12 countries in 12 years

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Break out of your comfort zone and live life to fullest by living and traveling abroad.

(FIRE. Financial Independence Retire Early).

HOW DO YOU KNOW WHERE TO GO?

You want to live an affordable cultured life, with a slower pace with time for friends and community,  that is easy on your pension and investments.

Or maybe you want to find a base, and then go from there to different countries for a few months at a time.

Or you just want to avoid negative trends in your home country.

So you go on the internet and...well let me show you:

Here's a snapshot of a real conversation on social media.  I blocked out the names for privacy.  Every day F.I.R.E. abroad folks participate in conversations like these on social media. 

 I see them all the time.  And I've been watching and talking to retire abroad folks for almost ten years now, and see  similar behaviors all over the internet.

Take a look:

It starts out with a question.
Click on any of the images to enlarge them.




Then comes all the great glowing reports:





So, I would love to go to a place like PDC, or Playa del Carmen, a nice little coastal town in the Mexican tropics, or a coastal city in Italy, or a mountain getaway in the Andes of Ecuador, or a sprawling tropical city in Central America,  or a chic cosmopolitan city in Portugal, you name it,  if only...




Now it gets real juicy:




Ok great, are you ready to go?  How does that not sound inviting, and all we had to do is go to facebook and ask a simple question, or...

It's a done deal.

Or is it?

In these conversations, no one pipes up with any facts to balance out the greener grass syndrome, or just to help someone get to the facts to make a proper decision.  I tell you this to show you why I help people just like you FI-RE earlier and better at home or abroad.

WANT TO F.I.R.E. EARLIER AND BETTER BY LIVING OR RETIRING ABROAD?

  But look at this:  Ironically, the title on this article in Spanish translated is THE TRUTH, i. e.  La Verdad.  Click on any of the images to make them larger.




  It says there has been 182 incidents of violent crime in PDC.  A city of 245,000 people.








And to top it off:


The perps were not caught.  This is just one area of life, i.e. crime.  You would agree there is much much more to investigate, if that wasn't enough though.

This is where it happened:


And this is where the school is located that the above poster said wants to enroll their children in.  The murders happened right around the corner, about 2 kilometers away from the school and not far from the Centro which is where all expats usually like to congregate.


This is not about just crime or just Mexico.   Want to know what to do about this?  Click here.

CRIME HAPPENS EVERYWHERE

We're supposed to be going abroad to IMPROVE our lives, not to put ourselves at a greater risk than we were in, before.  As an example in the u.s. town where I used to live there were 18 murders last year and 85% of them were solved.  You will admit that is a stark contrast to Play del Carmen.  

That's just me though.  What about you.  I would venture that if you now live in a u.s. town with as many unsolved murders as in Playa del Carmen right now you should immediately look for a new safer place to live in your own country.


IT'S USUALLY THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Here I want to show you that its usually first timers that participate in this kind of behavior, you see that by the questions they ask.  

Many people usually don't know anything about the location and they purport to get important information from people on facebook that are also newbies.  And that's the whole point.  We are more willing to trust a total stranger on facebook than think maybe there is more to it.


I know what you're thinking.  Thanks Frank and Angie.  I will look into this from now on.  And you proceed to google and find this:


You see, what most people don't realize is that the RAMMs, Retire Abroad Media, Magazines and their cheerleaders dominate first positions in google.  Google doesn't care about handing you the truth on a silver platter.  They care about other metrics which is subject to a different conversation. 

We have made blog posts outlining other forums where everyone on the forum was saying how safe Panama was, and then we exposed the idea that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM making those posts was a representative of the real estate industry in Panama. We refer to them as vested interests.

Point is we have made videos and posted articles about this, showing people that what you get on google is the domination of the above characters in first position in google and the biased information you will receive.


WE DO MORE DUE DILIGENCE BUYING AN IPHONE THAN MOVING AND LIVING ABROAD 

Want to go to 
Playa del Carmen, a nice little coastal town in the Mexican tropics, or a coastal city in Italy, or a mountain getaway in the Andes of Ecuador, or a sprawling tropical city in Central America, or?

If you were going to buy a house, you would do all the looking around until you found the one that excites you and meets your needs, right? But then comes the reality. 

 You understand due diligence in an industry that is well regulated and it is a given that you will hire specialists and consultants to give you a full report in areas of expertise that are outside of your domain.

That's understandable, given that buying a house is one of the major decisions in life and the stress meter says it is also one of the most stressful things you can do together with moving.

It is also a fact that moving abroad is even higher on that stress meter.  Well of course it is.  It's not just moving to a new place, it's a whole new country, new people, new weather, new food, new customs, new laws, new everything. 

