The Retirement Secret Nobody’s Talking About

speaker-0 (00:00.652)
big culture shock comes if you’re going to Asia. So, you know, Thailand and Malaysia are two places, Vietnam, three places, if you will, that are popular for the low cost of living, but the right, you’re gonna have the culture hurdles there, which some people are up for the adventure. and if you’re not, there’s plenty of other places in the world to take a look at.

speaker-1 (00:29.646)
Welcome back. Today we have Leif Simon. Leif Simon is one of the co-founders of Live and Invest Overseas. Leif has lived and worked in seven countries on five continents and traveled to more than 75 countries. His real estate investment career began with a $5,000 down payment on a three-flat building in Chicago.

From there he turned his attention overseas and has bought properties in twenty four countries, including France, Croatia, Portugal, Ireland, Belize, Spain, Argentina, Cyprus, Romania, and beyond. Leif has established residency in three countries and has acquired a second passport from Ireland. In 2008, Leif and his wife Kathleen Peticor, who’s also a captain.

co-founder of Live and Invest Overseas, purchased an acreage in Panama and installed underground electricity, water, and internet to build a forever family home. Leaf’s latest book, Cowboy Millionaire, the New American Pioneer, collects all his wisdom that he has learned in three decades of living and investing outside of the U.S. He also offers advice on international diversification in his twice weekly

offshore living letter and his monthly Simon Letter dispatches. Now this fits nicely into our global retirement perspectives it talks about multiple different countries and things to think about when you live or invest or retire overseas. I hope you enjoy it.

Okay, thanks Leaf joining us. everybody, this is Leaf Simon. Leaf is with Live and Invest Overseas. it’s always best, Leif, if you give us a bit of a background about yourself. I’ve already given you an introduction, but why don’t you just tell us a little bit about yourself in your own words?

speaker-0 (02:41.042)
Sure. So long story short, I’ve wanted to live internationally since since high school. So I went to the Thunderbird for my master’s degree and started working overseas right after that for an oil company. lived in a few places, Chad, Kazakhstan, Argentina that in pla places where oil is what weren’t the funnest places to be, but got a good experience there. And then been out of the United States.

now for the last twenty-eight years with my wife, Kathleen Peticord, who’s my partner overseas. and we’ve lived in Ireland, Paris, and Panama. And in fact, I spent about six months in Nicaragua while we were married, also working for helping out with a project of the company we worked for owned real estate project. So yeah a lot of a lot of moving around but we’ve been in Panama now for the last eighteen years

Full time we’re splitting our time now between Paris and Panama.

speaker-1 (03:43.726)
So when I was reading your bio, it indicated that you had s invested in seven countries on five continents and traveled to more than seventy five countries. If you were to look at all those things, what’s the similarities and what’s the differences?

speaker-0 (04:01.976)
So it it’s living in seven countries, some of the one the ones I just named. I’ve we’ve actually bought property in 24 countries. just a few more. Which I know the numbers get confusing for depending on what they are. I understand. and so so real estate is my big focus mostly. So I’d like I you know invested in real estate in Chicago, made some good money, and then we moved overseas. I continued looking at real estate opportunities.

speaker-1 (04:09.718)
Okay.

speaker-0 (04:29.912)
For ourselves and now I look at it for our for our readers. and so one for real estate specifically, one big thing that people need to get out of their heads, including their accountants, is North Americans think it’s illegal, especially Americans, maybe not Canadians so much, they’re a little more international than than many Americans, but that it’s illegal for Americans to own property in another country. And it’s just not true. Some countries have restrictions.

but it’s not illegal on the US or Canadian side. So when I have people come to me, they say, I found that opportunity took that opportunity that you sent us to to my accountant, and he said I couldn’t do it because it’s illegal. Like you need another accountant. But the process of owning is fairly straightforward. Yeah, land ownership rules are strong in well in the countries that we talk about, I talk about. and the main thing to

to pay attention to is is title. So some countries have we call it rights of possession type of land, which you can buy, but you’re not going to get a clean title. So that’s the one thing in in certain Latin American countries to really pay attention to.

speaker-1 (05:44.718)
Okay, so why so many countries? Why not just buy in the US? Now it sounded like you were doing a bit of traveling, so I suspect that that’s where part of that came from, but

speaker-0 (05:55.928)
So it’s so the big underlying premise of of my publications that I put out is diversification. And so the the best example of and and I have a colleague friend, you know, who is in the stock is this broker, so he’s in the stock business, and he’s has spoken at conferences in the past and he comes up to me and says, Lee, you know you’re not really diversified. Well, I am diversified on the real estate side because I own in a bunch of countries.

in different currencies, not so much on the stock portfolio side. I’ve been trying to rectify that the last few years. But owning properties in different countries, you’re exposed to different economics. So, you know, if one country is up, another country is down. 2008 was down for everybody around the world. Real estate became a bubble globally. and each market reacted differently. So you saw in Spain 70% decline in prices.

especially along the Mediterranean coast, because mostly that market was foreign driven. And so you know the foreigners weren’t weren’t buying anymore, and the pre-construction people who were putting money down weren’t completing their purchases. the other extreme was Panama, where prices on average dropped maybe twenty or twenty-five percent and recovered really quickly.

