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    • Chitré, Panama
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    Affordable

    • Valencia, Spain
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    • Las Terrenas, The DR
    • Pisa, Italy
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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

    • 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
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Home Testimonials

Why I Left America

by Kathleen Peddicord
Mar 02, 2025
in Testimonials
0 0
church steeple above colorful irish village of waterford ireland

church steeple above colorful irish village of waterford ireland Stock Photo | Adobe Stock

I stood on the cracked sidewalk staring at the door plaque. Yes, this was 824 East Baltimore Street. Maybe my father was right to be concerned. I’d grown up in this city. I knew this block of East Baltimore Street.

What kind of publishing company would be based here?

I mustered my courage and went inside for my meeting with Bill Bonner. The interview consisted of one question.

“What do you think of the Oxford comma?” Mr. Bonner wanted to know. “Yea or nay?”

“Yes,” I said. “Always. Apples, oranges, and pears isn’t the same as apples, oranges and pears.”

“Agreed,” Bill said. “When can you start?”

It took longer than it should have for me to cop on to the answer to my question about what sort of operation I was hooking up with. Turned out, Agora was a direct mail house, “filling up dumpsters across America,” as Bill put it. I’d had no idea.

To my relief, junk mail wasn’t the point. Here in the heart of the Baltimore ghetto I was welcomed by an intriguing collection of oddballs.

The chief financial officer dressed year-round in white T-shirts and itty-bitty white shorts to show off his forever tan. The chief financial editor’s office was stacked floor to ceiling with newspapers from around the world that he never threw out. In this pre-Internet world, he relied on them for research. How he ever found what he was looking for was a mystery.

No matter how early I arrived to work, Bill, Fred, and Robert were already hard at it. I so wanted to be part of their world but was just smart enough to recognize that I was nowhere near smart enough.

My job was to edit copy that I mostly didn’t understand. “Oil & War”? “Paris Confidential”? What business did this 21-year-old girl who’d traveled outside the United States but once and only to Bermuda for Spring Break have editing books with titles like those?

But Bill gave me the chance that first year I worked for him to take on those projects and others as unlikely. In the process, he opened my mind to a world that was much bigger than the one I’d known.

Then, for two-and-a-half decades to follow, he carried on presenting chance after chance.

Two years after I joined the crew, the editor of Agora’s International Living newsletter quit. Bruce wanted to write fiction. The day he resigned, he walked straight from Bill’s office into mine.

“Go on,” he told me. “Go in there now and tell Bill you want to be the new editor of International Living before he has time to consider anyone else.”

Again, I had to muster my courage, but I shouldn’t have worried. When I told Bill that I thought I could fill the International Living editor role and would appreciate the chance to try, he smiled, stood up from his chair, and reached across his desk to shake my hand. “Congratulations,” he said, “and thank you. You’ve saved me.”

A year after that Bill suggested I try writing a promo package. I didn’t know what that meant but was too excited at having been presented the opportunity to question it. Bill gave me samples of what he called “current control packages.”

“These are magalogs,” he said. “This format is working well for our other products. We should try one for International Living.”

I wrote a magalog for IL that not only mailed but became a brief control. Based on that track record, Bill offered me another chance.

Agora was destined for billion-dollar glory, but the early years were lean. Bill sometimes took copywriting side gigs. He invited me to collaborate on one. Our “Trade Secrets” package for Boardroom earned me $1,000. I remember the day Bill handed me my check. It bought me a trip to Uruguay.

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Bill began inviting me to marketing meetings and copying me on financial statements. I transitioned from editor to publisher for International Living… then Bill asked if I’d be up for launching a new division.

Not everyone across the organization was on board with the idea. Some had trouble taking this young sometimes ponytailed girl seriously. But Bill had faith. He, Mark Ford, and I worked together to start Agora Health.

My early-in seat at the Agora table set me on a career path I’d never imagined but came to cherish. It connected me with my tribe. I found I liked these free-thinking contrarian misfits. And it expanded my horizons big time.

I realized from day one at Agora that I had a lot of catching up to do. These folks I was now privileged to be spending my days with had been everywhere and seen everything.

One year in, Bill agreed to allow me an extended vacation. A friend and I bought discounted tickets on IcelandAir and a couple of Eurail passes then spent three weeks carrying backpacks across Europe. My appetite was whetted. As soon as I returned to Baltimore, I planned my next trip.

Bill supported my wanderlust. He invited me to join for business trips to London, Paris, and Bonn. In my first five years at Agora, I visited 12 countries.

I was invited to participate as a partner in the purchase of a finca on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua called Rancho Santana then as a partner in the International Living business and then came an even bigger chance.

How would I like to move to Ireland, Bill wondered one day.

Agora had been on a mission of global expansion for a decade. Now Bill wanted to establish a base in the Auld Sod whence the Bonners hailed.

That suggestion led to a tour of Ireland. On that tour I met a guy named Lief Simon, also planning a new life on the Emerald Isle. He and I married, moved to Waterford, and launched Agora Ireland.

The Agora Ireland team at 5 Catherine Street, Waterford.
The Agora Ireland team at 5 Catherine Street, Waterford.

It wasn’t always easy going, starting a business from nothing while also starting a family in a new country with zero support on the ground. Two years of Irish labor law, Irish bankers, Irish staff, Irish landlords, and Irish weather later, I came close to throwing in the towel.

“Just hold on,” Bill said when I called to tell him I was thinking I’d like to return to Baltimore. “I’ll come visit. We’ll talk things through.”

Bill flew to Ireland and spent two days in the office in Waterford meeting with me and the team. When it was time for him to go, I walked him out.

We stood together on the front stoop of 5 Catherine Street, in front of the Georgian front door I’d painted red. Bill looked left toward the Peoples Park then right at the corner shop where we stopped every afternoon for tea and blaas.

“If you want to move back to Baltimore, that’s fine, of course,” he said. “You just say the word. But you’ve planted a seed here. It’d be a shame to walk away now.”

With Bill’s support, I stuck it out. Several years later he supported me again in a move to Paris. Four years after that Bill gave me the greatest chance of my life.

It was time for me to see what I could accomplish on my own. Bill and I met for une coupe at La Fregate, the café on the corner of rue du Bac and the river with a view of the Louvre where Bill and I had been meeting for years. It was autumn, typically grey and chilly, but we sat outside beneath the heater. We finished our champagne and stood to leave.

“This isn’t good-bye, of course,” Bill said as he kissed me on each cheek. “Only au revoir. You know where to find me.”

I nodded and turned and headed down the quay. That first step away from Bill and the world of Agora was one of the scariest of my life. Lucky for me, they’d raised me strong.

Until next time,

Kathleen Peddicord signature

Kathleen Peddicord
Founding Publisher, Overseas Opportunity Letter

Tags: 'Ireland'Pariswork abroad
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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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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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Lahardan Books

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