I’m lucky in that I love my work, it’s my passion but the truth is that I work lot’s of hours, mostly because I spend so much time working on my own projects I.E. www.winningstreak.com www.commoditytrader.com www.securitytraders.com www.investoffshore.com (and others).
My belief is that Domains are “Virtual Properties or Cyber Estates” and as such, have value when developed into useful, busy, websites. Therefore, my objective is to always be attempting to improve my dozen or so websites, which improves my long term prospects. My objective is to sell the advertising space on the sites, and or lease out the sites to companies needing to create a “virtual” presence in their industry or wanting better “brand” name.
To sustain the pursuit of my objectives, I sell my time as a webmaster, and continue web site development and maintain my wonderful lifestyle. Brasil provides the best cost of living value, that I’ve ever found. It’s possible to live well here for $1000 USD per month, or really well for $2500 per month.
My wife and I own a great little car, retain a membership to an incredible country club, buy new shoes and clothes often, and eat in fabulous restaurants no less than twice per week. Excellent wine from Chile and Argentina is $5 per bottle and a shopping cart full to the top, with lots of high quality meat and cheese, costs the equivalent of $60 USD. Fruit and vegetables are bigger and riper than anything most people have ever seen (anywhere), usually delivered “ripe” the day before, directly from unbelievably verdant fields.
Real Estate prices are easily one third that of South Florida or one fifth of California, and you get much, much more. The construction methods are inherited from Portugal, and then enhanced by methodology brought to the country by a wave of Italian immigration, during the first 50 years of the Twentieth Century (15 million Italians in 50 years to Sao Paulo State). Houses are built very thick and solid, no central air conditioning but instead, the use of techniques and common-sense thinking, to optimize environment for the coolest effect of natural elements.
Property rental varies, like the country itself, to provide enormous contrast. The beach areas around Rio de Janeiro are almost as expensive as being near the beach in South Florida but drive down the coast 45 minutes and you can find places for $300 USD per month. Similar in Sao Paulo, choose a trendy area and flashy house, condo, or apartment and you’ll pay California prices but search around, think more like a local, seek security, utility, and functionality (instead of flash) and you can rent a place for $400 USD.
Yes, I could work from anywhere in the world, provided it’s connected to the Internet. My web server is in Alexandria, Virginia, inside the world’s largest data-center. I connect, and work, via high-speed cable access from Brasil. It’s fiber cable from point to point, so my connection speeds are optimum for best construction work boots online, often faster than connecting from, say, California of Canada.
I love Canada, but Australia spoiled me at the early age of 24, for living in warm climates and near the beach. Now, for over half my life I’ve lived in tropical climes, and having experienced Hawaii and the best of Australia, spent the next 20 years searching for “My place in the Sun” (to borrow from Hemmingway). The Islands of the Caribbean are too small and remote, the countries of Central America are (for me) not cosmopolitan enough and again too small. I have come to really enjoy the anonymity of big cities, despite growing up in a small town in Western Canada. I love NYC, feel right at home in Miami and L.A. but realized that for all my love of North Americans and that marvelous country/continent, my personal growth was being stunted, I was getting too materialistic, and becoming success-obsessed (measured in terms of dollars), and worst of all, was growing bitter about U.S. foreign policy (post 9-11).
On my first visit to Brasil, this place completely captured my imagination. The people, culture, food, music and beaches – wow those beaches! I knew then, and still believe 8 years later (living here 2 years), that somewhere here in this massive, fascinating country, there sits a place on a hill, elevated just high enough above the marine eco-zone to grow a garden, surrounded by rain forest, overlooking the beach, and out to the sea, where I can buy or build a Casa, then I will have discovered my place in the sun.
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