Why We're Considering Albania for Our Next International Move

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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Disclaimer: The information in this video should not be considered tax, financial, investment, or any kind of professional advice. Only a professional diagnosis of your specific situation can determine which strategies are appropriate for your needs. Entrepreneur Expat can and does not provide advice unless/until engaged by you.

Transcript

0:36

Well, it looks like we're very soon going to be checking out Albania as a country to live. We're currently here in Mexico and we actually just finished a few appointments in Guadalajara. We have our private driver here who took us to Guadalajara for the day to go to our spa. We got, we got our facials done that, uh, we had bought a package for those a while ago before we had moved to Chip, so we got our facials done. Uh, did some other stuff in town. Picked up a few things for some rental properties we're managing, and now we're headed back to Chip Paul. And we wanna do a quick video about the next country we're looking at going to, which is Albania. Welcome to Entrepreneur Expat. This is Justin. I'm Amanda. And on this channel we talk all about the international lifestyle, how to make money from anywhere in the world, 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. We have a lot of content coming out. We've got more countries other than just Mexico because we've gotten a lot of questions and requests about what other countries are great for American expats. Those are incoming. So make sure to subscribe and for those of you who need help with either, global tax optimization businesses, diversifying yourself. Immigration visas, residencies, all that fun stuff that comes with this lifestyle, and you have over a million dollars of net worth or more, then make sure to apply to work with us because we can help you with our team here in Mexico. We also have contacts in several other countries who can help you as well. And if you don't have a million dollars in net worth yet, not a problem. We're probably one of the only YouTube channels. Who talks about this that has created a lot of resources for those of you who are not there yet, which you can find in the description below, and will help you make the money that you actually need. In order to get those visas, whether it's a digital nomad visa, whether it's perhaps a temporary or permanent residence in Mexico, they keep increasing the requirements every single year. So if you've got a job, we help people all the time that have a longstanding history in the corporate world, even all the way up to the C-Suite executive level, and they're like, you know what? I can work for a corporation. I can make money. I'm making multiple six figures, but I have no idea how to do that from anywhere. So we've got courses and training to help you with that below. Um, but of course, if you are a millionaire, you've got money to invest, uh, you're looking for some hands-on personalized support, then you can also go to entrepreneur expat.com/consult and apply to work with our team. So on a recent video we did, we mentioned how we were starting to look at other countries other than Mexico. We've been here. Well, you've been in Mexico a total of like five years. Mm-hmm. All the times that you've been in Mexico. I've been here a couple years. We lived in the city, we're in Guadalajara now. We recently moved out to the Chapala area, which we love. Uh, but Mexico was always meant to be a bit of a temporary thing or a starting point to the international lifestyle. We always knew that eventually we'd end up in other countries. We just didn't exactly. Know when, and on that recent video, we talked about countries we were interested in, namely Uruguay and Portugal. So if you didn't catch that video, make sure to catch that one. What we forgot to mention was Albania, and that's what we're going to be talking about today because Albania has been making a lot of noise in the expat spaces lately, but I feel like it's still under the radar enough where it's not like. You know, for those of you, a lot of you in the comments were like, oh, Mexico's gotten too expensive with their requirements. Well, maybe Albania might be an option, for example. And even if it's not about the money, and even if you're like, you know what, I have a lot of net worth. I've got assets. But when I look at Portugal and their, uh, highest marginal tax rates of almost 50%, that's not worth it. No. And you compare it. We're gonna talk about this in a, in a minute. I don't wanna spoil it. But when you compare some of the tax rates and things like that, even if you are wealthy, and I would say almost, especially if you are wealthy and you live in Portugal full time, you're actually shooting yourself in the foot just a little bit. Uh, versus Albania is actually much more business friendly in terms of taxes and the climate to set up businesses than Portugal. So let's go into some of the reasons why we're considering Albania, like seriously considering it like maybe in a year. We're there, um, while we finish some things up here in Mexico. Well, number one, it's proximity to a lot of countries that I have been wanting to travel to for a very long time. I've had, for example, Turkey on my list for a long time. Greece has been on my list for a long time. Some parts of Northern Africa have been on my list