We’re bringing you an inside scoop on how to move to another country, and what it’s like to own businesses and property in other countries. We interviewed Kathleen Piddicord and Leif Simon of Live and Invest Overseas in a jam packed hour of travel and expat life inspiration. 

The pair met on a guided tour in Ireland and have since been doing business overseas for over 30 years, including owning multiple overseas properties and operating their website and newsletter dedicated to helping others live and/or invest overseas.

If you’ve ever been curious about buying a vacation home for yourself or as a business venture and have been looking for information on how to invest overseas, this is the episode for you! They answer the questions that seem like roadblocks and inspire you with their stories of living in Panama, France, Belize, and more. 

They really broke down how to buy a house in another country from how to find a good property, rate of return to look for, how to find an overseas realty attorney, and gave recommendations on the best places to buy investment properties overseas.

Connect with Kathleen and Leif at Live and Invest Overseas and subscribe to their daily newsletter for more resources on how to make your dream life overseas a reality.

If you’re really interested in expat life, also check out our episode with Lindsay W on her life as an American living in Spain with her Spanish husband and daughter. It’s another good one to inspire you to take the plunge into the exciting life of an expat.

How to Move to Another Country – Episode Transcript

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1 (1m 8s):
Welcome to the Travel Squad Podcast.

2 (1m 11s):
We adventure the world together. One passport stamp at a time

0 (1m 14s):
We’re here to share travel news tips and our own adventures with you.

1 (1m 18s):
We traveled Tuesday. We share stories on a variety of topics, including our hometown, San Diego, high teens,

2 (1m 24s):
Weekenders national parks and national getaway,

0 (1m 27s):
And inspiring you to go on your own adventures, even if it starts with your own backyard. I’m Jamal,

2 (1m 33s):
Brittany, and I’m Kim

0 (1m 34s):
And where the Travel

3 (1m 35s):
Squad

2 (1m 35s):
Podcast. So grab your ticket and your passport,

0 (1m 38s):
And don’t forget your travel insurance and

1 (1m 40s):
Prepare for takeoff.

2 (1m 53s):
Hello. Hello. Welcome to this week’s episode of the Travel Squad Podcast. We have very special guests joining us on this week’s episode, Kathleen Petty chord and Leif Simon founders of living invest overseas

4 (2m 10s):
Live and Invest Overseas is the world’s savviest most experienced and most trusted sources of information on a multitude of X-Pack topics, such as living, retiring investing, and even starting a business overseas

5 (2m 24s):
Live in invests website newsletters and international conferences offer an invaluable wealth of knowledge on all the ins and outs of banking, real estate visas, taxation, how to go about getting permanent residency, you name it, whatever questions or information you want and need to know on how to make that ex-pat life possible. Living in best is the authority on the matter.

2 (2m 50s):
This was such a great conversation. It really got all three of us fired up about the possibilities of actually living overseas, whether that’s full time when we retire or part-time and creating our life in that way. I think the three of us really gravitated towards everything they shared around actually buying investment properties overseas. No, we’ve talked about it before, but they really answered some of the questions that were roadblocks for us on how do you even do it? Like, just imagine if we actually did purchase like a condo in Rosarito that we talked about where we can rent it out, fully souped up with everything people need for their trip. And our squaddies can actually book that trip.

2 (3m 30s):
Maybe even have a guest appearance from us on the trip. I think it’d be amazing.

4 (3m 34s):
That would be amazing. I really enjoyed this conversation with Kathleen and Leif because we talked with them about how they got started in their careers and how it evolved into their ex-pat lifestyle. And they shared with us some of the best places to start investing or looking into living abroad and just some really practical advice on how to get started.

5 (3m 52s):
And with that, let’s welcome Kathleen, and leave to the Travel Squad Podcast.

2 (4m 1s):
Kathy and leaf. You are both a wealth of knowledge and inspiration in the ex-pat life, and we’re going to get into all of that. But before we dive in, I want to go way back and here, how did you first get into travel?

7 (4m 15s):
I didn’t take my first trip out of the United States until I was 18. So for my spring break that year as a graduation gift, my parents gave me a trip to Bermuda. That was my first trip out of the country. And I wasn’t that excited about the Caribbean to tell you the truth. But since I was a little girl, I wanted to go to Europe. I like castles and Kings and the history and romance of the whole world. That just idea gets me very excited. And so finally, when I graduated college, went to work for a publishing company. I took my first vacation with my college roommate and we were able to take a month off and we bought your L passes and we traveled to 15 countries in that month.

7 (4m 58s):
So it was a crazy it’s that cliche, you know, 15 countries in 14 days kind of trip by train, train, travel through Europe is great. And then the company where I went to work immediately out of college, turned out to have a big interest that I didn’t even realize before I took the job in travel. And especially in European travel and the magazine that I a couple of years later ended up editing for them. And then I was publisher of that magazine a few years later, international living, which is still around for that role. I was able to travel to two or three new countries a month for a couple of years as editor and then publisher. So that is what really opened up to me.

7 (5m 41s):
The idea of travel, especially beyond the countries, I had always dreamt of like France, for example, I’d always wanted to spend time in Paris, but now I was going all over the world, central America, south America, throughout Europe, eventually to Asia. So that was what really gave me the travel bug.

8 (5m 59s):
For me. It’s simple. I did the 30 day nine country tour when I was 17. I found a brochure and the Dillard’s travel agency one Christmas and saved up my money to take a trip that summer and then went from there. My interest in international in general goes back to even my schooling, which I got an international MBA and wanted to work in live overseas. So it’s just always been in both of us. I think

5 (6m 21s):
For you, Kathy, was it just happenstance that the magazine that you’re editing for happened to be a travel publication or was that something after your trip to Europe that you’ve said, if I’m going to do this type of profession, I want to do it in the travel field.

7 (6m 35s):
I would love to say that it was all strategic and well thought out and planned, but in fact it was completely accidental. The whole, the whole story is completely accidental. My whole life is completely accidental. I took this job because I all I knew clearly I wanted throughout my college career. And then when I graduated was I wanted to be a writer was very clear on that, but I was in Baltimore, Maryland. There’s not a big publishing industry in Baltimore, Maryland. It’s, you know, there are a few tiny little operations. And th this company I worked, went to work for a Gora, which is also still there. When I was hired, I was the 12th person. So this was not a big publishing house. This was a tiny little operation, but they needed an entry level editor.

7 (7m 17s):
I was engaged to someone not to leave. It was my first husband. I was engaged to someone and he wasn’t leaving Baltimore. So I wasn’t leaving Baltimore. So I kind of defaulted into taking this entry-level editor job at a Gora because the only thing I was clear almost I wanted to be a writer. I want it to be in publishing. After I took the job, I found out that one of their divisions was focused on travel. I didn’t even realize that when I took the job. And so in the beginning, I was a very low level editor for all of their publications. They had about 10 publications at the time, and one of them was international living, which I only came to know after I took the job.

7 (7m 57s):
And the, and that opened up everything for me,

5 (7m 59s):
Just worked out perfect for you

7 (8m 1s):
Now, amazingly. Well, I am, I’m lucky and they say it’s better to be lucky than smart. And that has worked out for me.

4 (8m 8s):
And so did you and Leif end up meeting traveling, or did you guys meet in where you were living and working?