 Whether we've done it before or not  it's been our experience that it is still stressful and full of potential surprises. 

So then why o why would you not consider hiring someone with the expertise and knowledge to do a deep due diligence on your chosen location?  Ok, where do I sign up.

NOT JUST CRIME AND NOT JUST MEXICO

Get the facts. We're talking about every single thing that entails and encompasses your life abroad is affected by this need for due diligence. 

Such as, crime, food costs, housing costs, living costs, safety, health, banking, infrastructure, etc.   

And you get to decide which part of that information is important to you or not, not someone else.


EARLY RETIREMENT LIFESTYLE ABROAD

We've been early retired for over three decades.  Two of them in the u.s. and one of them abroad, and we have been talking about it since we moved abroad on our youtube channel "Retire Earlier and Better".

And all along we've been exposing the domination of this space by the large retire abroad media and magazines, and their groups.  Why is that important?

HOW TO SEE THROUGH SHILL WEBSITES




As you can see from the example above people are not getting the straight facts when it comes to living abroad.  On top of that there are "shill websites" on the internet and I'm going to show you how to see through them right now.

You see websites telling you how safe it is and how you have nothing to worry about.  You don't know any different because the website looks good, and it tells you what you want to hear. 

 It makes a reference to a lot of things in an accurate manner, to disguise their true agenda.

They will say things about gringo price gouging for example, and tell you to just shop at markets where the prices are listed, and they will tell you the real taxi fares, but...and this is huge...they will not tell you what the local rents are, because then you would know that you are not going to be paying them.  

They make reference to 'fake news' so as to disassociate themselves when in reality they are masking the fact that they are the fake news.

Any how, I wanted to let you know that we've been on top of this game for many years.  All of this is potentially detrimental to your plans and if it sounds a bit deep its because it is.

That's why we help people like you F.I.R.E earlier and better at home or abroad, which ever way suits you best.  How?

If you want to F.I.R.E. earlier and better abroad, we have two ways we do it.  Please click here. 

If you want to F.I.R.E. earlier and better at home in your English speaking home country please see our facebook group: 



HOW DOES THIS HELP ME F.I.R.E. EARLIER AND BETTER?

I used the above social media conversation as an example and it is not meant to focus on crime only.  

We're talking about every single thing that entails and encompasses your life abroad is affected by this need for due diligence. 

Such as, crime, food costs, housing costs, living costs, safety, health, banking, infrastructure, the real and current stuff not the made up or outdated part you see on the internet.

THE WORLD HAS CHANGED

In the old days, about a couple of decades ago, before the internet, expat communities were isolated to a few areas such as Mexico and some of the other places where Americans went to work abroad.

Information was sparse about these countries.  You had to go out of your way to buy a book about them if you could find one outside of the travel books.  I know because I am one of those that did this in the 80's and 90's.

Welcome to the information age and the internet where all of the world's eyeballs that are in the internet (a few billion) can now see the same information about living abroad as you do.

What does that mean for you?  That when you put together the monopolistic presence of the RAMMs and the huge number of eyeballs on the internet you get huge expat and foreigner bubbles in specific places that are touted.  

This creates a huge profit center, and the RAMMs and their followers know it.  They follow these RAMMs abroad and set up shop to sell everything to gringos and foreigners at corresponding prices.  

Well so what?  You might say it sounds normal so far, except that what you actually get is a blackout of information and a world of make believe when it comes to your well being and your F.I.R.E. earlier and better abroad plans.

Do you want to leave your financial, physical, mental and emotional well being to chance like the lady in the example above? 

 Or do you want to take charge of your future by getting help from someone that has done it before you to: 

1. do the due diligence for you                         
 2. show you how to go abroad like a PRO       
  3. both of the above.                                           

When you make that choice you choose to be in control.  You take that control out of the hands of those that would seek to manipulate you for their own profit and benefit and put it back where it belongs, in your hands.  

Isn't that what F.I.R.E. is all about?


Frank and Angie




                                      










2 comments:

  1. Okay here's one for you! Can I retire [FIRE] late in life and pull it off?
    I'm 71 y.o. $65K IRA, $1000/mo SSA, $5000 after personal sales, plus mom's estate settlement. Then there's travel expenses with shipping & handling clothers and books. After the move, I need to consider hospitalization, Jure Sanguinis dual citizenship costs [Can I apply for dual citizenship while living on a VISA?]. All I need is a small flat [one bedroom?] w/balcony, in any hustle/bustle Italian metro [Napoli?] with piazza. I can live on Tang and beer pretzels. Can you help?!?

    ReplyDelete

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