Episode 053 – Picking the Right Countries for Early Retirement | Mark
Hello and welcome to another episode! This is actually part 1 of our interview with Mark from Portugal, because so many interesting topics have been touched that we found two episodes were necessary to cover it all. Today we focus on strategies to choose a country, portfolio and investment method for early retirement.
We also talk about:
- Portfolio diversification
- Bonds
- p2p lending
- Using spreadsheets for tracking
- US brokers
- Portuguese way of life!
Don’t forget to subscribe our podcast on Itunes, Android or Spotify. Direct download here.
Living FI-style before FI
Mark hails from Northern UK and after living in six different countries has retired at 49 and chose Portugal as his base. He has done the FI thing long before he was aware of the movement, always saving at least 10 per cent of what he earned and posing a target of retiring at about 50 – which was a reasonable goal at the start of his career – looking for optimal investment strategies that would make the money work for him.
Harry Browne’s investment strategy
In his book “The Permanent Portfolio”, Harry Brown suggested a very simple investment strategy that Max found very effective in times when not much information was available: conceived in the 70s, this strategy proved successful for him in the 90s as well and he stuck to it since then. One great advantage of it, apart from its simplicity is that it can be tracked and tested very easily and it protects from drawbacks in the stock market.
Re-modulating work in early retirement
Now that he has reached financial independence and retired, Mark doesn’t do structured work any more. Rather, he focuses his efforts on his website, where he shares insights on his life strategies and investment methodologies: having worked in software all his life, he finds it’s a great way to keep being busy with something he enjoys.
Curious about news and big ideas from the financial independence community? Check our newsletter!