Courtesy of Jeffrey Park
Jeffrey Park, 63, hasn't been to the US in 13 years and has no immediate plans to return.
Park was born and raised in Baltimore, but his wife Kerstin is from Munich. After starting a family in the US, the duo settled in Germany in 2005. And Park said he's planning on retiring abroad.
Park is an example of an American who moved abroad as an empty-nester looking for new experiences and job opportunities. While some Americans are returning to the US for retirement, Park said he's certain he's retiring in Germany. He said the free public healthcare and quality of life are better than in the US.
As an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1980s, Park met Kerstin, who is German and was visiting the US on vacation.
Park took a break from college and lived with Kerstin in Munich in 1982 and 1983 before returning to the US to finish his studies. The two married in Baltimore in 1983.
Park transferred to Johns Hopkins University and graduated with bachelor's degrees in English and German in 1986.
At that time, Park and Kerstin had their first daughter. Park worked as a movie theater manager for a few years and then landed a job at Giant Food, a grocery store in the Baltimore area, where he worked for 13 years.
In 2002, Park earned his Master's in education from Towson University in Maryland and taught English at a middle school for three years.
In 2005, when Park and Kerstin's youngest daughter graduated from high school, they moved to Germany. Kerstin's family had lived in Munich, and their newly established empty nest made it easier to go abroad.
Park and his wife moved abroad without job offers, but he said they found employment soon after arrival. Park found work as an English language coach, and Kerstin — who studied biology — found a job at the Gene Center Munich.
They lived in Munich for nearly a decade, renting an apartment for the first five years. He said rent was about $720 (€650) a month. In 2010, they bought an apartment in Munich for about $243,850 (€220,000).
Homeownership in German cities is rare compared to the countryside, Park said, and Munich is one of the pricier housing markets.
In 2014, Kerstin received a job opportunity at the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen, which is located in central Germany. They moved to Göttingen but still own and rent out their apartment in Munich. Today, Park works as an English lecturer at the University of Göttingen.
After renting in Göttingen for four years, Park and his wife moved to Ebergötzen, a small village south of the city with a population of less than 2,000 people.
Park said it's a beautiful, bucolic village, and he enjoys the outdoorsy lifestyle. When they moved to Ebergötzen in 2018, they bought a house for about $498,780 (€450,000).
The property has a barn, pear trees, apple trees, and a walnut tree. The village has a great bakery and butcher shop, and things feel more calm than in the US, Park said.
"Everything's just a little bit more personal, or smaller, or a little bit old-fashioned, compared to American life," Park said.
Park takes the bus to work daily, which he said runs every 30 minutes and is efficient — he said he hasn't driven a car in about 15 years.
Attracted to Park's ease of life in Germany, his two daughters both moved to the country in the past decade. In fact, one daughter, her husband, and their three children live with Park and Kerstin in their house in Ebergötzen, along with three dogs, four guinea pigs, and chickens.
In Germany, the mandatory retirement age for civil service workers depends on the year they were born. As a university teacher, Park's mandatory retirement will be in August 2027, when he will be 66 years old.
He said his wife makes more than he does working in biology, and the couple feels financially stable. He said they hope to be able to pay off their mortgage on the Munich apartment and Ebergötzen house by the time he retires.
As a US citizen with a permanent residence visa working at a public university, Park said the healthcare system is efficient and easy for him.
He has a public healthcare insurance card and said he doesn't pay anything for care. While in Germany, Park broke his collarbone, had a cataract operation, and had a detached retina that required emergency surgery.
"In all three cases, there was not a single insurance form I had to fill out and zero out-of-pocket charges," he said. "As far as I can tell, the quality of care was just as good as I would have gotten in the US."
Park also said he thinks Germany is better for raising a family than the US. He enjoys watching his grandchildren grow up bilingual, and he said Germany feels much safer than the US, particularly because there isn't the same level of fear around gun violence and school shootings.
Park retained his US citizenship and residency, so he's eligible for Social Security. Americans can claim Social Security at 62, but the extent of their benefits varies until they reach their full retirement age, which depends on a person's birth year. For Park, that will be 67. He said he is waiting to collect his benefits to earn the maximum amount.
Park said he hasn't been to the US in over a decade because he's conscious of the carbon footprint of flying back and forth across the Atlantic and has plenty of travel options in Europe.
His father, who is 97, lives in Baltimore and visits Park in Germany once a year.
Park said that while he's lived abroad for nearly two decades, he certainly feels American. In fact, he enjoys sharing American culture with his students and neighbors in Germany.
Are you an American who moved abroad? This reporter wants to hear your story. Please reach out at jtowfighi@businessinsider.com