So they they were back to normal by I would say even 2010, where a market like Portugal wasn’t back to the pre previous levels until 2015. So diversification is a big reason for me. Lifestyle is a big reason as well, as you’re alluding to. So we have you know properties again, we split our time now between Paris and Panama. we have properties in Paris and Panama that we use personally. We have other investment properties that we

We use when we have time and then just pure investment properties elsewhere.

speaker-1 (07:57.278)
Okay. You had indicated in your bio that you lived in Ireland for a while with your wife. Yeah. And do you have a second passport from them? Yeah.

speaker-0 (08:10.772)
So we we we did we as I say we did our time in Ireland. and so we were there long enough to get naturalized. Our son was born there, so he was born with Irish citizenship. but we were there long enough to get naturalized and that gave us the second passport. and that gets back to just this mantra of diversification that I I do talk about. You know, having more than one residency, more than one passport gives you options in the world. You know, a a US or Canadian passport is

strong travel document, but it doesn’t get you into every country visa free. and in other countries they they have access charges for lack of a better term. whereas our Irish passport is handy for like Brazil comes and goes with the visa for necessary not for US passport holders but for Ireland you don’t need a visa you before getting there you can just show up. So that was the pre-pandemic.

pitch for having a second passport and second residencies. The pandemic was great for this concept that I’ve been talking about for 20 years. because we had the Irish passport in Panama residency, and we were in France when the the world shut down. And so we had options. We if if we could have found a plane, and we probably could have but didn’t look too hard, we could have gotten back to Panama from France or gone to the US from France because we had our Irish passport, we could stay in France, no problem.

and then during that year 2020, we were able to to head back to the States to help my mother with some things and stayed for a few months and then rather come down to Panama, since we’re already basically halfway there, because Panama was the shutdown was very strict in Panama. men and women could go out every other day. So men was what was Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, women were Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a two hour period.

So we didn’t want to come back into that situation. and so we went back to France, which by the time we went back, it was had loosened up a bit and it was never quite as bad as in in Panama, and then eventually came back to Panama in January 2021. But we were able to to do all of that moving around because of the Irish passport and being able to get back into the EU at a time when they weren’t accepting, you know, tourists, if you will, or anybody that didn’t have citizenship or residency.

speaker-1 (10:39.168)
Is the Irish passport part of the EU collective?

speaker-0 (10:43.648)
Yeah, so Ireland is part of part of the EU, and I’ve been saying for years that the Irish passport is the best second passport for a North American. others would say Portugal or or other random countries. but having an EU passport is beneficial. The Irish passport, now that the UK has left left the European Union is the best because Ireland Irish citizens can also live and work in the UK. There’s a special

rule between Ireland and the UK. So Ireland gives you that just that one more country that you can hop into without any without any issues.

speaker-1 (11:20.994)
Okay. looking at all these places, they have different cultures. Is there a culture that’s better for people that want to retire to those countries?

speaker-0 (11:35.384)
So yeah, that the well the first question most people ask is, you know, how much English is spoken there? Right. You know, if you don’t speak a second language already, you’re and you’re older, you may not want to learn a second language. You will learn some some of the second language no matter how hard you try not to, moving somewhere. But there are English speaking countries that you can move to. Belize and the Americas. now Belize is a bit

more third world, if we’re still allowed to use that term, than the rest of Central America even. But they speak English. so you can get by without without learning a new language. Then Portugal’s become very popular. And the Portuguese, there’s a lot of English spoken in Portugal for because of tourism and also because of their connect longtime connection with the UK. so you can get by, but you’re gonna over time need to learn some Portuguese just to make your life easier. Ireland, of course, speaks English, but it’s they have a

much higher threshold for getting legal residency at this point. so how much like we just spoken what are the expat communities available so that you can, you know, you meet others English speaking people. And then the raw culture differences in Latin America, most people from North America are have some familiarity with with the Latin culture. The big culture shock comes if you’re going to Asia. So you know

Thailand and Malaysia and are two places, Vietnam, three places, if you will, that are popular for the low cost of living, but right, you’re gonna have the culture hurdles there, which some people are up for the adventure. and if you’re not, there’s plenty of other places in the world to take a look at.

speaker-1 (13:21.038)
Do you have properties in Asia?