8 (8m 14s):
So as I was actually an international living subscriber and Kathy put together a tour to Ireland for business purposes, but had a bunch of subscribers come on that as well. And that’s where we met. I worked overseas already after grad school for about a year for a drilling company and the places where oil is, and they send you, it’s not really places human beings should be. So I left that job and came back to Chicago and then finally decided I wanted to go back overseas. So the trip to Ireland was my first foray into trying to figure out where to go. And we met in the end of June. And so the short version is we met at the end of June. We were engaged in September, married in November, moved to Ireland in December.

8 (8m 56s):
Neither one of us tends to waste too much time making decisions. So that all worked out. And in fact, just a quick pitch, cause Kathy won’t say it, but she just released a memoir book of our seven years in Ireland. That’s available on it.

7 (9m 11s):
Well, it tells exactly this story. This is what we’re saying right now is the beginning of the at-home in Ireland book relief. And I meet on the tour in Ireland and dating for two months, him in Chicago, me and Baltimore dating for two months, we’re engaged in September, married in November. We moved together with my eight year old daughter to Ireland in December and then are there for seven years. So we’ve renovated an old Georgian stone Irish country house. We start the publishing business. We have a son, I found out about three months after we were married, that I was pregnant. So two months after we had moved to Ireland, I was pregnant. And so we had our son and, and then we had a whole lot of misadventures, a whole lot of, you know, lost in translation because the Irish speak English, but not really.

7 (9m 60s):
And they never understood us and we don’t understand them. And they drove us crazy from a business perspective because they were all just let’s have a cuppa and have a chat. And oh, we don’t do today. We’ll do tomorrow. There’s a joke in Ireland among the Irish that they don’t have a word that expresses the sense of urgency as manana. And so, so we were, we weren’t prepared for that. We were both very ambitious business minded people. And suddenly we found ourselves in this very small town where nobody was too worried about business.

8 (10m 32s):
Yeah.

7 (10m 32s):
And so living there, and that’s why it’s fun to have written this book in the past couple of years, with the perspective we have today at the time the Irish drove us crazy today, I look back and realize that was really for me so far, I’ve got, whoever knows how much living left, but for me at this point, that was the sweetest time of my life looking back at it

8 (10m 53s):
Well, and at the time we would say, if you’re retired in Ireland is great. The Irish will stop in the middle of the street and chat with you. And so for retirees, it is a wonderful destination. And that fit into, you know, us learning that and talking about it with the writing that we do

5 (11m 7s):
Well. So it started off as the tour to Ireland. And clearly that’s where you guys met, fell in love. But what about Ireland made you guys decide? Well, now we’re actually living here because I feel like that’s a perfect segue. Cause we want to get into the meat and potatoes of really how you guys came to do what it is that you do now. So why was it that you guys decided Ireland and we’re living here now?

7 (11m 30s):
For me, it was so I was working for a Gora and I had been there 13, 14 years by this point. And I had, I was a partner in the company. I was the, I was a vice-president of a Gora. I was running the division. I was running two divisions, but one of them was the one that published international living the travel division, which by this time had become much bigger. So bill Bonner, who’s the owner of Gora my boss. He wanted to diversify a Gora into the EU and he wanted an EU base. So we were doing research into opportunities for where, where in the EU would make the most sense. And our attorney found this program that the Irish development agency was promoting at the time to try to attract foreign investment.

7 (12m 12s):
And so they were offering a very low, very appealing corporate tax rate and incentives for how many local Irish, you employed two companies who would come and set up operation under this Ida program. We qualified for that. That was why I was moving to Ireland. And that was why I put the tour together. Because one thing we always, we had done for years at international living was I ran tours. We would sell tours and conferences to our readers, and then I, or we had a couple of other people ran them. And so I thought, well, if I’m going to Ireland to open an office, I’ll get double duty out of this experience, this investment of time. And we’ll promote a tour to the route, to our readers.

7 (12m 51s):
That’s how leaves leaves signed up for the tour. We met on the first day of the tour, and you can read the book, but, but he was not very nice to me. And then

8 (13m 1s):
She says, I don’t remember that part.

7 (13m 2s):
It’s in writing. It’s published now it’s through. But then for leaf, it was similarly business, entrepreneurial minded.

8 (13m 10s):
I want it to be out of the states. And again, as Kathy said, supposedly they speak English in Ireland. We make fun of them in our Irish friends, laugh at it at this point because there’s lots of different words and miscommunications. And I’d read about Ireland through what Kathy had been writing anyway. And so I had a couple of ideas for business and thought writing an English speaking country is where I wanted to be. Cause I spent time overseas in a French speaking country, a Spanish speaking country, a Russian speaking country. And although I had Spanish in high school and that came back to me while I was in Argentina, I didn’t pick up so much French and Chad and I learned the Russian alpha because I had to for processing payroll in Kazakhstan, but English for me, it was going to make life easier.

7 (13m 53s):
And you’ve never, I’ve never heard you say that before. That’s interesting that the language was really,

8 (13m 56s):
That was part of it. Well, and the, and the idea of just business and the Celtic tiger and all that.

7 (14m 1s):
Yeah. It was the age of the Celtic tiger. So Ireland was attracting a lot of investment and a lot of foreign investor attention. So that’s not a typical story. Right? I was being moved by the company I worked for and Leif was moving to start a business. And we accidentally met at that moment. But then from Ireland, we moved to Paris. And that is again, not a typical story, but maybe more typical reasoning. I don’t know, maybe not at all. But we decided

8 (14m 28s):
To me,

7 (14m 29s):
Yeah, that our daughter who had been going to school in Ireland was 14. And in Ireland they do, what’s called a gap year. So all 14 year olds take off a year and they travel. They take a year for travel and go somewhere and study abroad. And Caitlin came and said, I’d like to do my gap year in Paris, always the dream of my life since I was five years old and aware enough to know there was a place called and my mother was reading me stories about it wanting to live in Paris. So I thought, well, this is interesting. So Kaitlyn and I went to Paris to see about enrolling her in a study away program or something. We couldn’t find any, anything suitable. So I, by the time we came back from that trip, I had the idea, well, why don’t we all go to Paris?

8 (15m 10s):
Th there’s no boarding school in Paris. And so where she would have stayed in a home guest house, whatever the right term would be, that we went and visited one and you know, apartments in Paris or small, the room she would have been in was like a twin bed was placed in the room and the door opened out. Then you just fall into the bed. And that was the room. So we’re like, no, she’s not going to

7 (15m 31s):
Be in

8 (15m 31s):
Place,

7 (15m 32s):
But that won’t be comfortable. So, so then we were moving to Paris as a family. Okay. And we did by this time leaf, I will just jump ahead. Leif was also working for a Gora. He had come to work for a Gora and he and I were running this international living division together, which we continued to do in Paris. Then fast forward some four years or so and leave decided he wanted to venture off and do something of his own. And he had identified a real estate investment project. He wanted to undertake in Panama on the Pacific coast of Panama. I decided the year later, I’d like to try doing my own thing as well. I had built a number of businesses within a Gora, but it’s not the same to build a business with all of that infrastructure behind you, all of that support, centralized services, blah, blah, blah, as just starting from nothing and seeing what you can build on your own.

