Retire Overseas

April 25, 2010
New York, New York

ALSO: Life As Art--Retirement In The Enchanted Land Of Bali...French Country Living At Its Best...Once Crazy, Now Genius--Just Ask Brian...Buy Brazil? I Don't Think So...

PLUS Lief Simon On: More Good Options For Financing In This Tight-Credit World

----------

5 Days Remaining To Save US$200 In Belize

The Early Bird Discount for our Live & Invest in Belize Conference expires May 1.

After that date, the price of attendance will increase US$200 per person.

This is the only Belize event we will hold this year, and places are filing much quicker than we expected.

Reserve your seat now online here or by phone, toll-free from the United States, at 1-888-627-8834.

----------

Dear Overseas Opportunity Letter Reader,

After 12 ½ years living overseas, we feel like tourists now when we return to these United States.

In New York this week to visit our daughter (who's interning at Christie's auction house during her third year at university) and to meet with the publicist for my new book, we've a full schedule for seeing the sights. This is 10-year-old Jack's first trip to the Big Apple. We want to show him the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island so he can learn a little about how his Scottish ancestors started their new lives in this country, the top of the Empire State Building so he can gain some perspective on this great city, and Central Park, dressed up for the season with brightly colored beds of tulips and daffodils.

We're appreciating the history, the shopping, and the museums of one of our favorite U.S. cities, but, as we wander and explore, we're also coming face-to-face with the realities of life in this part of the world right now. Conversations on the street, in restaurants, on park benches, and on the television screens we can't seem to avoid are all about health care reform, illegal aliens in Arizona, new taxes, the collapse of the housing market, the shenanigans at Goldman Sachs...

The debates are ever-present and often heated, and we're beginning to understand the stress involved with calling this country home right now.

The longer we're living elsewhere, the more we appreciate where we've come from. We'll always be Americans, but, right now, the challenges of life in the United States of America seem overwhelming, too great for us to process. I've heard these past few days arguments for and against the new health care bill, the new immigration law in Arizona, and higher taxes. I try to keep an open mind and to consider all points of view. It's not easy.

Lief and I want Kaitlin, living now in New York as a student, and Jack, who has lived his entire life overseas, to appreciate all that the United States has to offer. But we want them to understand, as well, that life here isn't the only life there is. We want them to see that they have options.

Right now, many of these options are irresistibly appealing. And pursuing them doesn't make you any less American.

We Americans are a romantic, optimistic bunch. The grass will be greener, we tell ourselves continually, over the next hilltop or around the next bend in the road.

And, in fact, it can be.

In Panama, for example, where we've been living for the past year-and-a-half, things like U.S. health care reform and what to do about the Goldman Sachs debacle seem very far away.

Every place has its own issues and causes for worry. When life one place becomes intolerably challenging (as I'd argue it has in the United States), move somewhere else.

You aspire to diversify your investment portfolio. Why not your life?

We lived seven years in Ireland at a time when we were able to enjoy the final roars of the Celtic Tiger. We sold our house in that country just before the Irish real estate bubble burst. We took the proceeds from that sale and invested them in an apartment in Paris, where we spent the next four years savoring the perennial charms of the City of Light.

Then, when the business agendas of our life became priorities, we relocated again, this time from France (a nightmarish place to indulge any entrepreneurial whim) to Panama, a market that continues to offer tremendous potential for upside.

We lived in Ireland when the U.S. dollar was trading on par with the euro. Today, our dollars spend better in Panama.

We're not the only ones adopting this kind of diversified lifestyle, of course. Friends refer to it as "planting flags," looking around the world to identify where best you might pursue whatever family, new life, better life, retirement, financial, asset-protection, business, profit, privacy, or banking agendas you might have.

Put your money in one jurisdiction, keep assets in others, reside elsewhere, and perhaps arrange second citizenship yet someplace else.

Lief and I have been working toward this life approach for years. The pieces are coming into place.

And, as they do, we're finding an unexpected benefit. As our options for where and how we spend our time and our money continue to expand, our appreciation for the world as a whole evolves, too.

Our appreciation of the whole world, including the United States.

In the current climate, Americans are more interested in the idea of living, retiring, and investing overseas than ever. As life in the States grows increasingly uncertain, a new life somewhere else can seem a great out.

It is. But it's also an in.

Starting anew in another country is maybe about escaping. More than running away from something, though, starting over overseas is about running to something.

Something new and better. Something richer and fuller.

Starting over overseas is about following the road around the next bend to someplace greener.

Someplace very green indeed.

Kathleen Peddicord

---------------

Choose Your Dream Retirement--Free Report Shows You How To Make It Real

Here's your chance to choose your personal, custom-fitted retirement paradise from among the world's top retirement havens.

Choose the overseas Shangri-la with your name on it. Then we'll send you, with our compliments, the Country Retirement Report that will show you how to make your new life in your dream haven a reality.

In fact, we'll send you up to 7 reports FREE when you act now.

---------------

P.S. What else this week?

• "From the comfort of your veranda," writes Asia Correspondent Wendy Justice, "you can see the people of the neighboring village tending to the irrigated paddies of bright-green rice. A gentle breeze making its way down from the distant mountains softly touches into life the shimmering greens of a hundred species of plant life.
  
