NEWS/BLOG

They’re Watching Us Down There

Yes, expats and others in Mexico are watching the presidential line-up with intense interest. Here’s what Inside Mexico has to say -

“Believe us, it doesn’t get any better than this. It’s been decades since a U.S. presidential race has been so wide open, unpredictable and fetchingly cast. It’s a racy, page-turner of a campaign and Inside Mexico is watching every cliffhanger, climax and anti-climax for you.”

For more of their take on what’s happening and their online voting guide with bios of all major candidates, go to www.insidemex.com/

Change - Good and Bad

I find it very exciting that younger people are living abroad and are earning a living. Places like Panama, Belize and Costa Rica are not only attracting retirees these days. The same technological advances these expats are using can also benefit trailing spouses, who often have to leave their careers behind, as well as retired individuals who want to stay involved.

The bad news in recent days has been hurricanes in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. Felix slammed Nicaragua hard and Honduras even harder. At the same time, Henriette was hitting the tip of Baja California in Mexico. This is the first time that Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes to hit landfall simultaneously since the National Hurricane Center began keeping records. It is also the first time for two Category 5 Atlantic storms to make landfall in the same year.

Many factors have to come together for hurricanes to occur, but warmer weather is among them. Global warming may make living in tropical coastal regions more of a challenge. Should this determine where you choose to live? That’s up to you. But I have to admit that I moved from an area prone to earthquakes to a place with fewer chances of natural disasters

Have Laptop, Will Travel

We get inquiries - how can I make a living if I move abroad? Now, however, expats in places from Tuscany to Thailand and dozens of other places are linking themselves electronically with clients, customers and various viable sources of income. Business2.0 (a cutting edge business magazine that unfortunately will soon stop publishing) calls them “white collar nomads” in an article by Chris Morrison. But they don’t all wear white collars and are more likely to be found in sweatshirts, t-shirts or no shirts. They’re individuals who’ve picked up and taken their business acumen to the four corners of the globe.

For some this means earning first-world pay while having third-world living costs. The lifestyle and the adventure are apt to be the biggest draw, however. Business Week called these brave souls “New Nomads” in an article by Karen E. Klein.

Gregory Moulinet, a thirty-something logo designer, is originally from France and grew up in various parts of the world while his father worked as a TV reporter and anchor. After traveling in Asia during his 20s, he settled down in New York City where he started a logo-design business but he soon hit the road again, staying in hotels and friends’ apartments in Miami, Paris, and Tokyo. In 2005, he met his girlfriend, Yoko Chiba, who is also a designer and world traveler, and they started their joint venture. See www.nomadesign.jp/plane.html.

A popular vocation to take on the road is maintaining a website about - you guessed it - being a mobile entrepreneur. Carmen Bolanos was a psychotherapist with a private practice in Texas. She became an executive coach and co-founded www.NuNomad.com, which enables her to work while traveling in Europe and elsewhere several months a year with her family. After blogging about her lifestyle, she met a her business partner, Richard Hamel, founder of www.LaptopHobo.com. As it happens, he owns a web design business, dot com Web Works, officially headquartered in Santa Ana, Calif., but for now he lives in Koh Lanta, Thailand. He works mostly with nonprofit organizations and he has written a book, Quit Dreaming and Go.

Another web entrepreneur is Anthony Page, founder of www.workingnomad.com and author of How I Did It, an e-book, which is a guide to earning income from multiple websites. Page recommends traveling light (think backpack instead of luggage) but with a few indispensable gadgets such as a travel adapter with USB charger.

Before you sell you possessions and take off, Business 2.0 recommends that you have a clear idea of what you’re going to do and get your business or telecommuting arrangement up and running, If you opt for a vagabond life, be sure to keep track of visas and entry requirements for each new country. Don’t expect all fun and games. When business is good, you might have to forgo sightseeing.

