Shaun Newman Podcast - #1044 - Mikkel Thorup

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

Mikkel Thorup is a renowned expat consultant and the host of The Expat Money Show, a long-running podcast started in 2017 that focuses on offshore living, wealth protection, and international investment. As the Founder and CEO of Expat Money, a private consulting firm, he helps clients legally reduce tax liabilities, secure second residencies or citizenships, and build portfolios of international investments, such as real estate, timber plantations, and agricultural land.Watch the Cornerstone Forum 26’https://shaunnewmanpodcast.substack.com/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Get your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

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Today's guest is the founder and CEO of expat money. I'm talking about Mikkel Thorougham. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joining my Mikkel. Good to see you again. You as well.

I'm looking forward to it. We had a good time down here in Panama a few weeks ago, and it was good to spend time with you in person again and catch up. And I'm glad to be back on the program again. Well, you brought me down to Panama, which was the first time I'd ever been to Central America. So I wasn't sure what I didn't know what to expect. What did you think?

We actually have not had a chance to properly, debrief after your time here. What did you think? Okay. I know way less Spanish that I probably needed to. Not that I didn't survive. I did. But a little bit of just basic Spanish would have helped. I couldn't get over how like lush like it was. I don't know why that surprised me, but I hadn't like searched out pictures and read a whole bunch of blogs on it. I kind of went in blank slate. just hoping to me like, well, let's see what's happened here. And then some of the buildings in Panama City, still, I'm like, how the heck is that there? I mean, I understand the tax implications and different things like that.

And so I understand why they're there. But like a couple of the buildings, I stared at and I'm like, how did they even build that? Like, just like mesmerize me. And then the Panama Canal, I don't know. I just, I don't know what I thought it was going to be, but it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. but it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. Okay. Interesting.

Interesting. So overall, and then your conference, I really enjoyed it. There was a whole cast of characters I'd never met before. I got to hear different perspectives on different places in the world and just different thoughts on the world that were very interested in me. I didn't know a lot of your guests, which was good. I enjoy that. It's like I'm going to get exposed to a whole bunch of new ways of looking at the world.

And I always am excited about that, Mikel. And I don't know, like for a first timer, not having to worry about anything except getting up on stage a couple times. It was, I don't know, it was enjoyable. Amazing. Amazing. I want to tell you a quick, funny story about you and your appearance here. So this is for the benefit of all of your listeners. So I've had an ongoing conversation with my father for 20 years about Canada. Okay.

And I've lived overseas now for officially 26 years. And we've had this ongoing conversation with my dad. And, you know, he's always saying Canada is the best country in the world and all of these types of things. And he actually came down to the conference this year. And Sean, you, me and a couple of other people were on stage and we were talking Canadian politics. About half the audience was Canadians. And I expected to see my father stand up halfway through the presentation and walk out because I thought he was going to be so, furious because he's a patriotic Canadian. And here we are and we're, we're being quite critical

of what's going on back home in Canada. And at the end of it, he had watched the whole thing. And I went and spoke to him. And he's like, oh, that's Sean guy. He was bang on. He really knows his stuff. And I was like, what? Sorry? Did you just, did you just agree with me and the things that I've been saying for 20 years? And then him and my mother and my stepmother watched your presentation, later on in the day, which you did an amazing job at. And they came to me afterwards, and they're like, yeah, we think that Sean guy, we think he should be prime minister of Canada. I think that would be really, really excellent.

He'd be good for the country. And I was like, my entire head exploded. I thought this was the funniest thing in the world. Well, I got to sit by him on the way out to one of the, he went to, forgive me. Peritas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we got talking about a whole bunch of things, Canadian.

And I clued in part way through. I'm like, wait a second. This is McKell's dad. Isn't this? I'm like, am I expecting an argument right now? I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, well, it doesn't matter. I don't have all the answers.

I'm far from it. But yeah, it was interesting to meet your family. I sat and talked to your mom for quite some time at your birthday party too. Because, you know, I just, it was cool to see you in a different setting, your setting, right? Where I'm just the observer and I get to just walk around and talk to different people. It was enjoyable for me. The only thing I kicked myself on, Mikkel, was not staying a couple extra days. Like, in hindsight, I'm like, why didn't I just book a hotel for a couple extra days and fly out?

The short time frame, I won't do that again. Because the short time frame, I mean, there was a full day there where I don't think I knew if I was coming or going. I was so tired, you know, jet lag flying a red eye. I do not sleep while on planes. And so, you know, it was an enjoyable. experience. It was the first time I'd ever been to Central America. And my only thing I thought afterwards, I should have just stayed longer. Like I, you know, I could have had an extra day or two to actually go explore myself. But so much of it was focused on being around what you had going on.

