Season In Various Countries

There Is A Season…

Aug. 24, 2008, Panama City, Panama

Dear Overseas Opportunity Letter Reader,

Our daughter has returned to the States after two weeks holiday in Panama with us. She's shopping for first-term books and working out her roommate situation before the start of her fall semester.

Here in Panama, too, we're buying books and supplies, preparing Jackson to start the year at the city's Paul Gauguin French school next week…

Le rentree they call it in Paris…the return to school and to work after two months of travel and sun. This is my favorite time of year in that city. The tourist throngs thin along the rues along the Seine…their lines shorten at the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay…

The days begin to shorten, too, and the gloriously long evenings of summer move toward the cozy, cooler ones of autumn.

As I write, Parisians are returning from the coast and elsewhere on the Continent to reclaim their city and to get back to business. The ladies are wearing short skirts and sleeveless dresses to show off their summer tans…the shops are re-opening after, in some cases, eight full weeks en vacances… Never let it be said that the French allowed commerce to interfere with a summer holiday.

Every place has a cycle, but perhaps nowhere more so than Paris. The whole of this city moves through the seasons as one…from le rentree to Toussant (the extended holiday around All Saints' Day)…from Noel to the annual January sales…

Learning to move according to the local cycles is one of the pleasures of discovering a new place.

Here in Panama, we've arrived mid-rainy season, meaning you schedule outings for the morning if you can, for the skies open and the rains fall heavy most afternoons.

But only, typically, for a couple of hours. The streets flood…within minutes, Avenida Balboa is a river…then, again, within minutes of the rains stopping, the water's gone…the sun reappears…and everyone (including the ever-present road crews) goes on about his business.

Correspondents Paul and Vicki Terhorst are weathering the wet season, too…in Thailand:

"Our advice," they write from Chiang Mai, "forget the high season. Come now instead, during the rainy season, from May/June through November. Especially in May and June, and again in September and October, you'll have the place to yourself. Rain, often at night, keeps the air fresh. Temperatures are only slightly higher than in the cool season, and, anyway, who wants to have to wear a sweater in the tropics? You'll enjoy better prices, fewer, if any, crowds, and locals who try harder."

Read more from Vicki in Chiang Mai here.

Also last week:

• One of the best ways to get a real-life, local experience of a place is to rent a home in that country while you try it on for size. Much preferable to putting yourself up in a hotel…and far more affordable, too.


• But here's an even better option: Don't rent somebody else's home in Paradise…swap your home for his. Maybe swap your car…your pool or club membership…and your household help, as well! See the world free…


• Or maybe stay in your own place…that you rent out to others when you're somewhere else. Buying to let is both a global real estate investment strategy…and a way to accomplish no-cost stays in a place you want to return to regularly. Don't invest in a rental property in a foreign country, though, until you understand this secret to success.


• Here's another way to travel free: Cultivate a portable trade. I'm a laptop-toting, letter-writing poster child for the most portable trade I know: travel writing. Yes, you really could do this…

Finally, last week: Mayberry by the beach… Retire in comfort and safety to this ocean-side community of adventuresome souls with a clear agenda. These folks have no interest in cutting back or getting by in retirement. They intend to spend this important phase of their lives not only maintaining the standard of living they enjoyed during their hard-working years…but improving it. They want to enrich their lives…to find new ways to spend their days…to discover…to explore…to grow…

Perhaps you'd like to join them…

Kathleen Peddicord

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This Is Your Final Call

Uncle Sam is working quietly, behind the scenes, to put obstacles in place that will make it more difficult for you to broaden your horizons overseas. And much more difficult for you to be in the driver's seat of your own future.

It's not just the banking arena that's under threat.

In 2008, changes to the Veterans Act allowed for an "exit tax" on U.S. citizens who choose to leave the country and end their citizenship.

What other countries have done this in the past? Nazi Germany. Communist Russia. Apartheid South Africa...

This is your civil liberty at stake. How long before you just won't be able to get your assets out of the States?

I'm not an alarmist. I'm a pragmatist. And, as a pragmatic investor, I've seen the writing on the wall for some time. I've worked all these years and with an added sense of urgency more recently to take control of my own life, my own financial future, and, most important to me now, the future of my family.

Now I'd like to offer you a chance to do the same.

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• Caribbean Gold