How To Travel The World & Pay No Tax - Nomad Capitalist

how do you describe what you do for work when you meet someone at a cocktail party I like to say that I help people go where you're treated best those are five magic words I learned them from my father at a very young age he gave me a permission slip I did not have to stick around where I'm from um I didn't have to stick around and take care of my parents because they didn't want their kids taking care of them they wanted their kids to go where the best opportunities were and he thought back in the 19 1990s where I grew up in the United States that there would be better opportunities by the time I got around to being in business and so what I've discovered is if you live in the United States or if you live in a country like it you're probably paying way too much in tax I'm not saying you should pay zero but you're probably paying too much for what you're getting um there's probably some things holding you back uh I think what we're seeing now is there's a lot of opportunities in business around the world and increasingly this multipolarity where the US is pitted against other places and so there's going to be a choice which Market do you want to sell to uh and so we help people at NAD capitalist reduce taxes become dual citizens find Opportunities around the world that most people don't talk about uh because I'm a pretty contrarian guy and I think that what we think is the best is often not it's strange having read and listen to a good bit of your work it's from first principles it's kind of weird that people presume well this is the place that I was born so this is the place that I'm supposed to work and live and die and bank and pay taxes and date all of these things yeah well uh you know I was born in Cleveland Ohio in the US uh right on the lake and right across the lake from Canada and I look and I say what if you know I'd been born right across that Lake I mean the grand scheme of things that lake is a pretty small pretty small thing and if you're a Canadian uh you can leave your country and you can leave your tax burden behind for one thing you don't have to follow Canadian regulations when you live overseas uh you have a passport that for years I mean it's it's the joke uh that people respect you a lot more and people are more open to giving you a bank account in other countries just think like life as a global citizen is a lot easier life just as a Canadian traveling is a lot easier um you know people aren't picking on you and to say that you're born that close to where your identity would have been different to mean to me just shows kind of the miracle of birth but not only you know if you the movie Midnight in Paris talked about you know were we born in the wrong part of you know Earth's history you know would you rather been born 50 years ago you know we can't change when we were born but we can certainly change where we were born and if we weren't born in a place that we want um we can change that I also happen to think as my father said sure when I was born in 1984 the United United States according to the St the studies that do this it was the best place to be born but there wasn't a lot of competition I'm talking to you from Malaysia I think it's the best value destination in the world for someone who can work from anywhere and you would have never even been talking about it in 1984 but you can talk about it today and so there's a lot more competition the world changes the world evolves and even if you were born in the right place maybe it's not the right place today what about cultural displacement I was born in the UK and now live in America on an 01 visa and I there's part of me that that does feel culturally displaced you know a lot of the um way markers that you would references and things from history and things from your past and stuff from culture and Stu from all the rest of it that that can be a little bit disquieting what's that like as a global citizen well obviously different places at different cultures I think that if you look at it in a sense we're all the same obviously we all the same motivations um in a sense we're very different there are places that I think it is difficult to adapt um I think that part of my background in the United States coming from a very humble background probably caused me at times to spend a bit more time in places where people were a bit less agreable um because you're you're taught you know where I'm from uh that you know look inwardly first uh but let's take Malaysia for example I think you have probably some of the kindest people in the world it's a quality that I've looked at is being extremely important um I look at a place that I've spent more time in the last year next to where you're from in Ireland um some of the most polite and kind people uh and welcoming people in the world they've done an incredible job you know transforming their country in the last 30 or 40 years uh and I say to myself I mean those are important markers so I think the things that we're used to uh sure there's places where I go and I still have an American mindset and it's frustrating and I was just you know just talked to my team yesterday with my people all over the place you know we're going to run this like a business run by a guy who's from the United States and yet being out of the United States for many many years causes one to develop an international mindset to where if I were to go back to the US today I think I'd feel very culturally displaced from there because number one I'm politically homeless I don't agree with Trump on everything I certainly don't agree with Biden on everything um and yet if you don't agree on everything it seems for a lot of people you're a communist or you're a fascist um I think that people are at each other's throats where I'm from I think that would be the ult ultimate cultural displacement that someone who's kind of developed an international sense of um of thought wouldn't be very welcome there today how many passports and bank accounts and stuff do you have I think it's five passports now always looking for a new I I I had a coach he said how about we how about one new passport and one new property a year the properties I decided I I kind of got pitars around the world because I like to split my time up have employees in different places kind of got tired of staying in hotels but okay the passports I think for now I'm good um yeah we've opened probably dozens of bank accounts all over the world we have multiple companies around the world um we invest and things like stocks all around the world um and as I said I mean we're really my business noad capitalist I mean we're expanding uh to higher people around the world we've largely been kind of Europe focused over the years um but we're really doing a lot of work now in Latin America um hopefully soon in Asia so I mean for me they call it planting Flags I want to have as many flags as possible uh but I want them to be correspondent to what the opportunity is I live in Malaysia because as someone who can work from and I live in Malaysia mostly the winters now is someone who can work from anywhere and who can live anywhere for me the idea of paying $10 million for this apartment um and then paying five or $6 million in tax because Singapore can demand that just as a one-time you know purchase for a foreigner I don't have to do that to live in a place that's marginally easier uh to live in than Malaysia where you know this place is 600 Grand and everybody Marvels at how cheap that is for what you get uh and yet if I want a bank I trust Malaysian Banks but Singaporean Banks to me are the gold standard so I'm looking for all the places around the world where I can take advantage of what are you the best at and the reality when we say you know go where you're treated best the place where you're from they're probably not the best at anything um the US does not have the best banks they of the safest Banks I mean they have the most bank failures of any country in the world combined um so but if they are if they are the best at something you should you should use it for that um I'm looking for places that are the best and I'm planting Flags there and I think places all around the world are the best at something how do you conceptualize the different elements that a person has to manage or play with country of residence bank accounts tax status stuff like that is there a a series of knobs and levers that we're playing with yeah I think so I mean what what I decided to do in our business was to make it based on what I've experienced I mean a lot of people out there will help you get a passport in the Caribbean um but I thought there's a real world challenge of going out and doing this it can be tough I mean you go to Banks a lot of banks don't want to take non-residents these days for example but yeah I I broke it down and I'm continuing to add things to this day I mean you mentioned dating I think that's a great one to add where should you be dating um I just had a a guy who works for me he lived in Ireland he broke up with his girlfriend of seven years okay obviously there's a bit of the rebound phase going on but I took him to a couple of our offices we had some work to do around uh other parts of kind of Eastern Europe and it was a dramatic shock that like wow these people are much more interested in me uh than maybe someone back home where I'm just kind of standard fair and I think that if you just look at everything in life and saying am I doing this the best people probably ask themselves similar questions just without the geographical element so I decided to add this overlay of geography to it okay so tax is one that's important how much tax you are paying uh ability to invest bank accounts quality of life what else am I missing from the big the big buckets where's your company based which I mean in part is based on where you live right I mean so the the the mistake is if you live in the United States but you put your company in the British Virgin Islands you can avoid tax I mean they figure that one out right I mean you have to to move as well but if you live in a tax friendly place like a Malaysia um you can have your company in a number of places that serve you well um where are you hiring people where do people have the best attitudes um I don't know that we're paying people that much less than we'd pay them in the US um they're certainly probably keeping more money than they would to an equivalent American but we can start off paying them less to begin with and then quickly scale them up once the risk is risk is reduced we can hire more people try more things um so I think for a business owner those are important elements where's your business based where are the employees based and they all work together but then again there's the personal things where's your data stored um you know if you're in crypto I think people should perhaps have a ledger and The Ledger should be stored somewhere that's an asset Haven where's your precious metals stored um you know I I I I've always liked lightweight business models my entire life I've started my first business at 19 I never wanted to have a business where I had to buy a ton of assets I had to have a factory I think it's a business because then you could just be profitable immediately and then you scale uh and nobody owns you I think the same thing about life if I want to live in Malaysia do I really want to be you know dragged down to all my stuff is stored in Malaysia if I own certain Investments it's all sitting in my living room I want to run kind of a lightweight lifestyle where I'm flexible um I think that's the name of the game this in this Century what's the difference can you explain to me between owning a passport being a citizen being a resident having a Visa what what what do all of these different things mean citizens so I mean generally speaking citizens are entitled to get a passport there's some things where you know a stateless person can apply for passport and then what's the national but generally speaking if you're a citizen you can apply for a passport so a passport is a travel Document you want to be a citizen um you know I've been talking there's there's kind of a the latest version of an old scam the Mexican passport scam where some guy puts your name in the system and they can print at a passport but you don't have any of the formal stuff that shows you've actually been naturalized and eventually at least historically speaking people start traveling these passports and they eventually have a problem because you're not really a citizen so you want to go through the proper Channel to become a citizen and therefore to get a passport um so there's any number of ways to get a passport you know