Entrepreneur Expat
Welcome to Entrepreneur Expat! This is a podcast about living in Mexico, moving to Mexico, how to become a digital nomad, location independent businesses, global citizenship, global diversification, real estate, business and more.
Entrepreneur Expat
We're Leaving Mexico - 3 Countries We're Considering For Our Next Adventure
Moving Abroad Resources:
👉 Moving Abroad Relocation Roadmap Guidebook that walks you through the five phases of moving abroad ($27): https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/relocate
👉 Moving Abroad Relocation Blueprint Course which offers step by step guidance on everything from choosing the right country to immigration to taxes and everything in between: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/blueprint
👉 Want us to handle the details of your move abroad? Apply for our white-glove relocation services here: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/consult
👉 Free Moving to Mexico Guide: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/mexico
👉 Free Moving Abroad Checklist: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/abroad
Remote Work and Online Income Resources:
👉 Expat Income Accelerator course which shows you the multiple ways you can make money globally based on our 15+ years of experience in online business, investing internationally and living in multiple countries: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/income
👉 Get Your First High Paying Client Online Bootcamp which walks you through the first four foundational steps of creating and monetizing an online business based on 15+ years of experience in online business: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/firstclient-yt
👉 YouTube Mastery Workshop which shows you how we’ve built two YouTube channels that bring clients and passive income from digital course sales (including turning Entrepreneur Expat into a six-figure business in six months): https://www.YouTubeMasteryWorkshop.com
👉LinkedIn Mastery Workshop which shows you how to use LinkedIn to find remote work, clients and connect with recruiters based on Justin’s experience building a six-figure business and finding remote work on LinkedIn: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/linkedin
👉 Free Make Money From Anywhere Guide: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/money-guide
V I D E O S T O W A T C H N E X T :
Online Business Tips to Working and Traveling In Mexico: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zGH0voCyOc&list=PLh3xKhkMgH_IA6s3KvB_g9Cc9Ze1eji8j&index=2
Moving to Mexico: 10 Reasons Why We Chose to Live in Guadalajara https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK23vD8_xjc&list=PLh3xKhkMgH_LAY7UV78YMgms-f2e1UcwN&index=23
Tips for Moving Overseas: Top 5 Remote Work Skills That Make Money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFzjCrlNAL8&list=PLh3xKhkMgH_IA6s3KvB_g9Cc9Ze1eji8j
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Inquiries: community@entrepreneurexpat.com
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#livinginmexico #movingtomexico #digitalnomad #makemoneyonline #expatsinmexico #digitalmarketingtraning #geoarbitrage #moveoverseasfromus #digitalmarketingcourse #guadalajara #costoflivingmexico #digitalnomadvisa #digitalnomadnews #workandtravel #locationindependent
By this time next year, we're going to be living in and traveling between two to three different countries every single year because it's what we wanna do, it's the lifestyle we're trying to pursue, and also because of some amazing financial and tax benefits that come from doing so. In this video, we're gonna tell you what those countries that we're considering are how we're gonna pick the different countries. As well as what our plan is gonna look like overall to build this international lifestyle.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Entrepreneur Expat. This is Justin. I'm his wife, Amanda. And on this channel we talk all about globally diversifying yourself and your assets, making money online so you can go anywhere in the world, all things Mexico,'cause that's where we've been the last couple years, but that might be changing. In a little while and so much more. So if that's something that you're interested in, make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell so you don't miss a single video that we have coming out on this channel. If you like this kind of content, give it a thumbs up because it'll help us get in front of our goal of 1 million entrepreneur expats or aspiring expats, and really build a global network a global community. In addition to that, if you are watching this and you happen to have a liquid net worth of a million dollars or more, we can help you set up your own strategy as well as handle things like immigration, relocation. We've also got some really interesting insights on investments here in Mexico, and we also just got some really cool stuff about Portugal that we would be so excited to share with you. So just go to entrepreneur expat.com. Slash consult to learn more about that. If you don't meet that threshold, don't worry. We've got stuff for you as well. You can subscribe to this channel because we have free content coming out all the time that is educational and meant to help you get there. And in addition to that, we have resources in the description below that can help you with anything from creating your own relocation plan, picking your own countries to go to. All the way through to how do I make more money online so I can apply for visas all over the world.
Speaker:So why is it that we think that it's a good idea to live in multiple countries? There's, there's so much to unpack here and there's a lot of excitement because we love Mexico, don't get us wrong. And we, we think that Mexico is definitely. Going to be one of the places that we spend a lot of time, but we don't necessarily want to be here all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Mexico's definitely also a place we're actively investing in right now, and we're seeing some crazy returns. I mean, we're bullish on Mexico just based on everything we see. We just did an interview with one of our real estate partners. Mexico's gonna be doing very well in the next, you know, 10 to 20 years. So obviously we wanna have some exposure to Mexico. But we always said from the beginning of this channel, like we're not gonna be in Mexico. Forever. Yeah. This is just the starting point for, for a lot of people, Mexico is the starting point.
