Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua Sheets. I'm your host. And on today's podcast, I'm going to share with you some useful information and ideas, especially focused on the topic of international planning.

I'm going to share with you some ideas about one nation in specific. That nation is Panama, and how it can be a useful tool in your international planning toolbox. And I'm going to invite you to sign up for a private one-week event, which I am co-hosting in January of 2024.

That one-week event will be located in Panama City, Panama. And what I'm doing is, together with my friends, Mikkel Thorup, founder of expatmoney.com, as well as Gabriel Custodiat, founder of Watchman Privacy, whom I've worked with on a number of courses, et cetera, we are presenting and co-hosting a private one-week event.

Think of it as almost an investment tour of the nation of Panama. It's going to be very limited access, very limited numbers of people, really nice luxury event for one week. And I want you to come and spend a week with me and with my friends in Panama. If you'd like to just skip straight to and say, "Well, that's it.

I'm up. I'm ready to go," go to expatmoney.com/radical. Link is in the show notes. You can go there. You can read the sales page. All the information is there, and you can sign up. In the course of this podcast, I will share with you some details. First, I'm going to share with you a little bit about my story with internationalization and why I have become so heavily involved in this space, because it's not necessarily a normal expression for many financial planners and many people's finances, et cetera.

I'm going to share with you a bit of a framework as to how you approach internationalization. I'm going to share with you a little bit about the nation of Panama and how it can be a very useful tool, and then I will share with you all the details of this event, let you know what you can expect when you come and hang out with me in January.

Let's begin with my pathway into internationalization. Though newer listeners of Radical Personal Finance might be surprised by this, for me, my international endeavors and my international focus is a relatively new thing in my life. Up until about four to five years ago, it's not something that I ever conceived of, thought of, or spent much time involved with.

I was born and raised in the United States of America, and I had, I think, a fairly normal experience of doing that. When I say normal, what I mean is I didn't think a lot about the world outside of the United States. I did enjoy traveling. I traveled more than many people, but certainly not as much as some.

That travel was something that I enjoyed, but I never imagined moving to another country or doing things in another country, etc. Most Americans don't. Most Americans have a mindset that basically involves doing everything inside of the United States, and that's not something that I think should really be criticized.

I don't like to engage in America bashing. I think it's a very common thing. Because the country is large and powerful and wealthy, people enjoy beating up on Americans, and I line up to defend Americans against many of those things. I think we deserve a good set of criticism.

I've got a long list of criticisms of my own, but there are some areas in which the criticism just falls flat, is an example that I like to use. Things like passport ownership. Many times, people around the world like to make fun of Americans for having a relatively low rate of passport ownership and for not traveling internationally all that much.

This is different than many other wealthy countries of the world. By the way, first, those numbers are often not as extreme as they're represented. Years ago, I would hear things like, "Well, 15% of Americans have passports." That's nonsense. I don't know what the current number is, but it's much higher than it was, probably due to the fact that now, unlike previously when it was easy to travel to Mexico and Canada with a birth certificate, etc., now you need more and more of a passport, and all the Secure ID stuff is probably more of a factor as to why.

The point remains that Americans have something of a lower rate of passport ownership than many other nations in the world. If I hear people bashing Americans for that, I quickly pipe up and say, "Listen, how much do you know about the United States? Have you been there? Do you understand anything about the geography of the country?" It's a little bit hard to listen to, say, a Polish guy bashing the United States if you understand something about the geography of Poland versus the geography of the United States.

Generally speaking, there's little to no reason for Americans to go to any other nation if they're looking to fulfill any kind of basic thing that they want to do on vacation. Because within the country, especially due to its latitude and even the longitude that it covers, basically almost every climate zone is represented, virtually every activity is represented.

If you want to go surfing on the beach, we've got that. If you want to go skiing on the mountain, we've got world-class skiing. If you want to go shopping in the big city, we've got that. If you want to go to a spa town, we've got that. Virtually anything that you can think of, or at least that I can think of, you can do inside the United States, everything from desert sand dunes to snowy white-capped mountains.

In many cases, the activities that are available for vacation, et cetera, in the United States are world-class. I can't think of really anything in which there's not a spot in the United States in which the facilities or the expression of that activity is not world-class. That's really unique and really worth paying attention to.

The United States being such a large nation means that even traveling within the country itself takes time. It takes hours to fly from one side of the United States to the other. If you understand that, it can be just rather bothersome to think then about going 12 hours to the other side of the world if you can have pretty much just about anything that you want within a few hours' drive in some cases or within a few hours' flight.