if you have a a parent or a grandparent or a great-grandparent in many cases who comes from somewhere you can potentially go back and get that citizenship um you can go back you can go back to a great grandparents generation and knock on the door of the embassy and say hey I fancy a passport in some they even took it back even further um like Italy for example as long as Italy existed or Slovakia they even went back one one further recently yeah um you have to get your documents obviously the further back the harder it is to prove and there are some exceptions like in the case of Italy if somebody became American before you were before the next one was born there was no dual citizenship I mean there's some caveats but yeah you can go back through your family tree and you can track that and you can get a citizenship that way there's citizenships you can invest in um about a dozen formal programs and a number of informal programs where if you're starting a business and hiring 20 people there's probably a country that would like to give you citizens ship in exchange for doing that if you want to make a donation to a Caribbean country they'll give you a passport in a matter of months and then of course you can just go and live in some country and eventually become naturalized two or three years in Argentina up to you know 30 years in San Marino in in Europe you know or or something like that um and so to be a resident gives you permission to live somewhere a country like Malaysia is never really going to give anybody citizenship Asian countries it's not really their thing citizenship is kind of an ethnic thing but you can be a resident and so I can have a residence permit for a certain period of time as long as I you know keep my nose clean as long as I maintain whatever got me the permit whether I'm married to a citizen whether I invested whether I did you know started a company I'm a resident if you're a resident in a European country you can you know if you go to the UK six years you live there X number of days a year eventually you can apply for citizenship and so you know there's different ways to look at this Ireland for example if you live there for five years you can apply for citizenship arguably one of the best passports in the world not only in the European Union but also has access you can live and work in the UK Everyone likes the Irish um and yet you can live in Ireland for those five years as a special tax status that locals don't have but that foreigners can Avail themselves of so you could live in Ireland speak English have all the services pay some tax but not the full 52% people are paying on their salaries and then get one of the best passp reports in the world so there's different ways to approach it plenty of Americans now just want they want a residence permit in Mexico or Argentina or Malaysia is a place to go and be welcomed they want a citizenship just in case something happens uh they want a citizenship because I think in the future being an American will be bad for Global business and I've seen that myself um but some people want to move so it's you know is this a plan B is it a backup or is it like hey what I did I don't want to live here any anymore how do I move somewhere else how do I navigate the world yeah how just how badly does the US rank on your Global list of places from a tax and financial perspective and if we rank it on tax I mean it is the one country that just across the board taxes citizens no matter where they live here's the international view I'm a pretty libertarian guy I believe in lower taxes I don't know why you have to pay so much tax in the US especially because you get nothing even my father shares the same view he likes to travel to Germany now he likes to travel to Europe he's like all right you know what at least here they're getting something you don't get anything in the US and even all that said I know no one ever signed up to pay high taxes but if you live there you know the deal in the US you got to pay the high taxes if you don't want to pay them you should be allowed to leave but the US is the one country that without restriction taxes you no matter where you live now if you're a business business owner you can incorporate your business somewhere offshore you can pay yourself as an employee of that offshore company and and legally not have social security tax you can exempt a whole bunch of money you can defer additional money at a pretty low rate I'm not saying you're going to move overseas and pay the exact same taxes we help Americans pay a lot lot less but you still have to file you still have to keep track of all the rules um that what happened when I gave up my US citizenship was I was suddenly able to access a lot more of my company's Capital our company's a cash flow company we don't have to reinvest at all for our growth I took some money out I built the collection of piar up so now I can travel around and live the lifestyle that I talk about always having someone comfortable to go I couldn't do that I've got an apartment here in qualen poor that's owned by a company nobody in the jurisdiction of the company understands it nobody in Malaysia understands it it was done for one reason it's the legal way for me to acquire real estate as a US citizen without paying a huge amount of of tax and so there's all these restrictions that Americans have again if you stay in the US pay your taxes if you want to vote if you think Trump's going to lower your income tax rate 2% good luck but if you leave you should be allowed to leave and I think that Australia is tiptoeing in the way that the us is going Canada there's been people talking about it there's this notion now that citizenship is not as much a privilege as it is a responsibility it's an obligation that even if you don't drive on the roads even if you don't send your kids to schools why aren't you paying because you're American you should pay for the privilege well wait a I didn't choose to be born here and again I was born 50 miles from Canada and so for me that's what's pretty unfair and so in that regard it must rank like the lowest of all I mean my friend is from Norway and if he just leaves the country and moves to Dubai in the first three years uh he has to pay a certain amount of tax but after that three years he's done and if he moves to any number of night countries that they like he's done so that's like a that's like a very very small version of what the US does but the US for as long as you are a US citizen you have to pay and you know what if I liked the us so much I'd be willing to pay that low rate of tax but for me the issue is I think it's offensive that there's this idea that since the Civil War just having that citizenship means you should have to pay if I live there I'll gladly pay that's the deal I was fully compliant when I lived there I didn't agree with the rates but you follow the law I think people should have the chance to leave and I think anything else is kind of like uh it's abuse isn't there wasn't there one other country with that Global Tax thing yeah I was funny because I had an employee of mine they said oh I have an aitran Taxi Driver this eastern African country next to Ethiopia I guess it broke away from Ethiopia in the 90s I think and they imposed a diaspora tax I think it was 2% uh on anybody who's living overseas and I think that they're like oh if you want to renew your passport show us you pay the tax it really wasn't enforced because as you can imagine like the United States has a lot more Global power to influence Banks and set up IRS offices and everything else than Eritrea does um you know War torn kind of the North Korea of Africa um and she's like yeah the guy says he doesn't pay the the DS for tax uh so yeah they do it um again there's other countries that in limited circumstances do it Australia is kind of tiptoeing in I think you'll see more countries doing a facto version of it as in it's already kind of the fact that if you're leaving a country like Australia or like Canada maybe um and you just kind of live a totally digital Nomad lifestyle with no base did you really leave maybe you should still pay us so it's getting worse which is why I think having second path Sports is important I'm not opposed to paying listen I I I will spend some time in Ireland and I will pay something but I don't think I mean for 50% of your income you know it's easy to make 40 Grand and to say hey I'm happy to pay my my four grand no one's arguing about that when you run a business that makes a lot of money and the government almost gets in your way more than uh they're helping you and you realize well wait a second over there they're doing it with 5% tax wh why do you need 50 and oh by the way have you been to Dubai recently the roads are a heck of a lot better than they are in Cleveland where I'm from where's this money going so uh I think there's a certain class of countries where they're clamping down because they don't like the competition that I'm talking about they don't realize I can come to Malaysia with a territorial tax system my company can be based somewhere else maybe I'll pay a little bit of tax on my own personal salary but my company will be entirely taxfree and I can take a dividend and I can pay a couple of percentage points of tax at the most and I I support the comp the country I buy a lot of stuff maybe I employ some people and they're happy with that Australia and the US and Canada don't like that Malaysia does like that what is the process of saying I don't want to be an American anymore what is that you go to a US Embassy overseas obviously all the embassies are overseas hang on so you have to leave you can't tell America in America that you don't want to be American anymore no because once you right because generally speaking there's two appointments you go in the first appointment they kind of explain it to you are you sure you want to do it okay and then generally it's like come back it could be you know the same day it could be a week from now it could be six months from now in some some countries depends on which Embassy you're dealing with um but after that second appointment you you leave your passport and you walk out and you're still in this kind of transitional status the state department hasn't approved it yet um which is generally kind of just a deao process um but I mean you're you're in the sense not an American anymore so I mean you you can't walk out back on the US so like but they're going to deport you to where oh of course wow yeah I didn't even I didn't even think of that how funny so there I mean if you didn't plan this correctly you could have no passport they generally like they'll ask me and I will say the most professional experience I've ever had with the US government was my expatriation like I would even say kind uh with the people now not everyone has that experience um but I did and they're like hey we want to make sure can you know do you want to show us you have another passport just to make sure we don't want you to be stateless there is there are a couple people who've chosen to be stateless and then they have to go and like get some stateless travel Document it's really confusing no one's ever going to understand like don't don't travel if you want to do that you're gonna have a tough life but yeah I mean theoretically I guess if the embassy doesn't force you to uh not every and not EMB not every Embassy is going to force you to prove that you have another passport um I remember there's a story of a guy back when dual citizenship was far less common I met this guy who lives in vanatu he renounced in the 70s because he wanted to become a vanatu citizen to be on equal footing for business and you could not be duel so he had to give up the US there's no US Embassy in vanatu so he flew to Australia they took his passport he's like well how do I leave Australia now they're like well that's not our problem and there was this whole discussion of like well you can just hang out for 90 days and we'll Deport you and we'll we'll figure out where to deport you to and then benatu eventually he got like an emergency passport or something and he got sent back but wow um yeah I mean there is a little bit of planning required yeah Jesus what about exit taxs when you left is the is there what is that is there such a thing so yeah there's the US has an exit tax by the way a lot of countries I mean this is one thing people pick on the US I get why they do it um because the idea is if you made a whole bunch of money here you don't just get to wipe the Slate clean and pretend that money wasn't made while you were a US citizen um much of my wealth now was made when I was living overseas so we can't argue it's those roads and bridges that are doing it for me but