Speaker:Soft landing. It's the
Speaker 2:soft landing. It's the starting point on the global citizenship journey because it's close to home. It's the same time zones. Uh, the residency. I know a lot of people are complaining right now. They're saying that it's gotten very expensive and it has, and it has, but it's also relatively inexpensive when you look at places like Portugal. So, I mean, it's all relative. It's all relative. Yeah. It's all relative at the end of the day. And Mexico does have a straightforward process. If you can prove that you have money, they will give you residency. It's Easy peasy in that regard. Mexico also has a lot to offer. In terms of, you know, diversity of culture, diversity of places. We've, uh, we've traveled extensively throughout Mexico. We lived in Guadalajara for a few years. We've been in the Lake Al area for the last few months. So Mexico is, you know, a, a really like coveted place for a lot of expats.
Speaker:Yeah, you can get the beach, you could get the lake, you
Speaker 2:can get anything that you want. City, Obviously the food in Mexico is worth mentioning. Um, so for a lot of people, Mexico ends up being a starting point. On the global citizenship journey, and that's kind of what we always thought it would be. It would just kind of be the starting point. You had lived in other countries, you know, previous to UNI meeting, but for me it was the first one. So we're like, okay, soft landing, and then we'll reassess, uh, in a little while, and then we'll see kind of what's going on in the world. Where are we going, what are we doing? So Mexico was always considered the, the starting point for us. Uh, very grateful for the time here, the exposure of investments. That we have here is incredible. That's probably what's shocked me the most is just the economic growth in Mexico. Um, and then in addition to that, you know, we always wanted to live in different countries. Like I have this, I, you and I are the same way. I have this, like this insatiable thirst for knowledge and this insatiable thirst for learning new things in different cultures and exploring the world and, um, all those kinds of things. And. we just needed to figure out kind of like, okay, what are we doing after we had gotten to Mexico in terms of like, how do we stabilize here? How do we feel here? You know, how are we gonna continue making income?'cause obviously that's changed a lot of things as well um, since we left the United States. Um, and then so we've always wanted to do it. We have an insatiable thirst for these things and then it's just really sweet for taxes. Yeah. And, and that's,
Speaker:that speaks a lot to like the, the going between different countries and not. Winding up in like the tax that of a given country. Yeah. But what I'll say, and I'll unpack this a little bit and kind of give it, give it some structure here to just make it easier and, and, and follow. What are these main reasons? Like number one, I think, and this is what I told you about a few days ago when I'm like, Hey, let's really take this seriously. I know we've been talking about it, but let's really dive into it. Number one on my plate for sure is the fact that we want global diversification of our citizenships and residency. So right now, of course we've both got us passports. We're working on our Mexican passport as well, or at the very least permanent residency. But we are looking at that track to having a Mexican passport. So that's gonna give us the US that's gonna give us Mexico. If we did at some point decide to renounce our US citizenship, would I be okay having just a Mexican passport? I don't know, maybe, right? But I didn't feel like there was quite enough diversification there. We're gonna look at a few countries where that we're, we're actually gonna tell you about in this video in just a minute. there are countries out there that have a little bit more diversification than say, just having a Mexican passport or just having a Mexican and a US passport. So that was like really number one on our list is, especially for me,'cause I, I'm always like looking at the playing field saying, Hey, Mexico is great, but also is it too dependent on the US economy, for example?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker:Or are there a lot of risks, like for example, political instability to the extent that's in the us? I don't think so, but there's always a lot of risks in any country and it's. It's always imperative to not just leave your eggs in one basket or two. exactly the way that I look at it is it's really cheap insurance for geopolitical instability. So this is why a lot of people coming to us, especially those high net worth individuals, are having questions about second residency, second passports. They're buying it essentially as an insurance policy, and it's one of the most effective insurance policies that you can buy because if you're Really wealthy, if you've got 5 million, if you've got$10 million in the bank, like a lot of our friends do. You might think, well, I don't necessarily need health insurance. If you live in the US you probably still do because it's wild. But if you lived in Mexico yeah, at that level, you almost wouldn't need health insurance. You definitely don't need, even in the US, probably don't need car insurance. Again, I guess back to the craziness and the litigiousness of the us, maybe somebody could take you like that for five mil if you don't have car insurance, like, I guess, but, but there's different levels. like For a lot of things. Once you get above a certain level, maybe it's more like 10 or 15 or 20 million in the US realistically for some of those things, but you get above a certain level and you realize you could probably just self-insure for certain things. But it's very difficult to self-insure for the geopolitical risk that can happen, especially in a place like the US that right now is kind of giving us a little bit of late stage empire vibes.
Speaker 3:Yeah,
Speaker:Mexico's definitely up and coming, but I don't wanna put a hundred percent of my eggs in that basket.
Speaker 3:Nope.