Then when you get into just the simple conveniences of modern life and the facilities for virtually any activity that are available in the United States, it's just so easy, so much easier than going abroad in many cases. I'm one who has gone to many countries and I go to the hard ones and the easy ones.

The more I travel, the more I appreciate how easy everything is in the United States. I think unless people have some kind of weird fixation with travel and going to the hard places like I do, then generally speaking, I don't fault people for going to a nice resort that's a few hours away or going to a nice ski slope that's near where they are instead of going to Argentina.

It's just easier to stay within what you know and a lot cheaper, better service, better and cheaper in so many regards. So all that to say that I don't have any grudges against the United States and I never imagined really living anywhere else until about four or five years ago.

I guess it's actually more than that now. But what started to make me pay attention was when I started to watch a lot of the chaos surrounding national politics in 2015, 2016, 2017, etc. And I started to become very uncomfortable with my own future and the future of my children being tied to one country, a country that I increasingly didn't recognize and increasingly don't recognize.

A lot of my sense of familiarity was just eroding and I thought, "What on earth is going on? I don't understand this." And there were a few specific issues that were national level issues that caused me myself to become uncomfortable. And I thought it would be really nice if we had some other options.

At the time, my wife and I had a bunch of children and we're young bit children and I didn't know a lot of what to do with it, but this was in the back of my mind. And that was when I stumbled across an idea of what I've talked about in the podcast.

I'm not going to go deep into it, called flag theory. And basically flag theory was an idea that was invented in the 1980s by a bunch of rich libertarian playboys who wanted to live freely in what they saw as an increasingly unfree world. And that always resonated with me.

Now there's two aspects to that. The very well-known book by Harry Brown, right? Harry Brown, How to Live Free in an Unfree World, I think is really excellent. And that book doesn't involve running away from the problem. It just talks about how to free yourself from the system and how to live freely in an unfree world.

I haven't read that in a few years, but I've read it and recommended it. No problem. But then the flip side of it is, well, what can we actually do if we start to face something that affects us? What if we face some kind of persecution? What if we face some kind of issues?

What if our country just starts to impose unreasonable taxes or things start to fall apart, et cetera? And that was one of the things that opened my eyes up to thinking about going to other places. And I thought, you know what, if I at least had an option to go to another country, that could solve some specific, basically national level threats.

I was very concerned and still am concerned about things like taxation. I didn't want my children, I'm sitting here looking at a bankrupt government, increasing national debt, et cetera. And I thought, you know, I myself don't think this debt's ever going to get paid off. I expect it to be defaulted on myself.

But let's say I'm wrong. Do I really want my children to be tied to this country? And do I want my children to be enslaved in a form, indebted, becoming indentured servants to a government to pay off the debts of their grandparents that they didn't vote for? That's not right.

That's not just. And yet I'm the one who has to do something about that. Because if I don't do something about that, maybe too late someday. Don't I have a responsibility as a father to make certain that my children are free, that they have the option to go to other places?

I worried and still worry about things like military conscription. The United States has had an all-volunteer army since the Vietnam War. But that all-volunteer army is massively underneath its recruiting targets. And I always worried, what if the government drafted my children? And as they became increasingly anti-war, as I grew older, I became, you know, to see most of the wars that my nation was involved with as stupid and pointless and immoral.

I thought, don't I owe it to my children to make certain that if a government passed a draft notice that they don't have to flee to Canada in the middle of the night like so many did during the Vietnam War? Wouldn't it be nice if they just simply could go to a different country and live there as a citizen and have a different set of travel documents, etc.?

I started to look at financial issues and everything from increasing regulation on, you know, Patriot Act stuff and lack of privacy. And I thought to myself, don't I owe it to my children to make sure that we have – that we're not dependent on one country? I'll stop there.

I don't want to go too deep. And then this was – this also occurred with my paying a lot of attention to financial stuff and financial trends. When I was a formal financial advisor years ago, I was the guy that people would come to and ask questions about gold investing.

They would be talking about mutual funds and they would have a client who says, "But I want to buy gold." And a lot of times the advisor didn't know much about it. They'd send me an email, "Hey, talk to my client about gold because at least you can give him some decent advice about buying gold.

It's not just crazy." And so it was interesting in this stuff for a long time. As I watched financial collapses and thought about all of the doom and gloom prophecies of the future, I came to realize the legitimacy of going to another place. It was probably – I think it was probably sparked by John Reed's original book.

