For years digital nomads have flocked to Southeast Asia for the low cost of living and the great
weather. But today I'm going to tell you why wealthy people should be just as inclined to live in
Southeast Asia. And I'm going to explain nine reasons why a seven or eight-figure entrepreneur
or investor, the types of people that nomadic capitalist works with, might love having a home
in Southeast Asia. Keep in mind you can have a home in Southeast Asia or anywhere in the
world and live there 12 months a year, six months a year, three months a year. In some cases one
day a year. It could just be a backup plan. But let's go through the reasons why this could be
a place that is one of your homes or your main home. And the first reason is healthcare. A lot
of people ask about this. People in places like the United States are paying through their teeth
for healthcare. It is not extremely affordable in Southeast Asia, but it is of extremely high
quality. The large majority of countries that score well for medical tourism are in Asia,
and so you have some of the best hospitals in Southeast Asia, in particular from Glen Eagles
in Singapore to Sami Tevej or Boomengrad in Bangkok. Prince Court, we've talked about a lot
in Kuala Lumpur. And it's getting better elsewhere. I can tell you I've been going
to Cambodia for a dozen years. And when I first was there, I'm like, I hope nothing happens to
me because it could be more dicey. Now you have better healthcare facilities. So the entire region
that they call ASEAN, that's a group of Southeast Asian countries, is getting better.
But your Singapore's, Malaysia's, Thailand's, and to some extent the Philippines all score very
well for healthcare. It's extremely affordable. You can go and check out our numerous episodes
where I took my entire staff that came to Nomad Capitalist Live to Prince Court for an annual
checkup. It costs pennies on the dollar, what you'd pay in the US, and it's much more efficient. So
it's efficient, smiley, affordable healthcare, great quality, great doctors trained overseas.
The second thing is just better health in general. Not all the countries, but if you
look elsewhere in Asia, Japan is one of the healthiest countries by many metrics in terms of
just the types of calories they consume and the foods they eat. Thailand also scored
relatively well on that in terms of the countries with the healthiest food. Now you can
eat healthy anywhere, but if you look at most of the English-speaking legacy brand countries,
US at the top and then the UK, Australia and Canada, the majority of your calories are coming
from ultra-processed foods. You can avoid that, but it's harder. And so it's a lot easier to
avoid that. It's a lot easier to eat healthy. The food is often of higher quality in countries
in a lot of places in the world, including Southeast Asia. The third reason is the weather.
Not everybody loves the humidity, although there are plenty of places in Southeast Asia that
are in the mountains. For example, parts of Thailand, you'll have less humidity, you'll have
cooler weather. But you have everything from mountain life to island life to city life.
And the weather in most parts of the region is nice year round. You're not going to have
cold snaps in the winter. I spend my winters in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and I'm able to then
go and do business all throughout Asia, manage my money throughout Asia. I'll come back to
both of those points later, but it's a great place to go. If you want to wear shorts,
if you want to wear linen in January, you can do that. It is not the eternal spring that
Medellin, Colombia is, for example, but you've got warm weather, up to hot weather all year round.
So, you know, your swimming pool is in use 12 months a year in many parts of Southeast Asia.
And you have places where you live in a condo, even if you build your own house,
or buy your own house, you have those things. I mean, unlike a lot of places in Europe,
not only do you have air conditioning, but it works. I remember I landed in Kuala Lumpur,
was it a year or two ago, when Germany was going through all of its power problems,
people couldn't run their air conditioning in the middle of the summer. It was working perfectly well
at affordable prices at my home in Kuala Lumpur, and they had that kind of stuff. They have pools,
they have AC much more commonly than you find in the high tax countries of Europe, for example.
The fourth reason to live in Southeast Asia if you are a wealthy person is the lower levels
of crime. Singapore is always in the top 10. They have basically the lowest homicide rate
in the world, outside of tiny, tiny, tiny countries. Overall, Singapore is extraordinarily safe
on par with some of the Middle Eastern places, like Dubai and Qatar and Bahrain and Oman.
It always scored very well. If you don't want to live in that part of the world,
Singapore is right up there as well, always has been. Even Cambodia ranks safer than the
U.S. overall for crime. A lot of countries do. Homicide rates in general are lower,
not only than the U.S., whose homicide rate is not that low, but Australia has a relatively
low homicide rate. A lot of the Southeast Asian countries are safer than that in terms of violent
crime. Property crimes, you know, certainly is measured from place to place. I've never had
any particular issues. Every country in the region except the Philippines has a lower homicide
rate than the U.S. So for a violent crime, you're not as likely to have it there. The
next reason high net worth nomad capitalists should consider Southeast Asia is the easy visa
policies. Now by easy, I mean less bureaucracy, more straightforward, very welcoming, and more
importantly, non-judgmental. Generally speaking, Asian countries don't really care where you come
from. So we can say, listen, you could be Russian and you could be against the war.