speaker-0 (13:23.188)
not anymore, no. Invested in Thailand and the Philippines in the past, but sold those. well it was time to sell them. You know, the one was a a development project that finished. but the one issue in Asia is is being able to own property. So Thailand has rules that you can’t own land freehold, you can own land leasehold, or you can own a

speaker-1 (13:30.147)
Why not?

speaker-0 (13:53.026)
Foreigners can own up to 49% of a condo building, so that ultimately foreigners don’t own more than 49% of the underlying land. that same rule applies in the Philippines. Malaysia is a little bit easier. foreigners can own property directly there, freehold title. And then Vietnam changes the rules or has changed the rules in the past when I was looking at it. So I’m not sure the current rules. other countries, you know, Cambodia have an Australian friend who’s owns property in Cambodia.

And they may have recently changed the rules. and don’t pay again that much attention to Asia property at the moment. but he was owning property held by a friend. So it’s not quite as secure as you might want it to be. if that friend decides he doesn’t like you anymore. so it’s harder to invest in real estate in in in Asia unless you’re doing kind of a you know with the developer, which is more risky, but owning property outright you

Focus on the Philippines and Thailand and Malaysia.

speaker-1 (14:55.018)
Okay, so that’s the ownership side of things. You said something with regards to Ireland having a higher bar for residency. What’s the residency rules like of across the various different countries?

speaker-0 (15:06.688)
So there’s when we just wrote about this actually this week. you probably heard of the golden visas. And the golden visas are where a country will allow you to buy a property and get residency with very loose rules on how much time you have to spend in the country. And Europe is trying to eliminate these, Portugal’s changed theirs, Spain has eliminated theirs, Greece has increased the minimum investment requirement. and

That allows you to get the legal residency by buying a property anywhere from two hundred fifty thousand euros to eight hundred thousand euros, I guess, depending on the country.

And that’s a lot of people think that’s the only way to get residency overseas is making an investment. It’s not many countries, especially Latin American countries, but also European countries and and Thailand and the Philippines as well, have just income thresholds. So Panama, for example, if you have a a pension that could be Social Security or your Canadian RRSP or whatever the initials are up there, yeah. of a thousand dollars thousand US or more a month.

You can qualify for the Pensionado Visa in Panama and get permanent residency in Panama through that. Portugal has a similar rule, but it’s not just tied to pensions, it’s any passive income. And it’s about 12 to 1500 euros for a single and maybe 1700 euros for a couple to qualify for residency in Portugal. Ireland, the rack rate

is fifty thousand euros the rack rate using the hotel term. Sorry. So the the list the listed amount is fifty thousand euros okay per person. Now we have Irish immigration attorneys that say there’s some you know for a couple it could be less than 100,000 euros and there’s some flexibility there if you own your own property and things. But just on the surface for a single it’s 5000 euros of income a year that you have to prove plus some other asset levels.

speaker-0 (17:15.234)
that basically ensure that you won’t become homeless in Ireland for and the biggest thing is none of these countries want somebody moving there to become a warden award of the state. So or a burden on the state.

speaker-1 (17:26.892)
Make use of the social fabric.

speaker-0 (17:29.46)
Exactly. And so Ireland decided that we really didn’t want any more retiree immigrants maybe ten or fifteen years ago. And so that 50,000 euro was put in place, which you know makes it harder for many retirees because th that’s kind of where you know a good retirement, you know, somebody with a pension and social security in the US might be making, you know, four to six thousand dollars.

a month they’re right at the level depending on the on the euro exchange rate.

speaker-1 (18:03.438)
So you’re somebody that’s it sounds like you’re primarily based out of Panama, is that correct?

speaker-0 (18:09.73)
Yeah, we’re we’re here most of the year, yeah.

speaker-1 (18:11.906)
Yeah. I’m hearing a lot of people here in US and Canada migrating or retiring to Panama as opposed to originally I was hearing Costa Rica like fifteen, twenty years ago, that sort of thing. Right. Why why Panama now all of a sudden? Why not some of the other Latin American countries or South American countries?

speaker-0 (18:36.248)
So yeah, we won’t get into why not Costa Rica anymore, unless you want to, but the why Panama part is excellent infrastructure. It’s the Panama City is the most developed city in Central America. It you know, you come in and it looks like land. It has high rises, it has a has a metro system that they’re expanding. it’s an international hub, both for travel.

and for international companies. So they’ve and it’s also a a banking center. So there’s a lot of business transacted in Panama, which means there’s lots of cer good services, especially in Panama City, good restaurants, things like that. Panama has the easy to qualify for pensionado visa. And it from a real estate investment perspective, it it has a lot going for it.