Years ago, John T. Reed wrote a book called How to Survive Hyperinflation or something like that. And his basic point in that book was he laid out the idea that just don't be where the hyperinflation is and go to another place. He didn't talk about residency permits, things like that, or passports.

He just talked about going as a tourist. But it opened my eyes to recognize that economic crises are largely national level things. They're not international. They do make a difference. If the United States sneezes, the world catches a cold. That exists. But the really bad stuff, the million percent hyperinflation, the total collapse, these are national level events and they're not contagious.

The collapse in Venezuela doesn't automatically lead to a contagion that affects Brazil and Colombia. Those countries each have their own unique situations. And as I watched that, I realized that you can avoid most problems if you just go to another country. So that's where I myself got heavily involved in international planning.

And it began with basically an idea to say, "I want to make sure that I and my children can choose which country treats them the best and choose which country they want to interact with and they're not beholden to one country." Because I believe in the importance of competition.

And while I believe and acknowledge publicly, repeatedly, that the United States is world class at so many things, any company, any person, no matter how good they get or no matter how good they are, if they don't have competition, they quickly start to disrespect their customers. And it's much healthier to have a world of many strong players because that competition keeps everybody focused on protecting their customers.

So it started in 2019 when my wife and I went abroad with our then three children, went abroad for birth tourism to have our fourth baby abroad, and it has continued on since then. So about four to five years now. And I just basically haven't really gotten around to going back to the United States.

I still think I probably will in the future, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I continue to enjoy building and having robust plans around the world and just enjoying the international lifestyle while also acknowledging where, you know what, I think there are certain things that I really appreciate more about the United States.

And doing this has brought me an incredible sense of freedom, an incredible sense of peace, et cetera. I laid out my plan in 2019. I was a DIYer and I went and I looked and I got all the information I could find. The first book I had ever read on it was the original one by W.G.

Hill called PT. That was where I started. Then I started to find more of the modern resources and I studied the countries and I laid it all out and I made up my flag theory plan and I went and did it. I did it. I was a DIYer. I didn't hire a consultant.

I just went and did it. And along the way, I made a ton of mistakes. I spent huge amounts of money unnecessarily, things that I could save today. But I've enjoyed it. It's fun. I like a challenge. But today, I just feel this incredible sense of relief that I'm no longer dependent on one country.

For me, for my family, for my children, I've done all the stuff. I've checked it all off. I've got flags planted in other countries. If I never wanted to go back to the United States again, never wanted to use my U.S. passport, never had a dime in the country, etc., I don't need the United States.

And that has actually brought me to a place of greater peace with the country than when I was entirely in it. I think of it sometimes, I don't love this analogy, but it's probably the most apt, is that if you talk to somebody who's in the midst of frustration and anger and fighting nonstop with his spouse, it seems like all the guy can do is say everything that's wrong with his wife and what a horrible woman she is.

It's about all he can see. And then a lot of times, the relationship ends, they go on their way, and you come by some years later, and if you catch the guy in a moment of honesty, he'll acknowledge, "Hey, there were some things that were really frustrating about what she did, but at the end of the day, it wasn't all bad and it wasn't all her." And that's kind of how I feel about the United States, is that today, having rounded the corner, I can look at the world with a lot more peace and equanimity and just relaxation.

I don't see everything as, "It's going to catastrophe." I see things in a more moderate way, and I just appreciate the good things about the country. And that's something that I'm grateful for and that I want for you, if that's something that appeals to you. And so internationalization is the process of basically figuring out different places in the world that might provide you with more of what you want and less of what you don't want.

Because in many ways, you can't change much about the place that you live, but you can change the place that you live. You can't change much about the country of your birth, but you can change the country of your children's birth. The environment that you live in, the environment that you choose for yourself, is something that you can choose.

People don't think it is, and yet it is. And that's where I have realized that when we go out in the world and we're careful about the things that we build, and we build a sense of freedom for ourselves, it can bring all kinds of benefits. Now I've mostly talked about some legal stuff and kind of emotional stuff.

There's a whole slew of other benefits that can be achieved. Tax planning that's available in the international space is phenomenal. Having been a financial advisor in the United States, I had previously had a very one-sided view of tax planning. I knew what there was in the tax code, but I didn't know anything about other tax codes.

I didn't know anything about what was available from an international perspective. And it's very common. I still find this today. I'll talk to great, very well-informed financial advisors, accountants, et cetera, and I open up just the most simple of comments from an international perspective, and they don't know anything about it.

