Nov. 29, 2009
Paris, France
PLUS: Expats' Thanksgiving...Costa Rica Versus Panama--Why Costa Rica Is No Longer Among The Top 10...
AND: Rebecca Tells All, Starting This Week!...
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Discover Panama, Warts and All!
No marketing hype, no rose-colored glasses.
That's the promise we make this week with the launch of my new
Panama Letter.
Panama is right now the world's top retirement, investment, offshore, and doing business haven. To get the most out of this little country with such an abundance of upside right now, and to determine
which opportunities might be right for you, you need to know the full story. You need to understand all the facts, straight, complete, and current.
You need to see Panama for what she really is.
Let us open your eyes to the good, the bad, and the ugly of living, investing, banking, and doing business in this much-talked-about little country. Only then can you set yourself up for success here.
Announcing: The
Panama Letter.
This is Panama without the sugar coating. From a team of expats, investors, and businesspeople with, together, many decades of experience spending time and making money in the Hub of the Americas.
Go Here Now For The Full Details
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Dear
Overseas Opportunity Letter Reader,
It's cold and drizzling, a typical late Fall Sunday in Paris, but this city delights nevertheless, tempting all your senses at every turn. Shop windows show woolen jackets draped with orange and pink scarves. Around the corner from our apartment, the Boulevard St. Germain is strung for blocks with blue Christmas lights, its cafes outlined with green garland and red bows. White smoke curls from rooftop chimneys.
Never mind that the skies are dark. The City of Light shines as always.
I'm in town, alone, for three days, to attend the funeral of a dear friend who, last week, lost a two-year battle with cancer. Francois was so sick for so long that I'm happy he's at peace now and happy, too, that I've been able to make the trip over from Panama to attend the services his family has planned for him tomorrow at the 12th-century church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre.
It was Frank (as his American friends knew him) who helped introduce me to Paris, starting nearly 20 years ago. He'd take me on long walking tours up and down the river, through the Latin Quarter, inside the courtyards and the foyers of the city's most historic, most impressive architectural accomplishments. He'd take me to restaurants specializing in pigs' feet and traditional
boeuf bourguignon, places where I was the only American in sight but, with Frank's help, made to feel at home and welcome. He showed me the view from the shuttered windows of his 18th-century apartment on l'Ile de la Cite, and I was hooked.
Frank gave me the real Paris. He is gone now, but his city shines on, and I feel so fortunate to carry Frank and his Paris with me.
Kathleen Peddicord
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Top 2010 Retire Overseas Options Revealed In Full
Cheapest, safest, friendliest...best weather, best infrastructure, best health care...most tax-advantaged and most foreign resident-friendly...
Plus most beautiful, romantic, exotic, historic, and adventure-filled.
Here are the world's top overseas havens for 2010:
- Panama
- France
- Uruguay
- Dominican Republic
- Argentina
- Malaysia
- Chile
- Belize
- Croatia
- Vietnam
Over the coming 12 months, we're going to introduce each and every one of them, in complete and current detail, to subscribers of my
Overseas Retirement Letter.
Each month brings complete and in-depth reports on the
world's top overseas havens, including full details on residency, visa options, health care, taxes, and itemized monthly budgets.
Not an
Overseas Retirement Letter subscriber yet?
Better Get On Board Now
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P.S. What else this week?
- Here in Panama all the fixings of a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner can be found at any of the big grocery stores, the turkeys alongside the rest of the frozen meats, just as they would be in the States, and the pie makings in the same aisles as the flour and the baking soda.
Here in Panama, we Americans and our trappings aren't so exotic...
- "I don't understand how you do this," my sister often remarks. "All the packing and moving around. Don't you get tired?"
Yes, we get tired, I admit.
"So...why do you keep it up?" she wants to know.
After particularly trying days, when the trials and tribulations of life in the developing world nearly overwhelm us, Lief will look at me and ask that question, too.
"Maybe our families are right," he'll remark. "Maybe we should just go back to the States. Life can be so much easier there..."
- You don't move to the little beach town of Las Tablas on the eastern coast of Panama's Azuero Peninsula to enjoy the trappings of luxury. You come to Las Tablas to relax, to slow down, and to plug into a simpler way of living.
Once you do that, you won't believe how little your new life at the beach can cost. Neither will your friends back home, especially when you tell them you're renting a comfortable house within a few minutes walk of the beach, for example, for US$200 or US$300 per month...
Panama Editor Rebecca Tyre, a resident of Las Tablas for the past three years, brought some recent receipts into the office this week. Here's an idea of what it's been costing Rebecca to live among the Tableños...
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Rebecca's complete report on expat life in this beautiful, safe, welcoming, and highly affordable region of Panama is featured in the first issue of my new
Panama Letter, out this week.
Get yourself on the list to receive the full story, hot off the virtual press, here now.
- "I would have sworn that I had read in one of your reports that Costa Rica is on the list of the world's top 10 overseas retirement spots. Am I wrong, or have you reconsidered your list?" wrote a reader earlier this week.
Yes, I explained in reply, I've reconsidered.
Costa Rica is a good case study. About three decades ago, this country decided to make a business of the foreign retiree...
PLUS: Panama continues to hold out as a jurisdiction that respects banking secrecy, refusing to buckle to OECD threats. More important, this country's banking system is more developed than that of any other jurisdiction in this part of the world. It's also well capitalized and has been largely unaffected by what's gone on in the banking trade elsewhere worldwide.
Furthermore, as I remind you often, it's possible, as a foreigner, to borrow from banks in Panama for the purchase of a home, an apartment, even land and construction. This is a significant advantage for both the real estate investor and the second-home owner--not only because it's not possible for a foreign property buyer to borrow locally in most anywhere else in the region, but also because
Panamanian property is right now one of the smartest buys on the planet...
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