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  • Home
  • Countries

    Top Destinations:

    Whether you’re looking for fun and sun, a peaceful retirement, or the chance to earn some extra income, you’ve got a real world of opportunity open to you… In short, we’ve done our best to narrow down your best options, but only you can decide the right country for you.

    • Spain
    • Portugal
    • Panama
    • Belize
    • Colombia
    • Cyprus
    • Mexico
    • France
    • Montenegro
    • Browse All Countries

    Best For:

    • The Best Places To Retire
    • Health Care Abroad
    • Cost Of Living
    • Investing in Real Estate
    • Establishing Residency
    • Gun Laws In The World
    • English-Speaking Countries
    • Safest Places For Retirement
    • Best Places In Latin America
  • Budgets

    How Much Will It Cost You To Live Overseas?

    The only honest answer is, we have no idea. And neither does anyone else. The only one who can answer that question is you. Here’s the most important thing to understand about budgeting your new life overseas…

    Super Cheap

    • Chitré, Panama
    • Santa Marta, Colombia
    • Phuket, Thailand
    • Dumaguete, The Philippines

    Cheap

    • Medellin, Colombia
    • Boquete, Panama
    • Kyrenia, Cyprus
    • Hua Hin, Thailand
    • The Algarve, Portugal

    Affordable

    • Valencia, Spain
    • Cascais, Portugal
    • Las Terrenas, The DR
    • Pisa, Italy
    • La Rochelle, France
    • Mazatlán, Mexico

    Luxury

    • Ambergris Caye, Belize
    • Kotor, Montenegro
    • The Panama City Beaches
    • Paris, France
  • Resources

    Global Living

    • Living & Retiring Overseas
    • Raising A Family Abroad
    • Foreign Residency & Citizenship
    • Offshore & Diversification

    Making Money

    • International Real Estate
    • Banking
    • Employment
    • Investing

    Follow Us:

    • Meet Our Experts
  • Real Estate

    Buying Real Estate For Cashflow

    • Discover tips and strategies used by global property investing veterans

    Explore Our Latest Posts

    • Learn how to invest and purchase property abroad…

    Go To The Overseas Property Alert Site

    • How To Become Independently Wealthy And Fund The Lifestyle Of Your Dreams
  • Conferences

    Upcoming Events

    • Explore Our Events Site

    Live and Invest In Spain Conference

    Offshore Wealth Summit

    Greece Workshop

    VALENCIA, SPAIN

    Sep. 17-19, 2025

    PANAMA CITY, PANAMA

    Oct. 15-17, 2025

    VIRTUAL

    Nov. 13, 2025

    Learn More About This Event
    Learn More About This Event
    PRE-REGISTER
    Learn More About This Event
    PRE-REGISTER
    • MORE EVENTS

    Contact Our Events Team

    Toll-Free U.S. and Canada:
    1 (888) 627 8834
    From Outside North America:
    1 (443) 599 1221
    Working Hours
    Monday – Friday 08:00 am – 17:00 pm EST.

    Reach us with your questions by email at: events@liveandinvestoverseas.com

  • Store

    Unlock The World

    • Access Your Library

    Overseas Havens Reports

    • Expats' comprehensive destination guides

    Conference Kits

    • Hours of coverage  from our latests conferences

    Lahardan Books

    • Titles on living and investing around the world
    • Explore Our Store
    Your passport to a life well-lived abroad

    Services

    overseas living letter offers affordable retirement guidance
    The Simon Letter Wealth Protection Insights
    Global Property Advisor Global Investment Opportunities

    Our Customer Service team is here to assist with any questions or concerns CustomerService@LiveandInvestOverseas.com

  • My Library
Live and Invest Overseas
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Home Countries Ireland

Back Home On The Auld Sod

by Kathleen Peddicord
Apr 06, 2025
in Ireland
0 0
Ancient old Fortress Ross Castle ruin with lake and grass in Ireland during golden hour nobody

AdobeStock/adammachowiak

In the four years following my divorce, my role at publishing house Agora continued to expand. Now I was a partner in the International Living business, rather than editor, and also managing the health division I’d launched.

I’d put my marriage behind me and had fallen hard for a man at work. As my best friend, Beth, had warned me often throughout that relationship, “With a workplace romance, in the end, it’s always the woman who has to leave.”

She was right. When I finally admitted to myself that I needed to move on, the only way I could imagine breaking things off was by going far away.

“You need to pull a geographic,” Beth agreed.

How, though, could I start over somewhere new without giving up the career I’d been working hard and long to build?

By this time, Agora owner Bill Bonner was not only my partner and mentor but also like a second father. Bill was witty, charming, and gallant, a larger-than-life character who told a great story, loved to travel, and prioritized ideas, the more contrarian the better.

Bill eschewed popular culture and anything trendy and prized the traditional but not the conventional. He thought big and outside any box I’d encountered.

I, too, had a huge appetite for discovery, though I’d never known it. Bill liked architecture, another interest that, when he introduced me to it, I realized I shared. On a business trip to Santa Fe for meetings with the managers of the book business Agora owned there, Bill rented a car and drove us to Albuquerque to see the first house he’d ever built, which, he seemed really happy to note, was still standing, perched on the side of the hill where he’d left it.

Bill also played guitar, including at office get-togethers, and had made a living for a short time in his 20s as a busker in the Paris Metro. He wore a homburg hat and, in winter, a gray wool scarf that he tied the way the French do.

