Radical change

If you are specifically looking at English speaking countries then that would be the most obvious place to start crossing countries off your list. In South America, the only country where English is spoken is Guyana, forget about the rest unless you're willing to learn Spanish or Portuguese. In Northeast Asia there are no English-speaking countries at all, and at least in Japan, Korea and China the vast majority of the people do not even speak English as a second language; besides, the languages of these countries are particularly tricky to master.
Even if you look at countries where English is the lingua franca or otherwise widely spoken, such as Singapore, Malaysia or India, chances are that your neighbours will use language to communicate among themselves. Even though they may be willing to accommodate you by speaking English to you, you will to a certain extent still become isolated, unless you make an effort to learn the local language.
See if you qualify for a working visa for Australia or NZ. Not sure if your qualifications are much in demand there, but you can always give it a try.

If you want to escape mundane life at home; try Costa del Con..err sol. Or one of them. They are maybe more English than Spanish along there. Lots of them couldn't give a hoot about the local culture either.
And those are the traditional places for brits on the lamb.

An old timer expat in Costa Rica said, "You might want to avoid some of the grings aroun d here. They have dodgy extradition laws.
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The invisible baggage is the heaviest. `settle socialn accounts etc. Make amens. Or that stuff can ruin a great otherwise free experience. You can't get it off the list over there, wherever.

It won't be easy to get permission to live and work permanently in any of those places.

Your age does not help - you are too old for working holiday visas and most highly skilled visa programmes give considerable preference to young workers. You can check out the Australian and Kiwi skilled migrant programmes online- they assign points for qualifications, in demand skills and also age...They may be interested in skilled, specialised and experienced construction workers but it sounds a bit more like you are a jack of all trades rather than master of one which may not work in your favour when applying.

You don't have any skills that couldn't be more easily and cheaply provided by locals in low income countries in Africa, South America- cooking, farming, landscaping and construction are not specialised enough so you are unlikely to get a visa. Plus, there are people living there who probably need the jobs a lot more than you.

Is there anything else you can do which is a bit more likely to be unavailable in these areas and so provide you with employment and income?

Some places have retirement visas for retirees with a certain level of guaranteed income but I would guess, since you only have 25,000 dollars, that you would not have that level of income. If you do, that might be worth checking out.

There may be visas in some countries for people who wish to open their own business- you would need to prove you had enough money to invest and open a business such as a hostel/restaurant etc. I have no idea how much money would be required but you could look into it if you think it may be a possibility.

Or as a European, you can live and work anywhere in the EU so if you are desperate to leave home but don't qualify for any of the above, then you could move within Europe.

It is also terribly boring but what do you actually plan to do when you are of pensionable age? Are you planning on going back to your home country and if so will you still be eligible for support there? will that support be enough to give you the lifestyle you want? Or is this a permanent move, in which case you will need to consider the available medical care in these countries and how you would fund it.

Spain requires expats to prove they have $10,000 income per year. And health insurance. And $100 cash for the service. And it must be done from the U.S. for us yanks. On paper, it takes six months.

Since you have pastry and bakery experience, why not look at places where these sorts of jobs might be advertised? Have you used google for "pastry chef jobs"?

I would worry less about English being spoken as the local language and more about other factors, like finding a job that would be satisfying.

Ruth

You could always try and learn a new language?

Heaven forbid we should stoop to adapt !

Thusly get more out of the experience.

tsalbstlydooit

You can think about it all your life and never get to the "go" button.

I drank at it for thirty five plus years. Now this Texan more happily lives in Sevilla maravilla. 68 now.
*see profile

I almost had terminal Paradigm Paralisis.

Thanks, Bill W.
Never woulda done it withoutcha !

Are you quite sure that English is the only language you can offer because, and tell me to buzz off if I'm wrong here, you sound like it might not be your mother tongue?

If you do have another language it might be relevant even if its not the language of the country you're moving too. For example - my friend speaks Spanish and English fluently and moved to Germany with it because there was a Spanish company with offices there, who wanted to deal with Americans.