Shaun Newman Podcast - #594 - Mikkel Thorup

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

He has circumnavigated the globe over 400 times, visiting more than 110 countries and has called 9 different countries home in his 20+ years of non-stop travel around the world. He helps individuals legally mitigate tax liabilities, obtain a second residency and citizenship, and assemble a portfolio of foreign investments.  SNP Presents returns April 27th Tickets Below:https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone/ Let me know what you think. Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastE-transfer here: [e-mail] Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Phone [phone] – general sales line, ask for Grahame and be sure to let us know you’re an SNP listener.

This is Alex Krenner. This is Dave Collum. This is Bruce Party. Hi, this is Jeremy McKenzie, the raging dissonant. Hello, this is Maxim Bernier. This is Danny Beaufort. This is Chuck Prodnick. This is Vance Crow, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast.

Welcome to the podcast, folks. It is March. And you know what I love about a new month? A new intro. And if you're new to the show, every beginning of every start of the new months, we put on a new intro. folks were on the podcast last month. So if you missed anything, there you have it. There are the new folks introducing the podcast for this month. I always loved putting that together. I don't know.

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and his 20 plus years of non-stop continual travel around the world. I'm talking about Mikkel Thorough. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by McKell Thorough. So, sir, thanks for hopping on. My pleasure. I think this is going to be a really fun conversation today. I think I'm, I'm pretty stoked about this one, Sean. I think it's going to be awesome. Where are you sitting at right now? I'm at, I'm at my house in Panama City, downtown Panama City. Downtown Panama. Okay. Well, I, we were talking just before we started, folks, and just kind of getting to know one another and kind of give a little background on who I am. For the audience, I'm wondering how many people know who McKell is. So I wouldn't mind just starting

there. You can go as long as short as you want on that question. But I think it would be really beneficial to the audience to hear a little bit about who Mikel is. Sure. I will go quite far back in time, but I'm going to try to make this as concise as possible because I think my background does have a good amount of context. And I think you'll understand quite a bit about me and kind of my viewpoints and why I do

these types of things because of this. So, Sean, when I was a child, I was diagnosed with a learning disability. Billy. And what happened was the teacher pulled me out of school one day, grade three, pulled me out of class, sat me down a little room and said, Michael, something doesn't work quite right in your brain. And what we want to do is send you to a special school, special school for special boys. And that's what they did. Every day for three years, I went to this quote unquote special school. And the only problem, though, Sean, was it was actually not a special school. It was a regular school. It was a regular. school with a special class. So you can probably imagine what happened. I got into tons of fights. I got picked on. I got bullied. Now, this is no, woe is me. Poor McKell. Poor McKell story. Victim mentality. Certainly not. I hate that kind of shit. And sorry, I don't know if I'm allowed to swear on your podcast. You are. Okay, wonderful. I swear a lot. So I apologize in advance. If I offend anybody. So they pulled me out of school. I went to the special school. And it was just, it was a

regular school. And I went to this special class and I got just in tons of fights and bullied and picked on. And it just was a horrendous experience. And I hated it. And I went to this special school for three years. And finally, after three years, I got to go back to my neighborhood school. And I thought, this is going to be amazing. My friends will have missed me so much. They're going to be so stoked to see me. And once again, you can probably imagine what happened. All the kids started gossiping and whispering and, um, Oh, I remember, Mikkel. He went to some retired school. Thanks, guys. Very, very kind. Kids are very sensitive, you know, human beings. But, you know, this was the 1980s. So, so that's kind of what it was like. But I decided at a very young age, I didn't like school. And after this experience, I stopped going. And then when I stopped going, I started failing. I started failing out of my classes. They'd send me to summer school. I'd fail that. Somehow I'd get pushed through the next year. Then I failed that. Long story short, I stopped. going to school when I was 12 years old. I officially dropped out when I was 15 years old. And not

shortly after that, I started traveling internationally. And when I started traveling, I started to meet all these amazing people who were doing incredible things in their life. And they weren't doing it in the traditional ways that I had been brought up to do so. And I met all these people and I thought, Holy moly. These are my people. Dem's my peeps, you know. Like I was, I was super, super stoked. And fast forward from there and I never stopped. I continued to travel around the world and explore and figure things out and do things in non-traditional ways. So I left Canada. I'm born and raised Canadian. I left at 17. I'll be 41 next week. I never stopped ever. Ever. I've traveled to more than 110 countries.