Amazing. Amazing. Well, it was fun to spend time with you. And also for the benefit of the audience. John is exactly the way he appears on a microphone is in real life. And now you've seen me in my environment and I think you will agree I'm literally the same person on the microphone or off the microphone. Well, I chuckled because people are asking me. What was McKell like? And I'm like, well, his birthday party wasn't what I thought it was going to be. I don't know what I thought it was going to be. But at the end of the night, you're sitting there with your son thanking everybody for coming. And I'm like, good on him because I couldn't handle my son being there. My brain, I'd be like, well, you've been to my cornerstone form. I don't have the kids around because I'm trying to focus in on what I'm

trying to do and not worrying about parenting. And so I was just like, well, get on him. He's got his kids here, his wife here, all of his family here. Your dad was in, you know, it was very family. I thought very family-oriented. I don't know if that's the way you design it or not, but that's the way it felt. It is purposeful. We're all about the family.

So all the consulting work that I do is all focused on the family unit. I believe that the family is the correct way of stewarding wealth. I don't think it is the government. I don't think it's big conglomerates and institutions or huge banks or things like that. I believe the family is the correct unit. So everything we do is family first. Well, it's one of the conversations we had there or you had on stage. I can't remember where I first heard it.

But you were talking about when you first left Canada, I don't know the timeline. Maybe there was a few countries in between. But you ended up in the UAE. And you were telling me, or maybe the group of us, you started to recognize things, years ago that would lend to where UAE is sitting right now. I was wondering if you'd share that story. Yeah, sure.

So it was actually my opening speech at the conference. What I was talking about was that I moved to the UAE in 2011. And I was there for almost eight years in the Middle East in the GCC countries, next to Dubai. And I had a great life. And it was tax-free and I enjoyed myself. and it was a fantastic opportunity when I was a young single man. Okay, I moved there in my 20s. And when I started having a family and started looking around in the environment

and started to think not just about myself, but also then my wife. And at that time, one child, one child, now I have four children. And God willing, I will have a fifth. I didn't like what I saw of the UAE. And the things that became more important to me were things like being food independent, being water independent and being energy independent. Now, the UAE has hydrocarbons, obviously. But a lot of their electricity at that time when I was there was either brought in or it was

burning the hydrocarbons or things like this. So it wasn't very resilient of a place. But more than anything, is that you are across the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Gulf, depending on whose map you're looking at, from Iran. And I could see the U.S. and the West, in general, aggression towards Iran. And I visited Iran in probably about 2013, 2014, maybe somewhere in 2012. I can't remember the exact date. But I went over there and I spent a couple of weeks and I met the Iranians.

And they were actually some of the most lovely human beings you would ever meet in your entire life. And you see this mountainous country, huge country with a very deep civil. civilization. And I'm like, they're not going to give this up easily. And with the U.S. being so aggressive and moving in their armada and all of the sanctions and things like that, I went, hmm, if something were to happen here, if this were to erupt, probably Abu Dhabi in Dubai would be a really terrible place to be. And now as a responsible father and husband, I better do something about it. So I made the difficult decision of picking up my family once again, selling everything that I had or putting it on a shipping container and moving overseas.

And I looked at the whole wide world and saw what was available. And I chose Panama. So my point was that I may have been early in my declaration when I left in 2019, but I wasn't wrong about the situation. And I really think that plays into a lot of what we're seeing around the world, is I might be early with some of these types of things. But I'm not often wrong. I have good judgment.

I've been proven to have good judgment, and this is why people come to me for advice for a very long time and on very, very critical moments when they're trying to make the right decision of where they're going. Food, water, energy, not government, not policy, food, water, energy. You still stand by those three? 100%.

Every single country that we work in where we are relocating people those are the three first things. Yes, we want to make sure that it has low taxes. Yes, that it has deregulation and things like this. But if it is not food, water, energy independent, then it doesn't make the cut. Now, you can look at countries that are food, water, and energy independent, but when then you put on the cost of living in there or the taxes, or you have to give away 53% of top marginal tax rate, you know, that becomes slavery. So those are important pieces. Don't get me wrong. But it plays like a UAE, which was a, which was a expat hotspot. I mean, it's too

fragile. We need to, we need to look at beyond just the financial side. Well, then you fast forward to 2026. You've, you're one of the things about the Cornerstone Forum, which you've been to, it's an eclectic group of people. And if I took the most eclectic group of people from the Cornerstone forum they arrived at the expat uh here's your summit your conference i was like this is this is a graduate i don't mean this in a negative to either conference just that these people have taken the next next step of like i'm tired of what's going on i want to explore somewhere else or i already have explored somewhere else so very interesting thing oriented yes like very very interested interesting.

