I did a lot more research after Portuguese stocks or Lisbon real estate for the next five years? (May) and, as part of an EU citizenship project, decided to purchase stocks over in Portugal rather than take on more real estate ownership hassles (one of the big joys of our Florida move has been saying goodbye to homeownership).
Moving money from Bank of America to Bankinter led to some discoveries about international wire transfer costs. If you move a small amount in euros, Bank of America says that they won’t charge you any fees:
But the exchange rate was actually 1.17 on 9/24. So this is a 2.65 percent fee (still only about $31, plus whatever Bankinter will charge to receive the wire (0.05 percent, minimum €5, maximum €30)).
What about for the million euro transfer that is necessary to get the golden visa/passport process kicked off? Compared to the quoted market, the hidden fees within Bank of America were about 0.75 percent (e.g., about $7,500 on $1 million). If sent in USD, however, and converted by Bankinter, the non-hidden cost is 0.5 percent, a little cheaper than BofA, but still about 80X more than the cost of a Bitcoin transaction on the blockchain, right? (right now roughly $60 to the miners?). Given that we supposedly live in a seamless global economy, I’m kind of surprised at how much it costs to change a couple of database records at two banks that are already tightly coupled.
Could this be an argument for cryptocurrency, assuming that just one of the Ponzicoins prevails and becomes a worldwide currency?
(Why is it fair to call these Ponzicoins? Whoever creates a cryptocurrency can mint the first few million or whatever at almost no cost and then they gain value when he/she/ze/they convinces others to buy in.)
Separately, let’s look at the motivational factors from May:
At least to judge by our media, the U.S. is embroiled in white v. Black, white v. Asian, white v. Latinx, and hetero cisgender v. LGBTQIA+ fights. We’re also adding $trillions in debt, welcoming millions of new welfare-dependent citizens, and instituting dramatic changes in government (every day we hear a new and exciting idea for a bigger more powerful central government!). It seems like a good time to ensure that children have the option to study, work, and live in Europe. The Europeans bumped up against the limits of how much government could be responsible for and don’t seem anxious to go back to the 1970s.
There is no way to predict whether Portugal, Italy, Germany, France, or Sweden will be a better place to live than the U.S. in 2030, but keeping only a U.S. passport is essentially a bet that the U.S. will be a better place to live than anywhere in the E.U. Would we want to make that bet?
Now that we’ve had a full summer of rule by Joe Biden and the Democrats, do the above factors still apply to the U.S. as reconceived from Washington, D.C.? Let’s take them one at a time.
embroiled in white v. Black, white v. Asian, white v. Latinx, and hetero cisgender v. LGBTQIA+ fights
The conflicts described in May don’t seem to have been resolved. To these we’ve added roughly half of Americans who now hate Texas and Texans (see “Boycott Texas,” for example, from The Nation, 9/14: “With SB 8 following a crazy new gun law and mandatory mask ban, the Lone Star State has more than earned the cold shoulder”). We also have the hatred of the vaccinated for the unvaccinated, a new-since-May phenomenon.
adding $trillions in debt
“America’s Need to Pay Its Bills Has Spawned a Political Game” (NYT, 9/26): “The Covid-19 pandemic continues to ravage the United States in waves, frequently disrupting economic activity and the taxes the government collects, complicating Treasury’s ability to gauge its cash flow.”
In other words, the U.S. will continue to bury itself more deeply in debt so long as coronapanic continues. And, absent an enormous advance in treatment, we know that coronapanic will continue so long as the virus has the capability of evolving.
(Of course the U.S. also buried itself more deeply in debt before COVID-19 emerged, but at a somewhat slower pace (St. Louis Fed))
welcoming millions of new welfare-dependent citizens
This one might have changed. In order to hit our goal numbers for Americans dependent on government-provided housing, health care, food, and smartphone, we’re no longer relying on immigrants (the “welcoming” part of the headline). We’ve got the new $3,600 per year per child handout, which started in July. Going forward, the NYT tells us that what we used to call “welfare” is our common destiny: “From Cradle to Grave, Democrats Move to Expand Social Safety Net” (9/6, regarding $3.5 trillion in new spending, “a cradle-to-grave reweaving of a social safety net frayed by decades of expanding income inequality, stagnating wealth and depleted governmental resources, capped by the worst public health crisis in a century.”). Tens of millions of additional residents of the U.S. will be dependent on government support (no longer called “welfare”) going forward, but, due to the massive expansion of the welfare state, most of them will be native-born.
