About 20 years ago PIL retired to Eastern Europe. At the time it made a lot of sense - they still had a big mortgage on their old house but when they sold up, the equity was enough to pay for a very nice house, albeit a bit out of the way in a small village.
Now 20 years later, things are still good for now but they are probably going to start struggling in the next couple of years. FIL is not in the best of health, he can't walk far and I suspect he is not going to be able to keep his driving license for much longer either (I don't know if there are medical issues related to this, I just picked up the impression from some of his comments that he is currently coming to terms with stopping driving). There is no shop in the village - it closed a couple of years ago - MIL can't drive, she told me there is a bus she can use, but it's a new service for pensioners and no guarantee it will last - there is no regular public transport to their village. They do have some friends in the village and they could afford there to pay for a home help. They don't speak the local language but many people speak a bit of theirs.
I get the strong impression that MIL would come back to her home country (where we and her other son and his family live) but FIL is quite defensive about the move (the political situation started to worsen soon after they got there and the tide of foreign pensioners started to turn about 5 years ago, many of their friends there have come back) and every visit it comes up as a sore point - he knows DH thinks they should go back, and they always end up arguing about the politics. Because of that (and I guess it is a sensitive issue anyway, and probably none of my business really but MIL has been good to me and I wouldn't like to leave her in a bad situation) it is hard to broach the subject even to ask if there is anything we could help with.
I don't really know what I want from this post, sorry - it's not really any of my business directly, but I worry about them and how they are going to cope if FIL really can't drive any more or if MIL's health deteriorates. Has anyone else got parents or inlaws who retired abroad, did they eventually have to come back or what happened?