So when you look at the world of 2026 now, you're seeing what's going on on Iran. Of course, we still have Russia, Ukraine, going on. You've got things like Germany and not allowing young males to leave for longer than three months. You're hearing more talk of conscription. You're talking about energy lockdowns now because of the pressures being put on by what's going on over there. the EU having less than six weeks of jet fuel, as per their own departments, six weeks of reserves. That was two weeks ago.

So I don't know what that means. My math is pretty decent. I believe that means less than a month's worth of jet fuel available in the continent for commercial flights. That might be problematic. I don't know. So when you sit there and you're talking to people and you're talking to your network, is there anything else that you're like, I mean, the jet fuel is a perfect example? It's like, what else are you hearing from where you're sitting that should be concerning to

not only Canadians, but just anyone tuning in? Well, I'll tell you what I'm telling my private clients. These are the people who pay me $40, $50,000 a year from my opinion. Number one, start getting out of debt. Debt of every single level on any shape, form. Start getting rid of the credit card, the loan, the mortgage, anything and everything. Stop speculating. Number two, stop speculating in the stock market.

We don't know. The Fang stocks, the magnificent seven AI, is it going to go up? Is it going to go down? I have no idea. Okay. But I can tell you that a lot of these things are manipulated. A lot of these things are pumped up. A lot of it is a circle. It goes around and around and around. I'd be very, very nervous about those things. I'd be using some of those funds that you have to pay off any debt that you have. If you have investable capital, I'd be putting it into tangible assets. things that you can smell and feel and taste and touch. I like precious metals, specifically gold. Silver is great, but in reality, silver is a play on the economy. It's a manufacturing metal. It is used in industrial products and technology and batteries and solar panels and things like this. Gold is a deep, deep market that is used by central banks. It's a monetary metal.

So as we see de-dollarization happening, which is not a speculation, is not a conspiracy theory. We can look at any of the numbers year after year. There is less and less and less dollars being held by foreign reserves. Where are they going? They're putting it into gold. And how do we know this? Because gold went from 1850 to 4,600 in just a couple of years.

And my guess is that it'll probably still go higher. And as there is more sanctions and more people that they cut out, and the more that they weaponize with, expect precious metals to go higher. So we are taking our money out of speculative type of investments, like the stock market and publicly traded markets. We're putting in tangible things like gold. If you need to have properties, if you want cash flow, I'd be looking at real things, real things that produce income,

things that you understand, like rental properties. And I don't mean taking a big mortgage, as I said, getting rid of debt, but buying properties that you can afford. Overseas, we're doing one-bedroom apartments for around $60,000, so you can pay cash for them, two-bedroom apartments for about $70,000 or $80,000. So you can get a couple of nice rental properties for your portfolio, cash flow at, I don't know, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10%, that's cash on cash return, and then you're going to get capital appreciation on top of that. I think that, you know, being a little bit more conservative, finding things you understand,

getting rid of debt, I think that's the play in today's environment. Specifically mortgages, just because I feel like anyone listening to this probably has a mortgage, are you suggesting selling your house? I'm suggesting paying down as much of the mortgage as possible so that you don't go into, don't go underwater. If we look at 2008, 2009, the countries that did the best had the least amount of mortgages. The countries that did the worst had mortgages. with the least amount of money down, you know, 5% down, 0% down, things like that. These are the people who became underwater.

Then they had to mail back the keys. That's what that means. You owe more than the property is worth. So what's the point of proceeding with the investment with your home? You might as well just send the keys back and start from scratch. So try to pay down as much of the mortgage as humanly possible. What countries back in 0809 did them have the least amount of mortgages? For example, Panama, where I live, is basically a cash market, even today in 2026.

It is still mostly a cash market for the real estate here. You can sometimes maybe get a mortgage, but at the very, very, very minimum would be 30% down. More likely is 50% down for the property. Then when you add to that, that you must, whether you're Panamanian or a foreigner, an ex-anhero and expat, you must have life insurance on your property. and the beneficiary of the life insurance is the bank. So if you want a mortgage and you want to take out a 30% or a 50% or a 50% or a 70% mortgage on the property, you have to have life insurance for that remainder amount.

The life insurance doesn't get paid out to your family. It gets paid out to the bank. So if you walk out the street, get hit by a bus, the life insurance covers the bank. The bank becomes whole. Now your family gets to keep the property free and clear, but the bank doesn't want a whole bunch of properties on their balance sheet. That's not the business they're in. Somehow in the U.S. and in Canada, that's the business they got into.

But it's not like that anywhere else. So 2008, 2009, Panama was pretty flat. While the rest of the world was getting destroyed, Panama was flat. And I think, John, if, you know, over the next year, your, I don't know, net worth goes down by 5%. and everybody else's goes down by 50% or 70%, you're going to be in a really good situation, right? You're going to be much better off than everybody else. So it's not right now about trying to hit home runs

or grand slams and try to swing for the fences. It can serve, simple, easy to understand type of things. Try not to lose at the moment. One of the questions I think a lot of Canadians specifically have when they're looking at a plan B is what countries, whether they got COVID right or not, more of how long did they get COVID wrong for before they changed their policies? One of the things I forgot to ask when I was in Panama was what was COVID like in Panama?