I’d been at Agora 13 years when my years-long office romance imploded. Bill had known about my relationship with my colleague all along, and, when I came to him to say I’d finally realized it had to end because it had no future, Bill responded immediately to make a recommendation, suggesting the situation had been weighing on his mind as much as mine.

“I’d say a big change of scenery is what the doctor ordered,” he said. “You need a break from Baltimore.”

It was unanimous. Beth, Bill, and I all thought a move was in my future.

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But where to go?

Bill proposed two options. I could reposition to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to work with Agora’s book business, or I could move to Ireland to run the EU base he wanted to establish.

Those might seem like dramatic options—moving as a single mom with a young daughter to the other side of the country or the other side of the Atlantic—but, as soon as Bill put them on the table, I knew right away that I was going to make one of those leaps.

Though I hadn’t lived anywhere else, Baltimore was not my destiny, and, until this point, especially since the end of my marriage, I’d been biding time until the path to where I was really meant to be presented itself. Bill’s bold suggestions put me at the fork that would get me on that path.

Or, at least, the exhilarating opportunities Bill had set forth would move me on from Baltimore. Finally I had the chance I’d craved to venture out and see more of the world.

The question now was how to choose which side of the fork to follow.

Having been editor and then publisher of a magazine focused on options for Americans interested in living and investing overseas, the idea of moving to a new country wasn’t nearly as big a deal for me as it might have been for most people. I’d been advising others on how to relocate overseas for a decade. It was time to take my own advice.

Besides, I’d been to Santa Fe and could take it or leave it. Though I’d never seen Ireland, I’d been infatuated by storybook tales of Celtic castles and kings since I was a young girl. If I were making a big move, I’d make the biggest move possible. Ireland would be my new course.

Bill’s assistant put an Irish flag in the center of the conference table in our main board room, and Agora’s Executive Committee and I spent two nights a week around it for months conceiving a strategy to open our EU outpost.

Our plan hinged on our application being accepted by Ireland’s Investment and Development Agency (IDA), which was offering tax incentives to foreign companies that set up businesses in the country and hired Irish staff.

That’s why Agora was going to Ireland—for a better corporate tax rate. That and Bill’s family was Irish.

The IDA approved our application and gave us three options for where to base our operation—Sligo, Galway, and Waterford. Another choice. I’d need to go have a look in person.

Agora organized tours in places we identified as most appealing for Americans interested in going abroad. I’d plan one to Ireland and offer it to my International Living readers. Twenty-five of them signed up to visit the Emerald Isle with me, and I decided to bring my daughter Kaitlin and my parents along. Ireland would be Kaitlin’s new home, too, and I wanted her and my parents to be part of the adventure from the start.

The schedule I put together had us flying to Dublin then traveling for 10 days in Waterford, Cork, Galway, Sligo, and Belfast before returning to the capital.

My mother, father, and Kaitlin were excited for the trip, but I’m not sure they believed it was the start of a trans-Atlantic move. That was okay.

I’d bring them around…

Until next time,

Kathleen Peddicord signature

Kathleen Peddicord
Founding Publisher, Overseas Opportunity Letter

Tags: 'Ireland'at home in irelandExpat Lifestyleexpats in Ireland
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Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has reported on opportunities for Americans to live, retire, and do business overseas for 40 years. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 24, established businesses in 7, renovated and built properties in 6, and educated her children in 5.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets from the east coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland, then to Paris, France, and finally to Panama City, Panama, where she has based her Live And Invest Overseas business. Peddicord and her husband, Lief Simon, now divide their time between Panama and Paris.

Peddicord was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. She opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Waterford, Ireland; Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France. Peddicord launched Live And Invest Overseas group in 2008 and has built it into a successful multimillion-dollar business. Today, she shares her firsthand experience of expat life with more than 500,000 readers of her publications, including Overseas Opportunity Letter and Overseas Living Letter.

Kathleen has been featured often in The New York Times, MSNBC, AARP, CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, and more and writes monthly about expat matters, international real estate, and offshore diversification for Forbes and U.S. News.

Kathleen has written several books including the memoirs “At Home In Ireland” and “At Home At Los Islotes” and her latest title “At Home Abroad,” all published by Lahardan Books. Her best-selling "How To Retire Overseas: Everything You Need To Know To Live Well (For Less) Abroad” was published by Penguin Random House in 2018 and her “Buying Real Estate Overseas For Cash Flow (And A Better Life)” was published by Wiley in August 2020.

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Top Countries

  • Spain
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  • Colombia
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Best For:

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  • Cost Of Living
  • Investing in Real Estate
  • Establishing Residency
  • Gun Ownership
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  • Safety
BROWSE ALL COUNTRIES

Budgets

How Much Will It Cost
To Live Overseas?

Super Cheap

  • Chitré, Panama
  • Santa Marta, Colombia
  • Phuket, Thailand
  • Dumaguete, The Philippines

Cheap

  • Medellin, Colombia
  • Boquete, Panama
  • Kyrenia, Cyprus
  • Hua Hin, Thailand
  • The Algarve, Portugal

Affordable

  • Valencia, Spain
  • Cascais, Portugal
  • Las Terrenas, The DR
  • Pisa, Italy
  • La Rochelle, France
  • Mazatlán, Mexico

Luxury

  • Ambergris Caye, Belize
  • Kotor, Montenegro
  • The Panama City Beaches
  • Paris, France

Resources

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Discover tips and strategies used by global property investing veterans

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Reach us with your questions by email at: events@liveandinvestoverseas.com

Store

Overseas Havens Reports

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Conference Kits

  • Hours of coverage  from our latests conferences

Lahardan Books

  • Titles on living and investing around the world

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