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    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.

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    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
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    • International Real Estate
    • Banking
    • Employment
    • Investing

    Follow Us:

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  • 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

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    • 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

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    Conference Kits

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    • 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
  • 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
    DISCOUNT
    LEARN MORE
    PRE-REGISTER
    LEARN MORE
    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

The Biggest Lesson Of My Move To Waterford, Ireland

The Way Forward

by Kathleen Peddicord
Jul 19, 2024
in Ireland
0 0
Reginald's Tower Waterford Ireland

Adobe Stock/pixs:sell

From Panama to Paris I flew for the weekend… Then early this morning I was on a plane to Dublin, from where I write. Then, I’m southbound to the main event: A week in Waterford.

The Live And Invest Overseas team has expanded to include a secondary base of operations on the Emerald Isle.

For Lief and me, it’s like returning home after too long away.

Twenty-five years ago, Lief and I pulled up stakes—me from Baltimore, him from Chicago—and moved to Waterford, Ireland.

Retire overseas has long been my beat but not my personal agenda. Lief and I arrived in Waterford with a business plan. We’d come to establish our first EU base.

The Challenge In Moving To Waterford, Ireland

Those early years in Ireland, we pushed ahead, stubbornly, persistently, enthusiastically, through challenge after challenge.

We’d wanted to establish an office for a direct-marketing publishing company, but no such industry existed in Ireland. Hardly any industry whatever existed in Waterford.

The Celtic Tiger was coming into its own, but Waterford was beyond its roar. The pool of available local labor was thin.

For marketing, fulfillment, and editorial support staff we hired people with no relevant experience. They’d worked as receptionists in hotels, hands in local stables, cashiers in local shops.

We tried to identify people who seemed to want to learn and then set about trying to train them.

Staffing our fledgling office was tough and so, too, was just about everything else, including finding the office in the first place. We didn’t want to be located in the new “industrial park” being built on the outskirts of Waterford City. It looked like a prison compound to me. However, other options for commercial space, like options for staffing, were limited.

Opening a corporate bank account, getting a company credit card (uncommon back then), finding an Irish tax accountant to keep us compliant, drafting employment contracts (which, we were instructed, had to allow for things like regular tea breaks)… all these administrative tasks were a struggle.

Meantime, Lief and I, recently married, were struggling on every other front, as well…

Struggling to solidify our new family unit… Struggling to adapt to life in a new city…

Start Your New Life Overseas Today!
Sign up for our free daily e-letter, Overseas Opportunity Letter, and we'll send you a FREE report on the 10 Best Places To Retire In 2025.
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And, struggling to communicate our situation to those in the home office back in Baltimore.

They couldn’t understand how or why it was taking so long to do simple things like rent office space, open a company bank account, and hire start-up staff… and we couldn’t adequately explain the delays, because we didn’t understand them ourselves.

What Moving Has Taught Me

View of the seaside town of Dunmore East, County Waterford, Ireland.
Adobe Stock/David

Today, 25 years and a series of starting-a-business-in-a-foreign-country-from-nothing experiences later, I can explain. Someone who hasn’t done it isn’t going to understand, but it’s just the way it goes.

Way back when in Waterford, I was among those who hadn’t done it. I didn’t know yet that the only way through the challenges is through them.

Perseverance is a critical prerequisite for the successful entrepreneur abroad.

A year after we’d landed in Waterford, I’d about had it. I was worn out trying to teach a bunch of sometimes-interested folks how to build and run a direct-marketing publishing operation…

Worn out by social charges, Bank Holidays, twice-daily tea breaks, bankers who didn’t return your phone calls, tax auditors who’d never heard of the business we were in and I couldn’t make heads or tails of our financial statements…

I was lonely for people who understood what I was saying without endless background and context. I wanted to be among folks who’d shared at least some of my experiences, personal and professional.

Telling every story from scratch every day… about how to produce a magazine, how to publish a book, how to sell a subscription, and then how to renew it? That was getting old.

Nearly desperate, I called my partner for this venture and told him I wasn’t sure this establish-an-office-in-Waterford thing was going to work out. Bill asked me to sit tight. He was in Paris and would fly over for a visit asap.

Bill came to Waterford. He spent a couple of days in the office, meeting with me, Lief, and the team we’d assembled by that point. We’d just moved into new office space, a big improvement over our original, windowless digs. The new office was in a three-story townhouse in the heart of Waterford City. We had a classic Irish Georgian front door that I’d painted red.

The afternoon he was leaving for the airport and his return flight to Paris, Bill and I walked out the big red front door and stood for a minute on the landing. Bill looked up and down Catherine Street at the other Georgian-style townhouses then back at the bright red door of our place. For me the door was a metaphor. It was my way forward. Bill got it.

“You’ve planted a seed here,” he said. “You’ve started something. It will continue to grow.

“It’d be a shame to walk away from this now.”

The second most important thing for an entrepreneur abroad to possess, along with perseverance, is perspective. You’ve got to be able to see what’s in front of you in the context of the bigger-picture agenda.

Most of the time, you’ve got to do this on your own, reminding yourself that you’re making progress. Despite the challenges and the struggles, you’re building and growing. You’re on track, moving ahead…

Sometimes, though, it will be hard to believe yourself.

Yes, I was lucky way back when in Waterford to have someone to call for a dose of perspective when I needed it and owe Bill a great debt of gratitude. If he’d not been around to make the point that, struggles to get to that point aside, there I was, I might have called it a day.

I might have returned to Baltimore and the familiar way of life I was longing for. Indeed, I would have walked away… meaning that the 25 years since would have played out very differently.

If not for Ireland… then maybe not Paris seven years later… and probably not Panama four years after that.

Reinventing your life overseas, wherever you choose to go, one step leads to the next.

When you set out, you may not be certain where you’re headed… but I can tell you from experience that you’ll end up where you’re meant to be.

Meanwhile, you might need reassurance that the path you’ve chosen isn’t crazy and can’t think of anyone to call, reach out to us.

We’ll be standing by to provide a word of support when you need it.

Meantime, stay the course. Adventure awaits.

Kathleen Peddicord signature

Kathleen Peddicord

Founding Publisher, Overseas Opportunity Letter

Tags: 'Waterford'life abroadLive abroadMove abroadMove To Waterford 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
  • Portugal
  • Panama
  • Belize
  • Colombia
  • Cyprus
  • Mexico
  • France
  • Montenegro

Best For:

  • Health Care Abroad
  • Retirement Living
  • Cost Of Living
  • Investing in Real Estate
  • Establishing Residency
  • Gun Ownership
  • English Speakers
  • 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

Global Living

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

Making Money

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  • Banking
  • Employment
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Meet Our Experts

Real Estate

Overseas Property Alert 

 

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

VISIT SITE

Buying Real Estate For Cashflow

 

Discover tips and strategies used by global property investing veterans

READ MORE

Explore Our Latest Posts

 

Learn how to invest and purchase property abroad…

EXPLORE

Conferences

Live and Invest In Spain Conference

VALENCIA, SPAIN Sep. 17-19, 2025
LEARN MORE
DISCOUNT

Offshore Wealth Summit

PANAMA CITY, PANAMA Oct. 15-17, 2025
LEARN MORE
PRE-REGISTER

GREECE WORKSHOP

VIRTUAL Nov. 13, 2025
LEARN MORE
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

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

Services

  • Overseas Living Letter: Affordable Retirement Guidance
  • The Simon Letter: Wealth Protection Insights
  • Global Property Advisor: Global Investment Opportunitites
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THE 10 BEST PLACES TO RETIRE IN 2025

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