January 2005

I left the USA probably for many of the same reasons most do; the erosion of rights, the lawlessness of the courts, the intrusions of privacy, the omnipresence of big brother and the general mental decay of society. What once made America great, is now gone, or at best is quickly disappearing and I’d had enough. It was time to go.

My wife and I packed our things, put our little dog under the seat of the plane and headed south. Not being too sure of where we’d end up, our original idea was Panama. However, we made a stop over along the way in Costa Rica five years ago, and have never gone any further.

We are not wealthy retirees. I’m 46 and she’s, well, she still won’t say, but we had a very limited nestegg and the clock was ticking for us to find something to do to support ourselves. Neither of us spoke any Spanish (still don’t very well) and we’ve been living on tourist visas for 5 years. Not a very stable situation.

I have always been enamored by the idea of living the ‘PT’ lifestyle (Permanent Tourist – Previous Taxpayer – Perpetual Traveler) and now was my chance. It was very clear under this philosophy, that in order to sustain this without a substantial trust fund, that you must have a ‘portable business’ which allows you to operate from anywhere in the world.

Tortuguero, Costa Rica

..

I threw up a website and started offering financial privacy consulting services helping other ‘escapees’ protect their financial affairs and did pretty fair with that, but never really seemed to get ahead.

Foreign Currency Exchange trading (forex) always fascinated me and I had dabbled in it some with a managed account. My account manager at the time promptly lost my account using poor judgment. I figured I could do ‘at least that well’. My wife and I found ourselves often making better decisions than my account manager, so we set out to learn this business ourselves, and to become more technically proficient. It wasn’t until I took the time to learn the ins and outs that I truly became excited by the real possibilities, undaunted by our initial misfortune.

For example, Forex allows you to use leverage. In other words, I can control one contract of $100,000 in foreign currency for only $500. So if I can get on the right side of a move in the market and this move is only one half of one percent in a day, I can double my money! ($100,000 times .5). Each pip (point) is worth $10 to me. In other words, this move was worth up to $2,400 profit, on a $500 commitment, and was completed in less than a day!

Now we’re talking some real profits !

These moves don’t happen every day. But they do happen several times a month. And lesser moves occur daily which are still quite profitable. Risk is very manageable and is limited only to the amount invested. We like to operate with the philosophy of only committing 10% of our account into the market at any given time to manage the risk. If we get hit with adverse market movements (and we do) our downside is limited and we have plenty of cushion to make it up the next time. We have learned that risk management is more important than profit management.

Page 1 of 2 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 | Next