On the third hand, once chain migration (wives, cousins, kids, parents, etc.) is mostly complete, we’ll have at least 1 million new citizens from Afghanistan as a result of our spectacular defeat in August and decision to evacuate mostly men mostly at random rather than simply pay the Taliban not to bother people on a list. If these folks are like previous immigrants from Afghanistan to the U.S., they and their descendants will be among the poorest of the poor here, eligible for every form of government assistance for at least three generations. (See “Challenges to the economic integration of Afghan refugees in the U.S.”: “Afghan refugees’ earned incomes are the lowest of seven refugee/immigrant comparison groups”)
instituting dramatic changes in government (every day we hear a new and exciting idea for a bigger more powerful central government!)
Other than the welfare state expansion that the NYT describes above, I can’t think of anything new since May from the Biden administration or Congress.
If an EU passport was a good idea in May 2021, therefore, it seems like it might be an even better idea today. If you want to buy yourself and your children the option to study, work, or live in Europe (or simply travel back and forth during lockdowns), I would recommend acting ASAP. The Portuguese love hardcopy, notarization, etc. and it will take a two months to jump over the bureaucratic hurdles, even with two-day FedEx delivery of signed hardcopies. Email if you need recommendations for a lawyer and bank over there.
Related:
Having second passport is generally a good idea, but isn’t it “grass is greener on other side”? In practice, restrictions in many European countries where way more severe than in WA, for example. And Europe has equally large migration and welfare problems.
SK: I have to disagree with you about the phrase “welfare problems”. As an American, handing out money to those who don’t work is an OPPORTUNITY, not a problem! Ditto for subsidizing those with low skills/income to live in luxurious downtown housing (not “welfare”).
I agree with you that it doesn’t make sense to bet on “Europe” doing way better than the U.S. (or vice versa if we take the 50-100-year view!) But at any one moment, due to the high country-to-country variation (Estonia versus France for business! Spain versus Sweden for lockdown/coronapanic level) certain countries within Europe might be a better place to be than anywhere in the U.S. And if we assume that travel restrictions will continue (now that governments have realized people will meekly accept them, how can they ever let go?), the EU passport enables travel back and forth when holders of just one passport will be stuck. Just consider the mental health difference between living in Sweden for the last 1.5 years versus being in the U.S. (most schools in almost-free Florida required kids to wear masks, even as adults were free to party in jammed bars).
Our kids will want to go to university one day. The option to be at a school in Europe is valuable. Suppose that our kids don’t want to spend time during college occupied with social justice matters. Probably at least one country in Europe will have a university where students aren’t required to undergo anti-racism training, etc. By contrast, students at U.S. universities may have to pledge allegiance to 25 or more social justice movements before they can enroll (and don’t forget the weekly vaccines and daily tests!). If someone just wants to learn Physics, why should he/she/ze/they have to even hear about this stuff, much less agree to it?
There is also retirement. The U.S. is a great place to make money, mostly because of all of the land that we stole from the Native Americans. But what if you’re not trying to make money? A lot of the European nations have a better balance of social/family life versus work and are thus more pleasant places to live. The option to spend a year or two in Europe during retirement is potentially valuable. Immigrants make everything better, as we know, regardless of their skill level and background, but one need not retire to an Arabic-speaking banlieue. I didn’t meet any low-skill immigrants in the Azores!
It’s a bit tricky with in-EU travel though. In 2020 borders between some EU countries were closed! I still think second passport is a great idea – diversification is good!
Any comment on why Portugal specifically?
SK: Good point on the EU border closures, but did they really enforce them for travel by road? I guess if you show up for any long period of time in a new place in the EU you usually have to register with the police, right?
Why Portugal? The fees are fairly low. You’re not just kissing $1-3 million goodbye like you would in Malta or Cyprus (not an issue for Biden-supporter Eric Schmidt, of course!). Why not one of the bigger EU countries? Most of them agree with Americans that the most desirable immigrants are those who show up unable to speak the language and with no job skills, thus requiring 3-4 generations of taxpayer support before anyone in the extended family will actually work consistently. So, like the U.S., they make it bureaucratically almost impossible for someone with money and education to get a passport while asylum-seekers and refugees roll in by the millions. Portugal keeps the fees to about $50,000 and you can eventually get your investment back, whether you bought an apartment or stocks. Unlike Spain and Ireland, Portugal does not require a significant period of residency before they’ll issue the passport. Just show up for about 5 weeks total (3 trips minimum) over 5 years and learn the language to a lame level. Also, Portugal is very pleasant, especially the Azores (the weather that England should have had). I think it is a tough place in which to get rich, but it is great lifestyle for people who’ve already earned their money.