Speaker:So that's, that's a big reason. Another reason number two, and it's almost tied. this is what you were talking about, is we want to have a little bit more diversity. We wanna have fun, we wanna have adventure, we wanna have diversity. While we're still young, we really want to travel and explore more of the world. And then number three to Amanda's point, is understanding more about people, understanding more about cultures and having the ability to learn about new countries, new languages, new people, new parts of the world, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Um, and also, you know, investment opportunities. Like, you know, Mexico might be really great for a certain type of investment, but not all. Maybe another country's better for another kind of investment. And again, that goes back to diversifying yourself, you know, geopolitically and also financially geopolitically. and financially.
Speaker:A hundred percent. And
Speaker 2:financially, because the world is constantly moving and shifting and changing. and We already knew that before we came to Mexico and before we started this YouTube channel. But obviously since we started this YouTube channel now we definitely know it even more because of all the research we have to do, um, all the time and all the ways that we help our clients. It's, It's just a constantly a chess board that's moving in all these different directions and there's lots of countries out there right now that are worth exploring and are kind of that upswing where a lot of the countries that Westerners are from United States, Canada. Western Europe, like they're just kind of not doing so hot. Although we do have a western European country on the list and we'll explain why.
Speaker:Alright, so anything else that we're missing in terms of like, why we sort of want to make this move? I, I think one that I like, oh, the tax net. We didn't even talk about that. So before we dive into the countries, let's talk about a little bit of the, the tax net situation, especially here in Mexico. So as with many other countries in the world, if you are here in person in Mexico for over 183 days per year, obviously not tax advice, consult your tax professional. But that's our understanding, right? It's about 183 days per year. If you're here more than that, then you are taxed on all of your global income as a Mexican tax resident. now, up until now, so far, they have not enforced too many taxes on expats, especially with foreign income. We really don't know a lot of expats that are even declaring or paying taxes in Mexico. We've
Speaker 2:talked to a lot of Mexican accountants about this, and they've all made, they say it's not really a thing. Yeah.
Speaker:But the letter of the law states that you can fall into that tax net, and my suspicion is over the next three to five years at most. They're going to start to crack down a little bit more on that as they get the resources to do though, uh, to do so as they get the technology to do so, and as they realize that there's this huge expat tax base, right? They haven't quite gotten to the point where they're even enforcing tax laws for many Mexicans. Like there's a lot of people here. Most people here they'll pay taxes. The joke is Mexico's actually one of the highest tax countries in the world where almost nobody pays taxes. Their marginal tax rates go above, uh, 35%. At that, some of the highest tiers, and you don't have to be earning very much. I think the highest tiers are about like 60 or 70 K or even less. You don't have to be earning that much money, uh, in Mexico to even be in that highest marginal tax rate. But
Speaker 2:no one pays it, which is why they instituted eva, which is the sales tax. So the government could make some revenue. Right.
Speaker:Which we won't get into the detail of EVA and how much that how much we have have to pay all that stuff on our Amazon imports from the US and whenever we send server parts here from your parents' house, but, but I digress. So when you are in a country though, for more than a certain number of days, and I know Columbia does police this a lot more than say Mexico, where they have connections between immigration when you're flying in and outta the country between the tax system and all that, and they definitely are asking you to pay taxes, most likely that's gonna happen here at some point. We don't know when, but we would certainly prefer, especially because if you look at the the numbers, we would actually spend less. Maintaining a place in two other countries, not the US'cause we don't really want to spend too much time there anyway. two other countries outside of the US besides Mexico, we would spend less maintaining residencies in those countries and actually having apartments, even if they're sitting empty than we would, uh, in what we are gonna be making shortly and what we potentially could pay. And, and I won't get into too much detail now, uh, to put our stuff out there too much, but, uh, we're, we're essentially going to, if, if we were. if Pulled into that Mexican tax system, we would end up spending less to have two other apartments and maintain them and pay utilities and everything else, and a couple other countries in different regions of the world then we would be paying just in taxes here.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker:So we could have three places around the world, which we've always wanted to do anyway. We've always kind of wanted to hop and, and, uh, take advantage of like, Hey, it's this season here, it's that season there maybe, maybe this. Continent is nice because the summer, the spring is really nice, but not the winter. Mm-hmm. So we, even though that's gonna increase our lifestyle and we're gonna have a better lifestyle, we're actually spending less money than we might be paying in just taxes alone. And we're able to get out of the tax net of any of those countries in addition obviously the additional benefits, which I think are really important of getting those residencies or citizenships. And I think it's important to get those now. Because even if we decide later to do something that, you know, they're, they're gonna charge you a hundred thousand or a quarter of a million dollars in investment or real estate in a given country to get a golden visa. Even if we were able to do that in the future, why not get those residencies or passports when it basically costs nothing,
Speaker 3:right. Other
Speaker:than some time living in that country and maybe paying rent there for a while, paying. Potentially minimal taxes there for the time that we are in the country, if anything. In a lot of cases we don't,
Speaker 2:since we've always, since we've always run online businesses and that's not an issue for us because we've been location independent for
Speaker:over 15 years,
Speaker 2:each of us. Yeah.