7 (16m 22s):
And I wanted to do that. I wanted to see what I could do on my own. So I left a Gora left international living and started my own lit live and Invest Overseas, which is what we’re still running today about almost 15 years later. And we moved to Panama. So this could be a, maybe again, a more typical version of how this can go, but we knew that France was no place to be an entrepreneur to run a business because we had been running the Agoura business there

8 (16m 48s):
Because there’s no place to have an employee. The French labor laws will kill you. And we had, we had hired one office manager or secretary in Paris for the satellite office that we’d opened up there as part of the international living group. And you do as, I think it was a six month probationary contract in France and on six months and one day the girl’s attitude changed completely. She was great up to that point, but once she knew she was on a permanent contract, she turned into a nightmare employee

7 (17m 16s):
Because it’s impossible to fire anyone in France. So we don’t have to go far down that

8 (17m 20s):
Rabbit. That’s why we didn’t want to stay in France.

7 (17m 23s):
So then we looked at the world map and thought, well, where do we go? We were not retirees. And that’s a very different agenda. You’re going to look at the world very differently if you’re a retiree, but we were still working. We were trying to, we were now going to be building two businesses and we had still one child in school, elementary school aged child, our son Jackson. So we looked around and we had, at this point had decades of experience doing business all over the world between what leaf had done in Kazakhstan and Argentina, et cetera, and what I’d done through a Gora in France and through a gore, I had been involved in businesses in about a dozen countries by this time. So we had a good idea of where wasn’t good and why and what mattered.

7 (18m 7s):
So if we were shopping, we knew what to look at. And one thing was labor law. Another thing was available, labor pool cost of operating a business. And so that’s how we came to Panama. So while Ireland had been chosen for me and Leif made the choice himself, but for a straight up business reason. And then Paris was in fact chosen by our daughter. We chose Panama. And that was a very, an ideal choice for us at the time and has worked out very well. Limit investor overseas is doing well and it has grown and we’re very established in Panama now.

8 (18m 41s):
And so it worked from a business perspective because for taxes, Panama’s a jurisdictional taxation country. So we were able to set up the business and in a way that we pay minimal taxes in Panama, English, speaking staff in Panama city, there’s a lot of English speaking and there’s a lot of international, like big international companies like Adidas and Estee, Lauder, and caterpillar that have set up offices in Panama for similar reasons. And then logistically for us to travel and to do the research we needed to do for lifestyle in real estate and other countries, Panama is called the hub is the Americas for a reason. And it’s because Copa airlines, they fly to every major city in the Americas directly. So from Panama, it’s an easy hop for us or our staff to go somewhere and, and do research.

5 (19m 23s):
Well, I guess from your guys’s business backgrounds, you knew Panama would be a good place to start a business, but for the lay person who has no idea, but once to either like invest, move, or is an avid traveler and wants to open a business over there, tell us a little bit about your guys’s website and what it is that live and invest does to help people understand that. Because as a good example, you know, Brittany and I and Kim live here in San Diego, we’re right by the Mexican border. We talk all the time. Should we buy a property in Mexico? Like along the coast, this, that, so guide us through what it is that you guys do and what an everyday person can find and benefit from on your guys’ website.

7 (20m 5s):
Yeah, exactly. Everything we’re talking about and what you just described. Exactly. Someone who’s thinking. Hmm. I wonder if I should buy house a rental for example, in X country, because it has your attention for whatever reason, maybe because it’s, it’s nearby for you guys, right? Mexico is just right there and it would provide very easy diversification. Maybe the person’s agenda is budget. That’s where this that’s the starting point for this conversation often, especially for retirees while I’m now 60 years old, I don’t have what I thought I was going to have because of the stock market or whatever situation. My plan hasn’t worked out. Am I going to be able to afford my retirement? You know, people today live regularly into their eighties and beyond and live healthy lives for decades beyond what just a generation or two before us did.

7 (20m 53s):
That’s a lot of living, you know, beyond your income earning years. So do I have enough nest egg to carry me through in a comfortable, interesting lifestyle. And a lot of the time Americans, wherever they are look around, unfortunately and say, realize the answer is no, I really don’t. So then they start looking beyond us borders, but whatever the reason is, you know, it can be the weather. I’m tired of the snow. I want sun, I just want sun all year round. That’s another really common priority agenda. So that’s the starting point. That’s where people usually connect with us through the internet. Of course you go online today and you Google retire overseas, buy a house overseas, second home in the sun, any of those kinds of keywords. And you’ll find us, you’ll find thousands of other resources too, but you’ll find living invest overseas.

7 (21m 37s):
And what we do is to take you from that point through our free e-letter letters, we publish now eight free letters. One is daily, and that comes from me. One is twice a week that comes from leaf and is the daily one for me is lifestyle. It’s focused on living and retiring overseas.

8 (21m 54s):
I was going to say, so there’s three, there’s kind of four main broad topics. There’s retirement. And just living overseas. There’s more people younger. Like you guys that are mobile with their businesses or jobs that are like, okay, well, let’s go have an adventure. And there’s more and more opportunities. Thanks to the pandemic and countries offering digital nomad visa as long stay basis that are permanent residency, but you can stay a year or more. So there’s the two lifestyle sides of things. And then there’s the, just the off shore side of things, which is investing, getting a second passport as a backup plan or a second residency is a backup plan. You know, people thinking, well, if the wrong president gets elected, I’m leaving this country. So I’m going to set up a residency in Panama Columbia today and be ready to move.

8 (22m 36s):
And then there’s real estate for both lifestyle. You know, the second home, a rental property, or, you know, you can be thinking by your retirement home today, rent it out for the next five years and then have that income and then move there once you actually retire. So there’s lots of ways to think about the real estate.

7 (22m 52s):
So we, that re that’s a way a good, a good way to frame what we do. We break it down, break down this big idea into the biggest pieces. Biggest subsets. One is living in retiring. One is investing in property. So we have a free e-letter overseas property alert. That’s on buying property overseas and, you know, covers it from all angles, where to be looking, what to look for, what to expect to pay all of the, you know,

8 (23m 17s):
The, how it works

7 (23m 19s):
And the process exactly, which is

8 (23m 20s):
Different,

7 (23m 21s):
Right? There are different pitfalls and kind of caveats and things you need to look out for that Americans typically aren’t prepared for because they take a lot of things for granted in the United States. And you can take these things for granted in the United States, like clear title and history of ownership and things along those lines in the United States. It’s so easy to find out what something should cost because you can easily look at comps comparables on real estate websites. That’s not possible in the rest of the world. There is no multiple listing service. So there’s no easy way to run comps, to know, okay, I’m looking for a 2000 square foot, three bedroom, three bath house in this zip code on this much land.