I've lived in nine different countries. I've circumnavigated the globe over 400 times. I do this at the hobby level, the professional level, and the family level. For example, as I said, I'm Canadian. I have Danish heritage. My wife is from mainland China. We got married in Africa. We met in Germany.

my daughter was born in Abu Dhabi, my son was born in Brazil. Our third child will be born in Chile. We have houses. Congratulations. Thank you very much. 35 weeks pregnant. 35, 36 weeks pregnant somewhere around there. So almost ready to pop.

Exactly. Very, very soon. And we have houses all over the world and do all this. From a father, from a father standpoint, you know, I only know the Canadian version of having a kid. And certainly, you know, can you do it out of the hospital? Yes, people do. But overall, majority of us go to the hospital.

You know, if it's past a certain point, C-section, if it's, you know, on and on and on, epidural, you know, like different things like that. I believe that'll make three kids for you in three different spots, correct? Correct. And when you go, well, I've had to. three kids and three days. Not that you know Canada's version, well, you kind of do, but you haven't been into the hospital. But what have you noticed from the first two? And are you nervous about the third spot? I'm definitely not nervous, nor is my wife. We practice what's called birth tourism.

So we have our children in different countries. Then the child is automatically a citizen of those countries. And then there's often benefits for the parents because you're the legal guardian. For example, we flew down to Brazil when my wife was, call it, six, seven months pregnant. We got an Airbnb. We lived there. We found a local doctor at a private hospital. I never do public. I think socialized medicine is not a good thing whatsoever, even though Canadians are trained to think that we have the best health care in the world. It's actually the worst health care in the world. I've never seen such atrocious facilities. And I don't blame the doctors. I think the doctors and the nurses are heroes and amazing. And what they have to put up with is unbelievable. But

everywhere else you go private medicine and it's brand new and it's gorgeous. And people aren't, the doctors and the nurses aren't overstressed or overwork. They're not working crummy shifts. They just have way more control over their life. They're making more money. It's just a all-round better system on every aspect. I don't know why government has to have anything to do with health care or education as my story highlights of my background. Government is involved in way, way too many things. And no, we had great experiences giving birth to our children overseas. That's a, you know, you always fear what you don't know, right? And so like, I've seen different people. I'm just going to speak to Canada,

like have water births and different things like that, and I'm like, you're insane. I don't know how you can do that. But then I sit and I go, I can't imagine having a kid at a country because you just hear, it's funny, you never hear the, I don't know, the pros of it. You always hear like, oh, it's going to cost you a fortune.

It's going to do all these different things. And you're like, I don't know, is it? So on that point, I think in Brazil, we paid $3,000 or $3,500, dollars for private hospital, private room, private doctor, meaning the doctor was there only to take care of us, whether we were, it took two hours for the delivery or 24 hours for the delivery. He wasn't going to leave. He was there the entire time.

Yeah, everything for two nights for three, three and a half thousand dollars, something like that. And like the doctor. Like, we had his WhatsApp number, and we figured, we figured out my wife was going into labor. I called him on WhatsApp, told him, talked to him. He said, yeah, get to the hospital. He met us in the parking lot, Sean, met us in the parking lot, carried our bags inside. We didn't even have to check into the hospital. We went straight upstairs to the birthing room, actually straight upstairs to our room. Then he's like, baby's coming. And then we went down to the birthing room.

and then we checked in afterwards. After the baby was born, we gave our ID and did all these things. And so the doctor's like, ah, don't worry about it, don't worry about it, and everything will be fine.

And took care of us first. Do you imagine that happening in Canada? I can't. I just look at your story. I'm just like, you have lived a life. Very few have. And I'm sure there's more out there

than I give credit, but I would say on the global side of things, very few have. And so your tolerance of the only word that comes is risk. And risk is where my mind goes because I just don't understand it. But where was the risk? Right.

But in the unknown. I'm going to play devil's advocate. Where was the risk? Well, just in like, but that's, that's my brain, right? My brain goes, you show up, you go to the emergency. They stroll you up. They have the doctor. He gets called in.

But, you know, like, let's roll through how my kids have been born. Okay. Right? Wife's pregnant. All of a sudden she's like, baby's coming. You race to the hospital. You get checked in. takes a few minutes, then you go upstairs.

You can pay for your own private room if you want. Okay, so you take the private room. Then I think I can speak for pretty much every Canadian couple. You wait for what seems way too long for the doctor to show up. And they're like, oh, you got to wait for the doctor. And that drives every woman nuts. Like this baby is coming, whether you want a minute or not. And half the time the doctor walks in two minutes before, throws on his boots, delivers a baby, and leaves again.

