Tag: Geographic Arbitrage

The 2018 ERN Family World Tour

My apologies in advance to all who were expecting an update on the Safe Withdrawal Rate Series. I posted Part 24 last week with a promise to do an update this week. Well, I got distracted a little bit last weekend and the new simulations take some more time. Stay tuned until next week! What to do now? Less math, more travel! We’re planning our June-December 2018 ERN Family World Tour and I thought now might be a good time to share our plans. The locations and dates are pretty much fixed already, though some details are still being finalized.

Let’s look at where the ERN family is heading for the second half of 2018…

Continue reading “The 2018 ERN Family World Tour” →

Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Mr. Corporate”

Welcome to the sixth installment of our “Ask Big Ern” series where I perform case studies in safe withdrawal calculations. See here for the other parts of the series.

Let’s make this Geographic Arbitrage Week because after Monday’s guest post on “Geographic Arbitrage,” I will now feature a case study with the same theme! Meet Mr. Corporate (not his real name) who reached out a while ago for advice on whether he’s ready to leave the corporate life. Just looking at his numbers I knew immediately that there is no way he and his wife can retire in their current location. But Mr. C found that moving to another country with lower living expenses will cut years off the time it takes to reach FIRE. And we’re talking about a country in Europe (he wouldn’t mention which one), with a high quality of life, nice climate, and a good healthcare system! Can he retire now? Let’s look at Mr. C.’s numbers…

Continue reading “Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Mr. Corporate”” →

Guest Post: Why geographic arbitrage is so important to retire early and what you can do to about it

Today we feature a Guest Post from my blogging buddy Benjamin Davis. A very exciting and important topic: Geographic arbitrage! Benjamin holds a Ph.D. and decided to become a landlord to retire early. He writes on From cents to Retirement, a blog about early retirement and real estate investing. He also wrote the book My strategy to retire early and runs a real estate and investment consulting business in Portugal. His goal is to build a real estate portfolio with 100 units before he turns 35 and turn From Cents To Retirement into a reference blog for early retirement through Real Estate investments, while he inspires others with his own story. Take it away, Ben!

I was born in Portugal and divided my childhood between Portugal and Italy. I lived in Canada and Germany after that. My family is Canadian and Italian so you can imagine how much I have been exposed to different cultures.

When I decided I was going to retire early, I needed to select the country I was going to live in. I decided to move to a country that would allow me to take advantage of geographic arbitrage, which is defined as the practice of taking advantage of different prices and tax rates in different markets.

There are multiple reasons why I selected Portugal. It would be very easy to talk about the food, the weather, the overall quality of life, etc. But this post is to talk about the financial aspects of this decision. Continue reading “Guest Post: Why geographic arbitrage is so important to retire early and what you can do to about it” →