anywhere else in the world, but most other Greeks don’t know English all that well. This often applies to people in the service industry too.
Still, you should be able to get by with just English in many situations, but you can expect a bit of a language barrier until you learn some Greek yourself.
Very Active Tourist Season
Since Greece is a popular tourist destination, you can expect a crowd of tourists during the warm seasons (May to August or often even April to September, if the year is particularly warm).
This means going from place to place can be difficult, and many places, especially restaurants, malls, and tourist attractions, are going to be full of people, particularly in large cities like Athens or Thessaloniki.
Greece Retirement Visa
When it comes to a Greece retirement visa, there are two main scenarios:
- EU Citizen: If you are from the EU, you don’t need a visa. Instead, you can move to Greece permanently by applying for a certificate of registration at your local foreign bureau. You can learn more about this on the Greek government site here. To get such a certificate, the person needs to have a valid ID or passport, as well as proof of residence in Greece and proof of sufficient income or maintenance funds.
- Non-EU Citizen: If you are from non-EU countries, you need to get a visa. There are two main visa options available: retirement visa and Golden Visa.
Retirement Visa
Unlike many countries in the world, Greece doesn’t have a specific visa for retirees. Instead, it offers a long-stay visa that’s available to anyone as long as they have sufficient financial proof. This visa is unofficially often called a retirement visa.
A retirement visa initially allows you to live in Greece for 2 years. After that, you can renew it every 3 years. After 7 years, you have an option to apply for Greece citizenship if you want to. If not, you can keep renewing your retirement visa repeatedly.
It is simple to apply for or renew your Greece retirement visa. There are three main requirements as seen below:
- You must buy or rent a property in Greece.
- Proof of a monthly income of no less than €2,000 coming from sources outside of Greece. For retirees, this means that either your pension has to be €2,000 or more per month, or you need an additional monthly income source.
- A minimum of €48,000 deposited in a Greek bank account.
- This sum increases by 20% if you want to add your spouse to your retirement visa.
- This sum increases by 15% for every child you want to add to the application (children must be under 21 years of age).
You can check the Greek government website to find out more information.
Golden Visa
In addition to the retirement visa, another option available to you is the Golden Visa. While it has a higher requirement, the visa duration is longer. You now get a 5-year stay in Greece, which is extendable.
In addition, you can now bring children who are younger than 24 years old, instead of 21 years old.
The main requirement for applying for a Golden Visa is to make an investment in Greece. The investment can be a ten-year lease, a timeshare, a real estate purchase, a capital investment in a Greek company, or a few other options. The amount of the investment is usually in the €250,000–€500,000 range, depending on the investment type.
More information about Greece’s Golden Visa can be found here.
Best Places to Retire in Greece
Every person has a different idea for what would be their best place to retire. Fortunately, Greece offers a lot of diverse options – from large modern and developed cities to small and quiet coastal villages and remote islands.
If you want city life that’s convenient and equipped with important services for retirees such as hospitals, government offices, public transportation, and more, you should check out larger cities such as Athens or Thessaloniki. However, the cost of living in these cities can be higher than in smaller towns. They can also be crowded during the tourist seasons.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for something more remote, Greece has an abundance of options from small rural towns, agrarian inland or coastal villages, to small island villages.
Here are our recommendations:
- Athens – the capital and largest city in Greece, Athens is busy and noisy, but it also has world-class healthcare with many excellent private hospitals, incredible cultural sights, such as the famous Acropolis of Athens, well-developed infrastructure, and lots of modern cultural events. The biggest Greek international airport “Eleftherios Venizelos” is also in Athens, allowing for easy transport in and out of the country whenever necessary.
- Rhodes – this small and remote island is one of Greece’s most beautiful and picturesque places. It has all the necessary infrastructure and facilities, but its remote location might be an issue for some retirees. There are good hospitals and institutions in Rhodes, but not quite on the level of those in Athens. At the same time, the cost of living is even lower. Rhodes is also the home of one of the original Seven Wonders of the World – the Colossus of Rhodes.
- Volos – a small coastal town in the middle of Greece’s mainland, Volos offers breathtaking natural and historical sights, such as the famous Centaur’s Path, and an abundance of peace and quiet. It’s a little far from both Athens and Thessaloniki, but it’s close to another relatively large town – Larissa. So, in cases of medical emergencies that require a high-quality private hospital, Larissa will be the best place to consider.
- Kalamata – located in the far southwest of Greece, on the famous Peloponnese peninsula, Kalamata is the ideal place to retire to if you dream of spending your Golden Years in between tranquil olive orchards and gorgeous spacious beaches. As it’s not a particularly large metropolis, however, it lacks many of the infrastructure and medical amenities present in Athens and Thessaloniki. However, the cost of living is even more manageable here. Kalamata is also very close to another of the original Seven Wonders of the World – the Statue of Zeus (in the Temple of Zeus, in Olympia) – which is only 116km (72 miles) away from Kalamata on the Peloponnese peninsula.
