survivorship-bias

The retire-abroad channels you watch are made, by construction, by the people for whom it worked. The ones it broke don't post a final video. The denominator is missing.

No agency counts how many retirees stay, so model it: 100 arrivals decay to 54 in place at 75, 18 at 85. The stay-curve, with its bands stated.

No agency counts how many Western retirees leave Thailand or the Philippines. The silent cohort, triangulated from three directions, uncertainty stated.

The brochure footage is real, and honeymoon-phase, survivor-sampled data sold as a marriage. Paradise is a relation, and the move ends it on schedule.

Moving abroad won't make you happy. The geographic cure is a term from addiction recovery. What travels with you, what doesn't, when the bill lands.