And after all, why would they? Because the United States, we think in terms of what state offers the best tax code. We don't think in terms of countries. And as I started to realize, wait a second, I can save tens of thousands of dollars a year completely legally on my taxes, hundreds of thousands in some cases, and I can do this completely legally?

Wait a second, you're telling me I can make 10 million bucks a year and live 100% tax free? That's amazing. Like, there's a whole new world out there that I discovered. And as I went through the process of doing that and having some money put aside and having money in other bank accounts, having money in other currencies, et cetera, just brought me incredible opportunities.

And so that was my pathway into international planning. What does that have to do with you? Well, it's become a common theme on radical personal finance. It's something that people ask questions about. I answer this stuff on Friday Q&A shows. I have courses on it, right? Internationalescapeplan.com. I teach an entire course on how to do this stuff, et cetera.

But what I have not done is I have tried not to get heavily into talking about specific jurisdictions, specific places, specific countries. I keep the details of my own planning somewhat private. And while I talk about individual countries, say on a Friday Q&A show, et cetera, and I don't run away from the conversation, what happens is that I like my stuff to be fairly evergreen.

I don't want my stuff to sound so totally dated. Stuff changes so quickly in the international space that I try to avoid that. The other thing that I try to be really careful of is the need for customized planning. Because just like good financial planning should be very individualized, it's even more important that good international planning be very individualized.

Because each of our circumstances is so different from one another. We have different interests, different abilities, different tolerances. We all desire different lifestyles. We speak different languages. We have different backgrounds. There are different things that are important to us. And so international planning should begin with a knowledgeable, competent planner who is sitting and talking with someone who could pull those things out and not approach it from a hardcore specific place.

So I don't – this is the country. And because so many of the people who promote – so this business has a lot of money in it. There's a lot of people who get involved and they promote this program, that program, et cetera. And when you are paid by, I don't know, St.

Kitts and Nevis commissions for suggesting their citizenship, then it's hard to consider other options. And that's often what happens is the people do one thing. They have a financial interest and they suggest this is the way it's always done. So I want to be – I think you should always be very careful.

You should approach the world very openly and go with what seems the most appropriate. If you're thinking about it, planning it, et cetera, you should look at the world very broadly. What I have found, however, is that there are a number of areas where people are really consistent about being concerned about and especially from my listening audience.

My listening audience being English speakers with a mass majority in the United States, a second largest exposure in Canada and Great Britain, obviously as English-speaking countries, and then a significant portion in some of the larger nations in Europe, Germany, France, et cetera, and then with a sprinkling all around the world.

But that's where most of my listening audience is. And if you talk with enough Americans and Canadians and Germans, et cetera, about what they're concerned about or what they want to think about in terms of their planning, there are a few basic themes that come out. Some of those themes involve things like personal freedom.

Very few people want to go out and put in – and get a citizenship in Russia right now or China, et cetera, because of the lack of personal freedoms and personal choices. People are frequently concerned about lifestyle. If you come from a place where living is pretty good, one of the reasons you got rich was not so you could go and live in a slum.

Physical safety, big concern. Linguistic compatibility. Tax rates, tax laws, other onerous laws and regulations, et cetera. And when you do this and you share these basic things that we have in common from a cultural perspective and you look at the menu of world choices that's out there, the different countries and what they offer, you go through a fairly consistent process.

And there are things that are just simply – all of us have concerns. So let's say that you're like me and you are an American living in the United States and you'd like to get connected with another country and you'd like to start setting some stuff up in another country and you're looking at the world and saying, "All right, but what offers do I have out there?" Well, you're going to start by looking close to home and the closest to home nations for Americans involve places like Canada, Mexico, big countries, Bahamas, some of the Caribbean nations, et cetera, and then Central America and to an extension, South America.

And you start going through these. So Canada, what does Canada offer? Well for young people who are highly educated, have some Canadian connections, et cetera, Canada offers a pathway to residency, pathway to citizenship that's very – can be pretty quick. The challenge is that Canada wants people who are going to move there and live there.

There's no pathway to Canadian citizenship or Canadian residency that doesn't involve you spending months and months per year there. So there's a huge investment of time. Canada also suffers from very high taxes and very high cost of living. Real estate prices are very high and overall high cost of living.

And so for Americans who look at that and say, "But I can do better in the United States," Canada can be hard. Unless you want to move there, have some connection there, et cetera, Canada can offer limited options. I always recommend Canada as a great first stop for banking.