So COVID in Panama was not great. This is why I used Panama as a plan A. And then during COVID, I went down to Brazil, which was wide open. This was the Bolsonaro era, and there was like COVID did not exist there. So even my second child was born in Brazil. And we were in a small island called Florianopolis in Santa Catarina in the south of Brazil. And we were on the beach every day and we were barbecuing and we were drinking Kaiparinas and having a good time. So Brazil was a very good option.

Mexico, certain portions of it were wide open. Nicaragua, which is a complete contrarian type of play because of the Ortegas. And I'm not saying the Ortega's are good people or anything like that. But they were wide open in COVID. They had no restriction. Danny Ortega basically said, listen, I'm not your dad and you're not my kids. You decide what you're going to do and you live with the consequences. And that's what they did.

So they had nothing there. Okay. Nothing. And I was like, how interesting. You know, a supposed dictatorship lets people do whatever they want. And Canada, you know, goes into churches and arrest. priests and pastors and stuff like that for practicing on a Sunday. But we're the pinnacle of democracy here and Nicaragua is the dictatorship.

How funny, you know. Well, if you fast forward to 2026 then, one of the other questions that Canadians are asking, as they're staring off at, I think, I don't know, I guess I should ask you, World War III kind of just unfolding right in front of us, where is the safest place to dodge or avoid what's happening on a global conflict? I would say it is the exact same place as it was in World War I and the exact same place as it was in World War II. It's the Southern Cone of South America.

These are food, water, energy independent countries. Most of them now are right-leaning. Most Latin American countries have gone right-leaning, the exception being Brazil and Mexico. But if you look at Argentina with Javier Mille, you look at Daniel Naboa in Ecuador and Panama is Raul Molino and Santiago Pena in Paraguay, all these countries, even Chile, even Bolivia, even Costa Rica are all going right leaning. If we look specifically at the southern cone of South America, I'd be looking at places like Argentina, Uruguay. Paraguay is an amazing country for a plan B. We do residencies for people literally every day in that country. It's very affordable.

The cost of living is very low. It's a territorial tax country, so there's zero tax. They have the largest hydroelectric dam in the world, the Itapu Dam, which produces enough energy to support their entire country, as well as sell electricity to Brazil and provides roughly 17% of the electricity of Brazil, which is a country of 200 million people. So that is an energy superpower. They're like the fourth largest producer of beef and soybeans. They have one of the largest aquifers of fresh water in the world. Like this country is a dream for a plan B. We actually have a newsletter called paraguipotential.com

where we talk about these things every week or sorry, every month. And I think that is the best place to go for World War III if you were concerned about these things. At least have a residency there just in your back pocket. It seems like it's such a no-brainer to me. Well, if I, I got, when I came back, I got asked a lot of questions about what I thought about, you know, Panaman and everything. And I'm like, it's funny because what I was there, I was asking all these X-Pacts.

So where would you go? Where's the place? Where's the most cost effective? And the pattern I recognized was everybody said Paraguay. Because of all the things you just said, but then on how quickly and how inexpensive it is to actually do Paraguay. it is almost free. It is like, like it's going to take a little bit of your time, but it is almost free to do.

And we help clients with it every day at expatmoney.com. It's ridiculous, Sean. Well, I know, you know, this is, this got to be third or fourth time, McKell's been on a podcast, folks. You can just, if you're on Spotify, you go up to the search bar, you can see all the times he's come on.

And one of the things I was talking about, an episode or two ago was, you know, like there's a lot of blue-collar workers that just don't have deep pockets. And they want a plan B, but they can't figure it out, you know, and there's been talks of different things happening in the United States to lure, you know, working age men down there that have skills. And the more I hear about Paraguay, I'm like, I feel like Paraguay is the place. Like we're not talking, uh, $20,000. Like, we're talking a reasonable amount. the time commitment and getting down there and everything, certainly. But when you're talking about the actual investment into getting everything going on in

Paraguay, it's way less. Like, it's just, it seems affordable. Well, I'll give you context. Okay. So we do, I don't know, the exact numbers, but a very large portion of the visas for the main investors visa for the country of Panama. Okay. We get, we talk to the ministers, we have dinner with them.

We give advice. We write opinion letters. Our lawyers get questioned on a regular basis. We do a very large portion of the investments in Panama. That is a $300,000 real estate investment. For the primary applicant is $10,000 in government fees and $4,500 in legal fees. For each additional child, you can basically, child or spouse, you can basically add another $4,500, $5,000 on.