And you go, that's my experience. So the risk isn't in what happened. The risk is in you being in a different country, using WhatsApp to get a hold of a family doctor, and it's just playing out nice and easy. It's like, I don't know. So the risk is that it's easier, safer, more comfortable, and cheaper. Amazing, Sean. This is hilarious.

It's the paradigm shift of the brain. Is it not? Like in my brain, I feel comfortable. I feel like everything I kind of understand the system, even if the system doesn't work the way it's intended to work. Correct. Yeah. I see, I would rather try to control my life and get the best for me and my family. And if that's outside of Canada's borders, which it is, I'm going to do it.

You know, I don't feel like a constraint where I owe Canada anything or I need to do something or be locked into one place. Like, mate, I'm not a vegetable. Like, I'm not a carrot. I'm not like stuck in the ground and I can't move, right? I'm a person. I can do, I can make choices and move around and do things. So I will. from 17.

So you've been on the road for 24 years, coming up on 24 years, correct? 24 years, yeah. I assume that you just see how the world operates from a different vantage point. Would I be correct in that? I see it through my lens. I understand that it's probably not the lens that everybody sees in the world. But because I have been doing this, my entire adult, or call it entire adult life plus some teenage years,

I don't know anything else. So there was never a big mind shift switch for me or anything like that. So probably, yes, I see things very differently, but I don't know any difference. What I'm, what I'm, I don't know, am I alluding to it? It doesn't matter. I look at it and I go, okay, in Canada they go, okay, you're going to live in Alberta or you're going to live in Saskatchewan. Saskatchews got PST.

You know, Alberta doesn't. Ra, rah, rah, we have no PST. But then you look at your taxes and you go, holy crap, am I getting raked? over the coal so then you try and figure that out but you're kind of you're kind of constrained to what can the law rough check with you it's like just in the nine countries you've lived in you've already got to see nine different ways to do taxes nine different ways to do laws etc etc you're a birthing tourist which you know it's funny i've only ever heard about this from the canda viewpoint of actually the chinese coming in and doing it in canada um and trying to close the

that loophole, you know, and yet you see the advantages of that and are doing it elsewhere in the world where just sitting here as a Canadian, you go, is that illegal? Can they do that? I don't know. What has, like, this is a very large question, Mikkel. But like, you know, you've been all over the world. What was the aha moment where you're like, I don't know if I'm ever going back to Canada. Look at how they're doing things here. This wakes way more sense. Was there a country you walked into? Was there a country you lived in? Was it was it marrying your wife and then just starting to explore different ideas? I don't know. You tell me. It's a hard one because it's so long ago. You know, I just remember being a child and being like, I don't belong here. Like,

there's something wrong in this place and I don't belong here and I won out. And that's why I dropped out of school and stopped going to school at 12. And I started working and saving up money. And as soon as I had enough money, I left. And as soon as I left, I was like, wow, there's alternatives. There's other ways that I can do things. I don't know what this all looks like, but I know I want to go and find out. I want to explore. And that's what I've done. I've dedicated my life to these things. And we've been really focused on the personal side in our conversation today, the tourism, where I'm at my wife, things like this. But, I mean, it's worth mentioning, I do this for a living now.

I work as a consultant helping wealthy families do these things. We deal with all the tax obligations, the legal planning, the immigration, the investment. I mean, I run a multiple seven-figure consulting business, helping people with the things that we're chatting about today. And people are starting to realize, especially over the last three years of the, this COVID nonsense that there are alternatives out there and possibly our government doesn't have our best interests at heart. So what do I do to protect ourselves? And that's what we do. You know, we put people in better situations. And I'm able to shortcut it because I've been a guinea pig for like you said, 24 years going on 24 years. I've studied it. I've worked with

mentors. I've read thousands of books on it. I've dedicated my entire life to this process. Does that make sense? It certainly does. And it's exactly why I brought you on. So instead of sticking on the personal, because I do find what motivates somebody and the background story very, very much needed, right, to understand where a person comes from. The fact you're traveling around with two soon to be three kids, I'm like, you know, part of my brain always goes, Mikkel. You know, it's easy for somebody to do it when they don't have kids. I can't use that on you, because you sir have have three or two soon to be three and you're you're doing it and um fascinating um i guess that leads you know you talk about the last three years and you know for for a group of us

it was late october or late uh 2021 i think it was october i think it was november 1st if memory serves me correct it's a while back now um but they were talking about not allowing you out of the country And so that spurred on people fleeing all over the place. It was Mexico, it was Costa Rica. Those were the two big ones that I'd heard of other than the United States. So I'll give those three. Now I find with, you know, possible election, you know, changing election rules, that type of thing. That's awoken even more.