um they would say well you were still a US citizen you still had our support um if you have $2 million or more if you earned what's the inflation adjusted number for this year I don't know probably if you if you if you paid like 800 and some thousand dollar in income tax federally over the last 5 years if that's what your income tax bill was for the last five years or if your taxes aren't in compliance which you can you can bring them into compliance before you expatriate um so if any of those things are are applicable then you've got to pay an exit tax for basically they sell your assets on paper so we've had clients who come to us where the first time they come to us they have you know 10 million their business is worth $10 million and so if they leave you know they started it for zero that's a $10 million gain whatever that is that's the tax minus a small exemption they're like well I can't afford that then they come back two years later now it's worth 50 million they can't afford to renounce yeah right because I mean they I have a friend in uh in Canada who has a number of businesses that have grown an awful lot and he he literally isn't able to pay the money to leave yeah like a financial prisoner of his own financial success yeah so I mean like Canada and other countries have an exit tax when you become a non-resident because their their taxes is residential if you live in Canada you pay tax on anything that you earn anywhere in the world so like I invest in Cambodia if I get a dividend from Cambodia and I'm a resident of Canada Canada will tax that dividend minus whatever I paid in Cambodia whatever so people think oh that's a citizenship based tax no because you can just simply leave you don't have to go to the Embassy and give up your passport you just have to demonstrate that you've cut your ties and you've departed Canada you can return to visit within limited you know parameters but you're not giving up your citizenship to leave Canada so he has the same exit tax just not the same requirement to give up his passport which what makes it more difficult the last year was the first year that I was fully exclusively filed in the US and it wasn't like the UK was coming knocking on the door uh I mean I'm glad I'm glad that I didn't have to go through the forms that's the reason that you have an accountant that understands this stuff but it's relatively simple it's like hey I didn't spend 90 days in the United Kingdom therefore I I don't I I I don't got to pay the United Kingdom any cash but that's not the same as it is in America in the UK there's different different tests depending on what connections you have it could be you know under 46 could be under 91 but yeah um the days test can be difficult because I think people think like in Australia and Canada if I spend under 183 no no no that's just one of the tests is how long you spend there but what are your connections what do you have but yeah they they let you go the UK is not one of the worst ones um and and so it is aggressive is anyone else more aggressive than America I mean California is probably the most aggressive of all so if you live in the US and you live in California you're just I mean that's unbelievable I mean listen you know what frustrates me people say there's nowhere to go because they live in a bubble they watch their local TV news let's be honest by the way is the propaganda in the US really that much different than the propaganda anywhere else it's you know they're telling you what the narrative they want you to hear um you know it's people live in the bubble and they say well where am I going to go because their thoughts of where they're going to go is Canada or Italy or something like that by the way Italy has a tax incentive now I mean at least they realized hey we got to bring some money into this joint I mean if you can pay a flat 100,000 euros a year and you can make as much money as you want they also have a 50 to 70% reduction for the first five years on taxes so at least they've done something to bring people in but you know what bothers me is there's nowhere to go even in a country like Ireland pretty laidback like the immigration office really laidback the tax office laidback compared to the US you come here to Malaysia you come to a lot of places it is not what it is in the US and I'm not saying you shouldn't you know pay um I'm a big fan of following the law and just going to where you agree with the laws um you know why why try and fight and change the laws and fight against all your fellow citizens what you wish existed already exists somewhere just go there and just you'll fit in um but the idea that there's nowhere to go is nonsense um this the the enforcement system just the div the divisiveness but just the adversarial relationship with the government again speaking as a Libertarian not a huge fan of a lot of government it's much less adversarial in some of these countries whether it's the police immigration tax these handful of Western countries it is almost unique how adversarial they are what should people do if they don't want to renounce their American citizenship but they do want to try and dial their tax back well if I mean if again if you're British if you're Canadian if you're from anywhere else you should just find another place to live if you are American uh I didn't renounce immediately I I I I remember my father read um how the taxes work to me he would come home and read articles from The Wall Street Journal when I was a teenager and I said wait a second if you don't live here you don't have to pay that's ridiculous he's like well it says here you can renounce your citizenship I'm like maybe I'll do at 13 I'm like maybe I'll do that because that seems ridiculous that they trap you like that but nevertheless I didn't move overseas and immediately renounce I took advantage of dramatically lowering the taxes so if you're an investor you're at a disadvantage so right now you know bitcoin's up and I was telling everybody move out of your high tax country when Bitcoin was at 16 ,000 now it's at 45,000 uh because you would have saved that whole $29,000 Delta in capital gains tax as as an American Investment is passive Puerto Rico is an option that's pretty much your option if you want to lower your taxes on passive Investments but if you run a business and a business defined as not a one man or one woman show but a business with some employees and it can function without you you can incorporate that business in some tax Haven I think if you're an American it probably should be as zero tax jurisdiction just so the two systems don't fight too much what would that be like what would be an example um well the UAE not really anymore that was the one people think about is Dubai I mean they've really come in I had a one of our wealthiest clients of all time messag me the other night I love the UAE but uh this new 9% not a fan uh Hong Kong still has a decent system I mean depending on the business you know the British Virgin Islands there's also multiple structures I mean you're probably not going to be running robust Payment Processing any of this so maybe there could be a us element to your business to do things like credit cards but maybe the parent company is going to move somewhere else and so it depends like if the parent company I mean many different things but you know traditional tax Havens British Virgin Islands I live man probably more difficult than it should be Hong Kong now um you know Panama is not as robust but that's an option um Biz not so robust um depends I mean here in Malaysia laan is 3% but uh set up a company in probably a zero tax jurisdiction figure out kind of structure depending on what your business needs depending on how people pay you uh take a salary from that company if you're married and you both work in the business both take a salary obviously I'm not giving this is not formal tax advice um but if you're married potentially you can take out close to about 250 grand um you can avoid Social Security and Medicare tax and then on the rest of it you're going to pay some lower rate of tax and so then the question is if you can use things like tax treaties or tax credits to pay that low rate of tax to some other country and then take it again as a credit against the US you know rather than moving to a zero tax country do you move to a country where you can pay 5% tax in Europe for example and then you use that as an offset against the us because you were going to pay the US anyway you might as well put some tax into Europe and then live in Europe if you want to and then work towards your passport in five years so like these are the kinds of things that go into it um if you're going to be an American these days you're going to have to pay something if you make more than six figures um and again you know what if you like the country and you want the option to go back and you're like hey for 10 years let me pocket a boatload of cash uh fine keep the US pay the US I'm not opposed to paying some tax I'm just a guy who didn't want to live in the US didn't want to be American and so why would you not want to be something and pay for the privilege if you like being it pay 10% pay 8% I mean that's not so bad it's a lot better than what you're paying now keep the American passport you're not going to get as good a deal as as is you would as a as a UK citizen just being able to pay zero but such is life um The Challenge though is again that passive income comes are you going to sell the business for $50 million in the future because that's where they're going to nail you and so that's the issue where you might want to look at if you're only concerned about tax planning expatriation because if you can argue that your business is only worth one million today and you only have a million dollars and other assets maybe you're under that $2 million threshold and you can leave with no exit tax at all and then once the business grows you know I mean I again tax was not really my motivator for leaving it was the frustration of I don't like the way the country is being run and I don't really feel like I want to be part of it anyway so why not just just expatriate but I will say from a financial point of view the time when that happened was very fortuitous my business is worth a lot more money now if I wanted to sell it I'm going to save a lot of millions of dollars because I because I left when it was worth not really that a lot what's the reality of this Puerto Rico hack well I mean you've actually got to live there um I think it probably attra there's different criteria but might just call it half a year maybe let's call it a little bit more than half the year I'm a more conservative guy I mean and I've seen some of these things people pitch like uh what was one of the ones last year the multi- pension plan that one got unraveled and they have all these different schemes that various advisers promote like oh it's so easy you could just you know I'm not a fan of the oh it's so easy because eventually that stuff comes crashing down let's say it's a little bit more than half the time in Puerto Rico to satisfy all the things I do think it attracts the kind of person who's like can I just get on a raft and Float back to Miami no don't do that like no don't do that um it's a place that is not that efficient what's the quality of life like I've never been I I I don't I I I've been there only once um I I think people say they tolerate it um and and by the way by the way people say oh you know it's like people move from California to Florida in droves now and and they don't think anything of that people move from New York to Texas in droves I would argue you'd save a lot more in taxes and maybe you'd have a closer cultural connection okay a lot of people from New York are in Texas now but you might have a closer cultural connection to someone in Ireland if you're from Boston if you're from New York then moving to Dallas um but for some reason moving to Ireland or moving to Panama is scary moving to Texas or even Puerto Rico is not scary because it's in the US I don't think a lot of the the local Puerto Ricans uh necessarily like this uh the system that they have going on there I think you have some of the same issues as if you move to a foreign country it's not that efficient people tolerate it I mean if you want to do something at the bank just prepare to spend all day and so I get it I mean if you want to be an American or if you just like if you just can't if you already have tons of money but you plan on having tons more I get that there's certain people who want to go there for me the issue was uh I was I was single at the time when I expatriated um I didn't think I would date an American and so do you know how many people I've had where