Do you think you would ever retire in the US?

So far, most of my focus has been on obtaining a green card however as that process moves along, I’m starting to think long term and would we remain in the US when we retire.

Social Security. You need X-number of points to qualify for US Social Security benefits which I think basically equates to paying into it for 10 years if you are full time. I think if you are short, there is some process to blend the Canadian and US but not sure if you loose out because of that or not.

Tax on divested RRSP’s. As far as I know, you always pay tax in the country you reside however Canada will institute a withholding tax on your cashed in RRSP’s until you prove you paid tax in the US. How easy that withholding tax is to get back is anyone’s guess.

Canadian Pension payouts. Not sure how difficult it is to pull a Canadian company pension in the US. I’d think it would be straight forward but they also may institute a withholding tax on the salary?

Healthcare costs. The big one. If you are short on the points for Social Security, do you still qualify for the basic retirement Medicare in the US? Most Americans use that and supplement it with some form of private insurance. A basic supplementary health plan can be around the 300-dollar or more range per month. Most Americans are terrified of the bare bones US Medicare but not sure if it’s all that different in quality of care one would receive in Canada. The hospital you go to won’t have valet parking but fairly good care I think?

Cost of living. Right now, the US cost of living is still better than Canada (I think) but got a feeling they are in for a big shakeup. Their relaxed regulations on business appears to be resulting in catastrophic failure of the economy. I find in general the US tends to relax regulations on large companies who then get greedy and launch short term ventures that eventually result in their collapse. Wall Street in the mortgage business…Enron funny games etc. No long term plan that actually make sense on energy etc is going to drive fuel and energy costs through the roof.

An obvious option is to revert to the snow bird scenario at retirement age. 6-months and one day in Canada and the rest in the US?

Social security - not a problem, your CPP contributions count under the totalization agreement;
RRSPs - not a problem anymore, they count as IRAs under the new tax treaty (prior to that distributions inside RRSPs could be subject to US income tax);
CPP - it's social security;
Healthcare - if you're a US citizen or you've worked in the US for at least ten years you qualify for Medicare;
Cost of living - meh, there's always going to be somewhere cheap.

If you get LPR status and/or become a US citizen, bear in mind you have to file a 1040 every year anyway, so that mitigates against coming back to Canada.