You've got the freezing in the bank accounts. That's a woken more. And there's just more and more and more people talking about. Well, where would you go? And the thing about where would you go is it's kind of a paralyzing question because nobody knows. Well, I go to Mexico. Why would you go there? So people left and gone and then they've come back, coastrated.

And you can understand. And it's my fascination with what you do because I'm like, well, I just want to cheat the code for some people. And maybe that leads them to working with you. I have no idea. But at the end of the day, I go, where would you go? McKell, where would you go or where would you suggest? So it's a good question. It's a difficult question.

though, because I mean, I can tell you where I would go because I'm here. I mean, I'm in Panama and there are definitive reasons I'm in Panama. But we also have residences and citizenships in other countries. I have plan B, plan C, plan D, plan E. Like, I mean, it just goes on and on. But I do this things, as I said, on a professional and a hobby and a family level. What we need to do is really define, you what are the goals and what are the objectives? I can tell you straight off the bat that there are no perfect countries out there. There really is not a Shangri law. It doesn't exist.

Now, I specialize in tax-free countries or low-tax countries. I want a place where I get to keep what I earn. Panama happens to be one of those places. Panama follows what's called the territorial tax system, meaning that if the income is generated outside of the country, there's no tax inside the country. So you can be physically located in Panama, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Belize, all of these countries. You can be physically located there. You can have an online business, Amazon FBA, drop shipping, consulting, work for a foreign company, freelancing, any kind of business where the money is generated outside of the country.

You can live here full time and your tax bill is exactly zero. 0.000% and for me, this is the correct amount of tax. This is exactly how much tax we should be paying. There's no capital gains tax. There's no wealth tax. There's no inheritance tax. There's no tax. That's rad.

All right. That's fantastic. Now, a couple of caveats. If you cut hair for a living, you're a barista or you, you know, sling drinks or something like that, that would be deemed locally sourced income. You would pay tax on that, right? But as long as the money is generated outside of the country, there's no tax. So I really want to hammer that down. What if you ran a podcast? Forgive me.

What if you ran a podcast? Zero tax. Oh, man. You want to come be neighbors? We'll hang out. When I was first 18, I remember getting, actually before that, I was probably 15. I can't remember my first paycheck. I remember the job. I just can't remember if I was paid under the table.

But I remember, it doesn't matter. Somewhere between 15 and 18, I received my first actual paycheck where I had tax come off of it. And it's funny how we're conditioned here, because I remember just thinking, oh, it's just part of life. Oh, that's fine. And the older I get, and now running my own business, I'm like, man, do we get screwed? Yeah. And, you know, one of the first things I heard or saw of you, or maybe one of your shows, I can't remember now, but it was the zero tat. I'm like, zero tat.

How on earth does that work? And how do I find some of that? Because it just seems like all I do is make a little bit of money and just ship it all the way. See you later, money. Thanks for, thanks for coming. I didn't even get to touch you. You're out the door and gone. But you get that beautiful weather in Canada.

My goodness. Aren't you so happy with that? shoveling snow and slip on some ice or something. And then your wonderful medical system where the doctor shows up one minute before and then leaves one minute after the child's born, you know, aren't you so blessed to give away 50 to 60% of everything you earn to support a totalitarian government? I'll say this. The reason I love this place where I'm at is the people.

We got a great community. And there's people all over the place though, Sean. It's true. The whole world is built with them. I know, but it takes time. Doesn't it take time, Mikkel? You have a different view on this than I do. To set roots and build community.

It can take time. But you seem like a quite, an energetic, outgoing guy. You know, you got a good head on your shoulders. I reckon you'd make friends real fast. And if you got a spouse and kids, I reckon they will as well. Now, the other piece to think about, is part of the value proposition when someone works with me is that we have a massive community in all of the best destinations in the world, all the tax-free countries, there's communities

of people, there's meetups, there's groups, there's so much going on. Like my 41st birthday is coming up in next week, two weeks, something like that, and we've got 150 clients flying in from probably about 30 to 40 different countries all over the world to come and hang out and celebrate. And yeah, it's my birthday, but it's not about me. I mean, it's about the community. It's about everybody else getting together and spending time together and all extremely philosophically aligned, right? People who actually understand what's going on, who are willing to make a change, good people, honest and ethical people. So there's lots of good people, mate, that are living overseas. You can find a new community. Actually, you can even do better than that. You can