So that's Panama. We do an insane amount of that. visa and then we have Paraguay on the other side soup to nuts is $3,500 in legal fees and government fees combined there is no investment required at the moment it will change at the moment is a flat fee of all of your government fees all of the legal fees everything for 3,500 a person okay with 300,000 plus 20 30,000 dollars in legal and government fees or three and a half grand like Please guys, get off the fence and get this done.

It's insane. Well, you hear more and more Canadians, and you know this from your own conference, right? Like, who was there? Canadians, right? When I said, how many were here from Canada? And it was insane. How many stuck their hand?

I'm like, oh, talking to a lot of Canadians. They kind of probably are going, yeah, I don't need to hear what Sean's about to say. There is more and more Canadians daily that are exploring plan B. there is a bunch of independent thinkers here that have put a lot of faith into Alberta independence and they're looking at it going, this will work. And if it doesn't, then what am I going to do? And that's where the plan B for a lot of people is already kicked in or they're already planning it out, I think. So we may have talked about this on a previous episode or maybe it was when I was up in Alberta visiting you.

my main point is this. I support you guys in Alberta secession. I think it's a great idea. I think we should do it. I'm a Canadian citizen myself. I think it is absolutely fantastic. But I think we're a bunch of idiots if we do it and we don't have a plan B in place. Okay, myself included.

Okay. You need to have something in your back pocket because we already saw what the government does. Peaceful protesters, over 200 people had their bank accounts frozen with no. access to capital whatsoever. And we're going to go and do this. Don't you think that might piss them off a little bit? Don't you think they might try to make examples out of some people? Do you really want that to be you, your spouse, your kids, your parents, your siblings? They go after, not just yourself, they go after like groups, right? So it really makes sense. Get a residency in your back pocket. Have a bank account overseas. You have a little bit of

capital. Maybe some precious metals. It's not going to get inflated. it away, right? Get something set up and then go to war, then go and fight all these things. But if you're doing all of this and you have nothing in your back pocket, no, no backup plan whatsoever, I mean, sounds like a suicide mission to me. I'd be really careful. Well, there's a, what was it the, well, there's two I'm thinking of. There's the Godfather where they go to the mattresses. And then there is, what civilization were, is they burn the boats there's no retreat sometimes i feel like there's a group of albertans that have burned the boats and they're like we're going and there's there's no talking us off

this we're pushing and pushing and pushing and my hats off to all of them because i'm like i uh you know i i just go back one of the things we share in common young father right i got three young kids and certainly i think of a lot you know not only these conversations but conversations I've had with lots of different people from across the planet now. And I'm like, you can see the tea leaves, which way they seem to be starting to flow. And as Canada aligns itself more with Europe instead of the United States, you're like, where does that take us over the next decade? Places I probably don't want to be. I don't resent.

Like I was talking about at the beginning of this episode, the UAE was a great place when I was a young single guy and I was, could do whatever I wanted with my life, and then I got married, and then I had four kids, and responsibilities change, and sometimes you need to grow up. And when you start being responsible for other people, sometimes you need to do things that, you know, maybe cost a couple of thousand dollars and take a week out of your time just to make sure that your kids are going to be safe. That's called being a responsible adult. This probably isn't the right, because people will infer more than I'm about to say.

but you know, I told you we're leaving for a year. I know. I'm excited for you. I'm excited for you. Well, we announced it at the Cornerstone Forum right at the end. And July 5th is the targeted date to start. And we're hoping to make it to Panama and El Salvador and, you know, a bunch of different places, Central America and elsewhere, I might add. Any advice on traveling? You know, one of the things you, whether you realized it, whether I said it,

after the first time I talked to, I'm like, oh, McKell looks at the world as just a bunch of doors you can open, right? You need the right paperwork, but you get through and then you're in and, you know, all the rules they said existed for the common man is if you got the right paper, you just walk through the door and you carry on with life. And I don't know, you're a guy that has put that thought in the back of my head of like, I just need to understand how the world operates. Any advice for leaving with three kids and,

and the wife, the five of us, roaming around? So, yeah, so a couple of things. The first thing is, I got to actually know about this, everyone, before you guys did at the cornerstone, because John, you and I talked about it privately, and I'm fully supportive of your decision. So some context, my eldest has now visited, I think she's at 42 countries or something like that.

She speaks four languages. She is the most outgoing person you'll ever talk to. she doesn't get shy about anything. And I think a lot of that is to do with traveling and, well, definitely homeschooling and traveling and meeting people from around the world. So your kids are going to get an amazing perspective because right now they see things through one lens, you know, an Albertan, you know, Canadian type of lens, right? But you're going to meet people from every walk of life, every type of socio-demographic,

color, skin, language, everything like that. It's going to be so interesting for them. So first of all, I'm very pumped that they will be doing this. Now, tips themselves, I would say, take it slow. You don't need to go too too far, too too too fast, I should say. Take your time and go through these types of things. What I really find when traveling is to let, let something soak in via osmosis. Go sit at a cafe.