Because of the business travelers, the tourism, which Panama hasn’t been pushing really, but it’s starting to it’s it’s grown on its own and they’re starting to push it more themselves. so you can find you know short-term rentals with good deals, etc. And Panama City has more and more companies with their Latin American headquarters because of the incentives and other factors that the government can offer, like stability.

That’s the one thing. Panama is very stable from a political perspective, always improving their infrastructure. And so it’s a it’s a hub for Latinos looking to place money out of their instable countries like Venezuela. Europeans come, North Americans come. So it has people coming from all directions that help keep it just keep business churning in Panama.

speaker-1 (20:27.128)
Okay. You s you hinted at something with regards to Costa Rica. Why not Costa Rica?

speaker-0 (20:35.47)
Co well, the the main reason why not Costa Rica, they years ago decided they didn’t really want retirees anymore. So they altered their their pensionato visa program. and they focus mostly on tourism. They just want people to come and leave their money and go, which is kind of short sighted because retirees living in the country are spending money every month, not just a splash of money, getting off a cruise ship or or coming for a week’s vacation. But the other thing with Costa Rica is

and the road has finally been built for but for a long time, for twenty years, there was a new highway from San Jose to the coast on maps, even, that wasn’t built. Costa Rica just never kept up with improving their infrastructure, although prices for property and the cost of living there increased. Costa Ricans come over the border to David and Panama to go shopping because it’s less expensive than Costa Rica. So

Costa Rica is the Irish would say, was no longer value for money. So you could go to Nicaragua where the infrastructure wasn’t much worse, but the cost of living was much less, or you could come to Panama where the cost of living was the same or less, depending on where you are, but the infrastructure is is much better. so there’s still plenty of expats who do go to Costa Rica, retire to Costa Rica or snubbard there, but or

Yeah, for from our perspective, Panama is the is the better deal.

speaker-1 (22:07.8)
So you there’s two paths here I I I could take I’m let me close off one area and then I’ll go to the infrastructure. so it sounds like you have an Irish passport, you have property in Paris that you make use of regularly, and you spend the majority of your time in Panama.

Why Panama as opposed to Paris or Ireland?

speaker-0 (22:35.31)
So well our our business that that’s a great question that my wife would probably like to hear my answer on. but Panama is where our our our the our business main business office is. So Panama City is where the bulk of our staff is, and we have a real our own real estate project in Panama that we’re developing. So we need to be here for that. And

Why not Ireland? My wife would like to buy a house again in Ireland so we could spend more time in Ireland. it’s just a matter of both time and money at this point. And on the Paris side, w right now our daughter and granddaughters are living there. So that’s one reason to go back. But you know, we love Paris. If we were restricted to one place, couldn’t ever leave destination, it would it would be Paris. We would choose Paris in that scenario.

speaker-1 (23:29.966)
Because of family.

speaker-0 (23:31.564)
O over Panama. Well, because it’s Paris. the family’s there. No think the family’s gonna leave anytime soon, but because it’s is Paris. And people get confused because Paris is a you know international city. Panama City is international, but it you know, it it has a different vibe. And then where we are out here on the coast of Panama is is, you know, much more rural. but we like the contrast and we and we kind of get bored after a while. So, you know.

Did we spend a you know a month or two in in Paris, come back to Panama, head up to the States for a few weeks. we’ve structured our life at this point to be able to to to move around and enjoy the best of the world as to offer.

speaker-1 (24:16.12)
Now let me go to the infrastructure side. I understand you bought and built in Panama. What was that experience like putting in the infrastructure for a place that you’ve built? Was there any issues? Was there what’s the quality of the workmanship?

speaker-0 (24:34.72)
yeah, painful is the simple answer. So for our project putting you know the development project putting in the the electricity, dealing with the the electric company, the electric utility was was and still remains painful. We’re not done with the project. We’re you know we’re extending the electricity into the different phases, etc. quality of the work again, we’re in a rural area, so we it’s you know it’s

Hard to find good people, but the people you do find that know what they’re doing are are good. So that’s that’s been good. Building houses is a different animal, really anywhere in the world. You gotta pay attention to the developer, make sure or the contractor, make sure they don’t get ahead of you on on payments. I would say just like you do even in the US, we we renovated my mom’s house, did a small renovation in her house a few years ago.