7 (24m 1s):
What should it cost me? It’s impossible to answer that question in most of the world. So the onus unfortunately is much more on the buyer. So there’s a lot you need to know. And we focus on that aspect of it, of buying property a lot on what you need to know to buy safely and

8 (24m 18s):
Be happy. The other things to consider

7 (24m 21s):
What, oh, then we have some destination specific the letters because there are two angles involved here. Big picture. One is the categorical aspects of this, you know, lifestyle, retirement banking, residency taxes, real estate, et cetera. That’s all the how. And then there’s the where the, how is not so fun. The, how is mostly work,

8 (24m 42s):
But that’s what Lee

7 (24m 44s):
Focuses on. That’s the thinking, how do you set up your, your internet and your electricity, your utilities. It there’s, you know, there’s a lot to it. That is, there are some general things you need to know, but then a lot of it is depending on where you go country by country. But that’s the fun part, right? The where, oh my gosh. If I could live anywhere, where would I like to live? So I like to put it out to people. If you could have any view from your bedroom window, when you woke up every morning, what would you most like it to be? Do you wanna see a white sand beach in the Caribbean sea? Do you want to see a waterfall down a mountain side with wild flowers all around, you know, frame it that way? Do you want to surf a surfing beach

8 (25m 24s):
Or do you want to see old stone buildings? Because Europe, you know, historically people thought Europe’s too expensive to retire to from the U S but it’s not. And right now with the Europe practically at parody, it’s, it’s definitely more affordable than it ever has been.

2 (25m 36s):
It’s been my dream to live in Italy and I never thought about it for retirement, but that makes perfect sense. Do you guys have people coming to you for earlier retirement?

7 (25m 48s):
Yeah.

8 (25m 50s):
Yeah. The, there there’s a range when more and more our readers are getting younger. I mean, historically 15, 20, 30 years ago, they’d be 65 and older and already on social security and with the internet making things easier. And then just now the digital nomad trend, et cetera, we’re finding younger and younger people looking to move for various reasons. One, couple that moved to Belize to development that a friend of mine runs going down there with their eight. I think they’re eight kids and they were just fed up with the pandemic. They wanted to have some space, cause project has community gardens and it’s on a river and they homeschooled anyway. So they decided that they could just up and do it. And there’s more and more people making that lifestyle

7 (26m 29s):
Moving as a family, making a family choice to raise your kids in a very different kind of a way. And then they’re also today in the past few years and it’s a growing idea to be, become a digital nomad. And so it’s kind of that’s. I think that it’s a very different demographic from what you’re describing a digital nomad is typically single, maybe even in their twenties, maybe their thirties, but typically most typically in their twenties. And they really just wanted adventure. They don’t want the nine to five. They don’t want to be locked into anything. They want to go some, they want to have a way to earn an income through their laptop, basically. And as long as they have an internet connection, anywhere in the world, they can go from here to there just as on a whim.

8 (27m 9s):
Yeah. So consultant, but even doctors, there was one older doctor years ago, he spent half a year in New Zealand. He was radiologist spent half the year in New Zealand on a contract there. Cause that’s, as long as he could stay there without getting legal residency, but then he was able to start reading x-rays and things remotely on the computer. So he was looking for a contract to do that and he could be anywhere in the world to do his diagnosis.

5 (27m 31s):
Well, I love how your guys’ site pretty much caters to everybody. You know, retirees, like you’re saying now the digital nomad, I think a lot of people are really more wanting to do this, but more scared to take that initial step. I feel like you guys break it down, but Leif mentioned something very interesting earlier, which was talking about setting up, you know, a second citizenship or even residency. And he mentioned somewhere, Columbia, not necessarily there, but what would you say to somebody and typically a lot of Americans, as you know, no one language would you need to know another language to do this? How would you start setting something like that up? And is that even a necessary first step if you wanted to buy property, invest or do anything like that?

8 (28m 14s):
Yeah. So the first step depends on what your real end goal is and where and where you want to be. When I talk about the off shore topics and that’s the twice a week he led with the Kathy was talking about, you know, so there’s banking and for some people that’s all they want to do. They want to get money out of the states. And we’re all for that, nothing wrong with having money in the states, but diversification. And we tell the story of Argentina, which is, you know, most Argentinians don’t keep the bulk of their wealth in Argentina because they know at some point there’s going to be a crisis in Argentina because it’s been a roller rollercoaster for the last 130 years. If

7 (28m 45s):
It’s not in crisis as it’s about to be in crisis.

8 (28m 47s):
And so, and the U S had, you know, there was a big crisis in 2008. And with that real estate crisis hit the U S it hit the rest of the world. But my real estate portfolio didn’t take a big hit because in some countries, you know, properties went down 75%. I didn’t own properties in those countries. Some countries properties went down only 15 to 20% and they recovered quickly. I did on properties in some of those countries. And so having that diversification, economic and currency wise is one thing that our readers look for, then there’s the, we’ll call it the lifestyle diversification from just being able to be somewhere else. And so if you want to be in another country longer than the tourist visa, which is 30 to 90 days, depending on the country, you need to apply for residency.

8 (29m 29s):
And there are some countries to make more sense, to have the residency set up what we would call backup residency, because you don’t need to be there often to maintain your residency and Panama Columbia to those countries, which is why I mentioned them for both those countries. If you have a temporary residency, you only need to be there once every six months. If you have permanent residency, you only need to be there once every two years.

2 (29m 49s):
Any English speaking countries that are easy to get a residential,

8 (29m 54s):
Not really. So Billy’s has a retiree program that is fairly easy. You just need $2,000, but it has to be pension income, retirement income qualify. Otherwise, no, there’s not an English speaking country that is easy to get a backup residency, per se.

7 (30m 12s):
Sorry, let me interject to go back. Cause I think what you were asking was where can you go on the world? If you don’t want to learn a language

8 (30m 19s):
Or don’t know,

7 (30m 20s):
It don’t know, don’t know a language. And so, right. So Ireland, but residency isn’t easy. New Zealand and Australia. Residency is really hard. It’s not, not easy. It’s really hard. Billy’s if you’re a retiree, residency is very easy. And if you’re younger, it’s very possible. It just requires a renewing.

8 (30m 39s):
Well, you can G you can literally move to Belize and renew your 30 day tourist visa for 12 months in a row and then apply for permanent residency. So if you want to live and believe it’s easy, right? If you want it as a backup residency, not so much,

7 (30m 51s):
But then beyond that, right, there are options for places to go where you don’t have to. If you don’t speak the language, you don’t really have to learn the language. If you don’t want to, because there are pockets where there’s such a big ex-pat community. English is really common, right? So for example, in Panama, there’s a community called in the mountains, big ex-pat community. You definitely could live in booket day and not have to learn Spanish. You could live in Panama city and not learn Spanish. In fact, I shouldn’t admit this, but I’ve been living in Panama city full-time and now part-time for almost 15 years. And I don’t really speak Spanish. I get along.

7 (31m 31s):
I can have a conversation until it gets really complex, complicated, and, or I have to, then it becomes Spanglish because I’m trying to keep up and I get confused and it becomes nonsense. Really. We’ve been living in Paris again as well on and off, over 20 years. And you don’t speak French at all.

8 (31m 50s):
We lived there full-time for four years, I made a goal of, I’m not going to learn French because it’s just going to screw up the Spanish. That was still in my head. And I did a good job. I didn’t learn much French, but I did pick up enough. You do you’ll, you’ll pick it up.

7 (32m 2s):
That’s the thing.

