Why To Move, Retire, Or Invest Overseas
We welcome a great number of new readers this week, so I thought it might be a good idea to regroup.
What are we doing here, together, each day, you and I? What’s the point?
We’re on a journey. I don’t know where we’re headed, ultimately, but I’m certainly enjoying the trip.
And I believe you will, too.
Specifically, we’re in search of the world’s best opportunities for living, retiring, and investing…we’re hot on the trail of far-flung chances for fun and for profit…and for a better life.
What if you could go anywhere, do anything, spend your time and your money any way you wanted?
My question is not rhetorical, for, indeed, you could go anywhere, you could do anything, and you could spend your days and invest your assets however strikes your fancy.
All you have to do is to open your mind to the possibilities.
On the one hand, this living and investing overseas thing is terrifying. The changes and risks and investments and speculations I introduce you to in these dispatches can seem intimidating, especially at first. The easy thing would be to ignore them…to dismiss them…to keep living the way you’ve been living.
What a thing to create a whole new life for yourself in a foreign place.
What a frightening thing.
And what an exhilarating adventure.
In the two-dozen years I’ve been covering this beat, I’ve spoken with thousands and thousands of people just like you who are, in fact, already living and investing overseas.
And I’ve never met one who regretted the experience.
Sure, sometimes, things don’t work out as you expect. Markets zig when you’re positioned for them to zag. Currencies go up…when you’re hoping they’ll move down. Real estate values increase…but they also fall…sometimes quick and sometimes far.
Sometimes, Paradise comes with humidity, bugs, broken-down taxis, and zero zoning…
You can be sure…and then you can change your mind. A place can seem perfect…and then you realize that no place is perfect.
What’s the worst thing that could happen, though, if you take the leap and start along your way down this live and invest overseas path? Maybe you end up someplace you don’t want to be?
So you move on…you make another change. Maybe you go back home…
Here’s my prediction, though: When you embrace these ideas and begin to act on these opportunities…you’ll never look back. It’ll be the start of a phase of your life that you’ll treasure and that will lead you to places and experiences you could never imagine as you read this today.
Lief and I have been living outside the States for a decade. We met in Ireland 10 years ago last spring, where we both were scouting for new business ventures. I was intending a move to the Emerald Isle from Baltimore, Maryland, with the International Living business and my 9-year-old daughter. Lief, living in Chicago, was thinking of ditching his cushy career-path job Stateside and pursuing adventures abroad…starting with a real estate development project in Ireland’s Sunny Southeast.
We were engaged to be married two months after we met…married two months after that…and living in Waterford, Ireland, by the fall. Ireland led to Paris led, now, to Panama…
Along the way, we have had a child (Jackson, a dual citizen, born in Ireland)…launched businesses in seven countries…renovated apartments…and houses…bought and sold real estate in a dozen-and-a-half markets…made good deals…and some not-so-good ones…educated our children on two continents…shipped container-loads of furniture back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean…organized residency visas and work permits…opened bank accounts…paid taxes…hired staff…vetted attorneys and tax advisors and property developers and real estate brokers…
Would we go back home?
We are home. Here in Panama, Lief, Jackson, and I are making a home. (Kaitlin is off at college in the States now, or she’d be at home in Panama with us, too.)
We were home in Paris. Indeed, these days, I’m missing our life in that city. This is my favorite time of year in Paris…the end of summer…the return to school…and I’m a bit sad that we’re not there to enjoy it.
Sometimes I miss our life in Ireland, too. I miss our big old Georgian country home and watching Kaitlin ride her horse in the fields that surrounded it…
And, yes, sometimes, I miss the States. My family, of course…I miss them…and my hometown friends.
Mostly, though, I recognize that we haven’t finished our journey. Panama isn’t a terminus. Panama is a stop we’re embracing and enjoying and that will lead us…who knows where…I couldn’t say right now…
Opening your mind and your heart to these living, retiring, and investing abroad ideas comes with practical, quantifiable benefits:
Move abroad and cut your cost of living to as little as $660 per month.
Retire overseas and never worry again that you might outlive your retirement nest egg.
Shift your perspective and realize that, despite what the talking heads are telling you, there’s a world beyond the doom and gloom…and things are not, in fact, tough all over. In some places, in fact…from Ecuador to Uruguay…from Argentina to Nicaragua, to name only a few that come immediately to mind…the living is good, safe, healthy, and cheap.
The U.S. real estate market is in turmoil…but other real estate markets are growing…appreciating…booming…throwing off nice yields… I’ll introduce you to them in real time.
Living overseas you can live cheaper…and investing overseas you can profit more.
But the real benefits of these endeavors are less tangible.
Lief and I…and our children…carry Ireland with us now…and Paris…and we’ll carry Panama with us, too, when we move on. With us for the rest of our lives…the experiences and the memories of this journey and these adventures…
Back home in Ireland…and in Paris…and, yes, in the States…is our “family.” In each of the places where we’ve spent time…where we’ve been at home…we have made friends that have become a permanent part of our lives. We carry them with us everywhere we go.
And we look forward now to making a home and to expanding our family during this next stage of our journey here in Panama.
Kathleen Peddicord
Continue Reading: Buying Land In Nova Scotia or Houses Prices In Paraguay
