I didn’t set out to “internationalize” my life. Who would?
My first experience diversifying beyond U.S. borders was with five home-town friends. We pulled our resources to purchase 2,700 acres on the southern Pacific coast of Nicaragua.
The undertaking was less impressive than you might be thinking.
This was 1995. Nicaraguan cattle land was cheap. Still, $50,000, my share, was a big stretch for me.
The financial soundness of the investment aside, the whole proposition was patently absurd.
We six had zero experience developing property of any kind. What business did we have imagining we’d turn a Central American cattle ranch into an international-standard resort?
We didn’t think to ask that question. Instead, we convened around meeting tables in Baltimore to pore over maps and drawings we’d made ourselves.
“We could carve out 20 lots here,” one of us would suggest, “and sell them, I’d bet, for $20,000 apiece!”
As they say, it can be better to be lucky than good… and we were lucky.
We found we were able to sell lots for, at first, $20,000 and then, over time, for much more.
Eventually, it occurred to us to invest in a master plan. We hired architects and engineers… and, today, 30 years later, remarkably, Rancho Santana has grown up to become the five-star oceanside escape we naively imagined it could be all those years ago.
Trouble is, you can’t count on luck. Better to count on your own efforts.
I flippantly wondered above who would set “internationalizing” as a lifestyle objective.
In fact, I know the guy.
My husband, Lief Simon, is a fourth-generation Arizonan. His great-grandmother blazed the family’s path from Texas to Arizona before Arizona was a state.
When he was 8 years old, Lief declared he wanted to see the world. By the time he was in high school he knew he would spend most of his life outside his home country.
Lief has no problem with America. He’s fiercely proud of his Wild West cowboy heritage. When he took a gig with an international drilling company upon graduation from grad school, he wasn’t fleeing America. He was pursuing new frontiers. Pioneering is in his DNA.
While my start at internationalizing my life and, in truth, a whole lot of internationalizing that has followed has been accidental, Lief’s global diversification plan has always been intentional.
His job with Parker Drilling took him from Chad to Kazakhstan then on to Salta, Argentina.
Lief’s earnest interest in diversifying his life as far and wide as possible led him next to Ireland. That’s where he and I met up. When I happened upon Lief leaning against the wall of an old barn in Sligo, Stetson tipped just so as he scribbled in a journal, I knew our fates were sealed.
Together we lived seven years in Ireland… then four in Paris… followed by a decade-and-a-half in Panama. Now, empty-nesters, we divide our time between the City of Light and the Hub of the Americas… with regular detours to Woodstock, Illinois, where we own a home having reintroduced the U.S. into our long-term plan a couple years ago.
For, again, we’ve never been running away from America… or anything else. Lief and I are forever moving ahead in search of opportunity… from one frontier to the next.
Over the past near three decades together, we’ve invested in property in 24 countries… built businesses in 7… and raised our children across 4. We carry both U.S. and Irish passports, along with Panamanian cedulas.
When Lief’s great-grandmother and her fellow pioneers set out to settle the American West, they had nothing—no jobs, no homes, no land. They traveled thousands of miles in search of one thing: opportunity. They wanted a chance to find their fortunes and change their lives for the better, cultivating new territories and building bright futures where nothing existed before.
Freedom to forge your own destiny by embracing opportunity and adventure is a quintessentially American ideal. It’s the best of us.
The American West has long been settled. Now pioneering American Lief Simon has found his fortunes and built his legacy on the new frontier—the whole wide world.
At my urging, Lief took time recently to reflect on the journey. He shares the wisdom he’s hard won over decades in his latest book “Cowboy Millionaire—The New American Pioneer”… along with insights into where next.
Today, Lief’s holdings are as well diversified across economies and currencies as a portfolio can be. His new book is his effort to help others achieve that same level of financial independence. This is a road map for growing and protecting real, legacy wealth.
For a limited time, we’re offering complimentary copies to subscribers of Lief’s monthly Simon Letter publication. Go here to claim yours now.
Until next time,
Founding Publisher, Overseas Opportunity Letter
