From the monthly archives:
I really don’t know what to make of this article from US News and World Report which is a thinly disguised advertisement for the author’s business. The article entitled “How to Retire at any Age” goes on to describe how a couple wanted to retire at a young age and moved abroad to Belize in [...]
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It’s late August and with August and September come hurricanes. The first hurricane of the season, Earl, has become a category 4 and threatens St. Martin, St. Barthelemy, St. Eustatius, the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, part of Puerto Rico according to the article linked above. Hurricanes I believe are a considerable threat to anyone [...]
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The Daily Telegraph has a very intriguing article on the mindset of health insurance companies dealing with insurance fraud overseas for expats. Since healthcare is often cheaper overseas, particularly in the developing world, it is common for medical professionals to charge a lower rate for cash paying patients, and a higher rate for patients paying [...]
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There is a flipside to moving abroad for work or retirement, and that flipside is the negative affect it can have on an expat’s home country. The term brain drain is used to describe the impact human capital leaving a country has on its economy. If many people in a country feel they have no [...]
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In all of the discussion of retiring abroad, it is rarely discussed as to how often expats return home. There’s no real accurate data available, but the British bank Natwest has stepped forward according to this article and taken a poll of expats who have retired overseas asking them whether they plan on returning home. [...]
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Mike at Oblivious Investor has a great blog post on retirement calculators and their problems. I think the right retirement calculator can be very useful. But like anything that tries to predict the future, the farther off the event you are trying to predict is, the less accurate your prediction will be. I believe a [...]
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I’ve been reading an interesting book recently about the United States and the Panic of 1907 which I will review in a future column. My reading habits are about as nerdy as you can get, and right now I am immersed in reading books on economic history. Unfortunately, the vast majority of literature on economic [...]
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I’m sure you’ve all read about the extraordinarily high price of gold in recent months, and how it is seen by many as a good investment option. I don’t consider myself an expert in commodities or gold at all, and I can only give some broad observations and generalizations about gold in this post. I [...]
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Recent news out of Mexico is anything but positive. Mexico currently has the one of the highest murder rates in the world, a murder rate higher than many of the world’s poorest nations. Yet it remains a leading destination for retirees, particularly those from the United States. Why? Well for one, it borders the United [...]
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Newsweek, an American newsmagazine that was recently sold for one dollar, has determined through a number of metrics which of the world’s countries are best. I always find these lists somewhat intriguing, particularly the one from the United Nations known as the Human Development Index which is basically a nice pseudo scientific way of saying [...]
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