inspire the people in your current community to stop supporting a totalitarian government and leave that Stockholm syndrome abusive relationship if they have with their government and go to somewhere else where they have more freedom. Something to think about. Just McKell's pushing something to think about folks. Hey, he's me. Okay. I'm going to park the taxing for a second. The only thing is, the only thing is, I look at the totalitarian government that we've been living in, and I've always argued, if we don't stop it here,

it just continues to expand. It continues to go. If the truckers don't go and do what the truckers did, then Canada falls, and then the United States falls, and then it just continues. And eventually, does it not reach the shores of Panama?

It might. I mean, it's not my responsibility. I don't feel a sense of patriotism to save Canada because I was born in that country. I feel a sense of responsibility to my wife, my children, my mother, who lives with us as well. I got my mother out of there. And, you know, my friends in my community. I mean, people that I chose to have in my life, not Justin Castro in his career. You know, like I don't, why do I feel any responsibility to them, right?

Like, they're going to destroy that country. People are going to have enough. And there's going to be a massive drain on human capital and financial capital from that country that they're not going to be able to do it anymore. And if things get better, then people can go back. But I mean, mate, we got one life to live, one life. As far as anybody can convince me in the world, we got one life to live. What are you going to do with it? Well, what are you going to do?

Six months? I just don't see the point. Six months to pay his salary. No thanks. When you talk about community, I guess mine seems like it's on a fixed location. You know, it's like it's here. It's tethered, if you would. And when you talk about community, it can be anywhere.

You can bring it anywhere. That's the idea that we're, we're discussing right now, I think. Sure. But you also run a successful podcast. So you have people who are listening to us today from every corner of the world, right? Fair. So that's not a fixed location, right?

Fair. You're making a lot of sense here. I don't think you've convinced me just yet. It's not for me to convince you or anywhere else. You know, I am giving you my perspective, what I have seen. And I'm here to support people with whatever decision they want to make in the world. And if that means you want to stay where you are, then awesome. You know, you do you, right?

If it means having a backup plan in case things get work, which worse, which I think is very prudent, by the way. I think it's only smart to have a plan B. To have a plan B. So, so smart that I'm going to support you with that. And if you decide that, you know what, I've had enough of this shit and I want to leave. then I will help you make it a reality. That's what it comes down to. I laugh at that because there's a lot of people who are just like,

I've had enough of this. Like it just won't stop, you know? You talked about having planned, not only plan B, C, D, E. So you're a guy that no matter what comes down the pipe, just as long as you have options, there's no stress. That's the way my brain works.

Am I falling your train of thought, right? You're definitely, I mean, I sleep soundly at night. I don't have stress or worry or anxiety about these things. You can consider it like an economic prepper type of mentality. Yes, I have extra food and water in the house, but those aren't the things that are worry me. It's about my assets. It's about the wealth protection, how things are structured, my physical space, where I can

go, where I have the legal right to live and work and do business, my tax situation. It's all of these things, the esoteric. piece that I specialize in on helping people to protect themselves. When you bring up wealth protection, my mind immediately goes to gold, silver, Bitcoin. All fantastic things. You have been, once again, all over the world. When you hear wealth protection, what comes to mind? Absolutely those three things.

And I am very bullish on them and have spent an immense amount of time studying. them and understanding the intercacies of how they work. The place that my mind specifically goes, though, is structuring how we structure our assets so that we have maximum protection for those assets. We're looking at privacy, secrecy, anonymity. We're looking at legal constraints. We're looking at diversification. Yeah, we're looking at. how we hold our assets within our own name, outside of our name. What are the case studies, the case law for holding these assets? What are the filing requirements to your government?

Because as I said, privacy and secrecy, but there's still, if you're an American, there's very little privacy and secrecy left in this world. I mean, very, very little. But what are the legal constraints of this? How do we navigate this to have? maximum protection with giving away as little information as possible. What country... What country is the best for that?

That you don't have to give up... Like, when you talk privacy, I'm like, Canada can't be far behind the United States, because like everything you do now, you have to give pretty much your fingerprint almost to do, right? Like they want every piece of information from you to do just about anything. What country... You do if you live in Canada.

If you don't live in Canada anymore, if you're not a Canadian tax resident, a lot of the rules no longer apply to you. So when I take people out of Canada, we do it legally, compliantly. We follow all of the laws. But when I'm done, you will never have to pay taxes again and you will never have to file taxes again. You never have any more obligations back to Canada. Now, you're still a citizen. You still have a Canadian passport. You can still come and go from the country.