for a long time. Then of course, obviously you're a hot skip and a jump from the Shein zone. Mm-hmm. Uh, which is most. Western European country. So, but you're not in the Sheen zone, which is kind of another pro because you can feasibly go and live half the year in Albania enough time to be on your way to earning your passport, which we're gonna talk about in a second. But, uh, you're a hop, skip, and a jump like Amanda said, over to central or Western Europe and the Sheen territory and all of that. So you could live three months here, three months there, and then do it again and, uh, still be below the number of days or right at the number of days that you can be in the. EU she up. So that's definitely something that's very attractive to us. We wanted to start with Latin America first because we both speak Spanish. So that was a big plus. And it was the same time zones,'cause we needed that for the businesses that we had when we started this. Um, and, but that's not no longer an issue, that's no longer a problem. We've got different ways of making money now. Um, that, that don't depend on, that don't depend on time zones, which is really great. And then, uh, everything that we said we wanted to do, we did. We spent some time in Latin America. We said we wanted to go to the Caribbean, uh, in the winters. Uh, this coming year will be the third year that we end up doing that. So we're like, Hmm. Time for Europe. Yeah, so that's the first pro is the proximity to a lot of places we want to visit. And I'll add a second pro in there, which is the fact that you are able to soon now with what a aban is, uh, now trying to, to enter the EU in 2022. They had actually started that process of entering the European Union. Uh, once they do, I have a feeling that it's gonna be much harder to get an Albanian passport, but currently they're not part of the eu. But I have a very, very good feeling that by the time we earn our permanent residency or citizenship there, which we're very seriously looking into, they're going to be part of the eu. And so that's gonna open up potentially a lot of opportunities. In the EU for us as well, without having to go through not only a much more expensive, but also a much less tax friendly country like Portugal, or in some cases Spain. I know a lot of people were trying to go the route of Spain and the taxes there are just insane. So that's another pro. Then a third pro that I really like is that you can get your passport in Albania in just five years and. It's similar to Portugal in that regard. Obviously you would have to speak Albanian in order to actually get a passport, at least basic Albanian. Uh, you could get a permanent residency even if you did not speak Albanian and pass the citizenship test. But five years is really not that bad. That's on par with Mexico, and then I'll add in. In order to do that, you only have to start with a digital nomad visa where you can show an income of a little under a thousand USD per month. We're certainly above that. But, uh, the cool thing is, you know, when you're running a business, you are not always, well, I'll put it this way, you're trying to have as little net income as possible. I mean, everything essentially is a business expense if you can relate it somehow to your business and to the activities of your business. If you look at a country like Portugal, they wanted for the two of us, approximately$69,000 per year in income, and that's net income. Which means not only would we have to make that, which that's the easy part, but then we would have to like pay taxes on that amount of money, whether or not we would need to do that in, in the course of normal business like operations or tax planning. So that would be tricky because it would cost us significantly more. So it's a pro because the requirement is lower, which means that our taxed income, both in the US and then also moving forward in Albania, does not have to be anywhere near as high. What else do you have on the pros in terms of like culture? I know we're talking about culture and lifestyle and everything else compared to here. Well, it's a European lifestyle. Everybody wants one of That's a big pro. That's a big pro. Yeah. You've got Latin America. And Latin America is beautiful and it's not that we're tired of it necessarily. We love it here. But it's a different pace of life. It's a different culture. And I, I am also Eastern European. Right. We've been with my cousins for a while now it's time to go hang out with, we're about to go visit my cousins in Albania exactly, because I've got Ukrainian roots. So it's kind of a little change of pace, uh, of lifestyle and culture. Maybe learning a new, a new language as well. And then another really big pro that I love about Albania. Is the tax scheme that they have there. So the first thing is they have, and of course, consult your tax professional, whether it's in Albania or anywhere else. We've got people we can connect you with. If you do meet that criteria, you've got a million dollars or more of liquid net worth, then you can book your consult@entrepreneurexpat.com slash consult. Uh, but tax situation there is, is much better even than in Mexico. Of course, most people in Mexico, including expats, don't really pay taxes to Mexico. Maybe they're paying taxes. Mexican to the us. Yeah. Mexicans joke that they don't pay taxes. I mean, they don't. But, uh, typically, like expats aren't paying too many taxes here. But if you do get