Nomadico

Golden Visa Sunset/Monkey Tool/Baller Bangkok

Nomadico issue #26

A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your friends can subscribe and join you.

The End of Portugal’s Golden Visa?
Take a sunny European country, incentivize rich people to move there to get an EU passport, and then kick back and watch the money flow in. Portugal wasn’t the first to try this ploy, but perhaps it worked too well there: the country has received 6.5 billion euros in investment as a result, mostly in real estate. Because the prevailing local wisdom (fair or not) is that this has driven up housing prices in Lisbon, the program is either going to shift to rural areas or get scrapped altogether according to the latest PM’s statements.


Thin Monkey Tool for Travel
Some things I always pack I don’t use every trip, but when I do pull them out they’re super handy. That’s the case with the Monkey Tool that’s the size of a credit card but has multiple screwdrivers, a bottle opener, rope cutter, orange peeler, and more for just a few bucks. (Makes a good stocking stuffer too…)


Living Large in Bangkok
When CNBC interviewed American expat entrepreneur Jesse Schoberg, it wasn’t the usual, “How I live on $1,000 per month” story, but rather the kind of life you can get in Bangkok when a high earner spends 8X that much instead. It’s a big life upgrade compared to what you get in SF, NYC, or London and spawned a great interview discussion on the Tropical MBA podcast about what came after the video went viral, including locally in Thai.


The Return of Savings Accounts?
With interest rates rising, it’s starting to make sense to leave cash in a savings account again. Since around 2009, traditional savings accounts paid next to nothing, so it made sense to keep deploying that capital or investing it. Now you can park your money somewhere for 3% or get more than 4% from a CD. That’s still lower than the current inflation rate, but with the Fed continuing to hike rates, the two numbers should converge in a quarter or two. In countries with a volatile currency, savings rates are topping 10%.

11/17/22

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