As you like, you go back for Valentine's Day and Christmas and Easter and Samantha Santa and Ramadan or whatever you want. I don't know. This is February. You go back for whatever you want, right? You're still Canadian citizen. But you never have to pay taxes again. You never have to file taxes again. you that sounds pretty good to be true almost too good to be true i promise it is true i'm not a lawyer

i'm not an accountant i don't play one on television but i do work next to all of the lawyers they sign off on all of everything that i'm talking about we get legal opinion letters i'm not just making this stuff yeah yeah yeah we go through it line by line by line it has to be done correctly right i'm not giving individual tax financial um or legal advice on today's conversation, yada, yada, yada. But when you work with me, we work, I have full-time lawyers who work with me. I've got 20 employees in my company. We go through everything, everything is compliant. And when it's done compliant, this is the result. Mikkel, is there a minimum of who you're willing to work with? Or is it just a fee?

There are quite a lot of caveats who I will work with. First and foremost, I want to work with someone who's cool. As I said before, well, you laugh, but it's true. No, I laugh because it's like I do a podcast. I don't want to have people on the podcast that suck, right? Like I'm like, if you suck, it drains my fun. And if you're an interesting person, all of a sudden, I understand. If you're a commie, I don't want to work with you.

If you're some fucking purple-haired, woke socialist, fuck off. I don't want to work with you, all right? If you got a bad attitude or you got bad ideas and you're looking to spread these bad ideas around the world, I don't want to work with you. That's legit, right? I don't have to work with people that I don't want to work with. I'm in a good financial situation, all right? I have a very high net worth. I could retire tomorrow. I have no problem. So I get to do these types of things. I get to speak like this because I'm in a good position, right? I'm not a bagger. Now, let's put all of that aside. Yes, I need to also work with someone who has enough money to make sure that they can

make some moves, right? My fees are not cheap. Actually, I'm ridiculously expensive, Sean. I am. And that's because I can do things that no one else in this world can do, because no one else has these types of experiences that I have, right? How many people do you know that's given, have their children born in multiple countries, lived in so many different places, traveled to so many different places, to speak multiple languages, have multiple passports, own real estate in a dozen different countries, bank accounts are 20 different countries. There's just, there's very few people who have that kind of real life experience, right? Well, in 590 plus episodes, you're the first.

So you're the first one I stumbled across. There's the endorsement right there. So I get to charge a good amount of money, but, and this is an important one, Sean, you might pay. me, but it will never cost you anything. I will always be a value ad. If I can't save you a multiple of my fees in taxation or make you a multiple of my fees by helping you find solid, tangible investments overseas, I won't work with you. That's the honest truth. I say no to lots of people. If I think, you know what, I can't bring enough value here, then I won't take you on as a client. So as Although you might pay me, it will never cost you anything.

Does that make sense? Oh, yeah. Well, I just, it makes complete sense. And, you know, I don't know why. I don't know why child care comes to mind. Forgive me. Young father, I got six, no, sorry, seven, six and four. No, three, seven, six, four.

And, you know, when we first started looking at child care, and I know this is probably a poor example, folks, but bear with me. You know, everybody, you know, because, and the reason it comes to mind is because there's this huge thing about $10 a day child care, right? I'm like, I tell you what you should never skimp on. It's how much you pay for child care.

Because if you get the wrong person around your child, well, we all know where that can go. Sure. And not very good places. So if there's one thing you shouldn't skimp on, it's child care. Child care you should actually pay out the nose for and get the right person, and it'll be well worth your dime.

And what you're talking about reminds me of that. And I realize it's probably not the greatest example, but when it's a fantastic example, and I can chime in, and I'm going to completely interrupt you because I interrupt. I'm sorry. When you move to one of these countries that we're talking about, you're going to have such a higher standard of living, your head is going to explode. And I'll give you a couple of examples. So my wife is a stay-at-home mother.

We don't require her to work because I get to keep every dollar that I earn. I'm not paying 50% in taxes. So my wife is a stay-at-home mother. My mother lives with us to help take care of our children. On top of that, we have two full-time nannies who 48, 50 hours a week, work for us. And we have a cleaning lady. That is a ton of extra help in the house to take care of our kids. We homeschool our children.