8 (32m 3s):
And especially now with computers and Google translate, I can go online and order my groceries and Paris. And if I can’t remember the word for green beans, which I can, but for example, if you look it up on Google translate, then you copy and paste that into the search and the grocery store app. And there’s, there’s ways to

7 (32m 22s):
How it work, how to muddle through. That’s a good way to put it, but

8 (32m 25s):
It’s

7 (32m 25s):
Harder to muddle through in a place where hardly anybody speaks English. So again, back to the list of places where you find big English speaking populations, I would put on that list as well say part of iota and like triphala Mexico

8 (32m 40s):
And other places in Mexico, any, any tourist spot at Mexico, they’re going to be a lot of industry

7 (32m 46s):
Portugal because British retirees have been going to Portugal for well, since world war two, when the Brits were there and they got to see how nice and sunny Portugal is, which is something that Britain, nowhere in the UK is sunny ever, not even most all the year, but just almost never. And so they, they thought, oh, wow, this is pretty nice here. And started retiring there. And so now all these decades later, there are big communities of British retirees, but also now American retirees and more and more American ex-pats. So English, almost anybody you meet in the Algarve is going to speak English.

2 (33m 20s):
Well, coworker of mine, actually, I work for an agency. And so we’re on our computers now for work remote. And he and his wife moved to Portugal during the pandemic. And he’s been absolutely loving it there.

7 (33m 33s):
Oh, great. Very cool. It’s one of our favorite places we’ve named it. World’s best place to retire overseas for nine years. It kind of checks every box. You know, we do literally create a big, massive spreadsheet for collecting data for this survey we do every year and every year for the past several we’ve all gotten together. All of our editors get together to have the, okay, let’s start the work on next. Year’s retire overseas index. And we start by saying every year and we will again this year. Okay. Let’s try not to name Portugal again. Let’s try to find somewhere else because you know, I feel like readers are going to start to think, okay, you guys, you have you just no imagination. There are a lot of other countries in the world.

8 (34m 12s):
Well, we thin slice that index in fact. And so we’ve chosen different places in Portugal and the margins have gotten closer in the end, the final scores in the last few years and probably something else because particles become more expensive for real estate. Since we first started talking about it back in 2014, 2015, and that’s one of the categories and the cost of living has gone up. It’s still very affordable, but there are definitely cheaper places even in Europe. So, but back to the English question, Kim, there’s two other places in Europe. So Malta English as a official language, it’s not very easy to get, well, you need money. If you want residency and multi let’s put it that way. They can be easy enough, but you need, you need a fair amount of money. And then Cyprus, and we’ve been talking more about more and more about Northern Cyprus.

8 (34m 55s):
Cyprus is in the EU. The whole island is considered part of the EU, but the north, there was an issue back in 1974 has been separated since 1974. And so in the north, the Turkish Cypriots have that side of the island. They speak English in the south. The Greek Cypriots have that side of the island and they speak English. So you can be on either side of the island and get by with English without any problem. And in the north, you just need to buy a property and you can get residency. So

7 (35m 21s):
If any

8 (35m 22s):
Price, any price, so you could buy $50,000 studio,

7 (35m 24s):
Which is possible. There are $50,000, nice studios. And,

8 (35m 28s):
And in fact, in the last two years, since the pandemic started, we’ve had maybe a dozen of our readers moved there already.

7 (35m 34s):
We were there just a month or so ago and everyone speaks English. We didn’t meet anyone.

8 (35m 40s):
You get by an English, but frankly, if you want to, and I do, you can get by with English in Paris. So you just you’ll need to learn wherever you’re going. So you’re going to want to learn the pleasantries. And I remember this from watching Rick Steves on television, you know, whatever 30 years ago, just need to learn the handful of words to get by and show and show some, show, some respect to the people, and then they’ll help you with whatever. And I’ve impressed French friends with my ability to get things done by French bureaucrats, simply because I start every conversation with partly belonged play. I don’t start speaking English. I don’t ask them in English. If they speak English, I ask them in French, if they speak English and I’ve gotten French bureaucrats to take me by the hand and walk me to where I need to be and stand there until it gets done, because I’m showing some respect.

5 (36m 27s):
I think what you just said, right there is a really good tip. We mentioned that a lot of times in our podcast, when we’re going somewhere, always learn kind of the key words, but the key words and things like that are good for a trip, not necessarily to live. And I appreciate you guys going over the places where it’s easy to get by with the solo language, but in terms of like investing or having a business. Cause I know you said, if you don’t really know the language, it’s hard to kind of get that residency. But in terms of investing, having businesses, is it easy to get by without knowing the native language and a lot of places

8 (37m 2s):
Providing real estate? It is, it has been for me, we bought real estate in 24 countries. Most of which I didn’t speak the local language. We find English speaking attorneys. That’s

7 (37m 12s):
The

8 (37m 12s):
Key and that. And so you find English speaking support people. One example is in Croatia, we bought a property there many years ago. We had a great English speaking real estate agent. When we found the property. In fact, our first attorney there didn’t speak English, but he did all the title work and the real estate agent did the translations for us. And I found a great contractor builder who speaks well enough English for us to do business. He’s introduced us to an English speaking architect. Who’s doing the plans. And we found now an English speaking attorney to help us with some other things too.

7 (37m 45s):
Our main, our main advice. If you’re going to buy property in another country, even if you do speak the language, your main ally and the most important first step is to find an English speaking attorney who has experience helping ex-pats by foreigners by because the process, again, as we said already is going to be so different from what you’re used to in the United States. So you don’t want to even begin. I would say you don’t want to even begin looking for property until you find an attorney who you can communicate with comfortably and trust that you both are understanding each other and he knows, or she has experienced helping foreigners buy.

7 (38m 27s):
So we’ll be thoughtful and mindful of pointing out things that they know. You’re not going to know because they know don’t know this. They don’t want to work with an attorney. Who’s never helped an American buyer in that country before because he or she will probably take for granted that you know how it works and may not tell you something that you really need to know because in your mind it could be a deal breaker. Oh, wait, no, this is not going to work for me. And they’ll just assume, you know it because everybody knows that, but you don’t know it and you don’t even know to ask about it. So it’s fun. It’s really important to find an attorney who has experienced working with foreign buyers, especially Americans.

2 (39m 8s):
I have two questions on that for you, one anywhere on your site, do you connect your readers with attorneys that you’d recommend or trust?

7 (39m 16s):
We do.

8 (39m 17s):
Yeah. So Cathy talked about the free letters. We have paid services as well. And so in those paid services and we do conferences, most of our conferences, we have a real estate and a immigration attorney that speaks usually it’s the same attorney because they do both things. And so yes, we have, we have those resources, real estate developers and agents in many countries. And that’s our goal going into any new country that we haven’t spent time in ourselves is to find the resources we would want and we would need so that we can share them, share them with our readers. Yeah.

7 (39m 46s):
That’s where we start any country where we’re looking to invest ourselves. We, if we don’t already have a good attorney contact, we start out actively focused on finding that attorney and we’ll talk with a bunch and kind of interview a bunch and then choose one. And it turns out now these years later that our best friends around the world are attorneys and architects.

2 (40m 8s):
And then my second question was what are one or two of those things that you’ve come across that surprised you, you didn’t know in the how find process overseas?