And we had to stay on top of that contractor and he’d disappear for two days. and we’ve learned, and started another job. And this is how the contractors everywhere in the world that we’ve done renovations have been, you know, they get your contract, they come and start your project, and then they go, you know, next week to start somebody else’s project, and then they just keep, you know, slow rolling all the different projects.

speaker-1 (25:54.862)
It’s interesting here in Vancouver, along the coast here of BC, there’s all these islands, and people like buying a parcel of land on some of these smaller islands and then building up a home or something like that, but they always run into the same problem. We call it island time. Yes, we’re here in Vancouver, your contractors here, they come in, they do their work, they go, and by and large, the work is of consistent quality.

trying to build something onto those Gulf Islands is you find somebody and they’ll show up maybe or maybe not, or they’ve gone fishing or something like that. And it’s like it takes a lot longer and you really have to push people to get stuff done. Hence the term island time.

speaker-0 (26:39.604)
So yeah. And yeah, so I I I think it’s the same with contractors everywhere. So our recommendation if you’re doing a revenue or building in Panama or somewhere else, it you you need to be there as much as possible. Trying to do it remotely will just be more difficult.

speaker-1 (26:57.462)
When you were looking at or are looking at all your various different properties, if you put your retirement hat on, somebody is deciding they they want to move away from the US, away from Canada, and I can understand with the weather it the way it is right now, what are some of the things they should be thinking about?

speaker-0 (27:18.86)
Well, the one thing I guess to get out of people’s heads, I mean, because the you know, North Americans like to own their house, but renting is perfectly okay. And you can find furnished rentals, which gives you much more flexibility for moving around. And you know, you moving to one country and getting legal residency doesn’t have to be your last move. we have one colleague who he retired young, earlier took early retirement from the company he was working for.

At forty-nine, and that was I’m looking at the calendar here, it was twenty six years ago, twenty-seven years ago. and he’s started in Ecuador, then he went to Uruguay just to to see what it was like. He and his wife moved there, then was close enough to Brazil that he started liking Brazil and he moved to Brazil, then he came to Medellin, Colombia, and then he’s now he’s

Then he moved to Mexico to split his time between Mexico and California, where his grandchildren are. And so he bought and sold in all those countries. But if you’re renting, you know, it’s much easier to to be mobile. So you don’t have to own. and then if you are gonna buy and it’s just for pure lifestyle, just you know, don’t over

Shoot, don’t over specialize isn’t the word I’m looking for, but you know don’t make it suited to just you. You want to be have something that somebody else is gonna want to buy in the future. I use Michael Jordan’s house in Chicago as an example. I saw it listed for sale for I don’t know, maybe 15, 20 years when he left Chicago. and it was the by far the most expensive house in the neighborhood by you know, multiples of the

closest multi million dollar house. And it was Michael Jordan’s house. It had a twenty three on the front gate, an indoor basketball court. So it it it finally just sold recently in the last year to a guy who it was too personalized. The guy and the guy’s not gonna live there. He’s putting it up on Airbnb to charge people a hundred grand a week to stay in Michael Jordan’s house. hopefully that works out for

speaker-1 (29:20.654)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (29:32.834)
Ha ha.

speaker-1 (29:34.85)
Okay. interesting. so you guys live and invest overseas.

speaker-1 (29:47.394)
How God, so many questions. How focused is that or how many retirees make use of it and what are some of the the common questions that they end up throwing at you?

speaker-0 (29:59.032)
So we have hundreds of thousands of readers to our free e letter. So the the free the free e letter is the easiest way to just start learning more about this. And we, you know, we we focus on, I’d say a dozen countries, we talk about twenty. and that’s always changing. We just came out with our twenty twenty-six overseas retirement index that focuses on actually destinations in the

Countries. And so first you’ve got to decide the country. So that’s the first question people are looking at. So what country makes sense for me? Both from you know, can I qualify for residency? and do I like do I like the weather? And so a place like Panama really only has two places to go, the coast where it’s hot and humid, or the mountains. A place like Portugal has more options for for different different climates. And so the biggest questions once people start then hounting down

the locations is the cost of living, which is an answer only they can provide because

speaker-1 (31:00.43)
Depends on their budget.

speaker-0 (31:02.486)
Yeah, you if you’re on a really tight budget, okay, but you can live, you know, in Panama, you can live for on a thousand dollars a month. I can’t, but someone else can. So it’s just a matter of what your priorities are and if you’re if you’re how willing you are to live like a local, as we say, because the you know a good salary in Panama is a thousand dollars a month. So there are plenty of people living here on that. then healthcare.

Is the the next one after cost of living. Health care in any populated area except really Belize outside of the US is likely to be as good or better than the US. You get certain so Panama City, there’s John Hopkins affiliated hospital, there are other large hospitals that have excellent doctors. They speak English. many of them speak English, not all of them. And a lot of them trained and went to school in the US. Get outside of the city.