- Thessaloniki – the second-largest city in Greece, Thessaloniki has all the benefits of Athens, such as private hospitals, excellent infrastructure, and lots of historical sights like the White Tower in the harbor. All of that is combined with more opportunities for a calmer and more relaxed lifestyle. Thessaloniki also has a large international airport – Makedonia – which retirees there can use to easily travel in and out of the country.
Cost of Retiring in Greece
As an EU and Schengen member state, Greece has a higher cost of living than some other countries Westerners often choose to retire to, like Thailand. However, it still has a significantly lower cost of living than most Western countries.
Depending on where in Greece you choose to retire and what standard of living you expect to maintain, you can easily get by with anything between €1,000 and €2,000 a month.
Here’s how much you should expect to pay in Greece:
Property Rates and Rent
The main and most significant example of the lower cost of living in Greece is the property and rental rates, which are approximately 50% lower than those in the US and Western Europe. There is variation, of course, as property rates in inner cities and major tourist areas are higher.
However, if you pick the right residential area, you can enjoy very low property/rent rates – often as low as €300/month for a furnished two-room apartment.
To find a good place to rent, it’s normally done through personal connections. If you don’t have one yet, Greece also has lots of great online marketplaces where you can look for property listings from both broker firms and individual sellers. Sites such as Spitogatos, Kyero, Spiti24, and others offer great listings with lots of details and filter options.
Utilities
The costs of utilities in Greece can be high. It can be even more expensive than other European countries – sometimes above €150-200/month. This is largely due to higher average prices and the need for frequent AC use in the summer heat.
However, this too can vary depending on where in Greece you live and what kind of accommodation you are living in.
Food
Food in Greece can be surprisingly affordable, especially outside of the major tourist areas. Stores, markets, and even restaurants in residential neighborhoods tend to have prices that are two or more times lower than those in Western Europe, including for seafood.
If you go out for lunch and dinner from time to time, your food expenses will likely still be around (or only slightly above) the €500-€600 mark. Please note that this budget is for eating at more affordable local restaurants and not for the tourist traps.
On the other hand, if you cook and eat at home most days, you can pay as little as €200-€400/month.
Other
Other services, such as internet, public transport, cinema and theater tickets, fitness clubs, mobile phone plans, etc., are also significantly lower than in the US and Western Europe. This becomes even more pronounced when you factor in the retiree discounts that apply to many of these services.
Greece Healthcare for Retirees
Greece’s system is a great combination of public and private services. Greece’s public healthcare system – called ESY – is free for all citizens and residents of Greece, including expats, EU citizens, and unemployed people. It’s also leagues ahead of other public healthcare systems in Europe.
ESY coexists with numerous private healthcare services, called EOPYY providers. You can learn more about both here. Such private healthcare providers can be more costly, but even they aren’t as expensive as most private hospitals in the US, especially since you can usually easily combine public and private services together.
Many people in the West (especially Americans) are used to thinking that if you want quality, you have to go private, but that’s not really the case in Greece. There are healthcare services that won’t be covered by the public healthcare system and will either require an out-of-pocket payment or private insurance.
When it comes to utilizing these healthcare systems, it depends on whether or not you are from the EU.
If you are from the EU, you can use Greece’s public health insurance system directly through your European Health Insurance Card (EHIC). More information can be found here. However, as mentioned earlier, relying solely on public healthcare may not always be reliable. You can opt for private insurance and use it together with public insurance in Greece.
If you are not from the EU, you can use your private health insurance, which is legally required when applying for a visa.
In case you are concern about public healthcare, another good country you can consider retiring to is Costa Rica.
How to Manage Your Finance as a Retiree in Greece?
Opening a bank account in Greece is the best way to manage your finances when retiring in Greece. You also need to do it anyway since it’s required by law in order to extend your visa.
Fortunately, it’s very easy to do. All you need is to get your Greek Tax ID, known as AFM, from the tax office or Greek consulate.
After that, you can visit a bank of your choice with your residence permit (if you are non-EU), proof of address, and proof of income. Popular banks for expats include Alpha Bank, Eurobank, National Bank of Greece, and Piraeus Bank.
You can then send your pension or income to your bank in Greece. Wise is recommended since it gives you a very low fee. Some retirees also set up a direct deposit so that their pension is sent to their Greek bank account automatically every month.
Now, On to You
As you can see, retiring in Greece does require a bit of preparation. Most of the homework you’d need to take care of is fairly straightforward, however – once you get your visa sorted out and you pick the right property to buy or rent, you’ll be ready to enjoy your retirement in style.