8 (40m 18s):
Well, so the one big one and this hit a square in the face. When we bought that Georgian house in Ireland is things aren’t the same overseas. We started to figure that out. And so in the U S everything’s run by the real estate agent and the title company, and the process is very similar purchase by purchase. And in Ireland, they don’t do things the same way. So the home inspection was the one thing that hit us in the face. So we asked to have a home inspection, which can happen, but there’s not a home inspection industry. So,

7 (40m 48s):
Well, let me just say real quickly, they were surprised they being everyone involved in the conversation, or even including our attorney, didn’t quite understand what we meant by a home inspection and were surprised. We were asking about this. In other words, it’s not a thing in Ireland.

8 (41m 3s):
Yeah. But it is available. And there are people who put themselves out as home inspectors. The guy we were introduced was, is a civil engineer. And so he came and inspected the house and he sent his report. And his report only talked about the decorations with new wallpaper and prettier curtains. Well, of course they could, but what he didn’t tell us, which we found out after we bought the house was about the dry rot and the baseboards and the wet rock and the floorboards and whatever, and

7 (41m 31s):
The furnace didn’t work.

8 (41m 32s):
And yeah, all the things that you would expect from a home inspection. And again, the guy was a civil engineer, so he knew what to look for, but he decided to comment on the decor. So that was that, that was one big thing. The other thing that we took, we talk about a lot, especially in our real estate conferences and newsletters is the transfer taxes, the cut, the roundtrip costs of buying and selling overseas. And most countries have a transfer tax from one to say 10%. And so this is one reason we recommend rent before you buy, when you’re moving to another country, because if you buy wrong and you say, ah, well I want to be a Paris, but you buy in the wrong . I just want to be on the other side of town. Well, you’re going to have to, when you sell, you’ll pay the real estate agents fees and whatever, but then you’ve sunk that 6% transfer tax in the first property.

8 (42m 18s):
Now you’re going to have to spend it again in the next property. So buying and flipping as an investor doesn’t make sense in most countries because of the transfer tax. And so it’s something you need to also keep in mind with your budget, because if you have say $200,000 to buy, you think, okay, I can buy a $200,000 apartment or home, but you can’t, you got to back that number down to make sure you can cover the legal fees, of course, but also the transfer tax, whatever it ends up being

7 (42m 43s):
Well. And then I’ll add one more, which is that Americans might be surprised to find out that financing bank financing isn’t generally available, or there are lots of places in the world where it’s not going to be possible for you as a foreign buyer to borrow from a bank and in the places where it is possible, the terms are going to be surprising to you. You know, you might not be able to get a fixed rate of interest. For example, it might only be variable rate and it might only be 50% loan to value maximum loan possible.

8 (43m 13s):
And at one, the big one is if you’re older, most banks in most countries are only going to give you a mortgage to age 70 or 75. So if you’re already 65, you know, you’re going to get 10 year mortgage maybe, and you’re going to have to buy life insurance in that country to pay off the mortgage. If you die before it’s paid off, which is going to add a cost that can make it prohibitive for, for many people,

2 (43m 32s):
That was actually going to be one of my questions. Cause when we were talking about buying the condo in Rosarito and renting it out as an Airbnb, that was something I was thinking of is how do you go about financing and would a bank even lend to you in Mexico? A big concern about that was what about not necessarily safety, but keeping the home safe when you’re not there. I think that’s a big concern. I have probably a lot of people you speak with too,

8 (43m 59s):
Right? And so, you know, buying an a, in a condo building where there’s management or an a gated community is one way for that, for like our one, our one property, which is an apartment building in Metagene. We have a, we have a maid that comes once a week and checks on things and there are doormen and whatnot. So properties secure from that perspective. But right, if I have property on some land outside of town, you’re probably going to want to hire a caretaker to, you know, live in the guest house or something like that.

7 (44m 26s):
More remote the property is the more you need to focus on security and you want a caretaker or someone in residence, ideally, or at least someone coming to check, you know, regularly and often, if you’re in a very remote location, you really want someone there checking a lot.

8 (44m 43s):
Well, and not even just for security, right? We joke about this, but water is the bane of our existence. And so

7 (44m 50s):
You constantly have a leak somewhere, right?

8 (44m 52s):
So either from the roof, if it’s a house or from the apartment above, if it’s an apartment. So our one apartment in Paris, the apartment above us has had leaks in its bathrooms three times in the nine years, 10 years we’ve owned the apartment. So if someone’s not there checking it then.

7 (45m 10s):
And my favorite water story for us is going back. This is a couple of decades ago, but in Buenos Aires, Argentina, we bought some apartments to rent them. The whole idea of these were investment properties just to rent. So we had a great rental manager and everything was great. We ran it. We didn’t do total renovations, but we made some improvements, furnished them, put them up for rental. Everything was going great. We liked our rental manager. We were getting good occupancy. We were getting good cashflow. Oh, great, great, great. And then suddenly one month we had zero rentals. And so we called the woman and said, what’s going on? What happened? Well, we had a month of nothing. How could that happen? And she said, well, I can’t rent it with that flood in the bedroom, but she hadn’t thought to tell us there was a leak or a,

8 (45m 56s):
So there was damage to the ceiling. It was the top floor apartment. So it was from the roof, not a, an apartment above, but yeah, it seems like every other month we’re having to deal with a water issue somewhere.

7 (46m 6s):
So that’s why you need someone who’s checking for you and communicating back in as close to real-time as possible. Hey, my gosh, you have a leak in the bathroom or the hot water heater has exploded or you know, all the things that happen with a house, with a home, you just want to find them out sooner rather than later. But while you know, the longer they go the worst.

8 (46m 25s):
So even if you’re buying just as a second home and don’t intend to rent it out, right, you need some kind of property management person in place.

5 (46m 31s):
I think you guys have stories and tales of your business is really, really great. And even just perusing your guys’s site, I gained a wealth of knowledge and I can only imagine what you get actually on the subscription portion of things. But yeah, I know you mentioned that you guys have consistently rated Portugal nine years. I believe it is best place to retire. Where would you say for somebody who’s not looking to get residency, but actually put money down and an investment property, where in the world would you say right now to do that?

8 (47m 1s):
If you’re up for the adventure of it and the potential risk, and if you’re just starting out overseas and want to just put a small amount of capital at risk, really Northern Cyprus is one of the best options you can buy for less than a hundred thousand dollars. You can get turnkey management from the developers who rent the places out short term and have separate management marketing companies specifically for that. And the net yields. Once the traffic from this dropped off from the pandemic comes back, the net yields on a lot of places could end up being in double digits, which is, which is good in case anybody listening doesn’t realize that Northern Cyprus and other markets, I mean, Mexico has great markets. So you guys talked about Rosarita.

8 (47m 42s):
I don’t know that market very well. I’m not sure how well it works for vacation rentals. Puerto Vallarta is always at the top of my list. I know that you can do good rentals there and Playa Del Carmen. You know, I spent a lot of time in that part of Mexico in the early two thousands and kind of then put it out of my head. Cause I thought I’d play Del Carmen has passed. Property prices have gotten so expensive. And then we sent one of our real estate writers there about 10 years ago. And he came back and said, they’re getting 8%. They’re getting some places are getting as high as 10% right now, net rental yields. I’m like, wow, I bet those current prices and supply the current seems to be a very strong, steady market. If you buy in the right place to get good net rental yields.