Go to the park. Let the kids run crazy and go and talk to random. people, you know, keep one eye on them, sure, but don't try to bail them out every time if they're struggling with the language or there's some other kid and they can't seem to communicate. They will figure it out. Don't step in the way of that learning curve, all right? I'm also very open. I'm like, here, go and talk to strangers.

Hey, that person looks nice. Go and introduce yourself, right? Once again, keep one eye on them. Have a safe environment, but don't. worry about like trying to protect them from every interaction. That's the good stuff. That's the, that's the fun things, right? Take your time, have fun. It's going to be stressful. It's going to be a lot sometimes, especially with three kids. Like I've taken all of my kids to Europe and we go for six weeks, four or five, six weeks every single year. And we've been to, I don't know,

last year I took the kids to Central Asia, actually. I was with them in Kyrgyzstan and Kassi. Stan with two of my kids and my wife. The year before, we were in Montenegro and northern Cyprus and Kosovo and Serbia and I don't know, a whole bunch of places. And it can be a lot for the kids. But if you kind of slow down and take time out, like I said, just to go to the park and just go run around or just do normal things in the country, go grocery shopping, that's all the good stuff. Don't worry about like hitting every museum or every, big monument and getting all the right pictures. Man, that's stuff you can find in some travel guide or something like that.

Well, I don't think the Newman's are going to have any. Well, they'll have problems for sure. But did I tell you about getting in the Uber coming from the airport? Tell me. So I forget, whoever it was, it said, oh, just take an Uber from this spot at the Panama airport. All right. So the Uber rolls up and he goes, you shot? Like, yep.

I can't do the accent for it. Sorry. And then I go to get in the front door and he's like, you, you could. And I'm like, no, I'm going to sit in the front. So I like push the seat back because obviously nobody sits in the front. And I start jabbering on. Of course, he can't understand me. And I can't understand him.

And he puts out his phone and we start doing the translation app thing. Had a just a grand conversation with him and learned a whole bunch about it. But I'm like, that, that's going to be my kids. My kids are going to be like, I don't, I don't want to sit in the back. and act like I'm some business stuff. I want to sit in the front. I want to know. And so that was my first introduction off coming up for a red eye to getting on an Uber,

to sitting in the front and realizing real fast. I'm like, all right, I don't know any Spanish. And this guy knows no English. This could be, but he'd been through it a few times because he pulled out his app and away we went. It was, that's a fond memory already. Nice. I love it.

That's amazing. Now, I guess, okay, 2026. I want to go like there's so many rumors coming out you mentioned food water energy right when you see them talking about straight of hormones 30% energy fertilizer all the things critical minerals blah blah blah blah blah we're going to have famine and starvation and energy shortages and the world's going to fall apart and everything else is that just the noise to you no I take that super serious and like okay let's let's take the fertilizer for example these I'm pretty happy to be in a country close to the equator, which has, you know, 12 months of

grow cycles, opposed to back home where you get a couple of good months. Imagine that the fertilizer does not arrive on time and they don't properly get all, everything that they need, the pot ash and nitrogen and all of these types of things. That might be problematic because growing in a Canadian winter is just, it's not a viable option. No, it's non-existent. non-existent, right? So, but down here in Latin America, if you're four weeks late with the fertilizer, it doesn't really matter, you know, it's not, it's, it's not going to be the end of the world, where I legit think it will be back home. So the fertilizer is the one that sticks out to you the most, though, over anything. Well, I mean, I'm a wealthy guy, so I'm going to continue to travel.

And whether there is six months worth of jet fuel for commercial flights, I mean, or there's no jet fuel. I'll find a way to continue travel and enjoying my life. Right. With the food, I don't know. Like, I think people will do basically anything to get food, including turn to violence. So I'd be really worried. Like people can, you know, not go on an airplane or something like that. And they're going to be pissed.

Like I said, I'm going to still be. do it no matter what, but people are going to be pissed about that. But you can't feed your child. Like, you'll kill someone for that. I don't know. I just don't want to be an environment where you can't produce your own food. Yeah, that's fair. So if you were sitting here right now, well, you are, but you're talking to majority of the Albertan, but I mean, it's all across Canada. It's in the States. I got some people listening to Ireland. I guess that's the third country that's, you know, really tuned into what I do. You're sitting there. You're sitting there. and you're going, okay, folks, here's the window.

Paraguay, as we've talked about, or if you want somewhere else to bring up, McHale, fire away, but you're going like, you already said it. Right now, it's not like you need a huge investment in the Paraguay, for now. And I don't think I skip over those words.

