Live and Invest Overseas
The Best Places To Retire In 2025 Report
FREE REPORT: THE BEST PLACES TO RETIRE IN 2025
We Value Your Privacy! We will not share your email address with anyone else, period.
  • 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
  • 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
 Moving Out Of The U.S?

THE 10 BEST PLACES TO RETIRE IN 2025

the 10 best places to retire in 2025

PLUS: A SPECIAL BONUS DESTINATION

Simply sign up to receive the FREE daily e-letter, Overseas Opportunity Letter, and we’ll immediately email you our editors’ latest research report… absolutely FREE

We Value Your Privacy! We will not share your email address with anyone else, period.

Home How to

What’s The Point Of Diversifying Offshore?

How To Plan Your Own Escape

by Lief Simon
Jun 24, 2024
in How to, Offshore
0 0
Colored houses in Rue Cremieux street in Paris. France

AdobeStock/daliu

I’ve been reviewing the schedule of confirmed speakers for my Offshore Wealth Summit in Porto, Portugal, this Oct. 16-18, to see who else I might be able to fit in.

It’s a powerful line-up this year, with more and more diverse speakers than ever before.

However, as my conference team and I were talking through the presentations and panel discussions we’ve planned, I realized that we were missing something fundamental. We hadn’t included a basic introductory session on the benefits of planting flags around the world.

That is, what’s the point of diversifying offshore in the first place?

“Why,” for example, as a consulting client asked me this week, “would someone want an offshore bank account anyway?”

And “what,” this client continued, “can a second passport really do for me?”

Good questions.

Let’s start with the bank account…

Fundamentally, an offshore bank account allows you to remove some of your money from your home country’s banking system. That’s the big-picture upside.

An offshore bank account, once in place, also can allow you access to alternative investment options not available back home… especially for Americans and Canadians.

Through your offshore bank account, you can invest in global stock markets, mutual funds, and currencies. Diversifying your investment portfolio, therefore, is a second reason to think about setting up an offshore account.

A third compelling reason is that a bank account in another country can provide some modest level of asset protection. Money in an offshore account isn’t within easy grasp of some knucklehead suing you back home.

An offshore bank account, however, doesn’t provide a high level of asset protection, which is why, depending on your situation, you may want to graduate to offshore structures.

Offshore structures

An offshore structure—an LLC, for example—can provide much greater protection for your offshore investments than a bank or brokerage account. Holding offshore assets in an LLC also can translate to some estate-planning benefits.

I use an offshore LLC to hold much of my global real estate portfolio. Holding a piece of property you own in another country in your own name means your heirs will have to go through probate in that country when you die.

Holding property in your own name in five countries means your heirs will be forced to wade through probate in five countries. Put all those properties in an offshore LLC, and your heirs will have to transfer only one asset when you die… the LLC.

An offshore LLC provides a better level of asset protection than an offshore bank account, but if asset protection is your main goal you can go one step further.

The next level of asset protection after an offshore LLC is an offshore trust. An offshore trust provides the greatest possible level of asset protection and estate planning. Structured correctly, an offshore trust can protect you as an individual from any judgment against your assets. The reason being that, once you transfer the assets to the trust, they are no longer yours. They belong to the trust. You’re simply the beneficiary of that trust and the assets it owns.

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.
We Value Your Privacy! We will not share your email address with anyone else, period.

What about a second residency or citizenship?

Then there’s back-up residency and second citizenship…

Back in 2020, Kathleen and I were in France when the pandemic lockdowns hit around the world.

With our residency in Panama and our U.S. and Irish passports, we had options.

We decided to remain in France for several months, as the lockdown there wasn’t as severe as the one put in place in Panama and had no compelling reason at the time to be in the States or Ireland.

Another benefit of having residency in another country is that it means you won’t have to have a return ticket to leave the country every time you decide to visit.

A colleague decided to spend an undetermined time in Colombia. As he didn’t know when he was going to return to the United States, he bought a one-way ticket.

When he tried to check in for his flight at the airport in the States, they wouldn’t give him a boarding pass because he didn’t have a return or onward ticket and he wasn’t a citizen or legal resident of Colombia. He had to go online and buy a ticket out of Colombia so he could board his flight.

A second citizenship provides similar benefits, as well as the option to get rid of your current citizenship if you decide that’s something you’d like to do.

Thanks to FATCA, more and more Americans are taking the step to renounce their U.S. citizenship.

For some, it comes down to not wanting to pay a U.S. tax accountant a few thousand dollars a year to file all the required forms… when the upshot of all that reporting is to tell the IRS that they don’t owe them any money.