  "You eye the ducks swimming in the irrigation canals and tilt your ear slightly toward the sounds of happy laughter, and other-worldly gamelan music softly carries from the banjar community hall in the distance.
  
  "Taking a deep breath, you sigh with contentment. The scent of flowers surrounds you, and a wisp of incense floats your way from the canang sari offering baskets that your housekeeper has carefully and reverently placed to invite balance and harmony into your home.
  
  "This place is called the 'Enchanted Land,' and, once you've seen it, you'll understand why. Despite its small size, this island packs in everything you expect of paradise, from coral reefs to the jungle-clad slopes of mighty mountains complete with tribes of naughty monkeys. Here, amid the most gracious and hospitable of people, you could live well for as little as US$1,500 a month...

• In the month since my new "How To Retire Overseas" book was published, I've been interviewed by a dozen reporters and editors intending to review the book in their respective media. A common theme has emerged:
  
  Americans are ready to make a move. They want out. They've had it with health care "reform," rising taxes, and an uncertain future. They want to find a way to hold on to the assets they've worked their whole lives to accumulate. More than any generation of retirees that has preceded them, they're ready to take action to take control.
  
  They're even ready to retire overseas!
  
  When I began covering this beat 25 years ago, I was a little ahead of my time. Back then, the suggestion of retiring to a foreign country was most typically met with raised eyebrows or confused silence.
  
  Today, a quarter-century later, leaving home and hearth, loved ones (especially grandchildren) and everything familiar at this important phase of life no longer qualifies as nuts. More and more would-be retirees are recognizing the sense, even the wisdom in the idea.
  
  Still, you might call it an outside-the-box strategy.
  
  And, frankly, the more closely and seriously you consider your retire overseas options, the more intimidating the whole notion can seem.
  
  I've been reminded lately just how daunting the idea can be not only by the reporters whose questions I've been answering, but also by a new friend, Brian, in Panama this month continuing his preparations for eventually moving to this country full-time...

• "Sometimes, when the sun shines, you just have to drop everything and get outside!" writes France Correspondent Lucy Culpepper.
  
  "This morning I dropped the children at school, then set off on my road bike into the Jurançon countryside in the southwest of France. This is rolling wine country. The vine growers use traditional grapes, such as Lauzet, Petit and Grand Mansengs, and Courbu. The vines are just starting to turn from woody looking sticks to the leafy boughs that will soon bear the fruit for both the golden sweet and the dry clear green Jurançon wines.
  
  "Wine has been grown in this area since the Roman times, but Jurançon did not become nationally famous until it was used for the baptism of King Henri IV in 1553. The infant Prince had his lips rubbed with garlic and moistened with Jurançon wine. It was said that the wine gave him 'a vigor and ardent spirit that never left him.'
  
  "Everywhere I explored on my bicycle this morning was bathed in the sweet smell of spring. At almost every turn there was a sign for a chambre d'hôte (bed and breakfast) or a gîte (a self-catered house or cottage), and I can easily understand why. This really is the most beautiful place to visit. Pretty villages with bakeries bursting with breads and pastries, streets lined with blossoming fruit and nut trees, towering ancient churches ringing out their bells, rivers and streams in full flow from the melting Pyrenean snow and the glorious mountains, with just a little snow hanging on, towering up in the distance.
  
  "I took a break at a small farm offering samples of homemade goat's cheese, a delicious nutty, creamy variety made on the farm. The owner proudly showed me his flock, grazing in the valley below. I passed on the glass of Jurançon offered, not wanting to wobble off into the distance on my two wheels.
  
  "This is France at its best..."

• If you want to live on the beach (or elsewhere) in Brazil and are prepared to pay cash for your second or retirement home, go for it. This country's coast is beautiful, and beach life here could be everything you're looking for in a new life on the water.
  
  If you're a big-time investor with deep pockets and the time and inclination to figure out how to navigate this market, again, go for it. This is a lively marketplace, and, as a friend says, lively marketplaces are the best places to make money.
  
  If, however, you're an average individual investor, certainly if you're a novice international real estate investor, I'm with Lief. You're better off seeking opportunity elsewhere. And here's why...

PLUS: From Global Real Estate Investing Guru Lief Simon:

My dispatch to you last week about developer financing being offered at Sugar Loaf in Uruguay got the attention of another developer group that I've worked with for a long time. The VP of Sales for Gran Pacifica on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, Kent Payne, wrote to me after reading my Sugar Loaf alert to propose details of a financing offer he'd like to make to the Live and Invest Overseas readership. Kent, too, recognizes that, in the current climate, the ability to arrange in-country financing can be critical to the purchase decision.

Not to be outdone by the 0% interest offer from Sugar Loaf last week, Kent has been inspired to make his own 0% interest offer for Live and Invest Overseas readers for a specific section of lots in his Gran Pacifica community. These lots are adjacent to hole 2 of the Emerald golf course, which is open for play, and they come with no build requirement (though most other lots in Gran Pacifica have one). So not only can you pay for your lot over time, but you don't have to build on it until you are ready.