There's no way I would send my children to a state-run school, no chance in hell. For my two nannies, my first nanny, I pay her $800 U.S. dollars a month. That's for full-time. I pay her $800 because she has her own visa to live and work in Panama, so I didn't need to sponsor her or anything like that. My second nanny, I pay her $500 U.S. dollars a month. And then on top of that, I had to sponsor her. So I had to do the immigration process, which was, I don't know, $1,000 or $1,500 to set up or something like that.

Then when you live in Latin America, the mentality of Latinos is very different than in Canada. In Latin America, it's family first for everything. So they don't have this, there's not this woke agenda type of thing. I'm going to laugh here because we were chit chatting about it before. But this transgender stuff, it doesn't exist down here. You don't have to worry about the sexualization of children when you live down in these countries. So all of that bad ideas that we were discussing before, it doesn't exist here. So we have the nannies and my wife and my mother who helps take care of the kids and raise the kids.

It's cheaper than it is back home in Canada. I can see what's happening. And they're conservative-minded, right? their family first in everything that they do. So we just don't have the same type of problems. Understand? Yeah, I just, in my brain where I go to a place where, you know, like imagine a place where,

do a show every Tuesday, Mikkel, where we lead off roughly 30 headlines from the news across Canada and a little bit in the United States for the most part. And this week was, well, every week is just absolutely bizarre. I'm like, I just can't imagine, we're living in the upside down. Like, we're literally, good is bad, bad is good,

you know, and you can extrapolate that however far you want to go to the point where, you know, the premier comes out and has like a parental first, a parental bill saying like, you know, we're going to put parents rights first. It's like, I don't know how we can be angry about this. All it is is saying you need to have the parent involved. outrage.

You know, 30% of Albertans or some damn thing or outrage by it. It's like, you're all insane. You've all gone insane. So I'm trying in my mind to find a place where that just doesn't exist

and I don't have to hear about it. It's called Latin America. Latin America. Yeah. Now, I'm not saying all of Latin America is good. There's, there's crappy parts as well. And there's socialism in Venezuela and Peru and Bolivia and stuff like that.

But in Latin America, there are enclaves of freedom. There are still good places that you can go to that will welcome a foreigner, an expat, hence my work, expatmoney.com, where you will be welcome with open arms, where you don't have to deal with all of this stuff. And as we said before, like, why? Why are you putting up with it? As a parent, like, as you're, like, I get the money side of it, right? like to me, from what I've seen of your work, I see success. That's what I see. I think that's what your reputation kind of precedes you, and that's what I've seen.

That's hence why I brought you on. As a parent, though, as you travel, have you identified places that, you know, like, you know, this place just didn't feel comfortable or safe to raise a family or what have you? Because literally in Canada, I'm sure there's those places as well. You could go to different areas and be like, I don't know about this place. I don't think that's an unreasonable thought. I think that is very like, there's a reason why parents or people buy houses or build in certain places. There's a reason why there's a huge group of people moving out of the cities into the countryside

and trying to get out of some of the toxicity that, whether it's in the city or around a community, etc. as you travel, have you identified some spots where you're like, you know, I just, I didn't enjoy it here. Because you've talked a lot about the great spot of Panama, of Latin America, of some of the things that are really attractive to that. Have you identified some spots? You're like, listen, I probably wouldn't go raise a family here, not because it's a horrendous country because of these things. Sure. I mean, not everything is rose color glasses, you know. The thing to understand, I think straight off the bat is that any country where you have money, you're going to be treated differently.

And I have money and I encourage my clients to have lots of money and I'm going to help them get lots of money. You know, have it, save it, protect it, multiply it, grow it as much money as possible. Now, in, I don't know, take a place, Costa Rica. In Costa Rica, there's really fantastic areas and there's really horrendous areas, right? But why would you be in the horrendous ones? We don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, right? Costa Rica is a beautiful country. Mexico, beautiful country, amazing people, amazing food, amazing culture and history.

There are dangerous places in Mexico, though. So just make sure you're not in one of the dangerous places, right? go to one of the nice neighborhoods. Like I wouldn't walk around at one o'clock in the morning, drunk flashing, you know, a Rolex or something in Toronto. Like I wouldn't do it in lots of places in the States. You know, don't do it in Mexico or Costa Rica or Belize or any of these countries as well, right? Like have a bit of common sense and I think you'll be okay. So, I mean, that's my first point on that.

As we, I don't know if you can answer this. But heck, what the hell? as we gear closer and closer to the world trying to push on World War III, you know, a lot of people, you know, like, we literally just talked about this in the book club.

