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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

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    • Raising A Family Abroad
    • Foreign Residency & Citizenship
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    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

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    • Explore Our Events Site

    Live and Invest In Spain Conference

    Offshore Wealth Summit

    Greece Workshop

    VALENCIA, SPAIN

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    PANAMA CITY, PANAMA

    Oct. 15-17, 2025

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    overseas living letter offers affordable retirement guidance
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Home Retirement/Living

Moving Overseas Before Retirement

Best Family Holiday Ever

by Kathleen Peddicord
Feb 19, 2023
in Retirement/Living
0 0
Waterford in the Republic of Ireland

Adobe Stock/chrisdorney

I had packaged the weeklong tour of Ireland, marketed it to readers of International Living, the travel magazine I was publishing at the time, and then decided to tag along for the trip with my parents and my 8-year-old daughter.

It was a chance for a family vacation that doubled as a preliminary scouting expedition.

My first travel adventures with best friends from high school and college had planted the seed, which, thanks to the whole world perspective of Agora, the publishing company where I was working, was then nurtured by dozens of business trips to London, Paris, Hong Kong, and beyond in the dozen-plus years to follow.

By the time of this Ireland discovery tour, I had a clear personal agenda: I wanted to live in Europe.

As I was growing up, so was Agora. By my mid-30s, I was a vice president for the group, managing two divisions, and Agora was pushing ahead with its aggressive plan for globalization, with offices in London and Hong Kong and an interest in establishing a presence in the EU.

Coincidentally, this was the age of the Celtic Tiger, and Ireland was working hard to attract further foreign investment. Its Industrial Development Agency (IDA) was offering a corporate tax rate of only 12%, grants for each Irish national employed, and other incentives to foreign companies that’d agree to establish offices in certain Irish cities. This program got Agora’s attention, and a plan emerged. Agora’s EU base would be in Ireland, and I’d move there to man it.

We had a dinner to discuss the plan formally. In an Agora conference room decorated with Irish flags, we dined on catered shepherd’s pie and toasted with Irish whiskey. I was young, naïve, and enthusiastic enough not to question… well, anything.

It’s cliché, I realize, but it’s only in the hindsight of the intervening near 25 years that I can say: Boy, did I not know what I did not know. And I’m thankful for that. I’d say that what you need more than anything when you embark on an adventure of this sort is naïve enthusiasm.

Stripped bare, here was the idea: I’d leave my hometown (the city where I’d been born and had lived my entire life until this point), my family, my friends, Kaitlin’s school, and the stable position with loads of upside I’d achieved within the publishing company where I’d been working so hard for so long.

Step 2, I’d take off with my young daughter to build a whole new life in a whole new place where I knew no one and had no existing infrastructure of support. For some reason, this seemed a reasonable plan of action to me. Perhaps because I was blissfully (some might say foolishly) unaware of what I was signing on for.

My first challenge was to decide where this new Agora EU office might be based.

The Irish IDA had given us three options—Sligo, Galway, or Waterford, three places whose local economies they were particularly interested in jump-starting. Thus the need for the scouting expedition. I’d been to Ireland before, but only on holiday and not to any of those cities.

The first morning of the Discovery Tour I’d organized, I sat at the head of a table in the meeting rooms of the Jury’s Hotel in Dublin with the 25 tour-goers, including my parents and my daughter, who I’d be traveling with for the coming seven days.

We regrouped on the itinerary: Dublin to Wexford to Waterford, then one or two nights each in Cork, Sligo, Belfast, and, finally, back to Dublin. As plans for the week were confirmed, I mentioned to the gentleman sitting to my right that I’d had trouble accessing my e-mail from the hotel business center earlier that morning.

“I don’t want to take off without checking in with the office in Baltimore,” I explained, “but I can’t figure out how to access my account.”

“You should ask that fellow down at the end of the table to help you,” my new friend offered. “His name is Lief Simon. I think he knows about computers.”

Lief Simon, I learned over the coming few days, a longtime reader of the travel magazine I was publishing, was in Ireland with an agenda something like my own. He, too, was on the tour not as a tourist but a scout. Lief, divorced from his wife of five years just two months earlier, wanted to make another big change in his life. He wanted to move from Chicago, Illinois, where he’d been living and working while married, to somewhere in Ireland.

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He also wanted to make the move from being an employee to building something of his own. Lief had two ideas: He thought he might either buy a pub and try out life as an Irish publican… or invest in an Irish country estate with the intention of converting it to a center for corporate retreats.

In Sligo, one typically overcast misty Irish summer day, we toured several properties for sale, including a 150-year-old house with barns and other outbuildings, on a half-dozen acres, falling to ruin but full of potential. In the hotel bar that night, after dinner, I sat with my mom, dad, and daughter, revisiting the day’s discoveries.

“Some of the others and I are going to meet in the room across the way to talk about that big old farmhouse we viewed today,” Lief mentioned as he passed by, leaning in to our small circle so I could hear him, “if you’d like to join us. Maybe you could give me your opinion. Do you think that’d work for my corporate retreat idea?”

The final night of the tour, back in Dublin, Lief, again in passing, mentioned that he and the others were taking taxis across town to a dance club. Would I like to come along?

We danced until closing time, made our way back to the hotel, shared a quick hug at the elevators, and wished each other well.

I returned to Baltimore to continue formulating a plan.

Now that I’d seen more of the country, I had some opinions. Sligo, on Ireland’s wild and windy northwestern coast, has a Wuthering Heights kind of appeal but didn’t seem like a place to try to build a business or raise a daughter. I focused my research on Galway and Waterford.

Then one afternoon the phone rang in my office.

“One of the guys from your trip to Ireland last month called to ask for your number.”

It was Patti, one of the girls who’d helped to organize the tour with me. “Which guy?” I asked.

“His name is Lief Simon. He called this morning to say he wanted to speak with you. I told him I’d have to check first.”

“Lief Simon?”

“The one we went dancing with on the final night in Dublin,” Patti explained.

“Ah… OK… yes, go ahead and give him my number.”

Two hours later, when I returned from a meeting, I had a voice mail message:

“Hi. This is Lief Simon. We met in Ireland a couple of weeks ago. I’d like to take you to dinner. Give me a call…”

Followed by four phone numbers—apartment, work, cell, and weekend house. I called the work number.

“I was hoping we could get together,” Lief explained.

“Get together? You’re in Chicago, and I’m in Baltimore.”

“I’ll come to Baltimore next weekend if you’ll have dinner with me.”

Lief came to Baltimore, and we had dinner. Two weeks later, I traveled to Chicago, and we had dinner. Two weeks after that, Lief was back in Baltimore.

He and I both needed to make return trips to Ireland, Lief to continue his property search, me to decide in which city I’d base the new office, Waterford or Galway.

“Let’s go back together,” Lief suggested.

And we did.

Our final night in Dublin this trip we stayed at a small bed and breakfast called the Charleston House just outside the city. The morning we were to fly back to the States, Lief made another suggestion.

“Maybe we should move to Ireland together,” he offered shyly. “I mean, what if we got married?”

And that became the start of our plan…

Sincerely,
Kathleen Peddicord signature
Kathleen Peddicord
Founding Publisher, Overseas Opportunity Letter

Tags: 'Ireland''Waterford'Live abroadMove abroadretire abroadRetire In 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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