Moving Out of the Country Part 5- Where to Put Your Money

When I was growing up, everyone who wanted to put their money in a solid, safe, anonymous place put it in Switzerland. The rich of the world held their assets in Switzerland, but times have changed. Switzerland has moved further left, like the rest of collapsing Europe, and has caved to international pressures. In the last few years, there’s been an exodus of assets people are pulling from Switzerland and placing them in…Singapore.

As I keep saying, the West slowly dies, the East rises. All the money is slowly flowing from West to East.

In going along with the terminology of this series, today I’m going to discuss your country C, where you should base your legal business operations, and country D, the where you should invest and save your money.

Let’s talk about country D first.

Rule number one for the countries you want to put your money in is that you want a country with the minimum number of entangling treaties and alliances with other countries. That means NO EU countries, or countries with neoconservative foreign policy tendencies, like the United States or Russia. Your money will not be safe for the long-term and/or anonymous in these nations, no matter how you may personally feel about them.

In terms of using a foreign bank, you want these five things:

1. Stability. This is another way of saying “Asia,” though not necessarily China (which is currently in a massive bubble that’s ready to pop at any time).

2. Liquidity. This is where banks in the US and Canada really suck ass. They’re illiquid as hell.

3. High interest rates. Obviously getting 6% on your money is better than getting 1%, and certainly better than negative interest rates that Europe has introduced. Yuck.

4. Currency diversification. You want a bank that allows you to have assets in multiple currencies. The US dollar is not the future. Neither is the Euro. The best banks for the five flags man are those that don’t lock you into one currency.

5. Asset protection. This is most important of all. And remember, you want protection not only from creditors, but from governments. Cyprus famously ripped money out of their citizens’ bank accounts a while back. Countries like Poland did this with citizens’ retirement accounts. You don’t want your assets in a bank where this can happen.

Based on the above list, here is a list of good places to save and/or invest your money. I have honestly not done as much research on this as I need to yet, so this list is very incomplete and might even be a little inaccurate on the details. Regardless, it should be enough to get you started.

Malaysia. One of the best places in the world to store your money, second only to Singapore. Easily one of the best banking countries. It’s also very cheap to live there (making it a possible country A), and has very lax regulations for foreigners to own property (including real estate).

Uruguay. As always, Uruguay is awesome. Great banks and low regulation. They want foreign money badly and have structured everything to get it.

Singapore. Best place in the world to store hard assets (like gold). Great banks too. You could put all your money there and be good to go. They have James Bond-like security for banking and asset storage, far better than Europe. They also have very high tech and flexible banking options, better even than Hong Kong, which is starting to get a little out of date.

New Zealand. Good place to bank, store assets, and own property, including real estate.

Georgia. This one surprised me. Great banks, great banking laws, and a very safe place to put your money. These banks used to pay 9% interest rates on American dollars(!), though not any more.

Cayman Islands. Good place to store assets like gold, also decent banks, though not as good as it once was.

Austria. Western Europe’s last holdout in this area. Austria is the number one best place to store gold in the world, because you are guaranteed absolute anonymity even if the government asks the bank who you are and/or what you have. The banks can tell the government to go screw itself, much like Switzerland used to be. However, it costs way more than places like Singapore or the Caymans. It’s only an option for rich people who are very concerned about privacy. So if you’re a financial tightwad like myself, you’ll probably want to pass on this.

Where to Place Your Business

Now let’s switch to your country C; where you should base your business.

Honestly, this is a very big topic that I have not done a lot of research on, yet. I will be continuing my research and will be be updating this blog occasionally (though guys in the SMIC program will get the bulk of my data).

Note that this is where you base your legal business entity, not where you actually sell things. In other words, you could start a web-based business in Norway and sell to the Chinese; that’s just fine. Here are some good options that I currently know of.

Estonia. Zero corporate taxes! Very attractive. I may be utilizing this option soon.

Latvia. I’ve heard this is another good place to start a business, but I’m hazy on the details. I’ll be researching this further.

Norway. This one is a little odd to me, so maybe you Europeans can help me out on this one. Norway. They’re socialist as hell, but at least they’re not part of the EU, so it’s not subject to their crap. It’s part of the EEA (European Economic Area), but that’s not the same thing. My understanding is that Norway boasts total free speech online, and is thus a good place for web-based businesses. This is odd to me, but that’s what my research is showing.