their their best tax move is to move to Puerto Rico but they've got a Mexican girlfriend well is she gonna get a green card how are you going to hang out with your Mexican girlfriend right um so I mean that's where the dating piece comes in like dude I I'll I'll take the Colombians I'll take the Russians like the okay not not anymore but as I'm married but um that for me was the problem in Puerto Rico is you're kind of limited to who you can who you can be with what do you mean when you talk about the global citizen sandwich and the trifecta strategy so the trifecta strategy is um I'm I'm as I get older I'm more focused on being in in one or two places uh and then just kind of briefly visiting the others for business or checking out opportunities um but for a long time I said I I can't decide I just love it all I'm a legitimately very curious person I'm fascinated by absolutely everything and I would you know say I'd go to Mexico I I gotta have some Mexico I gotta have some Latin America in my life and then I'd come to Asia oh I love Asia this is great and then I'd go to Europe okay I need some of this okay the trifecta is you pick three home bases you get either a residence permit or a citizenship uh theoretically maybe you could live there's a tourist in some countries and you basically have three home bases and you split your time between them now you can modify it but I mean the pure Trifecta as I called it was four months in one four months and another and four months and a third so it might be you know from December through March I'm going to be in qualm poor where it's warm then April May June July I'm going to go somewhere in in Europe and then you know the rest of the year I'm going to be in Latin America okay and I want to experience everything the world has to offer there's different business lessons you learn from being being in different places there's different cultures um I mean Asian culture is substantially different in some ways to what you might be used to in the UK and in the US and so some people 12 months a year they're going to burn out a lot of people come to Asia they do the two-year thing that's why they call them expats it's not permanent they're not immigrants right they don't plan on staying I think if you spent four months a year in Asia in the best months you would love coming back um and so that was the trifecta and it just so happens that in the kind of countries that I tend to like that can be very tax friendly and in some cases it's just like hey you didn't spend six months in Colombia so you don't owe us any tax the goal was not tax avoidance that was the side effect and so I'm in the tax business right people don't come to me to talk about how they don't like their mother or they want to dance salsa they come because because they have a problem paying too much tax and so I prescribed it as I like it for the lifestyle you might like it for the tax the global citizen sandwich is exactly why I'm in Malaysia Malaysia is kort I'm not saying it's the absolute best place it is the Best Value Place in the in the in the world to live nicest people it's humid but otherwise good weather tons of consumer conveniences I went to a five-star hotel where we have our Nomad capitals live event uh last year they have a beautiful gentleman's club like a smoke like a cigar lounge got four cocktails at happy hour served by a guy in a white dinner jacket who knows everybody who's successful in the country and four cocktails cost me 23 bucks uh the most beautiful Ambiance you wear a smoking jacket they come and they can get a haircut I mean there's nowhere better you obviously wouldn't pay that in Singapore but I I I do trust Singapore more than if I have precious metals to store or I want to put put $10 million in a bank I'd rather do it there I do think Malaysian banks are pretty darn safe but I'm not putting my $10 million they just don't have as many options they don't have as many investment options as many currencies it's harder to get the money out so I'm going to Singapore next door that's the top layer of the bread that's like the creme de La Creme the meaty part the meat in the middle is where you live Malaysia and then the other layer of bread is okay I own a home in Malaysia the trade-off is it's not really increasing in value that's that's a amount of Supply it'll take 10 or 15 years for me to see much appreciation I live my investment is a lifestyle investment and so you know I'm the one of the largest investors in a fund that a friend of mine runs in Cambodia I think Cambodia and real estate has some of the highest promise for capital appreciation in the next five to 10 years of any Market in Southeast Asia and it's accessible and so I wouldn't live in Cambodia I wouldn't Bank you know $10 million in Cambodia I don't think I need to live in Singapore so the nice meaty part in the the middle is where you spend your actual life living and then the layers on top are the the extremes of the asset protection and then the more adventurous kind of capital appreciation can't you buy you can do that anywhere you can buy land in Cambodia as a noncitizen non-resident is that right no there's like four countries in Asia Tha Thailand was was promising to open it up and I think they scrapped it um for for high investors Malaysia Japan parts of Korea I forget the other one uh but Malaysia is actually the most open in Southeast Asia you can own land so you can actually buy land you can build a house I have a friend who's doing that uh in Cambodia you cannot but you can own condo buildings now uh you know there's a program you know if you uh if you donate money to a charity endorsed by The King The King will give you citizenship then you can go out as a newly minted Cambodian Citizen and buy what you want but um you can also set up a Cambodian company and and and you can do that so you know what my friend did was he said up the Cambodian company pulled everybody together because it's not really cost efficient to do it to buy one apartment um but generally in Asia you're not going to get citizenship and outside of like Malaysia you're going to buy a condomin condominium that's how it works but they're very tax-friendly places they're very laid-back very L Fair people come to qualm Port they think oh it's a Muslim country and everyone who comes here the most Progressive people I know they say everyone told me we don't care especially if you're not if you're not Malay Muslim I mean if you're Malay muslim okay they're going to they're going to judge you a little bit even if you're a Malaysian but you're not Muslim you can wear the shortest shorts you can wear the tiniest tops you can do what you can drink you could do whatever you want we don't judge you that like that's between you and your God we don't judge you so it's this very laidback place um and I'm a big fan talking about Muslim countries that are both Muslim and not Dubai being British that is the uh probably the most common after somewh like a season in a Bea for the summer or or magalu or zanti or somewhere like that uh lot of people going to Dubai a lot of my close friends uh going and living out there there was a period some of my friends have been going out for literally 10 years there was a period a while ago where did you have to get you had to know an emirati or something and and if you knew someone who is emirati you could kind of get this extra blessing and then there was this other period for a brief while maybe five years ago up until five or four or five years ago where you had to go and do like a Visa Run once every quarter or something and now it's a little bit easier and it it continues to be doing that but what's the give me the the thoughts on Dubai because from a a British person's perspective it's the it's Nomad capitalist encapsulated in a single country again I'm a bit of a contrarian right I mean I and I think I almost like qualm think it is the best value but I almost like it in a sense because it's not Bangkok a lot of people go to Bangkok I just kind of like to do my own thing um so we had our company in Dubai for a while and we decided to move out um the banking I think is quite difficult I'm the quality of private banking is it's not ready it's just not uh and I just had that experience as recently as two months ago um I've got to go and figure out you know what what what where you know what's happening with some money that I sent them because the quality of service in the banking system not impressed um if you want to run a business I think it's m it's really designed to for people who want to live there so our finance team is in tobli Georgia um and every time we wanted to do something they're like well just come into the branch it's like the US they're like well people live outside of the US what are you talking about like people live said of Dubai like we can't imagine that like because people who live there who work in Banks and stuff their dream was to live in Dubai how how can you not live in Dubai that's impossible it's not really set up for remote operations so um and now the free I mean and now they're bringing in this 9% tax and they're applying it more aggressively to even the free zone companies than explain the 9% tax I haven't heard of this so well there's this Global minimum tax that they brought in on big companies so if you have hundreds of millions of dollars in Revenue the world got together and said we can't have you moving all your profits to you know Bermuda let's apply some Global Tax that applies across the board not to businesses like yours and mine well I don't maybe you're making hundreds of millions but not mine um and so they basically said okay everybody's got to raise their rates so a country like Ireland for example said okay we're 12 and a half if you meet the threshold we'll bump it up to 15 but what also happened was some of these countries that wanted to kind of get along were like okay well we'll increase our tax rates just on everybody um and the UAE did that they said okay it's going to be 9% if you run an onshore business but if you're in the free zones which is where a lot of people would set up you know there's different free zones in in Dubai and all over the country as long as you're not working with other UAE you know entities okay and it's you know you're not going to pay it's still going to be zero I said okay that's kind of like Hong Kong if you're based in Hong Kong you pay tax if you're offshore there's no way you can exempt yourself and not pay any tax okay fine Fair enough well then they started creeping in more and more and more into the free zones to where now it's like most people running a business are going to pay 9% even like we looked at into can we just keep our our trademarks there no you have to do transfer pricing you've got to move money into the UAE from your other companies to pay for the value of the trademarks that you're using and then we're going to tax that at %. so the UAE basically rolled out a 9% tax on domestic companies and then it's kind of been creeping into the companies that don't have any connection to Du they just said hey it's 0% tax what a nice place to go I can get a bank account I can get a residence permit I give the UAE incredible credit for making the residence process that you mentioned incredibly easy it is one of the easiest in the world and if you want to personally live there they've said for now it's going to be 0% tax on your personal so if you would just have again stock earnings or something well actually stocks if you have dividends could be a problem but if you just have capital gains if you have you know Bitcoin whatever fine but if you're going to run a business that's based in the I I don't think it's that ideal but I give them incredible uh respect for how they've made immigration super easy and it just proves the point if you run your country to where you don't have a big social welfare system you don't let people get away with crimes why wouldn't you let anyone who sets up a company anyone who invests some money why wouldn't you let them come and be a resident I mean that's the way the US used to be and so I see in that point like it's kind of like the new American Dream anyone who wants to make something think of themselves come on in we're not going to make it hard and they don't but I think on the tax side um in an effort to Plate uh the global Powers they got a little bit more aggressive than they initially thought and it's not the government's fault that the banks are difficult but I'm just I'm just I'm not impressed by the Banks I mean we are talking about a country that changed the weekend only a couple of years ago and just for people that people that don't know the Dubai weekend used to be Friday Saturday so your Friday night would