Speaker:So, yeah. So those, those are the different reasons we're, we're doing this and we'll talk about some of the objections people might have to this sort of lifestyle. And obviously we have two animals as well. We've got a dog and a cat, so we'll talk a little bit about what's involved there, but. What are some of the countries that we've been talking about? Obviously Uruguay was one.
Speaker 2:Yep. And Uruguay actually recently came up in the comment section because Uruguay has been making waves lately. Now my love, why is Uruguay making waves in all the expat spaces? Is,
Speaker:Well, there's a really cool thing that the Uruguayan government introduced called the 11 year tax holiday. So that means that if you are to get residency in Uruguay on that, on that path to citizenship. You could potentially be free of all taxes on all income, especially the income that's earned from other countries, which is most people's income if they're going to live there as expats for 11 years, zero tax.
Justin Keltner:Yeah,
Speaker:and they really only tax you on dividends and capital gains anyway if you're receiving your income from outside of the country. So you could do the 11 year tax holiday. And then there's also a separate option where you elect to pay 7% taxes for life. Instead of 12%, which later might go up on all those dividends and capital gains, which by the way, if you run a an S corp or something similar like I do, dividends would include the capital gains on that business, So, so the, capital gains would be the Schedule K that you receive. So I would still have to pay taxes on some of that, but I would much rather pay 7%. that's another thing we're looking into, like do I want the 11 year tax holiday? I don't know. Maybe I'm more likely to, let's say, go and live somewhere. Like o, do I permanently or retire there? In maybe more than a decade.'cause right now we're still traveling.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker:But you're not a tax resident there unless you're staying for more than six months. And most likely, if we're going to retire there at some point, it's gonna be in a decade. In 20 years, 30 years, who knows. Right, right. at that point, that 11 years would've already passed, but I'm gonna be paying 11 or well 12% tax on the capital gains instead of the 7% that you can lock in now. So there's some really cool incentives. You can either get that tax holiday for 11 years. And then pay 12% capital gains and dividends tax after on your foreign income. Or you could lock in that 7% for life, which to us is kind of looking a little bit more attractive because we're looking at that potentially as a destination, maybe to live long term. We're still exploring our options.
Speaker 2:and then Uruguay is also really interesting. It's known for having more of a European lifestyle, but in Latin America, which after being in Mexico for a while, would be an interesting change between those two countries. Although there are parts of Mexico that do feel very European.'cause it was a European colony as well. Um, and then in addition to that, you're a hop, skip in a from Argentina without having to deal with Argentina's taxes.
Speaker:Yeah, so Argentina was actually another country that we were seriously considering. And we're still, I mean, it's still kind of on our list. We're gonna go, to,
Speaker 2:I really wanna go to Buenos Aires.
Speaker:We're we're, definitely gonna go there. In fact, a lot of people don't know this, but you can take a two and a half hour ferry right from downtown in. Uh, in Uruguay and take that ferry, be right in Argentina, and Buenos Aires in just a couple hours.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker:For I think it was like 50 or 60 Euros. Right. you're practically going to a European city in, in Argentina. It's, it's very, very European. Uruguay is also kind of European, but Argentina especially. So, and there's just so much to do between those two countries. And we were really considering Argentina as well. We like what Malay is starting to do. He's
Speaker 3:attempting to do. Attempting to do, yeah. he's, he's reading out a lot of definitely spending. Yeah,
Speaker:he, he's, he's, uh, really just reigning in the government in so many ways. We're not sure how effective it is yet, or how effective it's going to be long term. One of the caveats though, like Amanda mentioned about Argentina, is that they do have a relatively high tax rate. It's higher than the US depending on the marginal bracket that you fit into, but it can go as high as 35% or more, all the way up from about 12%, just kind of starting, uh, starting base marginal. Tax rate for, for people like us that are expats. And so when you compare that to basically 0% on active income, which is Now
Justin Keltner:maybe not
Speaker:50% or so of our income, or 7% on just capital gains, but, or the option obviously in notay of something like no taxes until, uh, 11 years passes, Argentina doesn't seem that attractive. Now the second kind of caveat there in Argentina, in Uruguay, we could potentially spend three, four or five months a year there for a few years and get our permanent residence or citizenship. You don't necessarily have to be a tax resident of Uruguay in order to build the time in country that you need to get that Uruguay and citizenship. But in Argentina, you actually do have to spend over six months per year while you're working towards your citizenship and that
Justin Keltner:causes.
Speaker 2:You get caught up in the tax net. Exactly. That
Speaker:causes two problems. One is to Amanda's point, you get caught up in the Argentine tax net because you mandatorily have to be paying into that tax system. And number two, it removes the flexibility of travel so that you, let's say you didn't wanna spend all six months per year there in Argentina. You wanted to maybe spend three months, four months, a year there and uh, more time in other countries. For instance, when we apply for our Mexican citizenship, we will have to have been there in Mexico here. For six months out of the prior two years before we apply for that citizenship. So if for instance, you know, we're looking at Argentina and Mexico and a third country, that really limits our options because we have to spend the majority of our time in Argentina. The other caveat, and again this is not ruling Argentina out, we're still considering it. We hope that they're gonna make some reforms to the tax policy, especially for foreigners and, and allowing people easier path. to. Citizenship. But the other factor is that you cannot renounce an Argentine passport. So most passports will let you renounce. But if let's say things go even more south
Speaker 3:Yeah,
Speaker:In Argentina than they have in years prior, well now you're stuck with that for life. And maybe the government can come after you for taxes, no matter where you are in the world. Just like the US and TRIA do, right? Mm-hmm. Those are the only two countries, but who knows? So it's a little bit of a pickle. thinking, Hey, I've got this Argentina passport now, but I can't renounce it later if I want to. It's not something they support.
