The Cost Of Holding Can Be More Important Than The Cost Of Buying I read recently about a home owner's association in Florida foreclosing on units because owners are delinquent with their HOA fees. The article focused on a couple of condo complexes where the monthly HOA fees had been increased to the point where [...]
Pay For What You See "'Buy what you see,' you tell us all the time, Lief," wrote a reader recently. "Yet, at the same time, you promote pre-construction investments. How does that make any sense?" Perhaps I should adjust the mantra from "Buy what you see" to "Pay for what you see." Taken literally, Buy [...]
Low Debt, Low Inflation, And Continued Growth--This Is The Third World? In Monday's dispatch, I wrote about misguided misperceptions that persist related to life in Colombia. Most of the world continues to think this country is a no-go zone for safety reasons. Sure, wander off into the jungle regions near the border with Ecuador or Venezuela...or [...]
Easy Residency And Even A Work Permit In Panama Here's the most important thing to understand about the "offshore world": The rules can (and do) change fast. You can't assume you understand something today (to do with establishing residency, obtaining citizenship, opening a bank account, etc.) because you researched it a month or two ago. [...]
New Irish Residency Scheme Not A Sure Path To Citizenship In researching the lead article for the August issue of the Simon Letter on Irish citizenship, I came across information about economic residency options the Irish government came up with earlier this year. Some are touting these as economic citizenship options. Unfortunately, that's not really the case. [...]
In doing further curiosity reading after my Monday dispatch to you about the current tax debates here in France, I found some hilarious comments posted on news sites discussing Hollande’s planned increase of the top marginal tax rate in France to 75%. The best was from a young lady who stated (I’m paraphrasing a bit): […]
Nevermind The Politicians Based in Paris the past few weeks, we've been getting questions from readers and friends about what we're going to do in the face of recently elected President Hollande's proposed big tax changes. Hollande plans to increase this country's top marginal tax bracket from 41% to 75% for income over €1 million [...]
Buy Colombia Now I don't try to time currency fluctuations, but, last week, my banker in Colombia e-mailed to tell me the Colombian government announced they would purchase US$300 million over the next few weeks. She thought, therefore, it might be a good time to transfer some money down there if I need to. Indeed, [...]
Speak The Language Of Investors Back in Paris after having been gone for several years, my French, limited when living here, is, well, more limited. But the good news is that this is Paris, and, despite what many Americans say, you can get by here, even full-time, with very limited, even hardly any French. Certainly, [...]
Moving Isn't Hiding Some recent reader e-mails have me scratching my head. Some readers rail against me for writing about ways both to save taxes and to protect assets by moving them offshore. These readers seem fully to believe that these activities are illegal. The only thing I can think is that they are mis-merging [...]
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.
