Joshua shares the pros and cons of living outside of your home country. He convinces David why he needs more than one passport. Finally, Joshua makes a strong case for not retiring, and if one does, under what circumstances.
Show Notes
https://www.radicalpersonalfinance.com
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Transcript
Welcome to Money for the Rest of Us. This is a personal finance show on money, how it works, how to invest it, and how to live without worrying about it. I’m your host, David Stein. Today is episode 506. It’s titled, “Should You Retire Early and Live Outside Your Home Country?”
Seven years ago, in 2018, LaPriel and I spent five months traveling through the Southern portion of the U.S, visiting family and friends, holding meetups, and exploring the country. While in Florida, we visited with Joshua Sheats and his family. Joshua is host of the podcast and education platform Radical Personal Finance. We have known each other for over a decade.
During the visit, Joshua and I recorded episode 250 of Money for the Rest of Us, “The Great National Debt Debate.” Surprisingly, if you have listened to my three-part national debt series from last year, especially the finale, episode 479, my views have changed somewhat from what I expressed in episode 250. I am more concerned about the U.S. national debt today than I was seven years ago. In that episode, Joshua was a bit discouraged about what he saw as a lack of freedom in the U.S. Less than a year later, he left the U.S. with his family, and they have lived outside of the country for over five years.
During the holidays, LaPriel and I spent some time with Joshua, his spouse, and five children. Joshua and I recorded another episode together. I was intrigued about how his views had changed in the last seven years, most of which he has spent outside of his home country.
His views have indeed changed meaningfully as it relates to the positives and negatives of living outside of one’s home country. He convinced me in this discussion why I need to get permanent residency, if not a citizenship, in another country, even though LaPriel and I have no plans to live outside of the U.S. for long stretches of time. We also discussed why Joshua thinks most people shouldn’t retire, and if they do, under what conditions.
Joshua is one of the smartest financial planners I know. He is radical in that he is willing to question accepted financial wisdom. I think you will find this discussion as enlightening as I did.
David Stein: Alright, Joshua, thanks for being here. Seven years ago this April, in episode 250 of Money for the Rest of Us, you and I had a discussion on the national debt and freedom. And at the end of that episode, you said “I affirm that the United States of America enjoys more of these freedoms than on most places in the world. I affirm that.
As I’ve traveled, every time I leave the country, I’m just so thankful for the opportunities, and I said this on the show many times. It’s been a while since I’ve been outside the border, so maybe it’s time to take my own advice. If you’re feeling downcast about your possibilities that you have in life, get on an airplane and go somewhere, and you’ll be thankful for your job.”
Less than a year later you took your own advice. After traveling with your family around the U.S. for six months in an RV, you left the U.S. and have lived abroad with your family for almost six years now. You and your spouse have had two children outside of the U.S, you hold passports and permanent residencies from several countries. My question is, what have you learned?
Joshua Sheets: I think in addition to that I think we’ve been in—I had to count them, but something like about 30 countries over the last five years. What have I learned? Well, I’m affirmed in what I said previously that my appreciation for the United States has grown, but it has also sharpened. As I’ve traveled the world, what I was alluding to in that episode of the podcast was that in the United States, you have opportunity. You have opportunity to earn income. You have opportunity to build wealth.
And almost anybody can access that opportunity. There are some people who—physical disability or basic features are excluded from that. But there is opportunity for anybody. And as I travel the world, I see that that’s just not the case in many places. You can go to so many countries and you can be in reasonably good health, and of reasonable intelligence, and a kind of normal person, and yet you’re excluded from the opportunities that that land provides. And that was what I really was interested in at that point, was the opportunity to really build something.
As I’ve traveled more over the last years though, I’ve come to see the United States as dominant. We’ve talked about national debt, we’ve talked about problems in the United States, and at that time, seven years ago, I had spent decades living in the United States. And what happens to those of us who live in the United States, we tend to be very insular in our thinking. We see everything through an American lens.
We see everything through the perspective of everything that’s wrong with the United States, because we’re comparing our country to the way that it used to be, and in many cases to our ideal vision of how it could be and how it should be if our particular worldview and political view were actually expressed in fullness. And so all I experienced at that time was just sadness and frustration with the United States. And I thought “Well, everything’s probably better everywhere else”, and so I decided to go looking.
And I have gone, and I have looked, and two things have happened. And it’s not an extreme view. I have come to appreciate the many things that are available in other parts of the world, and I can give as many examples as you like, but I’ve also come to appreciate that if there were just one country that I would want to bet my future on right now, that had perhaps not the best in any one thing, but the best collection of features on every level of society, I’m still going to bet on the United States.
David Stein: You’ve also—you’ve commented in the past, and now that you’ve lived outside the U.S. for such an extensive period of time, there are a lot of expats like you that do that to retire. And I believe you said that in many cases it’s actually more expensive to retire outside of the U.S. once you adjust for quality of life, really.
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