Speaker 2:The other thing about Uruguay that's quite attractive is Uruguay is not really involved in any of the drama of the world. So if World War III breaks out, who's gonna go mess with Uruguay? Pretty much nobody is going to go mess with Uruguay. And Uruguay doesn't mess with anybody either. Um, some people say World War III is already happening. It's just different kind of warfare than what we've seen before. But point being, Uruguay is a safe country. It's not involved in all this drama. Going on in the world. Uh, and that's another reason why it seems pretty attractive to expats right now.
Speaker:Yeah. So we're interested in Uruguay. We're maybe interested in Argentina if they get their stuff together a little bit more, and if some of the tax policies change. But here's another perk to Uruguay, is that they allow access to a lot of Merkur countries without visas. That includes Argentina, that includes Brazil. I'm gonna have to study up a little bit on the specific number of days you can spend in those countries, but currently US citizens. Have to actually apply for a visa to go to places like Brazil. You could potentially be an Uruguayan citizen, live in Montevideo or or a surrounding town Montevideo and go visa free to Brazil, to Argentina, to so many other places. just with that Uruguayan passport, even if, let's say we renounced our US passport and had our Mexican passport, had our Uruguayan passport, that opens up visa free travel to the Shein area through both the Mexican and the Uruguayan passports. That opens up visa free travel to Japan through the Mexican passport. And there's other countries like Russia that are a little bit precarious with the US passport that you can access too. With the
Speaker 2:Mexican passport, you get visa free travel to all of Asia developed and. undeveloped, which is yeah, one of that's another things people don't know, that's another
Speaker:perk. And then you just kind of have that added benefit of now South America, so you're not gonna be able to live in Asia long term with an Otay passport, but you can travel there as a tourist for months, every year you can travel to Europe. That's not a problem at all, even if you don't have your US passport anymore. And it opens up all, I mean, really all of Latin America to you, especially South America with that Uruguay passport. So it's good diversity.
Speaker 2:And Uruguay is known for having good banking In South America, most countries or people from those countries know that Uru is pretty safe banks, pretty good banking experience, all those kinds of things. So then we expose ourselves to being able to diversify where we hold our money even more.
Speaker:So what is the last country that we were potentially considering and maybe the bonus of the country right next door that we were looking at, but we're like, eh,
Speaker 2:Portugal. Now, I know we just said a whole bunch of stuff about Western Europe and how it's going crazy and all kinds of stuff, and Portugal's neighbors, Spain definitely does have a crazy tax system we wouldn't wanna touch. Um, how, yeah, we
Speaker:looked into Spain and we're like, yeah, we don't know. Shakira had some bad times there.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Spain has a tendency of making examples out of people like Shakira. And Shakira wasn't the first one, um, in Spain. So with with Spain, it can get a little bit more complicated with the taxes. Um, you know, we've had a lot of clients who, for example, they tried to go through Spain first. I think it's if you have over 2 million in assets in Spain and you're in Spain, then they want to tax you on your worldwide assets. And people are like, there's, yeah, there's wealth wealth tax. There's a wealth Tax's tax, and people are like, why? I already own this property and the United States, or, Canada, and I'm
Speaker:paying property taxes on thousands of dollars a year. Yeah,
Speaker 2:so that's just silly. That's just stupid, right? And we have a lot of clients who are in that, you know, two to 5 million range, and then they look at Spain and they're like, you're gonna tax me on my properties in the us? Like F you, I'm gonna go somewhere else. And on top of that, and they're losing millionaires. Now,
Speaker:not only that, but you have to spend almost enough time every single year in Spain
Speaker 2:to get caught up in the tax net to get,
Speaker:and you get, in order to be able to get that, that residence or that citizenship. So you get, get caught up in that tax unless you go through the goal, the visa route, but they pretty much shut that down. Um, but if you are doing like a digital nomad visa and then trying to, to spend enough time in the country to then qualify for citizenship like you can with a Mexican passport, if you've got a, a passport from a Latin American country like Mexico, you can get fast track to Spanish citizenship and get that in as little as two years, but you have to spend almost six months a year on average in the country. Yeah, I think for that, and there's a, very, very fine line between the amount of time you have to spend in Spain. To qualify for citizenship, just like Argentina, but not quite as bad, right? Between that and the time that you're in the tax net. And it gets really tricky,
Speaker 2:I think, from my research. If you're coming from a Latin American country to Spain, you have to be there the full two years. You have to do your two years, and then you, you can qualify for the citizenship. I think with the other residency, it's like six months every year, so on and so forth, um, to maintain the residency. But yeah, Spain, I mean, I've been to Spain several times. My mother lived there. When she was a teenager, I actually went to school in Spain when I was 11 years old. I'm like, I'm good. I've done this already. Also. Your taxes suck. I can go somewhere else.
