A New World Requires New Tools and Services

Dateline: Oslo, Norway + Budapest, Hungary

I’m starting this article at the airport in Oslo, Norway. I’ll finish and send it from a hotel room in Budapest, Hungary. Thirty years ago, based on that information, you might have guessed I was an executive with a big oil company, or maybe had some cushy government job wasting taxpayer’s money.

In my case, I’m a Canadian who hasn’t lived in Canada for thirty years, flying from my temporary home in Ireland to meet my American son and his Chinese girlfriend coming from Hong Kong to enjoy a few days of laughs and good food in Hungary before they head to Italy.

Simple.

Today, a lifestyle of frequent travel, multiple residences, and successive new experiences is enjoyed by everyone from broke and indebted 20-somethings to affluent retirees. In my circle of friends and acquaintances, it’s so common that I have to remind myself that not everyone lives this way.

Breaking Old Systems

While those of us who embrace change and enjoy being so-called ‘early adopters’ are blazing the new path to personal freedom that technology offers, we keep noticing how rigid and restricted the conventional system really is.

Is my driver’s license valid in this country? Can I stay here beyond 30 days? What is considered proof of marriage? How does the local tax system operate and does it apply to my entire net worth? Can I work part-time? If I die here, who gets my stuff and how? If I’m caught with gold or cash in my possession will it be confiscated? Is freedom legal here? (Haha! The answer to the last one is always ‘No.’ Don’t kid yourself.)

These legacy systems of political sovereignty are breaking down under the weight of new lifestyles and new technologies.

New Tools and Services

Just a couple of decades ago your bank, lawyer, accountant, and travel agent could all be on the same block in your local town. After all, everything we owned was in the same political jurisdiction and in the same currency. And most of us didn’t have or need a passport. As far as travel was concerned, it was mostly holidays in a handful of popular tourist locations.

Today, if you want to simultaneously decrease your financial and political risks and maximize your potential net worth, you need different tools and services.

You might want to own real estate in a country that has more growth potential than your own, and a currency that has more upside. Who in your town can help you find that real estate?

You might want your spouse to incorporate a foreign company in a jurisdiction that has a low corporate tax rate, and you work as a private contractor for that company. Who in your town can help you find that low tax country and get company registration?

You might want to divide your nest egg into separate baskets with very solvent banks in places where the local government doesn’t use the words ‘bail-in’ or ‘too big to fail.’ Who in your town can help you find those foreign banks?

You might want to extend your retirement by living in a place with a low cost of living, good quality of life, and access to excellent health care. Who in your town can help you find a country with those attributes?

The world needs new providers of all of these services and more. That’s why I get excited about businesses like Nomad Capitalist that are at the cutting edge of this new ability to engineer a lifestyle that used to be virtually impossible for regular people. I like the way new solutions arise when new challenges and opportunities appear.

We all know the world is changing fast. Some of us realize that fantastic opportunities come with those changes. And the answers to your questions are out there because so many people are already living in this new world of possibilities.