It's one of the easiest places to go for an American and open another bank account. But I don't want to get too much involved with Canada beyond that unless I actually want to go and live there and appreciate the lifestyle and gain from what you spend in tax money, et cetera.

What other nations are there? Well, there's Mexico. Mexico offers world-class options. Years ago, a number of years ago, I interviewed a Mexican attorney and the title of the show was "Why Every American Should Go and Establish a Residence Permit in Mexico." I still believe that. Every single American should have a residence permit established in Mexico.

Prices have come up recently as they always do. And Mexico is a place that you should have a residence permit. There's a great second residency, a place that you can go and live. It offers a pathway to citizenship that, while not the fastest in terms of calendar years, can be one of the fastest in the world in terms of days on the ground.

It's a great birth tourism destination. One of my top three that I recommend for birth tourism, just a really, really great destination. It's wonderful also for Americans because of the drivability. However, Mexico has a number of disadvantages. Some of the big ones involve finding a lifestyle that you like with an appropriate community.

People are often very worried, especially in the drug war areas of crime and violence that happens. And a big challenge of Mexico is taxation, that Mexico offers very limited tax planning opportunities. It's a high tax jurisdiction. And so while, of course, there are millions of people living, not millions, excuse me, there are many people living there who just ignore the law.

If you want to do everything by the book, it can be difficult to get really low taxes or eliminate your taxes living in Mexico. So I think Mexico is a great option, but it's a limited option. It's one of those things that has certain benefits, but it's hard to see it offering the whole package.

Where else do you go? Well, the Bahamas is, I think, a really great destination. The Bahamas has, first of all, liberal entry requirements for people who want to simply come as tourists. It's a tax-free place, no income tax. It's very accessible to the United States, very close, easy to get back and forth from Florida, et cetera.

Great pathway, residence permit, not really any pathway to citizenship, but you can get a residence permit by buying a house there. But it's very small, and it's very difficult to see yourself being there all the time. And I think with wealthy people, it's not something, you know, international planning is something where you shouldn't lead with money saving.

The reason you got wealthy was so you could live the way you wanted to live. So Bahamas is a good option. There are some other options in the Caribbean, lots of Caribbean citizenships that you can purchase, et cetera. But the Caribbean also has some significant disadvantages, good tax havens, et cetera.

But at the end of the day, you're living on an island, not super well connected and can be quite challenging, depending on, again, what nation we're talking about. Big difference between Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, even though the weather might be very similar. What else is close to home?

Well, then you get into Central America. And Central America is a unique set of countries. So South of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, I think I got them all. And each one of these nations has a different set of benefits and a different set of disadvantages.

Of these nations, Panama is, I think, probably for the vast majority of people, Panama should be at the very top of the list. And there are a few reasons why. One of the big benefits of Central America is the geography, especially for American-based people. If you're in Panama City, you are on East Coast time.

You're an easy short flight away from really anywhere, especially on the East Coast. With anywhere from about two and a half hours to five hours, you could have direct connections from Panama City to the entirety of the East Coast. Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Tampa, Atlanta, all of the Washington DC, Baltimore, New York, both JFK and Newark, Boston, Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, etc.

And good connection to the rest of the country as well. Direct flights to Denver, Houston, Austin, direct flights to Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. Panama City is also the best connected of the Central American nations to other parts. First directly connected to, I think, every country in South America.

Direct connection to the vast majority of countries in the Caribbean and to every country in Central America. As well as direct flights to Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam, Istanbul, just direct flights across the ocean as well. And so that connectivity is really, really useful. And having the same time zone is really useful instead of constantly working in the middle of the night, etc.

It's a really good connection. Panama has aggressively courted outsiders and has offered them really, really smooth and simple options. Panama has for years been one of the best second residency destinations where you can come and with a simplified process you can set up a second residency. What that means is you can have a residence permit where at any time you can move to Panama and you can live there full time with no requirement to leave the country.

But importantly, this residency permit, unlike places like Canada, etc., doesn't require you to invest huge amounts of time on the ground. You do need to come there fairly regularly, at least once every year or two. I can't remember, once every couple of years you need to come to renew your permit.

But you don't have to be there for ten months a year. So if you're thinking about, you know what, I'm just going to keep on living where I want to live but I'd like to have an option in my pocket, a second residency in another place that could work out for me if I ever wanted to go or ever needed to go somewhere else, Panama is a really great place for that.