Then you’ve got the provincial capitals, so that’ll have you know more health care. And then if you’re in a more rural area, not dis not dissimilar to the US, you’re gonna find you know less less options. Europe has excellent health care. you know, but Colombia, Panama, Argentina not only have excellent health care, but have a you know a growing

Healthcare tourism market, what travel tourism travel, I forget the term now, but medical tourism, that’s the term. Sorry. as well as even places like Thailand, for example. So Thailand, you know, Thailand has you know excellent hospitals and a huge medical tourism industry. So then you kind of dig down into what are your actual healthcare concerns. One thing is prescriptions. So is if you’re on some unique rare med medicine.

From North America, is it available where you’re going? That’s very few people, so you’ve got to ask those questions. And and then if you’ve got then health insurance, everybody wants health insurance. but there’s restrictions on getting into new health insurance programs. So local programs in Panama, once you turn 60, you can’t get local insurance anymore. You can continue if you’re already in, so you can just keep paying your premiums and you can go beyond 60.

speaker-0 (33:26.04)
But if you’re already past sixty, they’re not gonna let you into the into the system. International programs generally have a a get into age of seventy-three. And then there are the national systems in Europe where those can

speaker-1 (33:40.718)
Sorry, let me interrupt you. You mentioned seventy three explain that one more time.

speaker-0 (33:46.424)
So there are international health insurance policies like BUPA and I forget some of the others. There’s there’s plenty of them. HTH is still around. that will ensure you living overseas and you can decide whether to be to include the US or not for on your coverage. but if you’re not if you don’t sign up with them by 73, they’re not gonna let you in either. So it’s just the same thing as the locals, but it’s just a different, different age bracket.

and then the national systems like Portugal, that’s a it’s a catch twenty-two. You need to have a health insurance policy to get your residency in Portugal. But once you have your residency in Portugal, all residents are automatically eligible for the national health care system. and you may want to maintain the health insurance after that because it’s not it’s not completely free, but also it’s

You know, the private system is just faster. Anywhere where there’s a public system, if there’s a private system alongside of it, the private system is faster. We saw that in Ireland when we

So how are you gonna the friends we knew we know they’re still around, but they retired back in the mid-80s when they were in their mid-30s, and they maintained international health insurance policy for a while, but then realized health care is so cheap. And they spent a lot of time in Thailand, where at the time, you know, 30 years ago, they were spending, you know, four dollars for a doctor’s visit.

they decided to self-insure. So they just they took the money they were going to put into to pay the health insurance company into a separate account because they were young and healthy and built up a a a nest egg to to self-insure separate from their their living nest egg. So there’s ways to to manage the insurance side of it. But the truth of the matter is and you know it you don’t want something catastrophic to wipe out your your retirement nest egg. But

speaker-0 (35:51.212)
Yeah, we talk about it here in Panama all the time. Someone we know fell and broke their hip right after they canceled their local Panama health insurance, which was bad timing because they’d just gone onto Medicare and thought they’d do everything up in the States that was required, but they didn’t think about an accident. Fell and broke their hip, and had to have it fixed, replaced, whatever happened here in Panama. It was like nineteen thousand dollars, where that same thing in the US would it cost more than nineteen thousand dollars, possibly even if you had insurance. So

it you gotta think it through and and manage your risk the best way for your situation.

speaker-1 (36:27.64)
That’s interesting. Here in Canada, I I have a neighbor. she’s probably now in her early eighties, but she broke her hip back in the early seventies, skiing up on one of the local mountains. And she had it repaired and everything through the public system. So no c out of pocket costs.

speaker-0 (36:45.72)
So no cost. And and right. And so for Americans and Canadians, there’s there’s two key differentiating factors. Taxes. So Americans are going to be taxed no matter where they live, they’re going to file tax return. Canadians, you can separate from Canada and just be a resident in of the other country and not not be spending time in Canada. But then the healthcare system kicks in as well. So out of the country for more than six months, you’re you’re no longer part of the healthcare system.

and I’m not Canadian, so I’m these are rules I’ve picked up from Canadian colleagues who released. So that’s why I finally realized we see so many Canadian snowbirds. They come down to a place like Panama or even Costa Rica or Belize or whatever for the cold months, and then they go back to Canada for the nice months up there. And and most maybe not mostly, but definitely in part, so that they can maintain their Canadian health coverage.

speaker-1 (37:40.556)
Yeah. It’s back east, tr the Ontario, Quebec areas, the Atlantic provinces, they were using Florida as their winter month haven, the snowbird haven. But now because of the instability and the tensions between the two countries, they’re going s further south into the Caribbean, into the Latin American air areas. here we tend to go down to the west coast of Mexico.

Maybe a little bit further down. That’s the reason why I brought up Costa Rica. We’ve talked a lot about the Latin America area, South America area as well as Europe. H we’ve only touched on the Asia Pacific. What’s your thoughts or what have you seen from that side of things?

speaker-0 (38:25.666)
So the the the other thing people ask about or think about is are the grandkids. We’ve mentioned it couple of times. and so the Asia’s farther. That’s the biggest issue with Asia. So coming from even coming from the west coast of North America, you know, it’s flight to get to some of these places and and and not so many direct flights either. So if you’re not wanting to come back and forth.

