• About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms
  • Unsubscribe
No Result
View All Result
Live and Invest Overseas
FREE REPORT
BEST PLACES TO RETIRE
*No spam: We will NEVER give your email address to anyone else.
  • HOME
  • COUNTRIES
    • Top Destinations
      • Portugal
      • Panama
      • Belize
      • France
      • Colombia
      • Dominican Republic
      • Thailand
      • Mexico
      • Spain
      • Argentina
    • Browse All Countries
    • Best For
      • Retire Overseas Index
      • Health Care
      • Cost of Living
      • Investing in Real Estate
      • Editor’s Picks For Retirement
      • Establishing Residency
      • Starting an Online Business
      • Single Women
      • Playing Golf
  • BUDGETS
    • Super Cheap ($)
      • Cuenca, Ecuador
      • Chiang Mai, Thailand
      • The Philippines
      • Las Tablas, Panama
      • Granada, Nicaragua
    • Cheap ($$)
      • Algarve, Portugal
      • Medellin, Colombia
      • Boquete, Panama
      • Carcassone, France
      • Buenos Aires, Argentina
    • Affordable ($$$)
      • Abruzzo, Italy
      • Barcelona, Spain
      • Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic
      • Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
      • Costa de Oro, Uruguay
    • Luxury On A Budget ($$$$)
      • Ambergris Caye, Belize
      • Paris, France
      • Panama City Beach Area
  • Real Estate
  • ARCHIVES
    • Living & Retiring Overseas
    • Raising A Family Abroad
    • Foreign Residency & Citizenship
    • Offshore Diversification
  • Making Money
    • International Real Estate
    • Banking
    • Employment
    • Investing
  • CONFERENCES
  • BOOKSTORE
Live and Invest Overseas
  • HOME
  • COUNTRIES
    • Top Destinations
      • Portugal
      • Panama
      • Belize
      • France
      • Colombia
      • Dominican Republic
      • Thailand
      • Mexico
      • Spain
      • Argentina
    • Browse All Countries
    • Best For
      • Retire Overseas Index
      • Health Care
      • Cost of Living
      • Investing in Real Estate
      • Editor’s Picks For Retirement
      • Establishing Residency
      • Starting an Online Business
      • Single Women
      • Playing Golf
  • BUDGETS
    • Super Cheap ($)
      • Cuenca, Ecuador
      • Chiang Mai, Thailand
      • The Philippines
      • Las Tablas, Panama
      • Granada, Nicaragua
    • Cheap ($$)
      • Algarve, Portugal
      • Medellin, Colombia
      • Boquete, Panama
      • Carcassone, France
      • Buenos Aires, Argentina
    • Affordable ($$$)
      • Abruzzo, Italy
      • Barcelona, Spain
      • Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic
      • Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
      • Costa de Oro, Uruguay
    • Luxury On A Budget ($$$$)
      • Ambergris Caye, Belize
      • Paris, France
      • Panama City Beach Area
  • Real Estate
  • ARCHIVES
    • Living & Retiring Overseas
    • Raising A Family Abroad
    • Foreign Residency & Citizenship
    • Offshore Diversification
  • Making Money
    • International Real Estate
    • Banking
    • Employment
    • Investing
  • CONFERENCES
  • BOOKSTORE
No Result
View All Result
Live and Invest Overseas
No Result
View All Result

#1 Strategy For Retiring On The Continent

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
Nov 02, 2008
in Retirement/Living
0
How To Retire Overseas
208
SHARES
3k
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

#1 Retirement Overseas Strategy

Somebody should tell the French. They don’t seem to realize that the world is ending.

All along the Boulevard St. Germain, where we walked last night, the cafés and the restaurants were full to overflowing. Not an empty table anywhere. The café-goers and diners chatted and laughed, enjoying their wine and the chilly autumn evening.

At 8 p.m. on a Saturday, shops and galleries remained open, and passers-by wandered in and out, for closer looks at the original artwork and the designer dresses. Not everyone was window-shopping.

We couldn’t bring ourselves to buy, though. Even with the currently stronger dollar, we felt guilty somehow at the thought right now of euro-indulgences. So we satisfied ourselves simply to be mingling among the well-dressed and seemingly well-heeled of central Paris.

Then we carried back a few groceries and prepared a quiet dinner at home and remembered that, in fact, some of the best experiences of this city cost not a centime.

Europe doesn’t seem like a bargain destination these days, but one of your fellow readers, who I met standing in the check-in line in Tocumen airport last week, told me two secrets he’s discovered for organizing what amounts to an extended sojourn on the Continent…on a very reasonable budget:

“My wife and I are headed to Italy for a month…or maybe three,” he explained. “We’re not sure yet, but we may stay on through Christmas and the New Year. We got this great deal on a car. When we began research for the trip, we couldn’t believe the rates being quoted for car rentals in Italy. So we decided to look into leasing a car instead of renting one. We found this great program with Peugeot. You can lease a brand-new French car, in France, tax-free. You have to lease for at least 17 days, and the longer you keep the car, the lower the rates.

“It’s technically a French lease, but you can take delivery of the car many places throughout Europe, including Italy. For us, it’s working out to a fraction the cost of the rentals we looked at. We have the option to extend, and, again, the longer we extend, the better the rates.”

I googled the program and found details here on this EuropeShoppe website.

Your fellow reader went on the other morning at Tocumen to tell me more about his bargain Euro-travel plans:

“Hotels in Europe are hurting right now. There’s lots of availability. A friend mentioned this to us and gave us the idea to go online at Priceline to try to bid for hotel nights in top hotels.