You know, like you got Ukraine going on and you're seeing what's happening in Ukraine. I just had a guy on last week talking about, you know, basically how, you know, if they can do it in Ukraine, they can do it anywhere in the world.

And that's, that's the big powers that be. And they're, they're getting uniforms, is ready for women, which means women are going to war. They're drafting for older and older individuals. So now they're pulling in, you know, instead of it being, you know, able-bodied men, now it's becoming more than that. And you hear that and I hear, you know, and then people in our own country, in our country, are like, okay, I don't want to go to war. I don't believe in it. I got young kids. Where can I put them where they're out of harm's way? I don't know if you can answer that. But, Do you have thoughts on it? I do. And I am, first of all, let's make sure my perspective is very crystal clear.

I am anti-war on all fronts all the time. I'm not a pacifist by any means. I come from a libertarian viewpoint, right? Libertarian philosophy. I don't do politics, but a libertarian philosophy. So I am very, very anti-war. And I've lived in the Middle East for almost a decade. I've seen what this does to countries and to the people.

We've wrote about this on multiple occasions at expatmoney.com. And what it looked safest countries right now to escape these types of things is the same as it did in World War II and the same as it did in World War I. And that is the southern cone of Latin America, of South America. So we're talking southern, we're talking Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, especially in the southern area of these countries. I think that is going to be the most safe place. These countries are all friendly with one another. They're food, water, and energy independent countries.

They, depending on where you go, there are very unsafe areas from a, from a petty crime or physical. but there are also very, very safe places. For example, when I lived in Brazil, I lived there when my son was born for about a half a year. We were in Florianapolis in a small island in Satakaterina. And it was heaven on earth. It was one of the most gorgeous places I've ever been to ever. Very safe, super, super, super duper safe. You know, I've been to Uruguay on a half a dozen occasions.

I've taken clients there. We've taken trips down there. We're doing trips to Paraguay right now. We really focus on food, water, energy, independent countries, which are away from the geopolitics, which are away from all of these problems that we see in the world. In those countries, and once again, I don't know if you can answer this, but I appreciate that answer because there's a lot of people thinking about it.

But one of the things that happened here in World War II, and literally, the next door neighbor of my parents' farm, his dad was German descent. And if Canadians recall, you know, the history reads, during World War II, we had internment camps where they put Germans and Japanese.

They just said, round them up, said, you may be a great human being, you may be a horrendous human being, we're just not going to take a chance. You're going to live here. Is there any way any of those countries,

and I mean, this is crystal balling it, if we go to World War III, that that could happen to a Canadian if they were in there. Is that a possibility? I mean, I realize I'm stretching the... I don't reckon. I don't reckon.

But let's also take it one step further. Let's say it did happen. My work doesn't focus on one country, right? I'm not focused on finding that Shangri-R-Lock, because as I said, it doesn't exist. What I'm trying to do is have a plan B, a plan C, a plan D, etc. So let's say you did move to a country and they want to round up all Canadians. Well, I think that there'll be a rumbling of that on the street.

It's not going to happen out of nowhere. So let's say it does happen. Then you move before everybody else. Just like, I mean, the writing is on the wall. The writing's on the wall in Canada right now of what's going on. And people are still stuck there. They're the vegetables stuck in the ground that I was talking about, right? Like, I don't know what else has to happen in that country for you to realize that

You need to make a change. And you can't do it next year or in five years or 10 years. You've got to get it set up right now. Like, what is the downside of having options? Like, I legit don't know any. So it's like, I wouldn't move you to a place and be like, that's it. You're now a vegetable. You now need to be stuck in this new place.

We've transplanted you and you have to be here. No, I'm going to get you another residency, another passport. We're going to have a bank account for you to come. different countries. We'd have a trust or a foundation or an IBC or an LLC or an essay in another country that's going to hold some assets. We'll have some precious metals held off store, some Bitcoin self-custody. Maybe we put it in a safety deposit box. We spread things out for you, right? And that's going to protect your downside. Do you understand? You become Jason Bourne. There you go. I mean, minus the international government chasing

you around and the amount of killing, probably. Probably. I would say that's probably a safe assumption. You know, with a few minutes left, I'm going to make sure we hop over to substack. We do a second, we do a little portion on substack, Mikhail. And so before we run out of time this morning, I'm going to slide over to substack. That way people can come join us there. And the substack group, if they didn't tune into this, we'll make sure that they go, oh, who the heck is this?

And come back and see the whole episode. So folks, if you're enjoying it, come on over to. substack, and that's where we'll finish off today's conversation.