And yet a lot of places in the world don't want to let you move there. They don't want
you to be able to go where you're treated best. And I think there's a number of countries that
the Western world kind of frowns on or they treat differently. Asia pretty much is,
did you meet the criteria? You're in. And I'm not saying there's not paperwork. I'm saying we
help our clients do all sorts of paperwork and where to submit it and, you know, powers of
attorney to make things go faster, all that kind of stuff. But the visas are more
straightforward. The residence permits can be longer than other parts of the world
and they generally want to see some kind of investment. So Latin America is, do you have a
salary? Asia just kind of is a basic idea is are you investing money? Can you put a couple
hundred grand in the bank? Can you invest some money in our stocks? Can you buy a piece of real
estate? So if you've got a couple hundred grand, most countries will let you in. So you've got,
you know, straightforward residents by investment programs in Malaysia, in Indonesia,
in Cambodia, in the Philippines, you've got a very expensive one in Singapore. If you're not
willing to invest a lot, then you've missed the boat on that. That's proof of why you want
to get your residence permits and citizenship early because the prices tend to go up.
Technically, in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong has brought back their program four times the price of
what it once was a decade ago. Again, lots of people want residence permits. The prices go up.
But at least in Asia, you can invest in stuff that you can sell later. You can get the money
out later. You can use the house, whatever. But non-judgmental residence permits for
entrepreneurs and investors. Now, Asia's not as likely to grant you citizenship. The Philippines
is the one of the few countries where you can actually naturalize. If you do things right,
you spend your time in the country. It's not a great passport, but it lets you can
have the permanent ability to live in the Philippines. But I think a lot of people get confused
with, do I need residence? Do I need citizenship? How does it impact my taxes?
That's what we help people with here at Nomad Cal. This is putting all the puzzle pieces
together because there's a lot of unknown unknowns if you haven't done this before.
And so if you're only, you know, working on the known unknowns,
you're going to be missing a lot of things that could hamper your plan
or might have you moving or getting residence somewhere else. So if you're going to nomadcal.com
slash apply, you'll learn how you can work with us to find the best places to move,
the best residence permits to keep in your back pocket, the tax planning and how to make sure
that you save as much money as possible when you move overseas because Southeast Asia
is generally, as I'll tell you in a minute, a more tax-friendly part of the world.
You want to put all the pieces together. This is probably not a place to chase
citizenship. And yet I think every Westerner needs a second citizenship,
probably even a third these days, because of the policies that are happening in Western countries.
But you don't necessarily want to get your citizenship where you move to. So
we can help you figure out which country in Asia to go to, how you do your taxes,
and then you get a citizenship somewhere else by investment through your family tree,
through whatever else, go to nomadcapitalist.com slash apply.
Now let's talk about taxes. Thailand did make their tax friendliness a bit worse
in the last year. I still think it's relatively friendly. Again, if you're a
high net worth entrepreneur or investor, because what Thailand has basically done is
created something kind of sort of like a non-dom program in Europe where the more money you make
overseas and the less you bring into the country, the less that you'll pay. Malaysia is
pretty tax friendly. They say, well, that's until 2027. I happen to think it'll stay
tax friendly. Even if they don't, it'll be in the same category as Thailand. So again,
the wealthier you are, the more money you're making every year, these Southeast Asian
countries that are tweaking their tax plans a little bit to be a little bit less straight
forward tax friendly, they'll work for you better. I think we've already come to a time where if you
make $100,000 or $200,000 a year, all things included, you'd be better off living somewhere
else than Thailand. You'd almost be better off living in Europe. In some places,
because you get the second citizenship and the taxes in some of the European
countries may be more favorable at that level than living in Thailand. But if you are
seven or eight figure entrepreneur or investor, then generally speaking, taxation in Southeast Asia
is good. Singapore is still relatively tax friendly, although again, expensive place to get into.
Philippines is pretty tax friendly. Those are some of the best ones. What you also have in the region
is banking. And so what I hear from some clients historically is, I don't want to be too far away
from my banking. And so Singapore, one of the great asset protection hubs, Thailand is seen by
some Asians as kind of a secondary asset protection hub. Hong Kong for certain people who want to be
further away from the Western financial system. I think very stable financial system. Maybe you
like Hong Kong, maybe you don't. But you've got within the region, within close proximity,
Singapore being the best, I would say, a number of potential places to hold your cash.