have been a Thursday night and you went back to work on a Sunday morning and one day one day everyone just woke up and the government said hey guess what the weekend is Saturday and Sunday now all the British like yeah are you gonna kind like I'm working on Sunday like what the hell's that listen I and I think I mean Saudi Arabia is kind of doing this now as well I mean Bahrain was always one of the more liberal ones um I mean I think the whole Gulf with the UAE being the kind of of the biggest standout has done an incredible job at what I would call let's go out and figure out basically go where you're treated best hey who's doing this the best okay let's let's just Implement that okay what what do they got going on okay that that makes sense policy perspective yeah how interesting it's it's right I mean you you know what the bit here's how I can assess whether a country is a failure and and I know this because I I we have people who work in some of these countries and that's why it was more affordable for us to go there oh don't know that's not how we do it we do it this way well maybe the results suck and you should change how you do it but your pride gets in the way I have a great respect for the UAE and these other countries I mean they have a pride for their country but it's not the pride doesn't get in the way of let's make the right decisions yeah and they did an incredible job on that uh how would you say like philosophically non- monogamous when it comes to the procedures yes yes yes I I think yeah I think monogamy in in the context of choosing countries and policies and things it makes a lot of sense one of the things I've had in my head as you've been talking through all of this today is dear God how much paperwork is associated with all of this you're talking about I mean dude I had to submit and I'm aware I tried to get into a very difficult country to get into but I had to submit a a three-inch thick 700 page hard copy portfolio for my 01 and I you know to get a social security number and there's no license equivalency test America has the worst hey guess what America you can't drive no one can drive in America right no one everybody's a bad driver there's no license equivalency between the UK and the us so I need to retake my theory test in order to be able to get a driver's license in order to be able to get a car but before I did that I had to get a social security number and in order to get a social security number I had to show my I94 but your I94 is only triggered if you've entered the country through the Border within the last 3 months which meant that I had to leave to go to the Bahamas to come back just to trigger this arbitrary number so my point being I've had to deal with lots of paperwork and I essentially live in two country I I'm invested in some form or a stakeholder in two different countries and you're this like big long octopus with his tentacles wrapped around many countries like how does how would anybody get even begin to get this started without just drowning in tons of Correspondence well I I was at a bank not so long ago um in Serbia and I think the banks are safe there I think it's a nice kind of diversification play but it was never a place that want to put a lot of money and so I went I said okay let me let me get a new debit card just in case I need it I'm never goingon to need it but just in case I carry around like this many debit cards um and I went to pick it up and they're like oh do you have a Dena card I'm like yeah I guess it expired so they're required by law to give you this card card that you can make payments in Serbian Dinars like nobody uses it but they're required for you to give you one and they're like oh we've got to cut up your debit card and you've got to come back in a month and I'm like I'm I'm not here I'm here like once or twice a year I'm not coming back so you know what go where you're treated best I'm just not gonna have a debit card and I'll keep a little little bit less money in that account and um you know that's what it is uh I'm probably going to sell some land I own next door in Montenegro just the thought of oh my God I got to build a villa you know what someone's probably built a villa somewhere else and I can just buy it if I want to and you know what maybe I should just rent a villa for a while and just like put the money to work um so I think that you've gotta you know that's kind of the whole thought process behind what we're doing is like you don't have to go to the US because yeah I had some properties that I owned in the US and it was the most laborious process now the US real estate market does have more liquidity than some other markets but where I own these properties it wasn't that great and I sold them and there were just so many fees and so many things to do and just like I I mean I think like the grass was literally half an inch too long and I got a thing in the mail like violation and they're like they just want you to pay a hundred bucks that doesn't really exist in all the other countries I just went through I I go through end of the year I pay all the bills for seven properties I have one of the people on my finance team help me and it's pretty pretty darn easy and I have people who have helped me it's in in many cases in many countries it's more informal someone was your real estate agent three years later if you want their help with the air conditioning that I I'll just go over there and check it out um you pay him a few bucks so I I found that yes there's bureaucracy um I mean having if you grow the business large enough you just build an in-house team that specializes in it we do an in-house but I mean the same with the with Dubai it just became too much to manage uh you know and we just said you know what we're just going to go back where we were um so it is go where you're treated best and I think that again the US is an ex that's an extreme outlier um I I saw a statistic not long ago that if you're getting a Green Card interview for I forget if it's like a sibling or what kind of family member you're trying to come as through family reunification uh from certain countries like India Mexico China you applied in 1998 that's when you filed that's when you that's when you did all the paperwork to get approved you're now coming in to finalize the process in 2020 well was 2023 then um now whatever you think about family reunification I mean we do that for people all the time you know someone gets a Portugal residence permit then they add their wife through family reification takes you know a month or two or something um there's something the US system is broken and again even in Ireland just got someone a a work permit the other day so they can go and work there and they can work for their own company and it's kind of a tax efficient way for them to to live in the country uh it took like a month and a half the person made a small mistake the solicitor pointed it out oh my God I'm so sorry said the government officer that doesn't happen in the U I mean the US is an outlier it's very uh adversarial very cantankerous it really is I I mean and you had the best sit situation I mean going to a US Embassy in and I've been there in Georgia for example you know and it just watch the Visa interviews there I mean British like that's a nice touch no no I went to Guatemala yeah I went to the the embassy there because the wait time I was 88 days into a 90-day Esther about to go over and if I had I would have been immediately banned from the country for God knows how many years so I was like right well I'll leave go to oh God uh I had the choice between El Salvador B in Guatemala and I was like right well let's go to Guatemala so I go to Guatemala I'm able to get know Berlin 2024 this is 2022 it's taken ages because there's this backlog from covid for people getting a one application blah blah blah London 2024 uh Guatemala next week I'm like hey guess I'm going to Guatemala right um so that was I guess that was a little bit sort of nomad NAD I mean you're still brtish I mean right so I think you you kind of stand out as The Shining you know it's like a finally somebody I like um an ex colonist yeah no I mean like yeah I think if you're British or Irish I getting an L1 is is more straightforward um but no it's it's you know I people say oh you you you hate the US I just don't think they're best at anything I guess prisoner population uh per capita um they're not they're not even best at obesity anymore so I mean like I just want to go where things are best and um I I would if if people take nothing away from this I I just I never felt good in the US again for multiple different reasons but like when I started traveling you know the TSA they open up your stuff they're yelling at I just like just so many interactions with the government are unpleasant that when you go to so many other countries it it's you think oh it must be the same it's it's not the same it really isn't uh that's it's just not the norm let's say that there's someone who's listening to this maybe two people one of them is American and one of them isn't and they're thinking Andrew made a bit of sense there I I don't feel a massive amount of affinity I feel like I could do with a change uh but I don't really know where to start and going to somewhere to Simply Be a tourist like I need to perhaps I need to work in some regard where would you like you mentioned that Dubai is is very simple what are some of the other places that's like on the um the new passport bro starter kit who's what what's included in that well so I mean my focus I I've been an entrepreneur my entire life and I realized you know as maybe 20 years old I had a Vonage phone if anybody remember is V like a VoIP phone and I would I would basically you know cold call people for my business I would call businesses uh hey do you want to buy some advertising and I I I realized pretty early on why could I do this from anywhere and eventually I started to do as I was as I was traveling uh I resisted the urge to move fully but I there were some years I traveled more than half the year and I'd be China and nobody would even know I would literally call my clients that you know they would know the difference um and you know I I think that's the perspective I come from is you have something that you can take with you so first I would develop that um is it you know I'm a I'm a cryptocurrency Trader I'm a stock investor I have an online business I'm a consultant yeah freelancer whatever I can take with me the cool thing about the US is there is more flexibility again not tax advice but there's more flexibility generally speaking on keeping your US bank accounts and so you know where if you leave the UK or Canada they're more like you should probably close that um I would get that in line first now I think you know qualm poor versus like New York was like 25 cents on the dollar I mean I just you know four cocktails 23 bucks that's like what one cocktail in Las Vegas or something um you don't have to make as much but I would get to the point where I can I can support myself um I mean Dubai does have a lot of networking opportunities um depending on what you do um I think I mean it depends on your personality I think a place like in Ireland where they speak English where it's very open I would say the UK but the UK has no way to move there uh we had n farage at Nomad we well we had Nigel farage at Nomad capitalist live a couple years ago I told him like you got rid of the investor visa the startup Visa doesn't really work even if even when it rarely does work it's like you have to be the next Facebook or you have to be investing in the next Facebook like there's just no way for a person with wealth or a business to move to the UK generally it's just really there's not a process for that um you can get a job and move to the UK you can get married and move to the UK but like a guy like me cannot easily move to the UK so to me that's kind of a bull workk um you know I like a place like an Ireland somebody else might like a place like a Switzerland that has maybe more established I don't know what you want to call it I mean Dubai obviously is a lot of very new money what about Portugal I saw Portugal were advertising for a while come and live in Lisbon it's on GMT we'll give you a Visa that's simple and so on is that not simple to get to they are but they got rid of the they got rid of the tax programs they had a great tax incentive um crypto brow right they were looking to try and bring people in that were trading crypto like okay for crypto yeah I I I've I unfortunately I've lost some confidence in Portugal um not a bad place to live um for me you know the places that I I've mentioned today you know Malaysia and Ireland people complain in both cases