7 (48m 19s):
All right, then what if your appetite for risk is lower because Northern Cyprus wouldn’t be for everyone. A lot of Americans, a lot of people in the world wouldn’t have ever heard of it. Wouldn’t know where it is on the map. So if you think more like someone who wants something a little more comfortable, I would say Dominican Republic, which is just a good, strong Caribbean market.

8 (48m 41s):
Yeah, it is. But I would, I’d go back to Mexico in fact, first, and you’ve mentioned via, can you get a mortgage in Mexico? And we have someone like longtime friend and writer. Who’s been doing this for about 20 years. He retired by reading us and then wrote to us and say, Hey, I’m an Ecuador. Can I write for you? He, so he’s lived in Ecuador, vertigo. I Brazil, Columbia now, Mexico. So he he’s our Mexico expert. And so you can get mortgages from some Mexican banks, but there’s also some us banks that have, and I believe still are lending in certain markets in Mexico because they’ve set up the infrastructure to be able to secure their loan. And most of those are out of Texas and it’s because their Texas clients wanted to buy in Mexico. So they figured they had enough of a wealthy clients to, to figure it out.

8 (49m 22s):
So there are borrowing opportunities for Mexico. And the other way to borrow is from the developer. So more and more developers are offering short-term short to midterm terms. If you buy pre-construction, you’re going to be making payments over the two to three year construction period. But some developers will go beyond that, including some of the developers we work with in Northern Cyprus. They’ll do five-year terms for a certain portion of the units that they sell, which is two years beyond the construction time. Other markets, I mean, Panama is still relatively strong, but you’ve got to pay attention and know where to buy. There’s not a lot of markets right now to just buy anywhere and expect good returns. Portugal is another market where if you buy right, you can still get good returns. But Europe in general, they’re more stable markets and more liquid markets.

8 (50m 6s):
You know, years ago we talked about pre-construction properties and Mongolia because they were projecting 15 to 20% net returns because all the mining that was going on, companies going in there sending an executives, they’re paying two, $3,000 a month for nice apartments. Okay, great. But you know, are you going to go to Mongolia to check up on your property and what happens when those companies leave? Are you going to be able to sell that for what you paid for it? Probably not. So you want to look at liquidity and the, and the stability of the market. We don’t ever think about appreciation. I focus on the yields and if a property is yielding, well, then we’ll invest and appreciation is just a secondary profit because everybody should have learned that back in 2008, a lot of people didn’t,

2 (50m 48s):
It’s a good segue into what’s going on with the market right now. There’s a lot of conversation on, is the bubble going to pop and is it still a good time to buy? How do you think that’s impacting overseas real estate?

7 (51m 0s):
We’re hearing a lot from a lot more Americans who are saying, okay, I’m ready to take some of my profits out of the stock market. And I real, I realized I’m seeing that what you guys have been preaching all along is, is really important. I need some diversification outside us markets, outside of the U S stock market and also us housing markets. And we couldn’t agree more. And it’s definitely, we’re seeing a growth in interest in not only going overseas, but in some ways more so buying overseas buying property overseas.

8 (51m 33s):
Right? Well, and that reminds me of another way to get financing, to buy overseas, which was done a lot in 2003 to 2007, I guess, which is take out an equity line on property you have in the states. And so if you could take out an equity line at three to even 5%, that’s going to be cheaper than a mortgage. You would even be able to get and say Panama, which foreigners can get a mortgage and Panama, but you’re going to pay 7% there right now, Europe, you can get mortgages for as little as 3%, still two to 3%, but it’s going to be harder to qualify when you’ve got those age restrictions.

2 (52m 6s):
This has been so interesting. I know the conversation gravitated more towards real estate. We’ll have to have you back on the podcast sometime in the future to talk about the lifestyle of living the ex-pat life. I’m sure it’s entirely different than living in the United States.

7 (52m 20s):
For me, the main difference within living outside the states for almost 25 years now, and we’re in the United States right now, which is for us, I feel more like a foreigner here now than when we’re in other places where we spend time. And the main difference for me is that living overseas, at least in the places where we’ve lived, the biggest benefit is that you don’t know what to expect day to day things. Aren’t predictable. Life is full of the unexpected. And I like that. And I think it’s important if you’re someone who’s thinking about moving overseas, especially in retirement age, how comfortable are you in with ambiguity? I think is a key question to ask yourself, because in the United States, wherever you’re living, you know, everything is very predictable.

7 (53m 7s):
You know how things work, know what’s going to happen today tomorrow, how your day is going to go in the rest of the world will ever, of course, everything’s going to be different to start. It is foreign to you. You’re going to have some culture shock, but then even beyond that, once you’ve settled in, you’ll find that you can’t count on things as predictable as they are in the United States. And definitely you can’t count on things to be as convenient. The United States is the most convenient place in the world to live. We’ve been talking about this a lot, these past two weeks, we’ve been here and that’s great. And for us, it’s like a holiday because it’s just so easy to do anything at any time, you know, but we spend now are years divided generally between Panama and Paris.

7 (53m 49s):
And then we travel a lot, but we’re either in Panama or Paris, much of the year now and on any given day in Panama, for sure you don’t really know what’s going to happen is, you know, the electricity going to be out is the road going to flood? Are you going to be able to do what you’ve planned to do? And

8 (54m 6s):
Oh, that business, you need to go to be open because the owner just decided to take it.

7 (54m 10s):
That’s true in Paris too. They’re just closed. Yeah. So we have this joke where you say one thing, choose one thing that’s important to get done today. And if you get anything beyond that done, wow. But if you get that one thing done, call it a win. That day was a success. If you set your agenda too ambitiously, you’re just constantly disappointed. You’re constantly frustrated all the time. So you have to be willing to take a very different perspective than we do. And I think most Americans do, especially in the United States where, okay, this is how things work. This things work where this was what we’re doing today. Things don’t work that rigidly or that reliably in most of the rest of the world.

7 (54m 51s):
And for me, I find that charming. Sometimes I you’re, right? Sometimes you get crazy and you just want to scream. But for the most part for me, life is more interesting that way and charming. And if you can just laugh it off, then you enjoy the laughter rather than being frustrated, because it’s not working the way you want it to work, whatever it is.

2 (55m 10s):
I agree. I think that’s a beautiful way to live slowed down a little bit and just take life as it comes.

7 (55m 16s):
Exactly. Exactly.

2 (55m 17s):
Well, you’ve given us so many good tips. Like I’m inspired. I want to move overseas today. Before we close this out, though, can you leave our audience? If they’re ready and they want to live overseas, they want to invest overseas today. What is your top piece of advice that you would give this person?

7 (55m 35s):
I have to have two, and I’m going to say one is for someone who is impatient and wants just immediate gratification. And the other is for someone who likes to take things more slowly and process things. If you just want to figure out how to make a move, I’ve written a book called how to retire overseas and it works for anyone at any age. One frustrating thing for us all these decades is we can’t come up with a better catch phrase for this, then retire overseas, but it’s definitely not only for retirees. And so the book is called how to retire overseas. And I really believe, and I promise you when I’ve heard this from hundreds of people over the years, you’ve bought this book. No kidding. We got someone who wrote in today to our customer service to say more or less this and a photo of the couple on the balcony of their ocean view condo in Panama city.