Speaker:And it's, it's subject to a lot of the, the other political instability issues, high crime, so many other things like
Speaker 2:protest, completely unled protest, immigration they've been protests and things like that. Yeah, that's
Speaker:happening throughout a lot of Western Europe. But contrast that with Portugal. And Portugal is starting to look like a really good option because it's safe, it's quiet. It stays out of a lot of the BS that so many other countries in Western Europe are experiencing. Why else do we like Portugal?
Speaker 2:Wine. Um,
Speaker:wine. That's a, that's a good one. You
Speaker 2:could get the Iberian lifestyle that you would be getting in Spain without all the bullshit It's basic. That's true. basically why. Uh, Portugal, uh, makes a lot more sense. And also I forgot to mention this about both Uruguay and Portugal, we both speak Spanish fluently. So going from Mexico to Uruguay is no big deal because we already speak Spanish, and then going from Spanish to Portuguese is not that difficult and in my opinion, I could be wrong. I know everybody who speaks Spanish says something different, but in my opinion, I personally understand port, uh, Portuguese from the Iberian Peninsula a lot more easily than I understand. Resilience. Just me personally. You could have a completely different experience. I've heard. I've heard it's like a 50 50 depending on who you talk to. Yep. But language barrier wise, going from Spanish to Iberian, Portuguese is not a big deal.
Speaker:Yeah. And it's, it's kind of a small con and also a pro at the same time because it's like another language that you get to learn. So that's sort of a plus. Right. We love learning languages and learning about new cultures and things like that, so we get to live there potentially at least for a few months, a year. Learn a new language, but it's not that tricky, like you said, coming from Spanish and a lot of people in Portugal speak English too, especially in the, the big cities and the, the tourist sort of areas. I'd
Speaker 2:rather learn port Portuguese if I can. Of course. And I already have a foundation but they also probably speak a
Speaker:decent amount of Spanish too. I mean,'cause they're so close to Spain.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker:So
Speaker 2:I mean, I can understand Portuguese, like again, I, understand I vary in Portuguese more than I understand Brazilians. But if I have it written in front of me, I understand like 90, 95% of what's being said. so It's not an issue for me or for you because you're also fluent to Spanish
Speaker:and when you look at the tax situation and things like that, Portugal is a little bit easier than Spain. They're a little bit more lenient in terms of when they consider you a tax resident and you don't actually have to necessarily stay in the country long enough to be covered in their their tax net. In order to get the citizenship, you can potentially be in Portugal as little as about three to four months per year for those first few years as you're building up that time in country. To qualify for Portuguese citizenship. And of course when you get that Portuguese citizenship, now you can live and work wherever you want in Europe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And there's definitely some other countries that are like honorable mentions, you know, in terms of what we're considering down the road. Greece has a really interesting program. They have digital nomad visas. They now have a golden visa, so that's an interesting one in terms of, uh, Western Europe.
Speaker:I'll say this about Portugal too though. Yeah. Because there's different categories. And another video that we're gonna do very soon is. Your global passport diversification at different financial levels, right? Mm-hmm. So if you're like, maybe, you know, in the, in the middle like us, where we're starting to get more and more savings, but we're still working. We're, we're actively earning income, we're growing businesses. We're sort of in that growth phase. There's a certain set of countries like Portugal, you can kind of come in no matter where you are. If you're okay spending time in the country, then you really only have to show a couple thousand dollars a month of income. It's not very much. It's very accessible to digital nomads, to people with a remote income to business owners that are operating remotely. So it'd be easy for us to qualify for that, and we're happy to invest the time in country, those requirements that we have to spend time in Portugal to obtain now time that is credited towards that citizenship application. But if you've got a few million dollars in the bank and you're okay investing about half a million in a lot of Portuguese stocks and things like that. You can get fast tracked as well for both you and your family in a much shorter period of time.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker:And what, uh, some of our clients John and David were telling us about is that they've got programs there as well. And we're starting to talk to partners there in Portugal about these programs. Uh, now that they, they've mentioned that recently we're, we're looking into this even more and you're able to actually take money out of your American IRA. Self-direct, the IRA, and then have it managed by a Portuguese firm that primarily invests in companies in Portugal, and they're seeing anywhere from a seven all the way up to a 15 or 20% return on some of these stocks. So there's a lot of really high growth stocks. There's a lot of stable stocks that they invest in as well, that are, that are in different industries in that country. Depending on your risk profile, your age, your tolerance, things like that, they're gonna set you up with. specific portfolio of stocks. If you're interested in a country like Portugal, we can connect you with our partners. We're also, we're researching different people, uh, different asset managers and in different countries, including Mexico. Including Portugal. So if you want to have your customized plan built, if you do have a million dollars or more in liquid net worth, definitely click that link below or go to entrepreneur expat.com/consult.