for opposite reasons about the weather to me the weather is the least important thing if you can't handle some humidity turn on the air conditioning you know in Ireland and du it doesn't rain that much um so I think that use case for Portugal is like oh the weather is so nice I I've never entirely understood that one um so some of their incentives have gone away uh I mean the answer is there's something for everybody um I mean I think Mexico is an interesting place a lot of people G is Mexico simple to be able to spend a a three Monon six month I'm going to go and do my graphic design from there well so I'm a big fan of having a residence permit especially now so Mexico technically is like the UK you get 18 180 days Visa free but much like the UK they're not doing it anymore hey when are you leaving I'm just here for the six months yeah we don't accept that get get the hell out or I'll give you one month and then you need to leave um if you can get a Mexican residence which is pretty easy I mean everything's easy nothing is easy but it's the qualifications are straightforward enough you have a couple thousand in income every month um you can get a residence permit live there all you want obviously if you know live there too long there's a tax planning question but yes I mean Mexico is a straightforward Place Latin America is a place where if you have income you can get a residence permit Asia is generally a place where you need to have wealth put some money in our bank buy a property you know put in six figures Latin America is the place where if you're just starting out um hey show us 800,000 1,200 $2,000 a month in income for the last three six months 12 months whatever here's your residence permit you can live here all you want so um I mean I think Colombia is interesting people live in medine I'm in boguta I think all of Mexico is interesting I mean Mexico City in particular for me but there's so many cities I mean to pick Portugal is interesting they got rid of the tax incentive Italy has a very interesting tax incentive people like that um you know it just depends on what you want I mean I I I think we popularize the country of Georgia very tax friendly not as affordable anymore with all coming uh east of turkey south of Russia okay in the Caucasus you so now you know Georgia the culture like in in Georgia uh decreasingly conservative coming into land um yeah I mean it's a very kind of conservative respectful culture laid-back so like Armenia next door they were always the ones who you there there's like 40,000 Armenians in Uruguay I went there and I saw Armenian restaurants Georgians were always more like chill enjoy great food great wine great Hospitality if you know a Georgian you've got like a friend for life um so in that regard it's nice the culture is a little bit different um you know I've enjoyed it but I also see why some people could get could get stuck up on that uh I mean there's just so many and then there's southeast Asia I mean Malaysia Thailand um but that's those are a little bit more restricted to wealth and presumably a little bit more procedural you can get digital Nomad visas Thailand has the Tha Elite Visa you pay a fee every five years um so there are more affordable ways to do it if your goal is not permanent you can also come to Malaysia for 90 days on a tourist visa and I would guess if you left for a couple weeks and came back uh they' give you another 90 days if you're a Westerner um you know if you're not a Westerner it's 30 days and that becomes harder to navigate but if you can make $2,000 a month I think it is you can get a dig digital Nomad Visa that may not last forever but the question is you know what's your level of commitment to this for me when I left the US I said I lied to myself I'm gonna do this for a year I knew I wasn't coming back it was just hey keep the house don't sell the house um but I always knew was it it was done I think for some people there's nothing wrong with saying I'm going to have a five-year Adventure I'm going to learn how the world works I'm going to pick up some new ideas I'm going to learn hey they do it over here same as we talked about in the UAE hey here's how they do this over here if I added that I bet that would make my business better I'm gonna save some taxes for five years I'm gonna bring that money back and then just you know enjoy my life I don't think you have to do that I mean I've talked about you know having kids I could have kids and live in multiple places you can hire a tutor there's any number of different things you can do yeah what that's that's a question let's say that somebody does have kids what's what's a a solution that you look at for your clients presumably a shoor that you would need to pay that would have to fly and be prepared to move with you well I mean some people just move to one place they move and they put their kids in International School we've got a a a private client right now he's like I want to move to Thailand and uh I'm buying in the same complex as the school and um I mean that there's something to be said for that um you could you know this international schools a lot of places you could homeschool in a lot of places I mean some of the northern European countries are pretty nasty on that but most of the rest of the world is not um but if you don't want to homeschool yourself so I I know a family we' got a guy who's speaking at at our live event coming up uh this year named Joshua sheets and he's a family of four and they homeschool them and they travel around and they do it themselves I also met a very successful guy in the entertainment business who is doing kind of my Trifecta he's I heard you say Trifecta and he's like that's kind of what I'm doing he has the homes around the world and uh they hired a tutor that travels with them so there's different ways to do it so but my my point is I don't think that like this has to be a single person's game or a couple's game I think you can keep doing it if you decide to do it for five years and to get the experience and to save the money um maybe you get an extra passport in the process if you settle down in one place I think that's fine too uh it's always good to have more options have more knowledge but the idea that you have to give it up because now it's time to settle down um I mean I I mean I I talked to my friend I said bring your son your son's like 17 come over and visit me in Asia bring him for two weeks take him out of school he'll learn more hanging around in Asia for two weeks than whatever they're teaching in The Chicago School System okay I mean believe me so I you know we have this bias that whatever happens in our country somehow works now we complain about our country Biden has sold us down the river Trump is turning us into a fascist hell hole whatever right We complain about it but somehow it's still the best in the world and that's not just Americans everyone says a lot of people say that and it's like well wait a second again what's best about it is your education system the best I who was it the other day it wasn't Guatemala but it was something similar is now outpacing the US in like math literacy or some [ __ ] like not not not Korea or something you've heard of but like you know it's like El Salvador or something like they're they're better now so I I have a a nonzero uh cohort of friends who are around about my age mid-30s and they thinking yeah I'm going to you know kids kids are probably going to come along at some point maybe they' got a partner or maybe they're looking or maybe they're engaged or married or whatever and they're staring down the barrel of the US education system with trepidation thinking like I don't know if I put a child in I don't know what's going to come out the other side and you know look at how many different people are trying to innovate their way away from this it's walor schools or it's like um there's one here that's Run apog Park that's run by Tim Kennedy and it's like all of this stuff sounds great but I like all of these things are largely unproven now that may be better than something that's proven to also be completely crazy or useless but like do I do I want my kid to learn how to whittle a flute out of a [ __ ] stick like am I going to teach him how to H hog the ground like so the US you're totally correct like we have these things education I had a friend I had a friend who moved to Dubai and he had a salary like a million dollar salary so he was screwed as an American because if you just have a salary you just get a small exemption you pay on the rest but he at least was still paying less than when he lived in New York City and he told me when I had three kids I had to earn $400,000 pre- taxes into school said imagine for 13 years you put $400,000 into some fund for those kids and you had them live in Dubai they'd learn another language they'd learn International they would do you know something else you're telling me the extra money and not being in New York and being somewhere International wouldn't be far better for them here's what else I think about it one of the concerns that some of our clients have and some of my old friends in the US have is not just the low quality of Education in the US but oh they're teaching you know there's this whole social conversation they're teaching woke they're teaching this they're teaching that and people sometimes get upset with me that I'm not so angry about this and I say I'm not angry about it because I don't even know what it is really honestly people aren't talking about that stuff where I live and I don't have to be a part of it I think that what makes people angry is powerlessness and so we convince ourselves to stay in the bubble based on where we're born because that's the best that's what we're told and we're fed the propaganda but then we G this sense of powerlessness because we don't like the way things are being done and we get angry about it we become miserable because we don't think there's another option I have plenty of options because I've decided to have options and so therefore I don't have to sit around like I don't have to bother myself like if I don't want to do something or if I don't want my kids to learn something whatever that may be that's we're not going to do it there's a there's a solution to that I don't have to feel powerless and carry this anger around with me and I certainly don't have to think that I have to base my entire life on one Poli ition getting elected and they're going to solve all my problems I'd heard I think I've even heard you speak about some people that have traveled abroad when the wife is pregnant to give birth in another country how common is that as a nomadic strategy well I mean I think it's much more common for uh people to come to the US and Canada and do that because you know most countries in the Americas have this Birthright citiz ship if you're born on the soil you're given citizenship uh I actually know somebody from Armenia I did not encourage them to do this I wasn't even aware of it they got a US Visa she and her husband she came over and gave birth now she has an American child um that child cannot sponsor her I was going to say does that work upward for the parents I think the child has to be an adult and then they can bring you uh and so that's a faster one that's I I don't think you're waiting 25 years for that one but you might wait five years something like that yeah well you get to wait the 18 right but the child always has the opportunities um they also have now this lifetime citizenship so it's like really this person is watches my stuff and they they didn't think of that but the reverse I mean so this um the the you know Joshua sheets they gave birth to one of their children in Costa Rica and so now they all got residence permits in Costa Rica and the child's a Costa Rican citizen um I think that's great because especially if you're like an American Costa Rica is a nice antidote who hates the Costa Ricans imagine you want to travel okay Costa Ricans need a visa to go to the US well if you're a US citizen you're going to go with your US pass you're required to um Costa Ricans can pretty much go to most of the rest of the world you know Canada Australia they can't go those are kind of the the toughest ones but they can go to the UK they can go to all of Europe I mean Costa Ricans are pretty well accepted all around the world so are Al salvad so are Guatemalans I mean those are pretty good passports actually you wouldn't think that the people you see you the entire story of that region is not so much Costa Rica people are all trying to come to the US for more wealth but if you have wealth you have plenty of options in Central America and so um I think it's an increasing strategy Brazil is one people go