And because they have such a well-developed infrastructure, the process is simple, straightforward, relatively inexpensive. You can get your residency, get a driver's license, get everything squared away in a fairly short amount of time. Panama is also one of the better destinations in Central America where you can live because of the lifestyle that it offers.

Unlike some other countries that seem rooted in the past and suffer with decay and not a lot of development, Panama is a nation that has actively embraced development. If you go to Panama City, it's just a wonderful city. And you can see that just driving along the waterfront and see the office towers, see the development, etc.

Panama is a financial hub of the world with many businesses based there of all kinds, huge banking jurisdiction, financial management jurisdiction, and they've gotten there that way because of their low tax rates. Panama is a place where you can live either at a very low tax rate or with non-existent taxes, completely legally.

It's a territorial tax nation and there are a variety of ways that you can set up your finances and live tax-free or very tax-light depending on what you are looking for. Panama has been a great place just even for lifestyle. One of the things I still remember, the first time I went to Panama and traveled along the Panama Canal Zone, and I was just amazed at how American it felt.

Now the whole country is not like this, it's not Little America, but the Panama Canal Zone, that zone of the country that was owned by and operated by the Americans for a hundred years after the construction of the canal, it's amazing because all the architecture, it feels like you're in 1950s America, 1970s America.

Some of that is now starting to be updated, but it's just a really interesting feel. It's a very Western feeling place. High rates of English spoken and the Spanish that's spoken is of generally high quality, a lot easier than Dominican Republic to learn and practice Spanish. Panama has been a useful destination for even things, again I mentioned banking, gold storage, etc.

It's just been, it's a good overall scenario. It's one of the most livable places with one of the least costs of any of the options that are there in Central America. And so it's a really useful tool in a planner's tool belt. And because of its proximity to the United States, I think it has advantages over many of the other jurisdictions.

If we go to South America, right, the next significantly set of, the next place that has good options for internationalization, then again we run into certain places are good for some things and not for most things. Colombia, I think, has a great future. I love Colombia. Colombia is not a tax haven.

It's very hard to spend a lot, you can't spend all year in Colombia and pay zero taxes. That's a challenge. Go throughout South America, you go down to Southern South America and there are, each country has certain things that it's good at, but now you get into distance from the United States, cost of going back and forth goes up, and there aren't a ton of great tax savings opportunities in some of those nations.

There are good residency options. Paraguay, Argentina has a pathway to citizenship, but then there's also a huge amount of instability. And Panama has several decades of good stability and a great, good government in force right now. So I'll stop going on about Panama. What I'm trying to demonstrate to you, however, in my own comments, and I'm speaking fairly extemporaneously off the cuff here, is simply that each nation has something to offer, but it's hard to find most things or everything in one country.

But if you have a base in the United States or you are around the United States, Panama is one of those options that offers more things than others. And so, again, even just the tax efficiency, the lifestyle, the conveniences, etc., Panama has a much, if you go down the list of ten different factors, Panama will punch eight of them, whereas some of the other nations in Central America, Northern South America, and North America will punch, say, five or six of them.

And so it's a leading country in that regard. So if any of this is interesting to you, then now we turn to the event that we are hosting. So the event that I am hosting is in January. The specific dates will be January 22 to January 28. So that's the fourth week of January 2024.

January 22 to January 28. It will be a seven-day, six-night trip in Panama. And basically, it's not all-inclusive, but it's close to all-inclusive. All of the planning has been done for you, and it's going to be an overview of Panama. It's going to be a chance for you to travel, see some sites, take a look at, do some investment tours, look at some different things.

And it's going to be based in Panama City, Anton Valley, the highlands, etc. And there's going to be a combination of activities put together. First is going to be an educational opportunity. I'll be speaking. I have a couple of sessions planned. Mikkel Thorup will be speaking. By the way, I had Mikkel on the show some time back as an interviewee.

And you can go and listen to that episode of the podcast with him. I first got to know Mikkel several years ago when I read his book. When I was back in that early phase of my internationalization education, I went out and I read as many different books on the subjects as I could find.

And one of those that I read was Mikkel's book, "Expat Money." Mikkel is a super interesting and extremely knowledgeable guy. He emigrated from Canada when he was in his teens, and he has traveled all over the world. He's lived in a variety of nations. Most recently, before he moved to Panama some years ago, I think he was living in Abu Dhabi with his wife.

