The Money-Making Tool Everyone Needs in Their Desk Drawer

Afternoon in Chiang Mai, up in the mountainous region of northern Thailand. The weather is above 90 degrees F, and sultry after the morning’s tropical dousing. 

I’m here investigating the expat/digital nomad scene for a story I’m writing for International Living magazine. 

I walked back toward my hotel after several hours of writing at a quaint coffee shop off a small alley. I popped into a 7-Eleven (they are literally everywhere here, like retail weeds) to grab a couple of Red Bulls…which by the way cost all of $0.27. 

And that’s where I had the flashback that precipitated this dispatch. 

There in the 7-Eleven, while waiting to check out, I saw a message referencing a Thai company—CP All PCL. 

A decade ago, in a former life, I recommended investors own stock in CP All, the local company that owns all the 7-Elevens in the country.  

If you’ve ever been to Asia, you’ll know that convenience stores play a key role in daily life here…way more so than in the U.S. where they’re mainly a place you pop into for a soft drink or a snack after pumping gas. Across Thailand, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and elsewhere, convenience stores like 7-Eleven offer a vast array of services. They serve surprisingly good coffee and surprisingly good food, and you can use them to buy tickets, send packages, wire money, pay bills, and do dozens of other daily tasks. 

But I’m getting too deep into the weeds because my real point is that CP All reminded me that the only way I could get my readers into that stock back in the day was through a foreign brokerage account. 

That, in turn, reminded me of how difficult/damn-near impossible opening a foreign brokerage account is today for Americans.  

Which reminded me that little opportunities like this are yet another reason why possessing a second passport and/or long-term residence visa can be so opportunistic. 

Simply put: You gain access to a whole new world of investment opportunity. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m by no means knocking the U.S. or a U.S. passport, which remains a good passport to own.  

But I am saying that because the American financial system is so parochial, so provincial, and so lethargic in its technical progress, we Americans are missing out on vast opportunities to grow and protect our wealth… 

Small example: Because I have a Czech residence visa, I was able to open a Czech brokerage account that lets me trade directly in stock markets from Poland to Hungary to the U.K.  

The few U.S. brokers that give you such access often do so through the Over The Counter market in America where trading volume is often non-existent. And buying stocks in a market with limited trading volume is a bad idea.  

CP All shares, for instance, are theoretically available in the OTC market in the U.S. But good luck finding any buyers or sellers. JPMorgan, which tracks foreign stock listings in the U.S., has so little CP All data to work with that it cannot even pull up any trading history. 

And stocks are just one tiny example.  

As Americans, it can be difficult, or even impossible, to open overseas bank accounts for the simple purpose of diversifying some of your wealth out of the dollar and into another country’s currency.  

Similarly, you miss out on just about every single initial coin offering—the launch of a new cryptocurrency—since so many crypto companies specifically bar U.S. citizens from participating.  

That’s because the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Treasury Department are so gung-ho about financial regulations and reporting requirements for U.S. citizens (even stricter than the European Union) that they basically treat fully-grown Americans like children who aren’t smart enough to make their own decisions with their own money. 

The result of this is that foreign banks and crypto companies don’t want to risk Uncle Sam’s overzealous wrath, and so they just apologetically tell American clients, “Sorry, not today.” After all, they have plenty of eager clients in Europe and Asia. 

A second passport negates all of that, since most other governments in the world treat their citizens like adults who are free to go forth and prosper. 

Which means that if you have a second passport from somewhere like Italy, Ireland, Hungary, Poland, France, Argentina, etc., a lot of new doors open to you. 

And here’s the thing: The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that having a second passport is completely legal for U.S. citizens. (Canadians are allowed to hold dual citizenship, too.) In fact, you might be entitled to a second passport right now. A huge swath of Americans—as many of 40% of U.S. citizens—are eligible to claim a second passport, often because their parents, or grandparents, or even great-great-grandparents hailed from another country. 

It’s a massive financial and lifestyle opportunity that too few people exploit. 

To think, all of that popped into my head just because I was buying a Red Bull at a 7-Eleven on a sultry afternoon in northern Thailand. 

Truth is, though, that I’ve been pursuing my own second passport in the Czech Republic for some time…because I want options.  

Options on where to live…where to invest…and where and how to protect my wealth. 

And the only way to secure those options—economically, socially, financially—is to first stash more than one passport in your desk drawer.