To visit family, grandkids, or whatever, Asia can make more sense. The culture we mentioned, but the cost of living is super cheap. So Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam for sure. Malaysia is isn’t quite as cheap as those others, but it’s you know the quality of life for what you’re paying is definitely a better value. And the hiccup is again, get along with the real estate side is is residency side.

So Philippines and Thailand have a retiree visa, if you will, that with a pension or social security. Malaysia has a my second home program that comes and goes that has a fairly high threshold. Last I knew it was around 3,500 US to qualify for that. so there are ways to get residency. we keep we get people ask about Australia and New Zealand all the time, and they just don’t want more people.

So to get residency in those countries as a retiree is practically impossible unless you’re uber wealthy and can make a large investment or start a business there. So those are the those are the challenges for Asia. Distance and distance property and finding finding the place that you’re comfortable with the culture.

speaker-1 (40:14.862)
We haven’t even touched on Africa or the Middle East or anything like that. I’m assuming

speaker-0 (40:21.184)
Yeah, that’s an interesting y you brought it up because we don’t really think about it that much. But somebody mentioned in a recent conference of ours, where we know we we didn’t talk about during the when we did a webinar for the retire index and somebody said we didn’t talk much about Africa. Right. It’s not a big draw for North Americans. the African American is looking at it. I know there’s one lady out there with the blog talking about Ghana. real estate, again, being able to own real estate as a as a foreigner.

is a problem in in many countries and and the and the they don’t need old people. Some of them might want to retire, but there’s there’s no true pensionato program that I’m aware of in any of the countries. There are likely ways to get residency through through income. But and then safety. So most of the back to your question of what are some of the things people ask safety is another big concern for North Americans. I think

Less and less so considering how unsafe it could be in some places in North America right now. But the places we talk about are safe. We hear from people saying, didn’t you see the US State Department’s, you know, it is has Costa Rica or Panama at a level two? Like, yes, I know that I also know that France is a level two, the UK is a level two, Greenland is a level two.

So you gotta look at the more detailed information and and and then go and and and just be smart about it from a safety perspective. There are cities in the US, you know, with neighborhoods that I wouldn’t drive in in the middle of the day with, you know, a shotgun out the window. So you you know, you every city in the world has places you shouldn’t probably wander into. so don’t go by what you again, what you see on

news or what you’re reading from the State Department, go check out the specific spot that you’re looking to move to. Mexico is the only country that I’m aware of. There might be others that the US State Department actually gives their their categories by state, by Mexican state. Otherwise it’s the whole country and the whole country can’t be unsafe. Well I guess you know in in a war-torn area, yes, but but you’re not gonna

speaker-0 (42:47.554)
Fine, you know, yes, Pan parts of Panama are unsafe, but the whole country’s not not unsafe. And the places that are unsafe aren’t places that you’re likely to even think about. like the Darien region, which is a a mountainous region on the border with Colombia, where there’s you know where the drug traffickers tend to come through.

speaker-1 (43:06.924)
You the way you were talking, it almost goes to common misconceptions that are associated with various different countries. What are some of the misconceptions people have? Like you had also earlier earlier you had mentioned that some people think that Americans aren’t allowed to own property outside of the US, that sort of thing.

speaker-0 (43:30.114)
Well well one but related to that really is that Americans think if they get legal residency in another country, they’ll lose their US citizenship. And that’s just so far off the scale, it’s hard for me to talk to those people sometimes. Residency isn’t citizenship. And even if you you can’t really lose your citizenship unless you’re from a war-torn country that s ceases to exist or whatever, without having another

citizenship to replace it. So Americans, you know, getting residency somewhere has has no effect on their citizenship. getting even getting naturalized at the moment, Americans are still allowed to have more than one one citizenship. So that’s one misconception about things that people think they that they’ll lose their US citizenship or that residency means citizenship in the other country, which it does not, you can work towards that path depending on the rules like we did in Ireland. So that’s that’s a big misconception.

And but I’ve lost the first part of that that we were talking about on

speaker-1 (44:32.93)
Well just some of the different misconceptions that people have. So I had mentioned with regards to people buying property, US citizens, that sort of stuff.

speaker-0 (44:44.61)
Yeah, so the other the other big thing is just safety. So in in when we started talking about Medaging Colombia, what is it now, sixteen years ago? people were writing into us to say, You’re out of your mind, don’t you know that this, you know, the drug capital of the world, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because all they know is how the Escobar and what they saw in the news, you know, at that point, 20 years earlier. Right. Escobar died in the late nineties and Colombia

It by 2010 was very safe, still had some FARC things going on in the mountains, but generally speaking, far from from Medellin, which is where we focused and where we bought property in fact. And even today, though, when we do a Columbia conference or talk about Colombia, people write in and tell us that you know we we’re out of our minds. Okay, if that’s how you feel, then don’t go to Columbia. There are plenty of other places to consider.

