
The Morning Everything Stopped I made what seemed like a smart decision. Here in Brazil, my car can run on both ethanol and gasoline โ it’s a flex-fuel vehicle. I’ve never bothered with ethanol before. I always filled up with gasoline because it was simple, reliable, and I knew it worked. But I kept seeing…

Thereโs a kind of wealth most people never talk about. Not money. Not investments. Not even a passport. Just a small plastic card โ a second residency. It doesnโt look like much. It sits quietly in your wallet, tucked behind your driverโs license. You donโt flash it around. No one ever asks about it. But…

Every parent wants the same thing: โI just want my children to have a better life than I did.โ Itโs why we work late, save diligently, and build businesses that demand everything from us. We imagine our wealth as a safety net โ a guarantee our children will never struggle. But hereโs what successful parents…

In the last few years, more North American families have come to us looking for at least a Plan B location, if not a complete Plan A. What they tell me is consistent: the city feels different, the school board keeps changing what’s โnormal,โ the communities they’re part of become less aligned with what they…

If you’re location-independent and optimize for lifestyle ROI, Paraguay offers a better value proposition than legacy destinations like France. This isn’t about comparing apples to applesโit’s about comparing strategic options for upper-middle-class families mitigating global political risk. Everyone knows France. Paris cafรฉs, Riviera beaches, Bordeaux wineโand endless ads telling you to “retire in Provence” or…

Two Loyalties, One Lie Weโve been taught, from the time weโre children, to conflate two very different kinds of loyalty. The first is loyalty to the people who matter most in our lives โ our families, our children, the communities we choose. The second is loyalty to a geographic location, to borders drawn on maps,…

My son doesn’t know he’s lucky. He just knows that in Brazil, soccer meant running barefoot through neighborhood parks every evening, the whole community cheering from the sidelines. He knows Festa Junina means dancing in a straw hat while bonfires flicker and the air smells like sweet cake and smoke. And this weekend, like so…

A friend of mine has a daughter in high school who wasn’t connecting with her math teacher. Instead of accepting this limitation, she hired an english speaking Brazilian PhD engineer over Zoomโsomeone who genuinely loves math and charges what amounts to a modest fee in U.S. dollars. After a few months of personalized instruction, that…