Re. masks in FL schools:
“The Board of Education voted unanimously Thursday to approve Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran’s request to withhold state funding equal to School Board members’ salaries plus whatever amount the federal government contributes to make up for it.
The board also voted Thursday to withhold funding for Brevard, Broward, Leon, Miami-Dade, Orange and Palm Beach counties for violating the DOH’s rule.
Four other districts have had backed down on their mask mandates. Lee and Volusia backed down before the first fines were levied. Hillsborough and Sarasota counties rescinded their mask requirements earlier this week.
”
https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2021/10/07/board-of-education-votes-to-fine-duval-8-other-florida-school-over-mask-mandates/
Palm Beach County will no doubt resist and get financial help from Uncle Joe. It is not surprising though because the county has been infested with Boston/New York democratic/commie vermin since long time ago. It’s not MA yet but quickly getting there.
Re. Portugal.
The cost is actually 10x: E500,000 or E350,000 in depressed areas. Besides, the program will be shut down starting the next year. Plus there’s a possibility of getting scammed/overpaying for not quite good property. A friend of a friend did end up overpaying almost 3x.
Ivan: I didn’t buy property (though we are assured that real estate can never go down in value!). I bought shares in publicly traded companies, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jer%C3%B3nimo_Martins (founded 1792; 115,000 employees, supermarkets in high-growth Poland), and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corticeira_Amorim (they make cork for the wine that Maskachusetts considers “essential” during times of coronaplague when schools are shut down). I’m assuming that equity markets are efficient, such that a Portuguese stock can’t be expected to do better or worse than a German or U.S. stock. So I don’t count the money that I moved over there as a “cost”. It is just a bit of diversification away from Bidenland/Kamalaland.
The Portuguese mostly hate their own stock market and love real estate, so if you believe in the wisdom of the crowd, it actually would make more sense to buy high quality real estate in Lisbon (starting in 2022, however, they will disallow Lisbon from the program).
Isn’t this what art is also for? You buy a piece of art in country A, roll it up in a tube and carry it to country B, then sell it there and deposit the proceeds in a local bank account in the local currency.
My impression is that Art is the original crypto-currency, it has no intrinsic value and ownership can be anonymous. It’s less liquid than crypto-currency but you are much less likely to forget the password or have your art wallet hacked.
Additional plusses to art, at least in the US tax system, you can declare the warehouse you store your art in a museum, donate the art to the museum, and instead of paying capital gains on the appreciated value of the art, get a write off for your donation to a non-profit.
For maximum utility, pick an obscure artist and completely monopolize and control the market in that artist’s work. Trade that artist’s work between multiple entities you control so that the apparent value of your art is whatever price you decide is currently advantageous (just like cryptocurrency exchanges!).
Heck, the more I think about it the better I think art is as a speculative investment, tax dodge, and meta-currency than bitcoin. Also, while Chagal, Basquiat, et al may seem out of reach, there is plenty of art that sells for just thousands of dollars.
Moving art objects between countries is heavily regulated. So much in some countries that people can’t move bring in pieces they bough abroad and just store them in the country of original purchase.
Having an EU passport gives you that freedom to move between EU countries. This is good. However, your challenge will be dealing with the language of the country you are moving to.
While English is spoken in EU, each country in EU has its own official language. If you don’t speak the country’s language, you will be locked out on a lot of opportunities. This means college is out of reach as well as a good job.
You might say I will learn the language, but that’s much harder said than done and can take a lot of time, years, not months and will cost you. Even much harder, trying to learn multiple languages and keeping up with them all.
Note: by “speak” the language, I mean both reading AND writing the language — at least at high school level.
For children until the age of puberty, mastering any foreign language is a matter of months rather than years. For adults, it’s a trickier proposition, but assuming you already know a Romance language, Portuguese would probably be fluent in about a year (especially for a fluent Spanish speaker), maybe sooner.
@Ivan,
After a certain age, it becomes very harder to learn a new language. And even if you learned a language as a child, you will lose it if you don’t keep up with it.
I know this for fact, I used to be one of those children. At the age of 15:
Arabic — I used to speak, read and write Arabic fluently. Today, I can speak it well but will have some difficulty reading and writing it. This was my native tongue language.
Aramaic — I used to speak (well), read and write Aramaic OK. Today, I can speak it all right (cannot hold a conversation) and have a very hard time reading and writing it.
Armenian — I used to speak Armenian fluently (never learned to read or write it). Today, I can speak it well but not fluently.