A Working Vacation in Belize

Visit Belize and participate in an avian rescue and rehabilitation this Thanksgiving. By enrolling in the “Toucon tour,” you can work with the Casa Avian Support Alliance avian rescue and rehabilitation program. Help with on-site nest-box building, general maintenance and feeding as well as habitat restoration, nature trail building, wild bird identification and signage.

Lodging is at Casa del Caballo Blanco eco lodge, which has six casitas on its 23 scenic hilltop acres near San Ignacio. (It shares space with the avian center.) Meals are served in a thatched-roof dining area using local produce and traditional local recipes. Also included are visits to the major Mayan ceremonial site of Tikal, tubing through Xibalba, the Mayan underworld of the Caves Branch River.

The four-night Thanksgiving package is $815 per person including accommodation, most meals, planned outings and on-site volunteer work with the various ongoing avian support projects. Excluded are local taxes, optional activities and service charges. Operation of the lodge and its avian project, both not for profit, depends partly on guest revenues from the lodge s as well as volunteer participation.

“Habitat destruction, the effects of global warming and the illegal poaching and capture of exotic birds are real world problems. The work we do here seeks to understand and support the biodiversity of Belize that attracts and sustains over 530 species of migratory and resident birds spotted in a given year,” explains lodge owner Vance Bente.

This is the first avian “voluntourism” program of its kind in Belize. It has been endorsed by the Rainforest Alliance sustainable Tourism Program, Belize Audubon Society, Friends for Conservation and Development and Birds Without Borders.

For more information, see www.casaavian.org. For information on year-round educational programs and vacation packages, please visit www.casacaballoblanco.com or call 707-974-4942. 

Go South, Way South

A few savvy expats began moving to Uruguay in the 1980s and even earlier. Since then its neighbors, Argentina and Brazil have attracted bargain hunters, but bargains in those two countries are getting harder, though not impossible, to find as their currencies have become stronger.

Uruguay is less famous for dance steps and music than its neighbors, to be sure. However, it has a fairly uncomplicated program for expat residents. Also, it has beautiful beaches. Punta del Este has attracted such folks as designer Ralph Lauren and model Naomi Campbell, among others. Ocean-view houses can be purchased for as low as $200,000 and a four-bedroom house a few blocks from the beach might go for just $160,000.

For a more cosmopolitan lifestyle, there’s the capital, Montevideo, with colonial charm, art galleries and an opera house. Properties in the historic old city are going for as little as $50,000 and modern condos are available for even less.

The disadvantage? It’s a long way and an expensive trip even from Miami. And your friends will say, “You’re moving where?”

Seeing Bubbles Before They Burst

“Sell all exposure to the American mortgage securities market,” Christopher Wood advised clients in his weekly Greed & Fear. What’s interesting is that he said this back in October of 2005.

Wood has called the end of other financial bubbles. He urged investors to sell just as the Nasdaq tech wave was cresting in early 2000. Also, he sent out an alarm on the problems in Thailand before the 1997 currency devaluation brought about the Asian financial crisis.

While a correspondent in Japan for the Economist, he wrote his first book, Boom and Bust: The Rise and Fall of World Financial Markets, published in 1988. His next book, The Bubble Economy, was first published in 1992 and updated in 2005. (It has been recommended by expats who moved to Japan and used to book to gain insight into the economic situation there).

Wood believes the credit bubble is just as bad as the 2002 tech bubble and the Asian Bubble of the 80s. Why? The reason, he says, is “securitization” where mortgages and other loans are repackaged and sold to investors. Bubbles aren’t necessarily bad, however, he maintains. Another one in the offing is in the Asian markets but it will take several years to reach to burst, he says.

Greed & Fear runs about 10 pages long and has about 7,000 readers, most of them clients of Hong Kong-based brokerage CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, majority-owned by French bank, Crédit Agricole. Wood has published Greed & Fear since 1996, taking it with him when he moved to different investment banks. He joined CLSA in 2002. Now based in Jakarta, the British-born Wood travels about ten months of the year.