Lifestyle

This California Couple Says They Couldn’t Have Stopped Working on Social Security at Home. Then They Moved to Malta: “Here, We Do It Easily”

By Erica Coleman · November 12, 2026

When it came time to retire, Mary Charlebois and Kevin Scanlon looked at their numbers in Mendocino County, California, and did not like what they saw.

“We would never have been able to stop working. We couldn’t live on our social security,” the couple told CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Seth Doane in a segment that aired April 13, 2025.

So they went looking somewhere else. They landed on Gozo, a small island in the Maltese archipelago in the Mediterranean, where they now live full time.

“And here, we do it easily,” they said. “We have a good standard of life here. Much better, actually.”

The CBS report lays out what changed. Their rent, Doane says, is 750 dollars a month, and the apartment came with the view they wanted. They were able to get rid of their car, and they say groceries cost about half what they paid in the United States. Rental income from their house in California helps them qualify for a visa.

CBS Sunday Morning posted the couple’s story on TikTok, where it has drawn more than a million views.

Health care was the obvious question, and Doane asked it: what if one of them got really sick? Would they want to go back to the U.S.?

One of them had already spent a couple of days in the hospital on the island. The couple explained that their residency requires them to carry private insurance, which they said costs less than what Medicare charges and pays 100%. Asked about the quality of care, the answer was short. “It was great.”

They are part of a bigger group. In the same broadcast, CBS reported that about 800,000 people receive Social Security benefits abroad. Jennifer Stevens, executive editor of International Living, a publication that offers advice and seminars on living or retiring overseas, told Doane she thinks it has “never been easier to retire overseas” than it is today. She said retirees can live well on a Social Security check in a lot of places, at a level of comfort that would be hard to match in the U.S. on the same budget.

That is the couple’s experience and one publication’s view. A move like theirs comes with fine print worth reading before anyone starts packing.

Medicare is the biggest one. According to Medicare.gov, Medicare usually doesn’t cover health care while you’re outside the U.S., with only a few exceptions. That is why the couple’s private policy matters so much, and why anyone weighing a move should price coverage in the new country first and ask how it handles care for older adults and existing conditions. Some retirees also think hard about whether to keep paying for Part B while living abroad, since dropping it and coming back later can mean late penalties.

Visas are the second. Many retirement visas require proof of steady income, which is why the couple’s California rental income counts. Rules differ country to country and can change.

The third is getting paid. Social Security can send benefits to many countries, but not all of them, and the agency’s international pages explain where payments can go and what beneficiaries abroad have to report.

For the couple on Gozo, the math worked, and they say the life they found is better than the one they left. For readers, the useful step is simpler: look hard at what your check buys where you live now before deciding whether somewhere else could stretch it further.

This article is for general information and is not financial or legal advice. Costs, insurance details and quotes are the couple’s account as reported by CBS Sunday Morning; check Medicare, Social Security and visa rules for your own situation. This article was produced with the assistance of AI and fact-checked against the sources cited by LightWave Reports.