Surprise ATM Fees/Walkable Europe/Onward Ticket Requirements
Nomadico Issue #128
ATM Fees Abroad (Again)
Despite my status as a should-be travel expert, I still get tripped up sometimes, like getting hit with a fee on top of a fee on my backup PayPal debit card in Panama this month. Besides the regular fee, they charged a 4.5% “foreign transaction fee” even though it was US dollars from a US dollars account. I’ve since heard of the same thing happening to people in dollar-using Ecuador, El Salvador, and Micronesia, though you will hopefully be spared the fee in Puerto Rico. I’m going to switch to a Wise debit card as my backup instead of PayPal when I have trouble with my main card that doesn’t charge me at all and reimburses local charges too. You can do the same with debit cards from the likes of Schwab, Fidelity, Novo (limited to $10 per month), and some credit unions.
Panama Residency by Investment Stays at $300K
The Panamanian government was set to raise the minimum investment to $500K on October 15 for its permanent residency by investment program. At the last minute they decided to keep the current $300K minimum in place for another two years at least. This is a fast track to permanent residency just by buying a home or condo and after five years you can apply to be a citizen and get a Panamanian passport. I was there for the fourth time recently and found prices at locals’ places to be on par with Mexico and once you get away from the waterfront with a view in the capital city, housing prices are reasonable.
Walkable Europe vs. Sprawling USA
The last four houses I lived in while in the USA were in “15-minute” neighborhoods where I could get to a grocery store, pub, coffee shop, and bank machine in walking distance—most of the essentials. In East Nashville I walked my daughter to elementary school too when she was young and I would go for days without getting in a car there and in downtown Tampa. This is common for Europeans but rare though for most Americans, as outlined in this article in the Guardian on 15-minute cities. These are places like Zurich and Dublin where 95% of residents can reach essential services in a walk of 15 minutes or less. Compare that to US cities where you’d starve if you couldn’t drive, with the daily per capita miles driven being 38 for Raleigh, 36 for Jacksonville and Birmingham. Apparently I was an outlier in Nashville: it’s #4 on the list. (Via Axios, article blocked by a paywall.)
Dealing With Onward Ticket Requirements
Many nomads are used to buying one-way tickets to where they’re headed and then sorting out the departure when they reach the end of a tourist visa limit. Anecdotally at least, random onward ticket requirements seem to be popping up more often and this can sometimes trip you up at the boarding gate. That happened to me last December going to Costa Rica on Volaris, even though I was using their annual pass, which is by nature a last-minute booking plan. So I bought a Volaris ticket while standing there, boarded the plane, then promptly canceled it and got a full refund upon arrival. Most airlines allow a fee-free cancellation within 24 hours, but if yours doesn’t, there are plenty of other inexpensive ways to get around the return ticket requirement. I cover them here: Solutions to Onward Ticket Requirements.
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would any of you at the nomadico team be interested in coming on my Military Retirement Podcast to have a nice discussion about permanent relocation abroad (or even discuss relocation topics stateside)? we did a live last week and a question came up about the Philippines as a final resting place based on cost, medical services, and taxes. I can speak to it having lived in Germany for 13 years and now living in Sicily over the last year and into the future. Even if the discussion leans more toward being a digital nomad… would love to hear your thoughts and top of mind for me is how could I be of the most service to you in this kind of interaction?
I've used fakeflighttickets.com which gives you fake flight itineraries for $5. It's worked for me every time I've used it (probably 10 times). Airlines cannot really verify if a booking is real on the spot especially if it's with a different airline plus considering there are hundreds of unique itinerary email templates out there based on how you booked it. Also I only do this as a last resort as the first thing you should try is just giving the check-in agent a hard time and insist that you don't need it. Waste about 10-15 minutes of their time and if they still insist, waste another 5-10 minutes while you stand there a book your fake ticket.