There are more millionaires than ever leaving the United States and acting their own plan A
and going and living in other more free and tax-friendly countries,
but the millionaires who aren't leaving also want to plan a plan B.
And today I'm going to tell you what that is and how you can build one for yourself.
And there's an article in Fortune Magazine which says rich Americans prefer Harris over Trump,
but they want a second passport no matter who wins.
Now you might say, hey, a lot of wealthy people would like Donald Trump to win.
That just shows to me how divided the United States is. You have certain wealthy people
like the Mark Cubans of the world who want Harris to win, who thinks she's the answer.
Obviously she wants to raise your taxes. She wants unrealized capital gains tax.
Who knows how far it goes. Elizabeth Warren talked about a wealth tax.
But one thing we do see here at nomad capitalist is our clients have become more and more
diverse over the years. Not everybody cares as much about lowering their taxes.
Hey, if they're moving overseas, they might as well get some tax savings,
but we have fewer clients looking to pay zero tax. They will push back if they think
Kamala Harris or Donald Trump or anyone is wasting their tax dollars,
but they're increasingly feeling like the US and other legacy brand Western countries
are holding them back. They're choking them. They're holding back their freedom.
And I think that's why you're seeing more Americans according to Fortune magazine and many
others want a second passport. Now, the article talks about how affluent Americans
are more likely to support Kamala Harris. Again, that seems perhaps a regional thing,
but they are looking for a backup plan to escape the political environment in the US
through what the media calls golden passport and citizenship by investment programs.
Now, why would an American want a second passport? Why would someone who's wealthy in a country,
people say, Oh, it's the best country to be a millionaire. Ironically, it's only people in
that country who say it's the best country to be a millionaire, but you would want a second passport
because no matter who wins increasing tensions, trade war, tariffs, whatever you want to call
with China and probably with more countries to come. What does that mean for your business,
especially if you do business internationally as I do? It means that having a US passport could be
a sort of scarlet letter. We've seen that with the cryptocurrency community. We've had investors
as our clients over the years. I can't open a certain account. I can't invest in a certain
project as an American. There are folks who can't invest in certain mutual funds and make
certain foreign investments as an American. So you already have had, we've talked about this
for years, more and more reasons why if you're a wealthy entrepreneur or wealthy investor, you
have been at a disadvantage. You will be at a disadvantage. Forget the fact that things like
FACA made it more difficult, although not impossible to open a foreign bank account. There's plenty
of banks now that don't want Americans. And I think what more wealthy people are seeing is,
wow, the country is kind of starting to fall apart. One thing that I have been told by
folks is I never thought I'd call Nomad capitalist five years ago. I never thought
I'd go to nomadcompolis.com slash apply and ask to become a client because, hey,
I thought five years ago, yeah, I pay too much in taxes, but things overall are good here.
What we hear anecdotally, but everyone I talk to says the same thing. Articles like those,
like this one in fortune, say the same thing. Wealthy folks are saying the cracks are
starting to show. And so when they went into the survey of people who had between
one in five million and five million plus, Americans said, no matter who they vote for,
they have deep anxieties about the country's economic outlook. More than 50% said theoretically,
they could leave the United States after November's election. Now obviously, you know,
you can ask people, you can put that question any way you want. Most people aren't leaving,
kind of like, hey, if so and so wins, I'm moving to Canada. Most people don't move to Canada.
But the article says they're seeking to secure passports in countries like Canada.
Not so sure about that one so much. Australia, I think that one's jumped the shark too. New Zealand
wasn't always the most friendly towards Americans. These are the ones they want you to think you
want. The UK, okay, this is totally out. Ireland, there are some folks interested in Ireland,
it's close enough, time zones close enough, you can get citizenship there after five years,
language is the same. All right, there's some people want that. Spain, that is a popular
and Portugal. No more tax deal there. Still the golden visa, but that jumped the shark.
I think what you're seeing here is a magazine like Fortune Goes Out and talks to wealthy people
and says, hey, would you leave the country? Oh yeah, we're scared of the direction the country
is going. Where would you go? And it's like I told a story at No Med Capitalist Live. But when
I was 16 years old, I was in love with the Petronas Towers in Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur,
where our event is and where I now have a home all these years later. But I always felt,
even though I couldn't stop talking in speech class, but how beautiful the Petronas Towers
were, I always felt like that was a bridge too far. And so when I was 15 or 16 and I decided
I wanted to move overseas, I thought I'm going to move to London because that seemed like a
reasonable place for a white guy from Ohio to go, I'll go to London. Okay. Never really
thought about, can I get in there? I mean, the UK doesn't really have, we had an actual
barrage talking this year, I asked him, why don't you guys have a policy for entrepreneurs
and investors like the kind our clients had. They got rid of the investor visa right before
the Russia-Ukrainian war broke out. They don't have anything for well people to move there.
