Category: Parenting
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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 “normal,” the communities they’re part of become less aligned with what they…
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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 apples—it’s about comparing strategic options for upper-middle-class families mitigating global political risk. Everyone knows France. Paris cafés, Riviera beaches, Bordeaux wine—and endless ads telling you to “retire in Provence” or…
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I joined the Marine Corps in 2002. Not by accident, and not for lack of conviction. I joined because I believed in it — because the idea of standing for something larger than myself, of courage, of doing my part, felt obvious. I was eighteen, and the world was simple. The war cycle happened to…
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Two Loyalties, One Lie We’ve been taught, from the time we’re children, to conflate two very different kinds of loyalty. The first is loyalty to the people who matter most in our lives — our families, our children, the communities we choose. The second is loyalty to a geographic location, to borders drawn on maps,…
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The System That Taught Me Won’t Teach My Kids I grew up in the public school system in a small Canadian town. It wasn’t great, but there were good lessons being taught. I excelled in math and engineering disciplines — the kind of skills that got rewarded in the 90s and early 2000s. I could…
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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…
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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 Zoom—someone who genuinely loves math and charges what amounts to a modest fee in U.S. dollars. After a few months of personalized instruction, that…
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I did the math: 8 hours at work, 2 commuting, 8 sleeping. That left 4 hours a day with my family — one-sixth of my life. So I left my high-paying Seattle job and took back 40 years of my life. Now I work an hour a day from anywhere — and actually live.
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The first time I traveled alone with my children through a U.S. airport, my daughter was strapped in a stroller and my son could barely toddle. I remember standing in that security line, watching it snake endlessly ahead of us, and thinking: This is going to be hell. I was right. In the United States,…
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One of the biggest myths I hear from entrepreneurs and middle-income families is this: “I’ll start thinking about international diversification once I have millions.” That belief is the reason so many people never act. They think that second residencies and citizenships are reserved only for the ultra-wealthy. That is a trap: you don’t need millions…
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Five years ago, I stood in a government office filling out visa paperwork to enter the country where I was born. My passport had always been my golden ticket. For decades, I’d traveled freely, never thinking twice about borders or permissions. But there I was—needing a visa for the place I was born. That’s when…