Andorra. Pretty much the same as Norway. It’s also a very small country, and as usual, the smaller the country, the better.

My current plan, subject to change, is to set up a business in Estonia while finding a backup country C where I can set up a second business entity quickly if Estonia ever changes their business tax policies because of Europe’s eventual collapse. Like I said, I’m researching this further.

In the next posts in this series, I’ll be discussing how to move yourself and your money around in more detail, so as to pay the minimum amount of taxes and deal with the minimum amount of restrictions and regulations.

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8 Comments
  • Eddie
    Posted at 05:20 am, 2nd May 2016

    Learned a lot from this posting… what do you think of the Panama Papers?

  • Concerned
    Posted at 06:24 am, 2nd May 2016

    I’ve read your series and like other commenters have been somewhat concerned with the information that you present. For example, look at your comments on incorporation. There are many places to incorporate a location independent business that offer you 0 taxes outsie the local jurisdiction. Panama, Belize, Seychelles, Hong Kong, among other. Estonia is not one of them. While it is true Estonia may not tax profits on a yearly basis, they do tax them when you collect them as dividends. So yes this better than a typical country but why would anyone with an online business want to pay 20% to Estonia to actually take their money money out when they could pay 12% to Ireland, 10% to Bulgaria, or 0% to HK, Panama, Seychelles, and the numerous other places that offer IBCs.

  • Caleb Jones
    Posted at 10:24 am, 2nd May 2016

    what do you think of the Panama Papers?

    I think hacking into law firms is one of the easiest things to do, sadly. And I find it very interesting that there were virtually zero prominent Americans discovered there. Hmmmmmm.

    I’ve read your series and like other commenters have been somewhat concerned with the information that you present.

    Why? I said several times that I had not done a lot of research on this yet. These posts are simply to get people started, as I’ve also said several times.

    Some of you nitpickers really need to relax.

    There are many places to incorporate a location independent business that offer you 0 taxes outsie the local jurisdiction. Panama, Belize, Seychelles, Hong Kong, among other.

    Correct. Didn’t know about Seychelles or Belize; I’ll have to do more research on those.

    So yes this better than a typical country but why would anyone with an online business want to pay 20% to Estonia to actually take their money money out when they could pay 12% to Ireland, 10% to Bulgaria, or 0% to HK, Panama, Seychelles, and the numerous other places that offer IBCs.

    Because it depends on how you’re pulling funds from your Estonia corporation. If it’s a holding company or a father company you may not care. There are also some problems with starting a IBC with some of the countries you listed above. Often there are dividend minimums of $10,000 or more, etc (including Panama I believe).

    As I’ve said, this is a complicated issue and for the third time, I’ll state that I don’t have all the details. But you seem to be simplifying things yourself. (Which is okay, we’re on a simple blog here.) You’ve got some good info though.

  • Henry
    Posted at 07:53 am, 3rd May 2016

    I was reading curiously about your ideas where to start new company for internet business which I need in near future and…

    Top pick IS my residential country!
    I have experience running small companies in Estonia and also unfortunately going bankrupt, including personally, but that was caused by bad luck not bad local laws. But I can enlightne you about local business climate if you want to.

    BUT there have been some ideas thrown around in Estonia about starting with taxation of business profits, so current situation might not last! So it would be important to have the ability to move the company if needed. And to counteract no company profit tax, emplyoment taxes are rather high in Estonia, but that probably would not concerne you.

    Plus side is that starting and running a company is very fast/simple/no byrocracy. You can start applying for e-Resident, which gives you ID card which you can use to start new company via computer from anywhere and do taxes and digitally sign contracts etc. So Estonia might be the easiest to run company from abroad.

  • Eddie
    Posted at 07:45 pm, 20th June 2016

    BD, thought this article was spot on for what you discussed here.

    http://nomadcapitalist.com/2015/09/07/tax-free-countries-second-residency/

  • Caleb Jones
    Posted at 02:45 pm, 23rd June 2016

    Yeah Nomad Capitalist is great.

  • Travis Kotzebue
    Posted at 01:07 am, 15th September 2016

    Hey Caleb. Any updates to Country C? Still going with Estonia for business 1, and what country are you leaning towards for the backup business?

  • Caleb Jones
    Posted at 10:54 am, 15th September 2016

    Any updates to Country C?

    No. It’s going to be a long time before I make a final decision on that. It’s also one of the last decisions I’ll make.

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