Turkish — I used to speak Turkish OK (never learned to read or write it). Today, I know enough only to survive as a tourist.
French — I used to speak, read and write French at middle school level (took 2 years classes). Today, I just know few words and cannot survive as a tourist.
English — I learned it when I arrived to the USA at the age of 15. Today, well, you be the judge. 🙂
So, unless you start at a very early age and keep up with the language, you won’t remember much of the language as you grow older.
@ George A. You are a true polyglot and should be proud.
George: I agree regarding the loss of fluency due to disuse. I had experience similar to yours: you lose fluency if you do not use a language regularly, at least a couple months a year on a daily basis.
I have not lost languages that I learned as child, one of which I consider my mother tong, I remain fluent speaker, reader and writer – I guess web helps. I learned English as an adult and although I do make too many typos my writing is decent after editing. I speak English well but have sometimes lapses. I had to prove to an educated American-born English speaker that I am an immigrant and not a dude from Appalachia – I had to read aloud and with proper intonation excerpts from text written in my mother tong.
I am learning another language but I am still a beginner although my reading skills somewhat improved, I have very few opportunities to practice it,.
@Toucan Sam, a polyglot is someone who keeps up with the languages he/she/* learns, I’m no polyglot.
Back in the late 1990’s, as a software engineer, I worked for a company that did voice recognition (customer call support over the phone). We had a guy on my team who was a linguistic. He knew 11 languages (speak, read & write). He didn’t know any of the languages I knew when we hired him. However, in 6 months, he was speaking Arabic enough as such he can survive in the Middle East on his own! Now that’s a polyglot!!
@LSI, I didn’t know much English when I arrived to the USA, legally. I though myself the alphabets and few words while waiting on our visa. As soon as we arrived, I started with ESL at my public school and took night classes. By my senior year, I was taking English class at level 1 and scoring over average as such, when I went to college, I didn’t need special English classes in college.
It helps to have parents who keep an eye on their kids and encourage them — that’s how my parents were.
George, I hate learning new languages or philology in general although creative writing in my mother tong was one my stronger points but by far not the strongest. Comparing to my family and friends my spoken language skills lagged although at middle age I exceeded most of them, due to leaving my day to day ethnic circle of communications and making American and other immigrant group’s friends and learning new language. Memorizing new words and phrases worked for me. Something clicks after memorizing translations of about 8 thousand translations I so do not need translate mentally any longer. All my language learnings are to attain some utilitarian or hobby goals
FYI Phil, if you have any german relatives who were jewish and affected by the Nazis in WWII you will get a german passport with minimal effort.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-lifts-restrictions-for-descendants-of-nazi-victimsto-get-citizenship/a-58046004
I did this many years ago when my grandmother was still alive. She lost her german citizenship in WWII.
But don’t you have to renounce all other citizenships before getting German citizenship?
SK that is correct. I have both US citizenship and German citizenship. When I went through the process the law only extended to grandchildren. It has recently been changed to include any “descendent”.
Stellar (https://www.stellar.org/) is a cryptocurrency network designed for exchanging fiat currencies. A more conventional and wide-spread solution would be just using Wise (https://wise.com/), which is much cheaper than using regular banks and easy to use.
As an expat abroad, I use Interactive Brokers for this type of exchange. You get the exact Forex spread and there is no cost for one wire transfer out per month (although the destination bank might have a wire processing fee).
I have used this for transactions in tens of thousands, but cumulatively I have moved a significant sum over many years. I would probably check with all parties for any restrictions on larger amounts. For example, IB has a three day hold period and your name must match on the accounts. Third party banks (and Countries?) might flag single large transfers and cause delays…
Right, IB is the way to go– pretty senseless to go about it the way Phil is.
AR: Interesting. Thanks for this idea! A little too late for the golden visa investment, but maybe useful going forward (unless I get the crypto religion).
For smaller amounts, i.e. travel money, I quite like my Revolut card. I don’t think it has come to North America yet, but in Europe it lets you pre-load cash in your native currency and then spend it abroad with very minimal exchange fees. Very similar to some travel credit cards.
The banks totally hose you on moving money. I used currencyfair years ago, and it was way cheaper and more convenient. Not sure if it’s the best today, but I bet it beats the banks.
https://www.currencyfair.com/ and https://wise.com/ are much better at moving money between countries than your old, fat bank.
Security is another concern, make sure your data are not thrown someplace at AWS for hacker fodder. And that the money changer does not make money by selling your data to third parties.