Justin Keltner:And
Speaker:can apply for a consult with our team, and we're gonna help show you what some of those different types of opportunities are. Yeah. So what were you saying about some of the other countries? So Greece, although if you've already got the Portuguese passport, you almost don't need it, Yeah. but it's, it's an alternative route. Right. Ireland's
Speaker 2:interesting. In terms of Western Europe, I've been to Ireland. I love Ireland. I always said I would go back, I wish there was better food in Ireland. I'm sorry. Right. But I love Ireland. I love the Irish people always said I'd go back someday, to do it. You know, obviously we're super interested in Southeast Asia eventually, but with Southeast Asia there's really no easy path Like there is no path to citizenship. It's very
Speaker:difficult to possible in Asia, it's very, unless you get married there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker:But then we would have to break up and then make married and It's a whole thing. It'd be very complicated. be a lot of paperwork, complicated. Um,
Speaker 2:you know. So, you know, and there's Middle Eastern countries that we're interested in checking out as well. That's kind of down the road. So in this next leg. our adventure of our lives, we were like, Hey, you know, we are really interested in Southeast Asia, but we're already speak Spanish. We're already on this side of the world. And to your point, you said things like, why would you wait if you can just start the process now and then avoid a bunch of headaches, price hikes, and problems later.
Speaker:Yep, that's, that's exactly right. And that's why we're looking more at these countries that currently are accessible versus going in Vagabonding in Thailand or in. Vietnam, and we might do a little bit of that too, I'm sure in the next few years down the road. Maybe we'll spend a few months, a year there, especially once we've started to establish enough time in these countries where we're not gonna have an issue getting citizenship. But look at it this way, we, we travel between, between Mexico, especially now that we're, we're earning our, our citizenship here, uh, somewhere like Uruguay and a place. Like Portugal in Europe, it's not a big
Speaker 3:deal.
Speaker:It's not a big deal. Yeah. Even with the dog. I mean, Daisy's a service dog. She can come on the plane. It's a seven or eight hour flight, depending on where we're going to, and she's been on flights like that before. No issue the cat, you know, it's in, in her little bag.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Uh,
Speaker:and yeah, it's not that big of a deal to, to travel and it's a lot of fun and then we kind of get our travel in plus the global diversification. So when we look at the financial aspects of this, because this is something that a lot of people are asking us about, like, how are you guys gonna do that? Isn't that crazy expensive? Well, our total living expenses right now, living in Mexico with a beautiful lake. View condo in the Chapala area. We
Speaker 2:live well.
Speaker:We live well, yeah. In Mexico, and we're spending about$2,000 a month. but That includes our utilities, our food, everything, massages, nails, house, everything, housekeeper, all that stuff. In terms of just like the rent and the basic utilities, it's around$600 a month. Like just our rent, our power, our internet, right? So call it$600 a month for Mexico. We may or may not maintain this place here. We're looking at different options, but we're gonna give you the worst case scenario financially, even if we have
Justin Keltner:have
Speaker:long-term leases, essentially in all. three places just to give you like a very conservative estimate. So$600 here, Uruguay is a little bit more expensive. We could find something in Montevideo furnished or semi furnished for around a thousand a month. Portugal is gonna be around the same as that at about a thousand dollars a month for a nice place furnished or semi furnished. So all in, you're looking at about$2,600 in rent. Maybe add a little bit more for extra utilities in both those places, even though we won't be using them much because we won't be there. But even if we have those three leases, long term leases, and we travel between them sort of three months here, you know, a few months there, a few months there, and we're not renting them out or anything like that, which that's, that's a way to obviously make. This work even easier, but even if we're just renting them completely empty when we're not there, we're only spending$3,000 a month in rent having three places in three different countries in the world. And that's pretty darn cool because I could not get a nice one bedroom apartment in San Francisco for less than four or$5,000, like in a comfortable area where we have anywhere near the quality of life that we're gonna have in either of these places.
Speaker 2:The flights also weren't that bad. when you were, The flights
Speaker:weren't that bad when I did the math. You're spending about$6,000 per year, which is way less than what you would have to do over the course of the five years, three to five years that it takes to get citizenship in all of those different countries. If you were to compare it to like a Golden Visa program, so Golden Visa, you're shelling out a quarter of a million dollars at least, or if it's a Caribbean passport, like minimum 150,000 plus. Um, but most of them are even more, they've gone up to like 200 something thousand, so consider like 300 k either. an investment or just a gift to the government. Instead of that, we're increasing our costs by, what's the difference? 2000 a month for rent, so that's 20 4K plus six K for flights,$30,000 that we're increasing our expenses by, if that, and over five years, that's still under$150,000 and we're getting three different citizenships.