into the tax net in Mexico, whether it's because you're running businesses locally here, or your income is high enough where, uh, they start to ask questions, or you're a Mexican and you're, you've got a salary here or even a foreigner and you're working for a company here, the tax rate in Mexico is very, very high. The marginal tax rate goes to around 38. Percent, or in some cases more. And you're also paying much higher taxes. You're paying like an additional, uh, around 10% or 15% on the dividends. I'll double check that exact number for you guys, but you're paying extra tax on the dividends as well, which could even include income from an S corp, which a lot of expats have set up if they are business owners. So Mexican taxes very high. Albanian taxes. However, if you set up the proper tax regime there, which is essentially you make yourself a self-employed person there in Albania working with foreign clients, IE your US based corporation or businesses directly of US or Canadian or other countries clients, then you actually get a tax holiday for the first three years starting now. If you were to, to get that, that citizenship now or, or start that citizenship process and residency process now, because until. 2029, there are no taxes for inde. Basically, independent business owners. Independent business owners there with clients outside of Albania, you pay 0% tax on your active income. And then after that it's just 15% per year, which is pretty cool. And we've already done some calculations. And yes, we would effectively pay a little bit more tax in Albania than we would say in Mexico because of how things are structured and enforcement and whether or not they're actually asking. Expats to declare and file taxes, but for the lifestyle you get that we would be paying effectively 30% in Portugal. So we would be paying double in somewhere like Portugal. Significantly more than double in a place like Spain. And Spain even has wealth taxes. Albania does not, unless you've got assets in Albania and even, even then, they're very, very low. So the tax rate is extremely favorable. To expats in digital nomads. Speaking of something else that's favorable cost of living in Albania, we were looking is about like what half of what we're paying in Mexico and we're already, we've really significantly reduced our expenses just being in Mexico while living a very good quality of life. I think a lot of Americans. Still think in their minds that if you leave the United States, you're somehow downgrading. No baby. Not at all. You're, you're trading up. Okay. You are trading up. We got a private driver right now. We went to the spa. We have a Lakeview for 600 bucks a month. You are trading up my friends. At this point. You get access to healthcare better quality food. Sounds like it's a better deal than, yeah, and it's not quite half. I mean, I think it would be a little bit more than half. Uh, it's, it's very similar to what we're paying in Mexico, but for, I would say arguably a higher quality of life, European lifestyle and all that, you can find an apartment like fully furnished in the city center of a few different cities in Albania, like Ana, for around. Four to 500 euros per month. Um, so that would be what, around like five to$600, depending on the exchange rate. So to get an apartment furnished, I mean, we're paying about that. We're paying a little under, like, we're paying like five to$600 per month. US for an unfurnished two bedroom condo that's in a small town. So it's like on par with Mexico or a little bit cheaper, especially for, for housing, but it's cheap enough. So this is another thing I'll just add here. Compared to Portugal, if we were to rent a, an apartment in Portugal or even an Otay in either of those places, we'd be paying minimum about a thousand to$1,200 a month for like a furnish rental, which we would probably do at least at the beginning. Versus in Albania, we could get a furnished place that would allow our, our pets and everything. For closer to$600 a month, so we have enough money left over where we could actually keep our place in Mexico. Either rent it out on Airbnb or have somebody house it, or have friends or family just stay there for free. And we're still spending realistically under a thousand or$1,100 a month in housing. And we've got houses on two different continents. Yeah. In fact, it's cheap enough where we even could have another place in Southeast Asia still rent it long term if we wanted to and just hop around between multiple countries. So another thing that's interesting about Albania is the economic opportunities in Albania. And there's a few places to go to here, and I know you wanted to talk about that, but. Place number one is the fact that Albania is really just starting to really develop, I think they're building their third airport. Now. You might think that's a bad thing. That's actually a good thing when you get in on the ground floor of a country. Mm-hmm. So for example, a lot of you've been saying, ah, Mexico's getting crazy with its immigration and it's getting very expensive. Yeah. Because Mexico's doing well. That's why, um, that's happening. Well, the same thing is gonna end up happening to Albania. We're just getting in on even more of a ground floor. Uh, than Mexico. So when you get in on the ground floor of a country, it's usually a really good sign for investors in business and things like that. And, you know, we, you just did a post about this on