And actually, interestingly, I was just recently with him and I asked him why he moved from Abu Dhabi to Panama. And his reasons I thought were very, very interesting and be reflective of some of the things that I said about Panama being such a useful jurisdiction. Super interesting commentary that I'm sure you can ask him about yourself.

And so on this tour, Mikkel is going to be teaching and presenting. I think some of his contacts are also going to be presenting a few different sessions. I'll be presenting and teaching, and then Gabriel Custodiate will also be presenting and teaching. But this trip is going to be very intimate, meaning hanging out.

The maximum number of attendees is 40 people. That's it. So once we get to 40, it's done. It'll be no more than 40. And given the fact that we're going to be spending time together in a number of different contexts, it's going to be a great opportunity for you to spend time with me, with Mikkel, with Gabriel.

We're going to be traveling together, spending significant amounts of time together, and especially by capping it at no more than 40 people. I expect it to be us to have lots of time to spend together. And we're not only going to be in Panama City. We'll do a real estate tour of Panama City.

We're going to do a tour of an offshore gold vault in the Panama Free Trade Zone. We'll visit the Panama Canal, of course. You can't go to Panama and not visit the canal. We'll go and visit the highlands and see a self-sustaining community that Mikkel is a partner in.

We'll have all kinds of events together over the course of those seven days. The full itinerary is listed at expatmoney.com/radical. You can read the itinerary and see everything that is included. In fact, let me go over what's included. First thing that's included, your hotel, six nights of accommodation at a high quality hotel in Panama.

Breakfast will be included every day as well. We'll have a welcome dinner and wine together at a very nice restaurant on day of your arrival. We'll have three days of conferences together. At those conferences, it'll include, of course, refreshments. It includes a private real estate tour with all transportation included.

Sunset cocktails on Ocean Reef Islands, tour of the Panama Canal, entry fee is included. Gold vault tour, transportation included. Afternoon spent in Casco Viejo, which is the historic district of downtown Panama City. Field trip to Anton Valley to visit the site of the upcoming self-sustaining community. Real estate on the Pacific Ocean, tour of the facilities, party on a private beach including food beverages, live music and transportation there and back.

The vast majority of your costs and the vast majority of your experiences will be included. What's not included will be any lunches or dinners that I didn't mention. A handful of lunches and dinners, snacks, water, souvenirs, travel insurance, any activities that you want to do that aren't included in the itinerary, as well as your transportation to and from the airport into Panama City and then airline flights to and from Panama.

The great news about that is airline flights are generally pretty inexpensive in and out of Panama and there's a metro that goes directly. If you want to ride the metro, it goes directly from the airport into the city or, of course, there's private transportation available as well. It's going to be a really, really great event.

What I'm most looking forward to myself is the chance to spend time with listeners. One of the reasons I'm doing this is to spend time. I have a financial incentive, of course, on this tour, etc. I'll go over the prices in just a second. So obviously, I have a financial incentive.

But one of the things that I most want to do is I really want to do a lot more interaction with you, my listeners. I desire very much to bring a much, much more in-person connections to this community. I have a few ways that I've been intending to do that.

Number one, I'm intending to do more simple meetups. I may be able to do more this summer. The problem is right now, I've got so many little children that it's incredibly burdensome on my wife for me to be away. So I have a choice of either I hit the road and I put a significant burden on her, which – by the way, she doesn't complain.

She doesn't say I can't do anything. But I love my wife. I don't want to overburden her. It's just tough. If I'm gone for weeks at a time, that's really difficult. And so I want to do more meetups. It's just difficult right now to be away for significant amounts of time.

I want to do some more camps and things like that. I have a friend and a listener that I'm going to start working on and organizing some family camps because I really want to bring more of a sense of community, of in-person community. We're all dying for friendships and community, et cetera.

I really want to – I love being with listeners because we're like-minded in many things. We have something in common and that leads to good relationships. So I want to do more family camps and more educational stuff in years to come. I want to do more seminars. In my files, I have multiple three-day seminars where I could teach through things in a systematic way, et cetera.

But I haven't figured out for myself, "Okay, what's the price point? What's the – Am I selling a $200 seminar or a $20,000 seminar and the marketing and all of that, et cetera?" And so one of the reasons I partnered with Mikkel is that he's got a team that does this.

He's got a great setup where he does these tours himself for his audience. Basically they've got experience with it. So I'm working with him because I get to – His team does everything. They make all the hotel reservations. They make everything. They do all the logistics. I show up.

