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By most western standards my family teeters on the line between middle and upper middle clas. We sold all of our US property last year; and now we are shopping
by fourthwaveska 5y ago
By most western standards my family teeters on the line between middle and upper middle clas.
We sold all of our US property last year; and now we are shopping for 4-6 unit buildings within 100km of Barcelona to get our Golden Visas. Our goal is to get citizenship and access to the EU then renouncing my US citizenship.
It isnt about money, I am juwt ashamed to have an American passport and know my tax dollars are being spent on war and murder in the name of christ and oil profits.
I was born an American and would prefer not to die that way.
- cpursley 5y agoSpanish tax and legal system is a nightmare. Have you looked at Portugal?
- fourthwaveska 5y agoYes, but my wife has spent the past four years learning Spanish and every time I suggest Portugal she gets a murderous look in her eyes. My preference is actually Denmark, but it is an order of magnitude more difficult to move there, and my wife hates the language :(
- Izikiel43 5y agoPortuguese is not that different from spanish.
- fourthwaveska 5y agoThis argument also gets me icy cold stares of death. It also reminds me of how mind-blowing it is that a country whose land-area is 1/5 of California managed to conquer almost 1/2 of South America!
- Izikiel43 5y agoI mean, I’m a native Spanish speaker and probably after a year I would be able to pick portuguese.
- fourthwaveska 5y agoShe just gave you an icy look of doom.
- stiltzkin 5y agoLook where the rich Spanish Twitch streamers are migrating: Andorra.
- moneywoes 5y agoDon’t they have no capital gains tax?
- sec400 5y agoGreece + Italy golden visas also worth taking a look at.
- fourthwaveska 5y agoI wish! Greece was my secone choice (I used to study Lyra in Crete, and Rembetiko Bouzouki (Rembetiko style) in Thessaloniki and Athens. We almost bought a flat in the Exarchia neighborhood of Athens! Politically/Energetically It’s what Berkeley was like in the early/mid-90s. The day Trump was elected we were in Barcelona, and decided never to go back to the USA, flipped a coin between Spain and Greece. I always lose coin flips!
- marcyb5st 5y agoYes! Also, not tied to golden visas, but in Italy we have this going on: https://1eurohouses.com/ https://1eurohouses.com/ . It is legit and not the classic Italian scam (it's sanctioned by the government).
- keewee7 5y agoSpain is a NATO country involved in many American wars in the past 30 years. If you oppose US wars and hegemony you should have followed Edward Snowden and moved to a country that actually oppose American influence in the world.
- coldtea 5y ago>Spain is a NATO country involved in many American wars in the past 30 years Which doesn't mean much. NATO is not some alliance, it's the US calling the shots and others doing as told, or else (insert diplomatic, economic, etc. pressure).
- fourthwaveska 5y agoRe: Nato, fair point. There is still a difference between being bullied into submission to American hegemony and being part of the us empire. I really, really detest cold weather and drunk people, both of which Russia has in abundance. Russia and China are just as offensive to my own moral compass as the USA. Once we attain citizenship I’m going to try to convince my family to move to Esbjerg, at least for a few years.
- lordnacho 5y agoThe city on the west coast of Denmark? Is that a typo?
- fourthwaveska 5y agoYes, I love it there. My two closest friends moved there to study marine archaeology and within 3 years another 7 had moved there. We were married in Fanø. I’m old, I like the quiet. Ideally we would spend our winters somewhere warm and the rest of the time in Denmark.
- lordnacho 5y agoIt's certainly nice in the summer. Long but not too long sunlight, warm but not oppressive. I guess if you just spend summers there it wouldn't be hard to arrange.
- coldtea 5y ago>By most western standards my family teeters on the line between middle and upper middle clas. (...) we are shopping for 4-6 unit buildings within 100km of Barcelona I'm not sure this is what upper middle, much less middle, class is. A family that can pay several millions for houses abroad just to get a visa to change citizenship is way above middle class, or even upper middle class for that matter. Pew Research defines middle class: $53,413 - $106,827 year, and upper-middle class: $106,827 - $373,894.
- fourthwaveska 5y agoThe Spanish golden visa will require a €550k housing investment, then the normal amount of accrued in-country time for citizenship. Maybe we’re sort of upper midde-class then. We gross about $200k consulting. Not rich, not poor. We live in the developing world now so here we are definitely upper middle class/rich, and do not have millions in assets.