Justin Keltner:Yeah,
Speaker 2:yeah. Now you might be thinking, oh, how do you guys make money? Well, obviously we have Entrepreneur expat with entrepreneur, expat. You know, we sell digital courses, so one of the things that we talked about was building in more passive income. Um, I don't think we would need to as much if we're living between three different countries, but we were thinking like five, 10 years down the road, if we ever wanna pick up the pace in terms of our travels, making sure we have the systems in place, the products in place, and we got not just this YouTube channel, but two YouTube channels that have started running like machines. Um, in that regard, it took us a little while to get there. Which is why I'm so grateful that we were in Mexico for a while to really stabilize, um, these things. And then obviously we do business consulting, so that pays a lot of money, uh, business consulting and then so does relocation. Relocation and immigration and taxes and all that stuff is also a very high ticket item. So we also do that for our clients. Um. And then in addition to that, uh, as a part of the business consulting, you also, you know, host people and their websites and all that kinds of thing, all that stuff. So honestly, we're on track. We're like, we're getting to the point where either passively or semi passively, all our expenses are basically covered by businesses that, you know, don't 100% run themselves. We're not quite there yet, but they're freaking close to 100% running themselves, either because we automated them. Um, either we automated the sales in terms of digital courses and things like that, or we automated the marketing like YouTube and Instagram or in terms of relocation, we have teams that we delegate to. And then the business consulting, it's kind of similar, right? Although we're definitely more actively involved in the business consulting. So when we started realizing like where we were now in comparison to where we were 3, 4, 5 years ago, we started to realize, okay, this is actually easier. To do because when we first came, well, when I first came to Mexico a couple years ago, we tried the digital nomad quicker pace thing and we were like, no, absolutely not. Because we were running like two different businesses at the time,
Speaker 3:separately.
Speaker 2:Separately. Those businesses did not really lend themselves to that kind of a pace and that kind of a lifestyle, that's when we were like, Hey, we need to park it in Mexico for a little while and figure out this piece of things so then we can move on, uh, to the next. Piece. So I'm very happy to say that like we're getting there and our goal for being able to, uh, live in different countries is still like a year out in terms of flights and things like that. So then that gives us plenty of time in order to, you know, really dial it in in terms of the passive income, the machines, uh, the relocation, all that kind of stuff. Because the reality is that we make more than enough money to be able to do this. And now we do it in a way where it's, it's, we're not so involved like we were, it's a lot more
Speaker:passive than it was before. It's a, Yeah. It's
Speaker 2:a lot more passive versus semi passives in comparison to the businesses that we had Before, which we ran into that issue when we were trying to be digital nomads. We didn't have a YouTube channel then.
Speaker:And on a, on a more personal note, I mean, it's very motivating to me because as much as I love Mexico, like I want to travel more, I wanna see different places. And when you're in Uruguay, you take that ferry to Bueno Aires, and now you've seen two different countries in right, in a week. Right. So being able to explore South America, Exactly. Or, or hop on over to Brazil or explore Europe from your home base in Portugal, like that's really cool too. That's super motivating for me because I love to travel. I love to learn new languages, learn about new cultures, learn about different people, learn new investments.
Speaker 2:You love to learn about new investment strategies.
Speaker:So now I'm like way more motivated. I'm producing content more and I'm like, all right, let's pick up the pace. Let's do this Because it's building towards that future. And of course this is also gonna make us a lot more money. Now we're building connections, not just through Zoom, not just remotely with a lot of these people in these, these other countries that can help with visa processes and things like that for our clients. But we're actually getting on the ground in person. We're getting content there. We're filming, so it's easily going to pay for the increases in, in lifestyle uh, expenses and whatnot, because we're actually there. Doing that research, filming that content, we're on site. It gives us a new level of credibility that we didn't have before, just kind of staying in one place. And yes, there's a lot of people moving to Mexico, but they also want to go to Uruguay, to Argentina, to so many other countries around the world. Isn't that right, Daisy? We want to travel. She loves to travel. This dog is very, very well traveled. Daisy is more, she's been in probably a couple dozen cities in a few different countries.
Speaker 2:Daisy's more well traveled than a lot of. Americans, unfortunately,
Speaker:she's got a big passport. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Fortunately or unfortunately, right. Daisy. Oh, baby girl. Yeah.
Speaker:So that's what we've got in terms of the, the countries that we're going to, this is not a, this is not a goodbye to Mexico. This is more of a hello to. Other countries in the world that we're going to be exploring, we're gonna be learning about, we're gonna be bringing you lots of new content now from all over the world. So we're super excited to be doing that. Again, if you want our support, if you've got a million dollars or more in liquid net worth, you want our support with a white glove, fully customized relocation service, starting with your customized plan where we can look through the options based on your ancestry, based on your savings, based on businesses that you wanna start in different countries. And we can tell you what some of the best second passports or even third passports would be for you. And if it's a place like Mexico or so many other countries, Panama, Costa Rica, Portugal, where we're building partnerships. With people on the ground, we can actually help you with that process start to finish. So just go to entrepreneur expat.com/consult, book that call, and if you're not there, feel free to check out all the free resources and some of the other courses and things that we have available for you as well. Those are right in the description below. Thanks so much for watching, and we'll see you again very soon