“We wanted to stay three nights in Rome and were planning to stay in a mid-level hotel. Then we went to Priceline, found a really impressive four-star hotel a block from the Vatican, and put in a bid of US$100 a night. And we got the rooms!

“We never could afford this hotel at normal rates, but, this way, we get to treat ourselves.

Here’s one purchase in this part of the world that makes more sense right now than ever. I mentioned it to you last week: the French leaseback. Buy an apartment in France through this program, and you’re not only investing in your eventual retirement pied-a-terre, but you’re also guaranteeing yourself a reliable annual yield. The amount of the yield depends on the leaseback property you buy. Typical yields today are in the range of 3% to 4%. And, right now, a yield of even 3% to 4%, if you can count on it, sounds pretty appealing to me.

Furthermore, you can finance your leaseback buy. Plus, when you buy, the value-added tax (VAT) is rebated, meaning you save 19.6% off the list price. This is a long-term play, as you must commit to lease your property back to the rental management group for nine years. However, in the current climate, locking in nine years of guaranteed yields doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, does it? And, again, at the end of the nine years, you walk away with your own retirement home in France.

There are even leasebacks in Paris…and, looking out my window at the Paris street scene below this morning, I can’t imagine a nicer place to retire.

Plus, frankly, you’ve got to do something with your money, right?

Right now, real property is the thing. Property with intrinsic value (like beachfront) that will hold up over the long term and ride out market ups and downs…or a place where you’d like to spend time (like a little apartment here in Paris).

I told you this week about the two best beachfront plays I know of right now, one for the investor, the second for the would-be retiree dreaming of retirement by the sea:

First, on the west coast of Panama’s Azuero Peninsula, which Lief Simon, my husband, as well as the most seasoned global real estate investor I know, has pinpointed as the Next Big Thing…the locale of the next boom in this country that has been enjoying a series of booms over the past decade. Panama has legs to carry it through the current world financial meltdowns. And its Pacific coast hides some of the most dramatically beautiful beachfront anywhere. This is a straight-up investment play with the potential for a big upside.

Kathleen Peddicord

P.S. How do you get started with this living and investing overseas stuff? If you’re just beginning to consider these ideas and opportunities, here’s a game plan:

Step #1: Get out a piece of paper and a pen and make a list of everything that’s important to you. Write down your preferences and your priorities. Consider all aspects of your life, big and small.

Step #2: Make another list, a shorter one, of the countries that, right now, might support your agenda. If you could live or retire anywhere, where should you go? Here are the 20 places to consider today.

Step #3 in this How To Find Your Own Personal Retirement Haven Overseas process? Get on a plane. Once you’ve identified a handful of countries that might qualify, you’ve got to go to see them for yourself. A place can make great sense on paper but just not feel right. You can’t spreadsheet your way to a new life in paradise. Start with a spreadsheet, but make your final determination with your gut.

 

Comments

Tags: retire overseas
Share83Tweet52
Previous Post

Escape Plan

Next Post

The Trouble With Tropical Paradises

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.

Her newest book, "How to Retire Overseas: Everything You Need to Know to Live Well (for Less) Abroad," published by Penguin Random House, is the culmination of decades of personal experience living and investing around the world.

Related Posts

Beautiful Wooden pier view in Belize.
Belize

Living A Whole New Life In Belize

by Kat Kalashian
January 14, 2021
0

It’s gray, dark, and rainy here in Paris… and it’s unlikely to change much over the next couple of months....

Read more
Perfect tropical paradise beach with palm trees and hammock.

Most Frequently Asked (And Not So Crazy) Questions About Retiring Overseas

January 10, 2021
Family watching sunrise on beach.

Moving Overseas Will Affect Your Family But It Can Be For The Better

January 5, 2021
Senior couple walking on the beach.

The 2 Biggest Concerns Retirees Have Before Living Overseas

January 4, 2021
Couple Enjoying Beautiful Sunset Walk on the Beach.

9 Critical Issues To Consider Before Deciding To Live Overseas

January 1, 2021
Elderly couple sitting next to other looking at the sea at sunset.

The Real Reason To Retire Overseas Is Purpose

December 30, 2020
Tavira, Algarve, Portugal.

The Top Options For Retiring Overseas In 2021 Revealed

December 27, 2020
Next Post
View of the shoreline in Goa, India

The Trouble With Tropical Paradises

A world full of fun, adventure, and profit awaits! 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 Style Overseas Today.

Start Your New Life Today, Overseas

how to retire overseas

LIOS Resources


  • New To LIOS
  • Ask An Expert
  • Media Center
  • Contact Us
  • FAQs

Quick Links


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

Sign up for our free daily e-letter, Overseas Opportunity Letter, and get your FREE report: The 10 Best Places To Retire Overseas In 2021

  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms
  • Unsubscribe

© 2008-2021 - Live and Invest Overseas - All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Countries
  • Budgets
  • Archives
  • News
  • Events
  • Bookstore
  • Newsletters
  • About Us
  • Members Area
  • Contact Us

© 2008-2021 - Live and Invest Overseas - All Rights Reserved.

WANT TO RETIRE OVERSEAS?

Sign up for our free daily e-letter, Overseas Opportunity Letter, and we’ll immediately send you a free report on the 10 BEST PLACES TO RETIRE in style overseas. Each day you’ll learn about the best opportunities for international living, retiring overseas, offshore diversification and asset protection, and investing in real estate around the world.

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.