But mostly I tell people get get on the ground yourself. Because what you see on the news channels, the international news channels, I I use CNN in this example regularly, is a snapshot of a day. And another example is Argentina in in 2002, in December 2001, they had their big financial crisis decoupled from the US dollar.

Currency went from one to one to four to one by the middle of the next year. And I thought, because I’d lived there before with the drilling company, great opportunity for real estate. So went to Buenos Aires. I was there in early 2002, and writing from the scenes, and people were writing saying, You’re you’re crazy, it’s dangerous there. I just saw you know riots on the protests on CNN. And my response at that point was.

Yeah, I saw them too. I was standing, I you know, I drove by the the judicial building where everybody was standing. Once the cameras left, they put their signs down and sat down and had their mate tea, and it was not an issue. The b the most the the most dangerous and air quotes here, protest I saw when I was there at that time was at night with the little ladies would come out after they made their family dinner, and beat with pots and pans the the the boarded up

speaker-0 (47:07.596)
banks because the banks had shut down, that you know, a lot of them went out business and the currency I mean, the people were suffering, fair enough, but it wasn’t like people were dying in the streets.

speaker-1 (47:18.71)
Interesting. Okay, so let’s talk a bit about some of the things you’re doing. You have a recent book, Cowboy Millionaire, the new new American pioneer. Talk to me about that. What’s that going on?

speaker-0 (47:32.856)
So but well the it’s mostly my story in that book, but the underlying premise is the really the American dream isn’t dead. It’s just you gotta you gotta go out and find it. And so I my wife and I have found it in creating the the lifestyle that we have and the opportunities that we found in in different countries. We could have stayed in the US, I guess, probably would have been bored at some point, but

could you know, done well in our careers and I could have kept investing in US real estate and all that. But we wanted we wanted something something more, something more interesting, something more diverse. and so that’s really what the you know the cowboy millionaire is talking about is just, you know, expanding not only your your investment portfolio, but also your lifestyle.

speaker-1 (48:22.006)
Okay. And then you have two looks like newsletters that go out, twice weekly offshore living letter and the monthly Simon Letter. Tell me about those.

speaker-0 (48:36.076)
Yeah, so those two are are fall into the offshore topic. So that’s you know, second residency, second citizenships, again, asset diversification, asset protection. And so those are the topics that we that we cover offshore banking, you know, you know, where to bank, how to how to move money, you know, for investment and buying property or just diversify just sorry, diversifying your the currencies that you hold.

And so the offshore living letter is the is the free twice a week letter and then the Simon letter is the paid version that just gets into more detail and has more more intense, I guess you will, articles about all of these topics. And trying to keep people up to date because the rules change regularly for residency and for these golden visa programs that I mentioned earlier, and for for for citizen qualification.

Portugal right now is talking about extending the five year residency requirement before you can apply for naturalization to ten years. And so those we try and stay up on all those topics to keep our readers abreast.

speaker-1 (49:47.918)
And on the website for Live and Invest Overseas, first thing you see is a n a new book, I think it is, with regards to the best place to r retire.

speaker-0 (49:59.97)
That’s our 2026 retirement index. It’s it’s it should be a book. It’s really thick, but it’s it’s it’s our January overseas living letter issue. And so if someone goes to the website and signs up this month, they’ll they’ll get that index as well. And each year we do that index, we include 12 to 15 destinations and rank them using the

All the categories we kinda talked about healthcare, infrastructure, cost of living, taxes. There’s maybe ten different categories that the team rates rates the rates for these destinations that are chosen by our editorial team each year. And so we include we don’t do countries, we do destinations in countries because

As Kathy likes to say, you’re not retiring to the United States. And you’re not even retiring to Florida. You’re retiring to, you know, Clearwater, Florida, or Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And so you you need to you need to thin slice it to get to you know each each little place is has its own uniqueness.

speaker-1 (51:13.858)
Cool. Cool. Well, Leaf, wanna thank you for taking the time and talking. it it’s interesting. The more I talk to people about overseas locations, retiring, investing, that sort of stuff, the more my blinders are being pulled off. And that’s why this is such an important conversation. thank you very much. for everybody that’s watching this, I’ll put links to

the newsletters, the book and the website for live and invest overseas at the bottom of this this video. Anyway, Leaf, thank you very much. Okay.

speaker-0 (51:52.406)
I appreciate it, Daniel.