your Facebook the other day. A lot of Americans reach out to us and they're like, oh, can you help us go to Canada? Can you help us go to the uk? Can you help us go to Australia? And we're like, well, number one, good luck with their immigration systems.'cause they're complicated and very expensive. Uh, Australia, forget about it. And number two, um, all those countries are having the exact same problems you're having in the United States right now, which is incompetent leadership, political polarization, economic instability. Increase in violence. All the countries that most Americans would feel comfortable in are all experiencing the same stuff. So you have to start thinking a bit outside of the box, like places like Albania, which are very safe, and then starting to develop and starting to do well, whereas a lot of Western countries are starting to decline. So there's that. And then of course, it's good for entrepreneur expat business because. Just like you get content there, we get contact, it's all content. We get more contacts, Robert and partners there in the area. They can help things. Robert building contacts in Albania as we speak. But how many people here in Mexico are gonna wanna go to Albania that will then hire us to help them do it? And vice versa. And vice versa. How many Americans we're Canadians are in Albania. They're like, I'm tired of Europe. Let me go to Latin America for a while. And then they could use our help, uh, moving over here. So of course good for business and, um. You know, travel is the best education in the world. A hundred percent. And I know you, you had some interesting insights about the business climate and economic climate as well. Yeah, I mean, because it's in Europe, uh, they, the benefit there is a lot of people there are going to speak English, especially our generation and younger. And so that opens up opportunities for us to network more. I mean, obviously we're talking to people in Spanish here, but I feel like, I feel like in Europe especially because. They're Albania as a country is trying so hard to like get back on top after many, many years of being under communism that they just essentially recently got out of that. I have a feeling there's gonna be a very favorable business climate there, and that's what I've also heard. And English is spoken very, very widely and it's much more connected to like a massive, uh, hub of influence of Europe versus say Latin America. I think here. This is just my opinion, but I don't think that people take business quite as seriously in a lot of places in Latin America as they do in Europe. Just from my experience traveling around Latin America and traveling around Europe. So even finding, I mean, in the major cities, sure, but outside of that, it's, it's not, uh, quite that. And, and also because English is so prevalent there, I just feel like it's a little bit easier to break into different communities and make connections and that sort of thing from a business standpoint. And then, uh, you were talking about tech. As well that in that part of Europe, you can find tech talent and all those kinds of things. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. We visited a friend of ours in Ahah who was saying that they actually had a lot of, a lot of really good hackers in Albania. There were a lot of, a lot of great, uh, great hackers and software engineers and things like that. So we're gonna, we're gonna check out that crowd as well, because we run businesses in the software space. And we have businesses where we do technology consulting, virtualization, software, websites, hosting, all that. So we're always looking for great talent all over the world to be able to help us with. So some of those things, whether it's for our own projects, our own infrastructure, or some projects that we do for clients. So it's, it's great to be able to build hubs of not just influence and business, but also those talent pools all over the world, because we're looking at expanding business and getting into more and more interesting projects. Every day because I can't keep still, as you know. You cannot. You cannot. The entrepreneur expat cannot keep still. And then finally, immigration in Albania is easy. Yeah. They give you a one year visa on arrival for US citizens, and you pretty much just have to spend six months a year in the country and after five years you can get a permanent residence or potentially a passport. Now I do want to go into some of the cons. One of the cons, I'll say from my perspective, and you can feel free to add to this. Mm-hmm. But one of the cons is definitely that. You're in a obviously other side of the world, right? You're on the other side of the world. You're going to have to deal potentially with time zone issues if you have clients that maybe you're meeting with at certain hours or doing a lot of synchronous communication with. In our case, we're not really doing a whole lot of that. Uh, most of our sales come from projects that don't require too much synchronous communication. We're not really doing too many live calls anymore, and we've automated a lot. Yeah, we've automated a lot. We're doing a lot of course sales. We're already up to about 10 or 15% of our income. Coming from online core sales that are like semi-passive, and then other things where you're on Slack and you respond to clients when they have questions. I mean, we have a lot of those. And then, uh, we're also doing a lot of