7 (56m 20s):
They moved in this year. They’re settled, they’re thrilled with their new life. And they said, this is all. Thanks to your book. We read your book. It broke everything down. It took us through the whole process. And now a year later here we are on our balcony in Panama. We couldn’t be happier. Thank you. So if you want to just really figure this out quickly, the how to retire overseas book will help you do that, make it possible. If you want to take it slower and really just look all over the world and consider lots of options, just sign up for our daily. E-letter the one that I put out because it presents this conversation. We’ve had the past 45 minutes or so is the conversation we have in that e-letter every day and every day, we’re looking at a different place from a different angle and just putting out options and ideas, planting seeds, and it allows you to work through this more slowly, as I said, and to consider lots of opportunities.

8 (57m 13s):
The other big thing, we hear a lot, especially at conferences, from experts that we invite to speak to the group is they wish they would’ve done it sooner. So some people can prepare for years, decades. We have people who write into, as I’ve been reading you for 25 years, and now it’s too late for me. I’m, you know, I’m now 93 is too late for me to move overseas. So just decide what you want to do and do it. And you can do it in a, in a test way. If you want to today, it’s easier than ever rent an Airbnb for 90 days and a country you’re thinking in the destination. You think you might be interested and try it out and try it out and then come home. And then if you really liked it, then go back. And while you’re there for those 90 days, you’re going to meet people and find the resources, the attorney for residency. If you decide you want to do it, all those kinds of things, but do something.

8 (57m 55s):
That’s my advice. Just do that.

7 (57m 56s):
Which case exactly what leaf is describing worst case. And if you can only do it for 30 days to go for 30 days, worst case, you have a great story to tell the rest of your life and you’ve had a vacation. And so we try to say, take the pressure off yourself. This isn’t an all or nothing. It isn’t, it doesn’t have to be that you are selling everything you own, walking away from everyone you’ve ever known and say goodbye. You know, I’m moving to Argentina. That’s a little scary, right? For a lot of people. And this approach allows you, depending on your scheduling your budget, you know, all those personal factors of course come into putting your strategy together. But what if you could do this twice a year for a couple of years, try a place on for size that you could go have this experience in four different destinations.

7 (58m 38s):
And then you’ve got all of that experience behind you, all those stories to tell, and then you can look back over it and say, okay, I’ve had this, this amazing opportunity to try these four different, very different lifestyles on for size. And you know what? None of them were right. This idea of moving overseas, isn’t for me, but, okay, great. You’ve had these great trips and now, you know, that’s not for you and you can move on. It’s not full time for you. Anyway, our experience though, is that as we’ve already said, most everyone we talk to. And at this point, it’s tens of thousands of people at conferences over the years who the only regret they have is that they didn’t do it sooner, whatever version this is. So customizable, whatever version of this, they figure out works for them.

7 (59m 22s):
That if it’s, full-time, part-time moving from one country to another, in a kind of perpetual way, you know, where you’re not committed to one place, but you’re still very flexible and able to move from place to place. And for years, we have friends who for 40 years now have been doing this since the age of 35. The only regret we’ve really here is that I didn’t try this sooner. I didn’t start out sooner.

5 (59m 46s):
I feel like what you’re saying completely resonates with everybody who finally takes that leap to do something just in general. I mean, we preach that on the podcast all the time, try to encourage people to travel, say it’s easier to do than not. And I think you guys bring that to travel, but in a business perspective also, and I think that’s really great advice to close out this episode. But one last question that I have, I know we talked a lot about your guys as newsletters and from my understanding of what you said, a lot of that stuff is free in 30 seconds or less. I’ll let you guys plug what you can actually do and utilize on the paid version and subscription on your site.

7 (1h 0m 24s):
What I would recommend, I can’t help myself what I’m going to plug right now.

8 (1h 0m 30s):
Yeah. I know what she’s going to say, which is start, start with the fraidy letters and then go from there. And so the, the progression is the free letters and then subscribe to one of the paid subscriptions that suits what you’re looking for, whether it’s real estate, lifestyle, or off shore. And we also have some just one-shot products that are available

7 (1h 0m 46s):
Books and

8 (1h 0m 47s):
Things, but then really, if you’re truly interested in this idea, look at our conference schedule and thanks to the pandemic we’ve been able to create, even for our in-person conferences, virtual access. So you don’t even have to go to the country, although we highly recommend it for the in-person conferences, but they range from one day workshops. We just did one for Dominican Republic last week, two full three day conferences for some of our more popular countries that require more information and you can sit at home and listen to it and

7 (1h 1m 18s):
You get the recording. So you can go back over it and over it, and you, and these are live and interactive. So you can ask questions and get responses. In real time, you can schedule a chat with any of the speakers and we’ll have at these events, the English speaking attorney, we personally work with real estate agents, bankers, everybody, you would need to know to make a move.

8 (1h 1m 38s):
We cover all the, all the topics, all the mundane administrative topics from shipping to banking, buying real estate, immigration residency. And when we have experts talking as well, telling their stories and every, everyone has a different story. So from single women, that’s a big question we got, is it safe for single women to move overseas? We know many who have two older couples, younger couples, people still working, et cetera.

7 (1h 1m 60s):
And I’ll give a final plug if you don’t mind, because now that you reminded me of conferences, which are really valuable, we have coming up to events that I think should be interesting to anyone who is at all really interested in this idea. One is focused on Europe as a region, and one is focused on Latin America as a region. And so those are great starting points because those we’ll be looking at the best choices in that region and why those are the best choices in that region. And then we’ll be breaking down what you would need to know to actually make a move to a country in that region. What would be the best place to go in Europe, depending on who you are in your circumstances and your priorities and how would you get there? And so if you have in your mind, oh, I really think I would love to live and retire in Europe.

7 (1h 2m 44s):
Well, you’d learn everything you would need to know to make that decision in three days.

2 (1h 2m 48s):
No sound makes you sound like a good time to take a little trip and pleasure. Thank you both so much for coming on the podcast. This was amazing. Very, very interesting.

7 (1h 3m 0s):
Thank you for the invitation. We love to talk about this. So thank you.

5 (1h 3m 6s):
Well, I mean, it’s a wealth of knowledge for us and for anybody who is looking for different business ideas or travel lover, who wants to make, travel into a business, so to speak also. So I know we took a lot from this and I know our listeners definitely will to.

7 (1h 3m 21s):
Thank you. Great.

2 (1h 3m 22s):
Thanks.

5 (1h 3m 22s):
Thank you guys for being on.

2 (1h 3m 24s):
All right. Squaddies we hope you enjoyed this episode with Kathleen and Leif, as much as we did hope you are inspired to also start looking into your overseas adventures. Thanks so much for tuning in as always follow us on YouTube, Instagram, and TechTalk at Travel Squad Podcast and send us in your questions of the week.

5 (1h 3m 42s):
If you found the information, this episode would be useful, or if you thought we were just playing funny, please be sure to share it with a friend that would enjoy it too. And please subscribe, rate and review our podcast and tune in every travel Tuesday for new episodes.

4 (1h 3m 56s):
Stay tuned for next week’s episode, we have some more amazing adventures and tips in store for

2 (1h 4m 2s):
Bye Squaddies