- ggggtez 5y agoYou are upper class. Yes you're not rich, but you're not middle class. The middle class American dream is a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, 2 cars, and a dog. You're talking about buying a half million dollar house in Spain because of a moral concern about global geopolitics. You're not middle class.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoTo be fair to the poster, they said that they sold their US propert(ies|y) which if they are older Americans probably releases an amount of capital that substantially covers the cost of the building they may acquire in Spain. But yeah, when the median US household income is about $68k, early $200k a year puts you far outside the middle class, even if it doesn't feel that way. [ yes, cost of living in NYC or SF has some impact on this, but not much, given the median household income in those cities not actually being much above the national figure ]
- 5y ago
- sergiotapia 5y agoStop the cap
- tech_tuna 5y agoCongratulations, I would do the same but I do not have the means to do so.
- grumblenum 5y ago>It isnt about money, I am juwt ashamed to have an American passport and know my tax dollars are being spent on war and murder in the name of christ and oil profits. You know Bush isn't president anymore, right? That hasn't been a a popular (and I would say erroneous, even when it was popular) talking point for more than a decade. I do find it interesting that expatriation trends seem to pivot in years with presidential elections, according to that chart.
- walkhour 5y ago> You know Bush isn't president anymore, right? That hasn't been a a popular (and I would say erroneous, even when it was popular) talking point for more than a decade. The US performed military operations in eight different countries just during the Obama administration, some of the conflicts where not inherited, like the war in Syria and Yemen. Those wars were payed by the US citizens regardless of whether they agreed with the war or not.
- grumblenum 5y agoObama invaded Syria "in the name of Christ and oil profits"? That justification was a myth, even when the Trotskyites-cum-Conservatives asserted it as truth 15 years ago. Creating a belt of failed states in Central Asia has been a long-standing policy, if Wesley Clark is to be believed. I can only speculate what the real goals are, but "because Jesus" or "because Bush is dumb" was always fodder for the low-info crowd who watched the Daily Show.
- fourthwaveska 5y ago> Obama invaded Syria "in the name of Christ and oil profits"? That justification was a myth, even when the Trotskyites-cum-Conservatives asserted it as truth 15 years ago. Citation needed.
- fourthwaveska 5y agoYes Bush isn't president, but the failures and hatreds of the entire Bush family are still incredibly relevant today. If you don't believe that, look at the 10s of thousands of Afghans currently walking through Iran and Turkey to find refuge in Europe). When you're the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, your decisions outlast your position.
- remir 5y agoPlease don't take this personnaly as I'm not targeting you specifically with my comment: but I don't know how I feel about wealthy foreigners coming to a place, buy property and extract rent from locals, who may not even be able to afford ownership in the first place.
- fourthwaveska 5y ago> Please don't take this personnaly as I'm not targeting you specifically with my comment: but I don't know how I feel about wealthy foreigners coming to a place, buy property and extract rent from locals, who may not even be able to afford ownership in the first place. Weird statement. Don't worry, I wouldn't take your uncertainty about your own feelings personally. However, I do understand you, and this is something we've struggled with. My wife is a Turk, and at first when we realized "hey, if we sell my house in Mendocino, we can live like princes in Istanbul, or kings on the Aegean", and once that novelty wore off, we decided that we weren't those people. The argument itself can apply to anywhere. In San Francisco, I spent 10 years living in illegal punk warehouses where I was not a gentrifier, but then I spent 10 years living in Oakland, where I was a gentrifier, even though I'm from California. Where does the line get drawn? Is it OK to have the $$ to buy a nicer place anywhere in my own country? What about my home state? We still struggle with this question a lot.
- remir 5y agoI guess the line could be at: I made money in the US and benefited from being a US citizen, but now I pack my things and go live elsewhere so I can benefit from the wealth differential in that country and extract rent from people there.
- fourthwaveska 5y agoHmm. So it is OK for me to say make all of my money in San Francisco then go buy property in much poorer Detroit? Now what if about 1/3 of that income came from my wife who is from a poorer country than Spain?
- withinboredom 5y agoIf you’re doing consulting. Check out the DAFT visa for the NL. Death stares or not, spend 5 years, get a permanent resident status and move to Spain.