relocation where in Mexico we've already got our partners and now we're gonna open ourselves up more to other countries, uh, in the Eastern hemisphere. So that's not as much of an issue for us as it might be. For example, for somebody who's working a remote job. Um, sure. We might have the occasional call at six or seven o'clock in the morning, which is fine'cause we're up early or like nine or 10:00 PM Occasionally we, we will probably run into those, but like, that's, that's all right because it's not gonna be all the time. Versus if you did have a full-time job and you were expected to be available, let's say Eastern standard time hours, you'd be working into the wee hours of the night, which, uh, coming from somebody who had to, to work while he was traveling around the Middle East, including Israel and also in Europe and other, other places. Uh, that were not aligned time zone wise with the us It's a, it's a real pain. It's not very fun to do that. So you're gonna Yeah, and we've been actively working the last two years to move away from so many calls and having to be on US time zone in US hours. And we're making, which, we're getting there, we're making it happen, which is why we're like, okay, time to start expanding. A little bit. Exactly. Yeah. Other than that, I mean, I can't really think of too many cons. Uh, the one that I would maybe add is also like really long flights back to the us. So maybe coming back either once a year or once every couple years for the holidays. It's definitely a longer flight, especially if you're traveling with two animals like we are. Um, so when we go back for short periods of time, we might just find a house sitter or a pet sitter or a hotel for them. Or something. Um, but that is one other con obviously it's a little bit farther than Mexico, but we're, we're really getting ready to explore more of the world. And it's, it's a nice hop, skip and a jump even over to, to the Middle East, to Turkey, to Southeast Asia. It's nowhere near as far as it would be coming from the US more Mexico. So the cons for us really aren't too bad. Am I missing anything? Um, I would just say based on what we've been researching, you know, and this is particularly for like Americans who are used to. Things working a certain way, uh, or Canadians or perhaps some, uh, Western Europeans. Uh, you know, because it's more of a developing country, maybe sometimes there's issues with the power, sometimes maybe. Mm-hmm. Um, just it's more of a cash society, for example. So it's not as much digitized, which is actually not that big of a con. Yeah.'cause I, I'm not really so big on the US and Canada and Western Europe with all these cbdc, the Central bank digital currencies. Right. The cryptos that they're gonna use. Uh, not the ones that are, well, none of'em are really private. They're all on a ledger. But basically the ones that are actually tied to a specific currency, uh, Albania is definitely far off from that. And I think philosophically they're probably gonna try to avoid things like that because of the totalitarian, uh, regime that they did not, you know, that they had not that long ago. Right. Um, so they're, they're far away from the. The government overreach, cbdc, and digital IDs and all these other things that are happening in the West. So maybe the cashless part is actually not that much of a bad thing in a lot of ways. Oh, you mean, no, it's cash Society, not cash. No, the cash Society. Yeah, exactly. Maybe the, the cash society is not that much of a bad thing. Just something to get used to. Exactly. Yeah. Other than that, you know, that's basically where we're at right now in terms of talking out this decision. But we've been looking at several countries and so far albania's like. It's, it's come to the top position in terms of where we're going next. If anything changes, of course we'll update you. So make sure to subscribe so you don't miss any of that. Yeah, and hit that like button as well. Hit that notification bell when you like these videos. It really helps us a lot with our mission of reaching a million entrepreneur expats and aspiring expats. And like we said earlier, if you've got a million dollars in net worth or more and you're looking to take things a step, uh. And you're looking to take things further in your relocation journey, our team can absolutely help. Just go to entrepreneur expat.com/consult and we can get you squared away. We can get you going, whether it's coming here to Mexico. Oh, there was a little tope back there. You saw that? Uh, it's if you know, you know, you know you, yeah. Um, if you're trying to come to Mexico, to Costa Rica, to Panama, and now we are building some connections in Albania, so we're gonna be offering services. Very soon there as well. And in other countries, we've already got people in Portugal that are helping our clients retire better there and invest there and get golden visas. So if you're interested in a place like that, we can also support you entrepreneur exp bet.com/consult. And if you're not at that million dollars or more net worth, then absolutely check out our free resources. Subscribe to this channel. For more content and we've also got a ton of courses both on relocation, living abroad, and also making money remotely so that you can live and work from absolutely anywhere in the world. Thank you so much for your time today and we appreciate you being the best part of this community of Entrepreneur Expat. Bye for now.