I hang out with y'all, which is going to be pretty cool. I show up. I hang out with you guys. I don't have to deal with any of the administrative stuff, but I also get to see how it goes, how it works, what works well for us. So if you just imagine hanging out for a week with me, with Gabriel, with Mikkel, and with 39 other listeners of the show where you have something in common, it's going to be a phenomenal week where we're just going to – I mean we can talk about everything.

And I promise you I'm leaving my family at home. So for this event it'll just be me and from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. I'll be around. I'll be available. And you'll get a chance to – We'll get to know each other very, very well. And so that's what I'm super excited about.

It's just to spend time and company with 40 of my listeners and Gabriel's listeners, et cetera. We're all going to have a lot in common. We're going to be great. It's going to be a great networking opportunity, not just with the Panamanian Connections, but just among us. I'm sure we're going to forge and deepen some connections and relationships and friendships that may go far beyond where we are.

So in case it's not evident, this is not going to be a family-friendly event, meaning we're not going to be doing anything that's not family-friendly, but other than sitting around and listening to – thinking about international tax planning. But it's not an event for children. So my troop of five young children under the age of 10, they will all be at home, not with me.

So I think – what's it? We said 13 and up. If you want to bring your children, they just need to be older than 13, something like that. But this is going to be an adult's event. And so that's going to give us time to be together with minimal work, minimal hassle, et cetera.

And that's going to be awesome. Prices for one individual, the price for all of that is $3,900. So that covers the bulk of your expenses there in Panama City. You got to get yourself to and from Panama and then cover a handful of meals and whatever other activities you want that aren't there.

And so figure probably all in, if our price is $3,900, then your budget probably $5,000. We should be very comfortable depending on where you're flying from. If you're flying in from Taipei, then you deal with your airfare. But somewhere between $4,000, $4,500 all in, you'll be there. So $3,900 for a single occupancy room.

If you want to come and bring your spouse, that is of course welcome. For a double occupancy room, then the price goes down to $2,900 per person. $2,900 per person for a double occupancy room. So those are the prices. More details, if you have any questions, you can ask me.

If you go to expatmoney.com/radical, that's where you sign up. All the details are there on the sales page. You can hear on that sales page, you can hear Mikkel talk about how to move to Panama or use it as your plan B residency. And so that's a great introduction to Panama.

And by the way, this event is a Panama tour. However, Mikkel does global planning. And in the same way that I'm not shying away, I'm not trying to convince you that Panama is the best thing. I'm talking about, and I will talk there at the event, we'll talk about all the different countries that you're interested in.

Mikkel does planning all over the world for clients, private planning, et cetera. He and his wife have a really interesting story and they've done all the stuff. And so this is not only about Panama. So if you have questions and you want to work on Mexican residency or something in Canada, Mikkel's from Canada, doesn't like Canada, probably disagrees with my telling you to go and get a bank account there.

But hey, that's welcome to the world of internationalization. He does these tours and has done them with his audience and the Channel Islands and a number of different places around the world. And he's lived in many places, et cetera. And so while this is a Panama event, don't think that you are committing yourself in coming.

Don't think that you're committing yourself that I've got to do Panama stuff. I think Panama stuff is a great option for a lot of people. And this is going to get you a chance to know Panama, to understand what's great about Panama, see it with yourself, enjoy a week away.

We put it during the winter, you'll notice. So this will be January and Panama will not be cold and snowy. Panama will be warm and tropical. And so if you want to get away in January, get away with your spouse, we'd love to welcome you for a time together.

And obviously you put on as much time at the beginning or the end as you want to, to take advantage of other aspects of being in Panama. But we're going to make it worth your time and look forward to hanging out. So at expatmoney.com/radical, you can listen to Mikkel's podcast on Panama and then we'll talk about other stuff.

The event is an event in and of itself. And we've got a lecture schedule that's planned on some specific topics where we're going to give you overviews of this on a truly international place. But we're in Panama and we're going to go and see what the opportunities are in Panama.

So I think that's it. That's everything I'd like to talk to you about. I hope that you will come. Go to expatmoney.com/radical, expatmoney.com/radical, sign up today. Remember there are only 40 slots available. We will do the trip if we get, we have a minimum number and I don't think we're going to have any trouble hitting it, but I think we're going to sell out.

I'm pretty confident. I mean, I haven't done a ton of these, but I'm pretty confident from what I have done that we'll have no trouble selling out. So sign up quickly, please. Go to expatmoney.com/radical, expatmoney.com/radical. All the information, sign up today. expatmoney.com/radical.