to Mexico is one um sometimes you can get citizenship faster in Brazil it's one year if you've got a child or a spouse now you've got to wait like an extra year to be processed you probably should live there for a part of that two years but um it's in some cases a for you to get a residence or even citizenship in the country but if nothing else you're just giving your child an extra and I mean when I when I met my wife this is one of the things it's like would you be willing to go go to Brazil all right that sounds reasonable I'm like that seems like a pretty open-minded person um you know again I I I had a friend who told me you know what you know what your superpower is is you don't have this Nostalgia about things that cause you to put up barriers oh we used to all go to the Portilla for you know after high school like you don't you don't get into that and so my question is it's very entrepreneurial I think I want to give birth I want to have you know my mother of my child give birth in Brazil for example uh what do I need to solve for I need to buy a few flight tickets so that you know family members can come because that's what people want okay we want our family there um I need to you know maybe you've got to go there X number of months early for certain kind of you know appointments throughout the pregnancy you know like that's what you have to solve for and the payoff is you now have a child who has a passport that potentially there's a domestic economy I think Mexico is is I mean look at the peso it's done incredibly I was on CBS a couple weeks ago talking about the pay it's incredible against the US dollar Mexico is moving in the right direction I think you're you're potentially giving them a passport in some of those countries there's going to be a lot of opportunities if nothing else it gives them an opportunity to travel gives them more places to live I mean just you're just giving them a whole world of opportunities you mentioned there about living in a place before you perhaps move there in your experience are there any locations that are fun to go on holiday and might seem romantic or seductive as an idea but the reality of living there for one reason or another is not what the holiday promised I was thinking the other day about Vienna uh because I love Vienna and and um now Austria has no tax program again my goal is I my goal is people confuse this I'm happy to pay some level of tax we can argue whether tax is fair or not fair my goal is not to always pay zero if it happens that I pay zero great if I pay a little bit great I don't think any country is worth if you're a successful person 40 or 50% oh you get free health care well that's great you made 10 million you paid 5 million you could have bought your own Healthcare um but I think that the challenge of some of those places that people like I mean my father loves Germany um he just likes the vibe um it's harder to meet friends there I really look at optimizing um closed I mean I remember flying back from Vienna 14 years ago I sat next to a guy American guy married to an Austrian woman he said it's just it's just a harder place to make friends now I think once you make friends in some of those places it's they're better friends than you'd have like an LA I mean it's more serious friends but I would say the same thing about Georgia for example I mean I have always been helped whenever I need something and it didn't take me that long to integrate they're just open people so listen I'm not saying this is good or bad I love Austria um but I think that you know maybe some of those central European places that a certain kind of person like myself who doesn't like the southern European laid-back Beach Vibe they think oh Austria I love Vienna but I think you're GNA have a harder time making friends in a place like that and no I don't think it's the language barrier uh I can get by in Spanish my Spanish isn't fluent enough and I'm certainly not fast enough to to engage in the long conversations that the Barista in bulata wants to have with me if I solved for that I could have tons of friends in in Bogata um so that's that's an issue the language barrier I don't think in in Central Europe it is um you know I think there's places in Eastern Europe that are very direct I appreciate certain directness over time the directness turns into brusk in some cases um obviously and I'm just I'm not a big fan of Resort destinations I me I I think people should you know I don't understand the thing of living in a vacation like living on a Caribbean Island but to each their own somebody might like that uh I'm not a laid-back person but I think that you want to optimize for where can I make friends easily and some of the happiest people that I know who are expats or even immigrants in very far-flung cultures none of them their friends are expats I've got a friend who lives in Thailand all of his friends are Thai and they're educated they speak English He Speaks some Thai but they kind of accommodated him in English but he thinks like a Thai person with some American attributes but he really kind of has the whole kind of Thai approach um and he's stuck with it for that reason so I think that you you want to maybe have some local friends and if you have a hard time doing that I think that's probably a place that's more difficult how many of the clients that you're working with and the people that you come into contact with are doing The Nomad thing as a protection strategy kind of like being a a I guess a global prepper in some regard um how how is that is that on the rise what are you noticing with Trends with regards to that it's an increasing number I mean there's always waves right so I think we're going to see that again this year with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as those go up um it's just as we saw in 2021 Co I think was a big wakeup call for people um and we can debate you know I'm sure there are some people who have views that are more extreme than mine but I mean governments around the world were pretty restrictive and it showed that citizenship really is an obligation I if you were Australian you couldn't leave and you couldn't return and look at how many people in Australia said well yeah it's your fault you took a holiday to maius like what about the rest of us like this whole kind of greater good the individualism of you're a citizen you've got a right to return to your own country that's literally like international law like the United Nations this is not like some right-wing concept um was just thrown out the window and so I think people realized in what people thought were these great infallible countries like oh my country can screw me um they don't really care about me I've been paying all these years and maybe I haven't even complained compl about paying and now when I need support I'm hung out to dry and so I think you're seeing more people saying yeah I want to backup plan um whether that's about you know people want Health Freedom we have people uh from the US that when roie Wade was overturned they said I don't want to live in a country where abortion is not legal what people don't understand about me and my brand I don't judge I mean to me that's that's the international political views that I've kind of picked up the the Dubai approach of let's just have the best like what works if you want to live in a country where there's legal abortion I'm not going to judge you for that um if you want to live in a place where there's less of a vaccine mandate I'm not going to judge you for that um I might agree with some of those positions and I might agree in part or I might not agree at all but like I think people are realizing that again like where they're born doesn't mean it's always going to align with their values I I think a lot of these countries are changing and so yes more people are looking for a plan B there's a fine line between kind of forcing people to do what you've done which they may not be comfortable with and trying to open their mind to the idea that you can leave uh again I'll tell you what we get a lot uh I want to leave in five years when the kids all graduate I mean could the kids not go to school somewhere else would that maybe not be better for them I don't have kids in high school so it's not for me to judge I I think more people should have a plan a not just because they can save money on taxes but because I think you learn a lot I think it changes you in very positive Ways to Live other places and I think that people don't move because of this sense of fear again they're happy to move to Florida not happy to move an equal distance to some other country um but a lot of people want Plan B citizenship residence sometimes they want Plan B CDE um so yeah not everyone that we work with now is moving whereas when we started it was I want to move I'm tired of paying tax now there's a lot of I don't want to move or I'll move later or maybe I'll you know get a residence permit and spend three months there in the winter uh one of the guys I talked to very kind of a wealthy guy didn't realize as an American he just can't go to Italy and spend four months like yeah you can't it's 90 days out every 180 you need to get a residence permit you need to get some kind of citizenship so it's kind of clearing up some of those basic misconceptions as well um but what is the you men you mentioned it a couple of times today that Italian whatever the tax uh implications are and the what is that they've got a couple programs uh so Greece rolled one out Italy rolled one out they're kind of based on the Switzerland model it's a lump sum so if you if you have a high income uh you pay $100,000 a year if you're married it's 12 and that's all you pay and that's more flexible than like what Portugal system was like where if you want to have your company in a tax Haven and pay zero you can do that you live in Italy whatever amount of time per year and then you pay them this this lump sum um so that's kind of based on the the the Swiss system with different cantons you can kind of negotiate different rates but it's it's cheaper than Switzerland um and and you can get citizenship in Italy uh maybe in Greece so that's kind of a flat amount so if you make a million I dollar a year or a million euros a year that's you know it's 10% basically um they also have in Italy uh incentives and they're going to shorten it this year for how long you can do it they're going to take away some of the most aggressive incentives but you can reduce your tax rate like as a freelancer between 50 and 70% wherever depending on where you want to live in the country so like in the in the north it'd be like 50% reduction so if the tax rate is 50% you pay 25 if you want to live in the south I think it's going to go down to 70% so if the tax rate's 50 you pay say 15 um so it's not zero but if you want lifestyle I mean that's a much you know better deal one of the things I've been thinking today is you travel around the world you have businesses in various locations bank accounts in various locations and you mentioned about being able to use different currencies if someone put a gun to your head and said you have to have all of your life savings into one currency that isn't the US dollar all right what would it be I'm glad it doesn't happen certain there people who say I'm not threatening you I promise I'm not threatening you uh yeah be careful on the US you gota you know they're they're pretty aggressive over there I you know I here's my construct there's judgmental and there's non-judgmental um and so I think Singapore is a pretty non-judgmental country I.E if you go there on like an African passport they look at the list is your passport in the list okay there okay here you go 90 days welcome whereas if you do that in the UK it's like yeah you got a Visa but like you know I think if you're going to hold a currency that policy applies equally uh one of the wealthiest clients we've ever worked with says I you know I'm from a place that like the West doesn't like I'm against my country but I'm from a play like the country the West doesn't like I don't trust the UK I don't want my money in UK Banks I wouldn't want to live in the UK and it's a it's just I mean for better or worse there's a judgment of like we like these people not like these people I would probably say the Singapore dollar it's based around a basket of different currencies um it's the freest economy in the world um they do a great job running it I mean name a place where retail banks are lending money to the central bank um I would say the Singapore dollar what about you so let's say you're going around to smaller banks in these emerging or Frontier countries or whatever can you actually put a significant amount of money deposited