At last week’s Offshore Summit in Panama, one theme that came up in many of the presentations was professional competence. The context was everything from immigration professionals for establishing foreign residency and obtaining a second citizenship to tax professionals to help U.S. persons take advantage of the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion and attorneys to set up structures […]
Five Flags Geography I'm reviewing and clarifying my ideas related to the Five Flags theory of diversification in preparation for my opening remarks at this week's Offshore Summit in Panama City. If you're new to the idea, the "Five Flags" are to do with residency, citizenship, banking, assets, and business. Not everyone needs all five flags planted [...]
Fill In Presidential Election Winner’s Name Here By way of full disclosure, I wrote this essay last week, before the U.S. presidential election. I held on to it waiting to see which candidate's name to fill in to the opening paragraph... Obama has won. He'll be running the show in the United States for the [...]
Emergency planning. It’s a common topic in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. It’s not only economic disasters, currency collapses, bank failures, and stock debacles we need to plan for. It’s natural disasters, too, as Sandy has reminded the world. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados, typhoons, monsoons, winds, flooding, drought. Few places in the world are free from […]
CDs In Ecuador And Citizenship In Italy In response to Monday's e-letter on CD rates around the world, a couple of readers wrote in with questions...and one more reader e-mail from this week that I'd like to share, this one to do with citizenship through ancestry... "Lief, do you know anything about cooperativas in Ecuador? A [...]
CD Rates As High As 12% With U.S. and European banks offering interest rates on savings of less than 1% (meaning you're losing money after inflation), you're not alone if you're looking for alternative places to stash your cash. Where in the world can you get better rates than U.S. banks will pay you? It [...]
Non-U.S. Banks Are Beginning To Comply With FATCA Regulations We knew it was coming. Non-U.S. banks are beginning to comply with IRS regulations under FATCA. A friend wrote yesterday to say that her bank in Belize has sent her a letter explaining what they are doing to comply with the FATCA requirements and a waiver [...]
Gold Rings And Mustard Packs--Don't Let This Happen To You A colleague in Panama wrote to a bunch of friends last week alerting us to a scam currently being run in Panama City by a group of Colombians. A Colombian woman called her sister's apartment and asked to speak with the "child" of the house. [...]
I had the chance to return to Colombia last month for the Live and Invest Overseas conference in Medellin. After that visit and the opportunity to meet again with developer, investor, property, and banker contacts there, I’m happy to report that Colombia makes as much sense for investment today as it did when I first started looking […]
What's Wrong With This Picture? Last week, friend Paul Terhorst sent me a picture of a security chain lock on the door of the room in the hotel where he's staying in Laos. The thing was installed backwards, effectively making the lock useless. When I looked at the photo, I shook my head and thought [...]
Offshore Living Letter is a publication of Live and Invest Overseas. Our goal is to provide timely, actionable information on all things offshore, including: how to go offshore, diversifying your portfolio, wealth creation, protecting your assets, and much more.
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