If you moved to Malaysia, you shouldn't move all your money to Malaysia.
But even that said, I'll tell you, I think Malaysian banks are pretty darn stable.
You don't really have bank failures the way you do in the United States, in this part of the world,
or really anywhere in the world. But you have some very high quality banks. And so if you want to be
close and you want access to investments in that part of the world, you're going to get that
close to home. And I think Singapore, as I've said for years, our team talked about this and
our nomadic capitalist R&D channel not too long ago. Singapore is a lot less friction than
Switzerland is. And so if you want that proximity to talk to your bank at the same
times than you can, investments are the next reason. And I think living in Southeast Asia,
you're going to see how the world is changing. And you may not exactly know that or feel it until
you do it. But I've been doing it for a long time at this point. And the perspective I get
on how to improve my business on where to make investments, it's a much different perspective
than what you get on the BBC or CNN or Fox News or Sky News. It's a perspective you get
by being on the ground. What's actually changing? And what's changing is not always that feeling
to the West. But you might adjust your portfolio or where you want to get clients for your business
or customers for your business by actually living on the ground and seeing. Now in Singapore,
obviously, it's a lot more like the United States or another developed country. There's
not as many easy low hanging fruit opportunities. I told you since 2013 about all the low
hanging fruit opportunities in Cambodia. I think there's still some juice in Cambodia,
Bangladesh, Nepal, technically South Asia. But I think lots of opportunity there. I think Vietnam
still has some opportunity to be seen what happens in places like Laos and how this
opened up in the years to come. If you're in that area and if you travel around that area and you
see what's going on, you're going to be, in my opinion, a better entrepreneur and investor
in a way that's sitting in a Western country is not going to make you. And I think that
Asia is a more accessible growth market than let's say one of the African countries,
which may see great growth also. Latin America, I think will lag Asia in terms of performance as
an investment. So if you're there, you're going to see that. And so lastly, connectivity. The time
zone, if you're used to working with North America, it stinks. You could, I'm in Kuala Lumpur.
There's times you're up till one, two in the morning. I'm at the point in my business where
I don't talk to that many people anymore. We push things down through the organization,
through leadership. And so I have them kind of adapt to me. They're calling
me first thing in the morning from Europe or if they're in Latin America, they're calling me
end of the day or their evening. But if you're talking to folks, that is a challenge.
And yet you can get around very easily the region. It's, I think, one of the best connected
parts of the world, I guess, second to Europe. You can get flights all over the region. You
can see the investment opportunities. You can go and meet your banker. You can go and
see the stuff you're investing in in Cambodia. This year we've got Reed again,
coming to Nomadic Capitalists Live, talking about investing in Cambodia,
investing in the next frontier markets in Asia. It's a lot easier to get there
within the region, of course, but you've also got great connectivity to the US,
to Europe, one of the best connected regions in the world. So I'm not pushing or promoting
any of these particular countries. I do happen to live in Malaysia. I've been there
for over a decade. That's my personal favorite. It may not be your favorite. The entire region
may not be your favorite, but the good news is if you come to Nomadic Capitalists,
you're going to get a unique perspective. Most companies you go to, and I met a client,
who's a client about four years ago, met him on the street by happenstance recently,
and he said, you know, I got to call you guys again, because I've been talking to this asset
protection guy or this trust lawyer, and they all have the one thing they kind of want to push on
you. I'm not going to push Southeast Asia on you. All I want to do is raise awareness that
you can be a seven or eight figure entrepreneur and have a great life. And I'll
tell you what, I enjoy living there and having, I still call my friends,
I just had a great lunch for two dollars. It was the most delicious thing I've ever
eaten. And yet I can also go and have caviar and champagne at night. You get to choose the
level of lifestyle you have, because it's just so many different lifestyle options,
so much great food. It's affordable, more money to put back in your portfolio. It just feels nice,
feels comfortable. The people, by the way, the people are very nice in these places.
Add that as a 10th reason, Malaysia in particular, I think, but people are nice
in much of the region. So I'm not saying this is the place for you,
but when you come to Nomadic Capitalists as a client, you're going to get the
perspective on everything where we actually represent you. We're not representing the one
country that we do business in. We're not pushing beliefs on you. If Southeast Asia isn't for you,
that's fine. But it's worth knowing maybe it fits into your banking plan,
maybe it's part of your residence plan, maybe it fits into your investment plan.
It could be one, two or all of those. But that's what we help people figure out. The
unknown unknowns go to nomadiccapitalist.com. I think it's a region that should be on your radar.
This is Kuala Lumpur.
Craziest live like a king you've ever seen.