I'm like, yeah, for now. Like there's going to be a window. Now is the window last a year or five years, maybe? Does it last another six months? Who knows? If you're putting some pressure or trying to get people to think about a plan B,

what would you say all of these plans go up in price they get more arduous more paperwork they're more difficult to go in they take longer every single year it gets worse and worse and worse why because there's more people trying to run through those same doors okay then the doors become closed and then they try to get through the windows and then they start locking the doors and they start locking the windows right So it's like it becomes more and more difficult. Okay. So it's like this is not something to put off. I'll give you a real life example.

So I told you already, price of the Panama Investors Visa. And I have people every day who are going through this because it's still an amazing option. And I even did a webinar this afternoon. And I had so many of my private clients show up live for it. And we're doing it right now. That visa to come into Panama when I did it was a $5,000 bank. bank deposit seven years ago, okay?

It went from a $5,000 bank deposit. Then it changed. This was an instant permanent residency. It changed to a two-year temporary residency and a $200,000 real estate investment. Then they killed that one, and then they put in a $300,000 investment. So over a couple years, it went from $5,000 to $300,000. That's the type of change that we're talking about in these programs. We're not talking incremental changes.

I'm not saying it's going to go from $3,500,000. to $4,000 to $4,500. I'm saying this could go from $3,500 to $200,000 or more over the next couple of months. So it's like, this is the time to do things because we don't know what's going to happen in the future. Yeah, that's a very good point because my brain goes to incremental change, right? That's not what we're talking about here. That's what we're talking about. I'm just like, well, I don't even know if there's anything.

I don't know, Miguel, you're the guy who talks to all. the expats. I'm like, I've been annoyed all day. Not with coming into this conversation. I was getting asked about a bunch of different things. I'm like, I don't know. I'm going to talk to McKell. McHale talks to people all over the world. I'm looking for a different viewpoint on what I see here. When I stare at Canada, your audience already knows what I think of what's going on. For sure. I bring you on and I go, tell me some good news. The good news is there's options available. The options, the good news is that the windows are still open. Okay.

The doors are already crowded, all right? It's difficult to get through any of the main programs right now. But there are still some windows. You know the right people and you know what to do and the right program. We can help you while it's legal. Okay. But this is the time to do something. Not in a year from now, not in five years from now.

This is the moment to get things done. Because we don't know. I feel like a broken record here, but we don't know what's going to happen in the future. I am certain it is not going to get better or cheaper or faster or more efficient or anything like that. I know what is not going to happen, all right? You're saying government over time doesn't get more efficient? I would have thought. One of the interesting things about Paraguay, I think once again, was it you or was it the group I kept talking to because Paraguay came up a lot?

was that in World War I, World War II, it became a safe haven for thousands of people. It stayed independent of all the conflicts. And Argentina and Uruguay and the Southern Cone of Brazil and things like that. That's where everybody moved in World War I, World War II, and that's why I think World War III. If we look at the trade wins, if there was a nuclear war, if we look at the food, water, energy, independence, which we already talked about, If we look at socially and culturally, like these are Christian countries, Sean. We're not talking about going to a country where their values and our values are different. They speak Spanish or Portuguese in these countries.

These are romance languages. These are based on Latin. English is based on three languages, okay? Germanic, old English, and Latin. It's basically a third, a third, a third. So there's something called cognates. That means that there are words that are the same in English and the same. in Spanish. It takes about, give or take, 600 hours of study to learn a romance language if you're

coming from English. So if you're trying to learn Portuguese, Spanish, French, Romanian or Italian, it should take you around 600 hours to do. That's two hours a day for a year and you're going to be at a solid B2 level getting by in most situations, being able to have conversations with most people, right? That's completely doable, all right? Learning Zulu is probably going to be more challenging than that, right? Like culturally and religion and language is probably going to be a more difficult situation. But Spanish, most people took like high school Spanish and have some type of a background, you know, or Canadians, goodness. Most of it took French. So now you have even more cognates. You have, you know, English

cogniz, but now you also have the French ones, too. So it should take you even less time. That was amazing. I took Spanish in college. I could tell you, I couldn't remember any of that while I was roaming around Panama. I was like, crap. I know there's some words here somewhere. They have disappeared. Exactly.

