How to decrease your cost of living by retiring to Europe [Video]

There’s a vast and complicated industry around planning for life in retirement, but if you’re thinking about how you can call it quits earlier or live more luxuriously when you do retire, the calculus can be remarkably simple.

“The big knob you can turn is cost of living,” says Tommy Sikes, a certified financial planner and founder of Traveltirement, where he highlights affordable homes in France and Italy through a newsletter and social media channels.

“It might cost you $70,000 a year to have a middle-class retirement in the United States,” Sikes says. “If you have that money in southern Italy, you can live like a king, including renting or purchasing a property.”

If you’re hoping to retire in style while keeping costs low, a European retirement may be right for you. But as you begin searching for chateaus, keep these three tips in mind.

If you were looking for an exciting but …