Munduro prices your lifestyle, not a place. Every result is a best estimate with a modest range, and every source has a year and a date.
At home
A US household's spending comes from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey (2024, retrieved 2026-10-13), raised to today's prices with CPI-U through 2026-08. Housing is priced as renting, so it compares fairly with renting abroad. Your area moves it by the BEA's Regional Price Parities (2024, updated 2026-02-19). Outside the US, the World Bank price level of your country does the same, and healthcare at home is not included.
Abroad
The same lifestyle is priced in local currency: the US basket times the World Bank's price level for the country (2025, updated 2026-10-08), adjusted for how much more imported and Western goods cost there. Big cities and smaller towns get their own factor. Costs convert to dollars at today's reference rate, so the dollar cost moves with the exchange rate.
Your household
Every number is for one person. Two people share a home, so household costs rise by the square root of two, the BLS method; insurance and flights count once per person.
Healthcare
Healthcare is its own line, priced year by year from your retirement age, from local public care to international insurance. Most retirees switch to hospital-only cover around 80, so from 80 we price worldwide hospital cover plus everyday care at local prices. Medicare generally does not pay for care outside the US, so the abroad line never counts it.
Medicare coverage outside the US (medicare.gov)
Exchange rates
Most rates are the European Central Bank’s reference rates, through Frankfurter. The 9 currencies the ECB does not publish come from ExchangeRate-API, once a day, through Munduro’s own snapshot. Each rate shows who published it and how old it is; when a source can’t be reached, the last good copy is used with its age.
Assumptions you can change
Withdrawal rate, planning ahead and ready to go: 3.9% (Morningstar, safe starting withdrawal rate for a 30-year retirement, 2025-12).
Withdrawal rate, retiring early: 3.5% (Early Retirement Now, a comfortable ceiling for a 60-year horizon).
Real return: 3% expected, 2% cautious (Vanguard's 10-year outlook, 2025-12, less the Fed's 2% inflation target).
Planning horizon: to age 95.
Tax on withdrawals: 10% (CBO, elderly households' average federal income tax rate, published 2026-09).
World Bank price level ratio (PA.NUS.PRVT.PLI), 2025, updated 2026-10-08
Lifestyle multipliers, city factors, healthcare abroad, flights home: research values, retrieved 2026-10-14, under review
Know Before You Go: official pages checked 2026-10-15; experience items are what people report
Data credits
World Bank, World Development Indicators: price level ratio (PA.NUS.PRVT.PLI), licensed under CC BY 4.0. Munduro combines it with other data to price lifestyles abroad.
The CC BY 4.0 license (creativecommons.org)
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Consumer Expenditure Surveys and the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U), retrieved 2026-10-13 through the BLS Public Data API, with renter-household rows as republished by FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. BLS.gov cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from BLS.gov.
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis: Regional Price Parities.
U.S. Social Security Administration: Annual Statistical Supplement, beneficiaries abroad by country (the launch countries).
European Central Bank: euro foreign exchange reference rates, through Frankfurter. The ECB’s reference rates are available free of charge from the ECB’s website.
ExchangeRate-API (exchangerate-api.com): once-a-day rates for the 9 currencies the ECB does not publish. Rates By Exchange Rate API.
Rates By Exchange Rate API
None of these organizations endorses Munduro.
Best estimate and range
The best estimate takes the middle of each lifestyle level with expected returns. The range around it is the middle half of each level: its kinder end with expected returns, its careful end with cautious returns for the next ten years, the span the return outlook covers, then expected returns. That keeps the range honest without stretching it to the extremes, even decades out.
Prices abroad are assumed to rise like US prices; that difference is not modeled yet.
Not financial advice. A best estimate with a modest range.