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    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
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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
    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

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    Overseas Havens Reports

    • Expats' comprehensive destination guides

    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

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Home Offshore

A Safety Talk: Why Diversifying Is More Important Than Ever

The 3 Best Places To Live Post-Pandemic?

by Lief Simon
Jun 19, 2020
in Offshore, Real Estate
0 0
carmelita gardens belize

Image Source: Facebook/CarmelitaGardensBelize

In Argentina, crisis isn’t the exceptional state of affairs. It’s the usual.

Each generation of Argentines grows up watching its elders navigate one disaster after another and perpetually preparing for whatever catastrophe will strike next.

The one thing an Argentine is certain of in the face of the eternal uncertainty of the Argentine reality is that another debacle is forever on the horizon.

The Argentines I’ve known aren’t complaining, despondent cynics; they are realists who pay attention to history. They don’t become complacent after a decade of growth and prosperity. An Argentine banks on the fact that nothing good lasts forever… and so he banks offshore.

He keeps as much of his wealth as possible beyond Argentine borders and therefore insulated from Argentine crisis.

Much of today’s world has become complacent… especially North America and Europe.

World War I began with a single shot and then led to World War II. No conflict since has enveloped the entire world… and economic growth in the West has been good these past 75 years.

Decades of relative peace and prosperity have had much of the world feeling comfortable and safe.

But the global landscape has shifted.

Buildings require emergency exits and sprinklers even if the location has never suffered a fire, and you have to listen to the safety talk every time you get on a plane.

A backup plan is always a good idea. Right now, it’s a critical necessity.

So… what’s yours?

Mine has a lot to do with embracing a self-sufficient lifestyle.

When we lived in Ireland, our house sat on 6 acres of land. Up a small hill behind the house was an area that had been, in a previous life, a kitchen garden. We restored the garden, after we discovered it, and planted strawberries, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, and peppers. Rebuilding the garden was mostly my job, and planting and harvesting my wife’s. It was a lot of work but hugely rewarding.

A kitchen garden alone won’t keep a family fed, though. We restored one outbuilding on the property into a chicken coop, with the help of my father-in-law, and started raising chickens. We planted fruit trees to create a small orchard. And I looked into raising a few cows, mostly to fatten them up in the fields and sell them.

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We didn’t buy the property with the intention of turning it into a self-sufficient farmstead, and, in truth, if we’d had to survive off our 6 acres, we would have starved to death.

Mostly because we were busy working. We didn’t have the time to keep up with the gardens or the chickens, and we never figured out the cows, as the government, we discovered, regulated livestock to the point that we would have needed a permit to raise even a couple of cows if our intent was to sell them to a butcher.

Today, I own many pieces of land in different countries, but most of it either isn’t suitable for farming or is owned with partners. I started recently getting serious about changing this and have expanded my flag-planting efforts to include self-sufficient options, specifically productive land that we own ourselves and develop with a resilient lifestyle in mind.

In this context, I’ve focused on two markets in particular—Panama and Belize.

At Los Islotes, the community we’re developing on Panama’s Azuero coast, Kathleen and I have built a house with room for the entire family, even if we all want or need to stay there for an extended time. We’ve created a large kitchen garden on one side of the house, are installing a small solar farm on another, and have planted fruit trees all around. We already have solar-powered internet.

We’re planning a chicken yard and can buy fish, when we want it, from the local fishermen who pass by our front gate every morning. We’re raising horses (our three mares have had four fouls) and building furniture, doors, windows, and decorative moldings in our woodshop.

As in Ireland years ago, we didn’t set out to create a self-sufficient homestead for ourselves and our children at Los Islotes, but, as we’ve watched world events play out over the past few years, we’ve recognized the sense in the idea.

Today we’re very glad our plan at Los Islotes has evolved as it has.

We’ve also bought a tiny house at a development in Belize where the developer, a friend, is managing shared gardens and orchards. The whole community is off-grid and completely self-sufficient. No, our entire family wouldn’t be comfortable living together in a tiny house indefinitely, but it’s an option if ever we need it.

In addition to the self-sufficient lifestyles we’re creating for ourselves at Los Islotes and Carmelita, we’re now also thinking again about a farm in Ireland.

The transportation limitations during the coronavirus pandemic have taught us a new important lesson. We’ve seen how one safe-haven option may not be enough in a time of crisis. We couldn’t get to Panama from Paris before the pandemic lockdowns were put into place, and Panama is still closed to international travel.

However, we could have gone from Paris to Ireland. Indeed, we’re thinking that’s where we’ll be headed after our trip to the United States later this month.

You don’t need hundreds of acres to be self-sufficient. With hydroponic technology today, you could grow a tremendous amount of produce in a few hundred meters of space. You’d need a few acres to raise some animals and plant a small orchard.

Whether you see farmland as a straight investment opportunity or a backup plan in case of a global crisis, I believe having a piece of land, whether it’s within a communal setting like Carmelita or your own acres you work yourself, as one of the most important flags to plant offshore right now.

Stay diversified,

Lief Simon signature

Lief Simon

Editor, Offshore Living Letter

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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.

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Best For:

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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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