However, you can’t give up your current citizenship if it’s the only one you have. You need a second citizenship first.

Helping people connect the dots from that first offshore bank account or foreign corporation to a backup residency or second citizenship is the primary agenda and objective of this year’s Offshore Wealth Virtual Summit.

To help me meet that objective, I’ve invited my global network of diversification experts to gather in Porto, Portugal, for the event.

These are the heaviest-hitting offshore experts you’ll find anywhere… real pros.

They and I will begin with the basics and then work up to master’s level material.

Come join us.

Stay diversified,

Lief Simon signature

Lief Simon

Editor, Offshore Living Letter

Tags: diversify assetsLLCoffshore structureoffshore wealth summitoverseas bank accountsecond citizenshipsecond residency
Share96Tweet52
Lief Simon

Lief Simon

Lief Simon has lived and worked in 7 countries on 5 continents and traveled to more than 75 countries. His real estate investment career began with a $5,000 down payment on a three-flat building in Chicago. Less than three years later, Lief sold the building for a leveraged return of 3,000%—$150,000 in profit after closing costs and commissions.

From there, he turned his attention overseas and has bought property in 24 countries including France, Croatia, Portugal, Ireland, Belize, Spain, Argentina, Cyprus, Romania, and beyond. Thanks to his decades-long career as a global property investor, Lief has built a multi-million-dollar portfolio that includes rental properties, significant land holdings, and 7 personal residences.

Lief has established residency in 3 countries and acquired a second passport from Ireland.

In 2008 Lief and wife Kathleen Peddicord made the most important investment of their lives—a 215-acre oceanside finca, known as Los Islotes. There, on Panama’s largely undiscovered Veraguas coast, they’ve installed underground electricity, water, and internet and built a forever family home that sits at the heart of their ultimate vision: a gold standard private residential community for those in search of a true safe haven escape.

Lief’s latest book, “Cowboy Millionaire—The New American Pioneer,” collects all the wisdom he has learned in three decades of living and investing outside America.

He offers advice on international diversification in his twice-weekly Offshore Living Letter and monthly Simon Letter dispatches. For real estate investment opportunities, check out his monthly Global Property Advisor service.

If you’d like to meet Lief in person, join him for one of our upcoming in-country conferences. You’ll find further details here.

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.

We Value Your Privacy! We will not share your email address with anyone else, period.
Our Expertise Unlocks The World

quick links

  • Best Places To Live
  • Best Places To Retire
  • Finding A Job Overseas
  • Real Estate

LIOS Resources

  • New To LIOS
  • Ask An Expert
  • Media Center
  • Contact Us
  • FAQs
the 10 best places to retire in 2025
Sign up for our free daily e-letter, Overseas Opportunity Letter, and get your FREE REPORT: The 10 Best Places To Retire Overseas In 2025

We Value Your Privacy! We will not share your email address with anyone else, period.

As seen in

US Media Logos

© 2008 – Live and Invest Overseas™ – All Rights Reserved.

About Us / Contact Us / Privacy Policy / Terms / Unsubscribe
Facebook-f X-twitter Youtube Linkedin-in Instagram

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
HOME

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

  • International Real Estate
  • Banking
  • Employment
  • Investing
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 About This Event

Offshore Wealth Summit

PANAMA CITY, PANAMA Oct. 15-17, 2025
Learn More About This Event
PRE-REGISTER

GREECE WORKSHOP

VIRTUAL Nov. 13, 2025
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

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
VISIT OUR STORE

Free Report

THE 10 BEST PLACES TO RETIRE IN 2025

FREE REPORT: The 10 Best Places To retire in 2025

Sign up to receive the FREE daily e-letter, Overseas Opportunity Letter and we’ll immediately email you our editors’ latest research report…

We Value Your Privacy! We will not share your email address with anyone else, period.

LIBRARY

Follow Us:

© 2008 - Live and Invest Overseas - All Rights Reserved.

RETIRE OVERSEAS AND LIVE LIKE ROYALTY

Sign up for FREE to learn how. Plus, check out our FREE report on THE 10 BEST PLACES TO RETIRE


We Value Your Privacy! We will not share your email address with anyone else, period.

RETIRE OVERSEAS AND LIVE LIKE ROYALTY

Sign up for FREE and learn how to live the good life on a modest budget, find bargain property, and more. Plus, check out our free report on the 10 BEST PLACES TO RETIRE.

We Value Your Privacy! We will not share your email address with anyone else, period.