You know, Canada has been squirrely, Australia and New Zealand have been squirrely about those.
I think people think these are the kinds of places they're supposed to go. And that the
reality is what our clients, once they get educated are saying is, let me have one foot in
the West and one foot in the East. So if I'm coming from the United States and I'm worried
about what's happening and I'm seeing the cracks emerge, I wouldn't be able to pivot to a Western
country that's more responsive, has more love for its citizens, has fewer beefs with other
countries around the world, they're going to blow back on me, they're going to make my passport
look like a scarlet letter. I want one in the West. And then I want one in the East.
We've had more folks interested in Turkey citizenship by investment that we have in
the past. So do people ask about Australia and New Zealand? Sure. And then they get
told about how long it takes and how much money to put in and how difficult it can be.
And they say, okay, tell me what else I can do. One thing that we've had tremendous success
within the last year is multi-citizenship, which now it seems is going to be a program that
sticks around. It's going to cost you about a million dollars of fees to get citizenship
in a country that isn't big enough to have a beef with anybody. They're not big enough to
go around telling people what to do or even, you know, bossing their own citizens around.
They have to be responsive to their own citizens in malta. It's a small place.
And so you can go and you can spend about a million dollars of fees. You and your family
can get citizenship. It'll take you about 18 months, which is a lot faster than moving there.
You don't have to move there other than you've got to be there for a little bit of time during
the process, but not a long time. And yeah, a million dollars is a lot of money. But if
you're someone who's in that five million dollar plus category or 10 million or 20 million
dollar plus category, that's a one time fee to get a passport as good as your American
one. Plus you can live anywhere you want in Europe. Plus your kids can and they can go to
school. Plus your grandkids can and their kids and their kids and their kids, you're buying a legacy
for your family and you can do that in the Caribbean through citizenship by investment,
a fraction of the cost. Obviously you get fewer benefits, but it's still good to have a
backup plan. Either way, I don't see Malta or St. Lucia, which is one of the citizenship
I hold or Dominica. I don't see those on the list. Why? Because wealthy people,
they think the way I did when I was 15 years old, I'll go to the UK. The UK doesn't want you,
and they just cancel their non-dom tax program. Ireland can work, Spain can work,
Portugal can work, a lot of the taxes aren't going to work out well. To me,
if you're going to move and you're wealthy, you might as well save taxes. I mean,
there's nothing wrong with paying some taxes. If you're open minded to that,
you don't have to go to a zero tax jurisdiction. But if you're paying 45% plus,
if you're going to get to the hassle of moving, get paid for it, get a couple of
hundred grand in your pocket every year. And as they say, every extra couple hundred grand,
it goes a long way. So what I see from this is people feel like the country's changed.
They feel the economy's going in the right direction. I think people are seeing
and feeling what I've been talking about for years. The countries where I live,
the Malaysias, for example, they're doing pretty well. They're going in the right
direction. People there are optimistic. And as some of the folks in the Trump administration said,
a middle class is emerging in Asia, has emerged in Asia, and is emerging in other parts of the
world. And what they didn't say exactly what they meant, I think, is, and that hurt our ability
to be competitive because we don't want to be competitive in legacy brand countries like the
U.S. We just think, hey, if we can't run the show, we're going to take our ball and go
home. Look at what's happening in the U.K. They made all the tax policies that have been around for
centuries that made it friendly for foreigners to come in. They're getting rid of it all. And now
that everyone realizes the jig is up, they're like, well, why don't you let people leave?
We're going to impose new taxes when you leave. So rather than trying to be competitive,
the U.K. is like, we're going to not be competitive. And then to make sure you don't
escape our uncompetitive grasp, we're going to be even more uncompetitive. And I think that
whether you can put your finger on that exactly, whether you watch Nomad Capitalist and you've
heard me say that for all those years or whether you're just kind of coming to the feeling that my
dad and I talked about as far back in the 90s, one day these Western countries are going to be so
broke, they're going to have to be so nasty and people are going to want to leave, but they're
not going to know exactly where to go. Yes, the article says, few people take the drastic
step of moving abroad if their candidate doesn't win. But here's the paradigm shift. Whether
your candidate wins or not doesn't matter. Let's say you're a Kamala Harris supporter in