into the bank accounts there I you can do whatever you want uh should you is the question um okay so that first that question and then also how do you assess Bank risk what's a good way to assess Bank risk well I mean look at the bank failures in the US last year there are more bank failures in the US than I think pretty much every other country combined um so I Ian I think the risk is in the US now you have the FDIC which is basically broke has less than 1% of all the money I mean if if you had a couple big bank failures they're wiped out and so you're basically dependent on is the US Congress going to bail out Banks uh I'm not so convinced that you know oh I've got millions of dollars in my bank account does the US Congress really want to be bailing out with taxpayer dollars in an increasingly kind of populist country people who had millions of dollars in the bank I'm not sure if it comes to that they're going to so I mean I look at banks in places like Singapore there are some of the highest rated in the world um that's not an emerging economy but some of those Banks might have operations in other countries I mean you look at a country we mentioned Cambodia there are stable Asian banks that opened up offices in Cambodia people are going and investing in Cambodia they're building my friend's strategy is he's buying real estate on Corners in the city Center that one day will get torn down to build skyscrapers or shopping malls because they're doing it I mean when I first went to Cambodia they had like one skyscraper now they're they're going up everywhere it's like a front running gentrification from that's it's a good uh it's like a band name or a book name or something um so like yeah am I going to get go to Cambodia invest in like you know some local bank I mean no I'm not going to put as much money there uh am I going to go to Armenia and invest in the bank that's like owned by a guy I mean there's like in Serbia me there are some banks like the 18th lar just bank is like it's owned by like a guy uh no but I can go to Armenia and there's Banks like there's there's French banks um yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna feel comfortable doing that because like do you think if that French Bank in Armenia collapses that nobody in France is going to pull their money from that bank of course they are so they have to make sure they move the money around so I I mean I think the risk is based on um the the quality of the institution I mean in Georgia the two largest banks are traded on the London Stock Exchange doesn't mean they can't go under just like banks in the US were on the US new US Stock Exchange they went under but I think that if you look at those factors um you can find decent Banks you know in a country like Ecuador um it's a lot of credit unions very high interest rates um the US dollar is the official currency which I actually kind of like because if anything ever happens like they're not going to like force you to take their currency but you know the banks are are there's no big huge banks that you would trust like all your life savings um I I think for me the point is I wouldn't trust anyone with my life savings I mean think about it um and look at Nigel farage in the UK whether you like him or not he you know what we just don't want your business anymore I mean that can happen anywhere um so I mean I've had things happen to me where they're like you know what who oh you're charging for the like yeah you're not really the kind of client we want um and then what do you do like the same Bankers that want you to like oh give us all your business are the same ones that would cut you off at the knee so I don't care how stable the bank is I don't want any bank to have all my money um I just don't but you know for me yeah I might put you if you put a million dollars in Singapore would you put $100,000 in the Bank of Georgia um obviously you know in some of those emerging World Banks if you're willing to take on other currencies assing that George and lry has done incredibly well in the last couple years meanwhile you made 133% interest so if you don't have any better places to park your money that's an interesting kind of diversification there's some countries if you do that you can get a residence permit for example so it's like how does this how does this stuff all work together I wouldn't move $200,000 to a Dominican Republic Bank but if you told me oh we'll give you a fast track to citizenship I I'd be I'm interested in that right so um I think it all comes down to what are you getting out of the deal um higher interest rates residence citizenship um or just in the case of like you know in a Cambodia it's probably safer than you think I'll give you one more thing there's banks in places like the Bahamas they don't even keep your money they just have Accounts at bigger Banks all around the world that would never take you as a client you know B&B paraba in France or Qatar National Bank Qatar oh God the the StubHub ticket reseller of bank accounts there basically just yeah I mean they're small Banks they take your deposits and they just have your money somewhere they don't make loans right I mean like why is it like the US Banks get in so much trouble I mean they just lend out to the hilt uh and they're you know they're so uh aggressive in some cases you go to Hong Kong Hong Kong is actually opening up more now for banking but why is Hong Kong historically been so difficult to get a bank account the banks literally don't want more money they're so conservative they have nowhere to put it that's why wild that is absolutely crazy what do you make of the uh of the meme of the passport bro cuz you have been doing this for significantly longer than that Meme has come about but there is a you know a strong Trend at the moment of especially Western especially men deciding that there is a problem with the culture or the dating or the government or whatever it is and then going right yeah I'm I'm I'm out of here is this were you an early adop of this or is this sort of playing into your guys's culture in some way what are you what are you seeing I don't I don't I'll be honest I don't entirely know I my thought is that that passport bro is kind of more focused on The Dating element right I that's kind of the a core driver of it um you know I think for me many many many years ago um I mean I I I was an entrepreneur I wanted to be an entrepreneur at 12 years old it wasn't cool back then like now it's cool it wasn't cool when I wanted to be an entrepreneur and so um you know I wasn't the most popular guy you just weird kid yeah just kind of like who's this this the guy wants to start a business well you're a freak uh I remember like being 21 and my friends would drag me to bars and girls would like you know make fun of me because I like I would go to like you know business meetings and it was embarrassing and retrospect like you know going to these business meetings but like like why are you wearing cuff links like what are you a weirdo or something and I remember being like 22 or 23 and I was on one of my early trips and I met this girl girl from China and she's like all the stuff that everyone else thought was weird she's like fascinated by like in Asia it's like what is it like you're 23 and you've like a business and you're making money and like it's growing like that's pretty like that's pretty like s like nobody in China would be like under 50 would be doing that like that's pretty cool and it kind of showed me this kind of Arbitrage opportunity um you know I mean yeah I've you know dated people around the world it's it's interesting I never looked at it as something where you know I've never want to be one of these guys where it's like I'm going to places I I've never chosen a place for dating like koal and poor probably not a great dating location um that's probably why some of the people don't choose it um I mean Thailand or Indonesia is probably better so I've never really chosen a place based on on dating um but you know I I've enjoyed you know meeting people from different places I I you know I never wanted to make dating kind of the only aspect but I certainly think that um people should seek competition in their life I think the biggest thing I mean you look for competition for a restaurant you look for competition if you're buying a product I mean people use apps and how can I save $3 buying this product somewhere else why don't you use competition for your taxes and for the government that serves you why don't you use competition for the people that you meet and again I mean really is your whether you just want to find a short-term relationship or whether you're looking for your soulmate or whatever you whatever it is are the odds that they live around you I mean really all the people out of 8 billion people the person that matches you happen to also be born in Cleveland Ohio like it seems ridiculous to me right and and if you look back throughout human history I mean people didn't have so many options they just learned to live with it but like you lived in a village and there were 50 people and you just like chose one and really those were the happiest relationships those are the most fulfilling relationships so I I mean I I I yeah I'm I'm you know I'm not the guy remember we were toing real estate in menine years ago and people wanted to buy property for Airbnb and we would go to some of the buildings and they like oh this one the government's for Airbnb but the building banned Airbnb and one one place we went they told a story of some woman was coming home with her child and a guy was uh being uh serviced in the elevator like they open the door opens and there's this guy with with you know with the woman and and it's like yeah we don't want these people coming here anymore obviously the idea that an american guy goes to Colombia and wants to find someone to to date I see nothing wrong with that at all some people do I that's ridiculous but obviously I don't I'd like to you know I'd like to have a certain level of class about it that we're not doing things in elers you know that's that's the the optimal way to do it look Andrew I I really I love your work I think it's a very first principles approach to people who live on a rock and these lines around it are pretty arbitrarily drawn apart from the oceans and even they they weren't done of your own choosing and to think about it from first principles I really really like it I think your input is is massively needed and and really hugely uh like inspiring actually so I I really I really love all of the stuff that you're doing if someone wants to get started uh with this if they said right I'm bought in this sounds like something that's kind of cool what are the first places that they should go we have a YouTube channel I think over 2500 videos we put something out uh you know 15 16 times a month with these ideas you can watch and get the vibe um our website we've got almost that many articles Nomad capital.com if you want it a bit more aggregated I wrote a book called Nomad capitalist it's on Amazon it's more storytelling than specific ideas we talk about some of the ideas we talk about what's not possible talk about you know what you can do through the lens of 15 years of my exploring this so the book is a way to aggregate it down into a shorter read uh and then we Host this this annual event called Nomad capist live and we bring a cur rated list of people who everything from Frontier Market investing to you know giving birth overseas to lowering your taxes we bring some of our staff that talks about our client work so you know from free to 10 bucks to Live Events and then you'll do white glove service I'm going to guess as well for the people that need it yeah if you have you know a mid six fig income or a low seven fig net worth or above we work with people all the way up to you know billionaires to put together these holistic strategies because you heard me multiple times throughout uh saying okay well this bank account probably doesn't work on its own but if you got a citizenship because you opened it like you know you wna you want to kind of consider the holistic nature uh and you have to consider the holistic nature given our our tax conversations I mean nothing works in a vacuum you can't just put your company in the British Virgin Islands and not move and think you're going to save tax because there's all kinds of rules around how that works and so you have to understand that and so that's what we help people figure out is is not only the known unknowns but the unknown unknowns oh yeah Andrew I appreciate you thank you for today thank you if you enjoyed that episode then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks and don't forget to subscribe