But there's somewhere. There's somewhere. And they will come back. I promise you, okay? I first came to Latin America back in like 2003, 2004. I hitchhiked from the United States through Mexico. all of Central America, I tried to get through the Dary and Gap, the opposite way of everybody else. I tried to go from Panama to Columbia. I spent about a week trying to cross into the Dairy and

gap and to get into Columbia. Eventually, I abandoned the idea and I came back and I took a week and I sailed through, okay, through the Sandblast Islands and I spent two months in Colombia, okay? Then 18 months hitchhiking and backpacking through Central and South America. I spoke a lot of Spanish at that time. And then nothing, Sean, nothing for 20 years. I probably didn't utter more than two words of Spanish until I came back to Panama. And within a couple of weeks or a month, it all came flooding back. And I remembered all of those types of things and words that I had learned 20 years ago just came out of my mouth. It was wild to see. And now I speak a pretty decent Spanish. Doing that trip. What did you learn on that?

that. Like, I know we've, like, I know we've gone in. If you go back folks to one of the earliest, probably the first episode of McKell was on before you came to the first cornerstone. I talked a lot about, you know, your travels and everything. I don't know if I realized you backpacked across Mexico and all through, you know, Central America and try going through the tearing gap the opposite way. I assume you pulled some like lessons out of that. I am sure it helped shape who I am today. I did all kinds of crazy things. John, we could just do an episode on crazy stuff that Mikkel did when he was single and had no children. Did I ever tell you about the time that I tried to go to Algeria on a camel? So a quick, quick side note from everything else. And this will just highlight how much I've matured and grown as a man. So one of my first trips was to Europe.

I was like 19 years old or 20 years old or something like that. And I went into the UK and the UK was very expensive at that time. And the pound was very, very strong. So after leaving there, I went to Europe and I started traveling around Europe. And I ran out of money really quickly. I was supposed to be over there for like four months backpacking. And I think at less than two months, my bank account was not. looking great. So I had met someone and they're like, oh, you should go to Morocco. It's really

cheap there. I'm like, amazing. Didn't know anything. This is like kind of technically not pre-internet. I mean, the internet existed, but we're talking 25 years ago. So it wasn't like it is today. Forget about smartphones, Airbnb, Uber, Google Maps, any of that type stuff. Put all of that out of your head. This was paper maps and like this thing here called a pen. Okay. And like bus terminals and stuff like that. So I took the ferry over from Spain to Tangiers in Morocco. And I proceeded to take two months and backpack around North Africa, around Morocco. And then I met someone and they're like, yeah, you know, where we're at the Sahara.

And they're like, yeah, Algeria is over that way. And so we're like, that's a great idea. We should go and see what Algeria is like. So we found some Bedouins who had some camels. and we paid them to take us to Algeria on a camel. Once again, we got about, I think we got basically to Algeria or maybe technically in the sovereign country of Algeria,

but there was not enough, there was no way we were going to make it all the way to a proper settlement. After three days on a camel, we turned around and came back to our little town, and I had to abandon that. So I've got a couple of things like this where I tried to get into another country in some,

unique manners, let's say, and failed at it. I'm sure I got through, well, I've been to 120 countries, so I definitely got in on more traditional routes, but some of the more risky ones. But now, like I said, happily married man. You're not dragging your wife on a camel for three days? No, no, I've abandoned those things. Good thing I got it out of my system when I was 20, eh? How did the body feel after, I assume, six days on a camel? It was, I mean, yeah, it was pretty rough. There's no question about that. But I'll tell you the thing that I remember more than anything else,

and I still dream about it to this day, is looking up and seeing the stars with no light pollution whatsoever. And you figure it's a desert, so there's no clouds blocking your vision. And I remember getting up to use the, to go wee in the middle of the night and looking up and seeing the sky. And it wasn't black and some dots. It was purple because there were so many stars in the sky. It literally lit up the entire sky. It was ridiculous.

And I still dream about that today, 25 years later. Before I let you out of here, is there anything else you want to let Canadians specifically know? that we haven't covered. Yeah, get out of the Stockholm syndrome you have with your government. They're abusive. They hate you. They're trying to destroy you. It's a controlled demolition of society.

But please, like, get out of this abusive relationship. Canadians, I am a Canadian. We can get a divorce from CRA, okay? We're not like Americans who have to pay taxes on our worldwide income, no matter where we live. We can get a divorce from CRA and leave. and then have no more filing requirements, no more taxes owed to Canada, as long as it is not Canadian sourced income

and not Canadian real estate. Move everything overseas. You can get your divorce. You'll still have a Canadian passport. You can still eat Tim Hortons. We have Tim Hortons here in Panama. Okay? There are lots of options.

You won't stop being a Canadian, but you just will not be a Canadian tax resident anymore. So get out of this abusive relationship you have with your government. Move overseas. you can always go back, no problem, and go back and visit, but you got to get out while you still can. McKell, thanks for hopping on and doing this. Pleasure is all mine. If you guys want more information, go to expatmoney.com.

We got lots of content there, newsletters, podcasts, webinars, trips, tours, conferences, summits, etc, etc., etc. expatmoney.com. Sean, thank you so much. Appreciate the opportunity.