Author Archives: Andrew

Coast FIRE for Canadians: The Math, the Myths, and Whether It Holds Up Here

I want to start with a confession, because it frames everything that follows. The first time I ran my own Coast FIRE number, I felt something close to relief. A single formula told me I could stop saving aggressively, keep a job I mildly enjoyed, and still retire on schedule. Then I changed one input, the assumed rate of return, from 7 percent to 5 percent, and the number I needed nearly doubled. That is the whole story of Coast FIRE in one sentence: a real, useful idea sitting on top of assumptions most people never stress test.

This is not a piece designed to sell you on Coast FIRE. It is designed to help you understand exactly what it is, where the math is solid, where it quietly cheats, and whether it survives contact with Canadian taxes, Canadian accounts, and a Canadian cost of living. If you finish this and decide Coast FIRE is not for you, I will consider that a good outcome. Clarity is the product here, not enthusiasm.

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Faceless YouTube Channels: Should Canadians Build One, Buy One, or Avoid Them?

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Every few years the internet falls in love with a new business.

Blogs. Dropshipping. Amazon FBA. Affiliate sites. Podcasts. AI SaaS.

Right now the infatuation is faceless YouTube.

The pitch is close to irresistible. Global customers, no inventory, no storefront, no lease, no payroll. Content that keeps earning while you sleep. Income that follows you to Lisbon, Chiang Mai, or a cottage two hours north of me. It sounds like the platonic ideal of a sovereign business: scalable, portable, and detached from any single geography. It sounds, in short, like location independence with a monetization engine bolted on.

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The Hidden Risks of Being House-Rich in Canada

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Canadians love watching the value of a home rise. Every increase feels like proof that things are working, that the plan is on track, that the family is quietly getting wealthier while it sleeps.

I feel it too. There is something deeply satisfying about a number on a real estate site climbing year after year, especially when you remember what you paid.

But there is an uncomfortable question sitting underneath all of it, and I have never been able to fully shake it.

If my house doubled in value while producing no additional cash flow, while demanding higher property taxes and insurance, while locking me into one city, and while quietly preventing me from buying almost anything else, did I actually become wealthier?

Or did I just become more concentrated?

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France Real Estate Investing for Canadians

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This is a country deep-dive in the Sovereign Canadian international real estate series. Like everything here, it is personal documentation of how I am working through my own portfolio decisions, not financial, tax, or legal advice. The Canadian-side machinery that sits above every country in this series – the CRA reporting, the financing reality, the four reasons any of us do this – lives in the foreign real estate investing pillar post. France also turned up in my offshore real estate survey as one of the countries Canadians consistently buy in, which is what earned it its own post. France has some of the highest carrying taxes and the most bureaucratic buying process in this entire series, so I verify the numbers before I write them down and I flag the ones that are moving right now.

France is the country everyone in this series has an opinion about before they have a spreadsheet. Mexico sells proximity. Portugal sells the easy on-ramp to Europe. Italy sells romance you have to renovate. France sells something more complicated: the single most-visited country on earth, world-class healthcare and rail, a rule-of-law system that has protected private property through revolutions and republics, and a lifestyle so specific that people build entire retirements around a village they visited once. It is not a value play and not a yield play. And for the right Canadian, it can still be one of the best places on the planet to own a home.

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REITs vs Direct Real Estate Investing for Canadians

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If I have $250,000 available for real estate, why would I buy a building at all?

That is the honest version of this question, and almost nobody asks it that way. The usual framing is “REITs vs rental property,” which quietly assumes the two are the same thing delivered through different pipes. They are not. One is a security I can buy before lunch and sell before dinner. The other is a business I operate, or an asset I hold in a country that is not mine to be pushed out of. Treating them as interchangeable is the first mistake.

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United States Real Estate Investing for Canadians

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Every country in this series has forced me to answer one uncomfortable question before I would put my own money into it.

Mexico made me ask whether a foreigner can really own coastal property, or whether the fideicomiso is a polite fiction. Spain made me ask whether regulation itself has quietly become the largest line item in the risk column. Italy made me ask whether quality of life can be booked as an investment return, or whether that is just a story people tell themselves to justify a purchase they made with their hearts.

The United States asks a stranger question, and it is a question about the buyer rather than the country.

Why do so many Canadians assume American real estate is easy, and are they right to?

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Turkey Real Estate Investing for Canadians

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Every country in this series forces one question before any other: is the cheap headline price telling me the asset is undervalued, or is it telling me the market is pricing in risk I have not fully counted yet? Turkey is the purest test of that question I have found. Nowhere else in the Mediterranean can a Canadian buy a modern two-bedroom apartment near a beach for a number that looks like a rounding error next to the Costa del Sol or the Algarve. And nowhere else does the reason for that price gap come down so completely to a single word: the lira.

This is the country introduction, not the city guide. I want to walk through how Turkey fits into an internationally diversified real estate portfolio for a Canadian, who it genuinely suits, who it does not, and which regions deserve their own dedicated write-ups later. Istanbul, Antalya, Bodrum, Izmir, Fethiye, Alanya and Cappadocia are all different markets serving different buyers, and I will sketch each one, but I am not trying to substitute for a proper deep dive on any of them here. This is the map before the road trip.

The central question to hold the whole way through: does Turkey deserve a place in a Canadian’s international real estate portfolio, or is the low entry price largely compensation for currency, inflation, legal and political risk a Canadian is not being paid enough to take? I am going to give you my answer and show my work.

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Honduras Real Estate Investing for Canadians

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A country deep-dive in the Sovereign Canadian international real estate series. Like everything here, this is personal documentation of how I work through my own portfolio decisions, not financial or legal advice. The Canadian-side machinery that sits above every country in this series – the CRA reporting, the financing reality, the four reasons any of us do this – lives in the foreign real estate investing pillar post. Honduras did not turn up in my offshore real estate survey as a place Canadians are buying in volume, and that absence is part of the story I want to explain here.

Mexico sells proximity. The Dominican Republic sells USD pricing and the only Canadian tax treaty in the Caribbean. Costa Rica sells titled freehold in your own name and political calm. Honduras sells one thing the others can’t match at the price: a world-class coral reef with a condo on top of it, in a market cheap enough that a diver on an Ontario salary can own a piece of it. Roatán is the pitch. Everything else about Honduras is the fine print.

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Malaysia Real Estate Investing for Canadians

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This is a country deep-dive in the Sovereign Canadian foreign real estate series. Like everything here, it’s personal documentation of how I’m working through my own portfolio decisions, not financial, tax, or legal advice. I verify the numbers before I write them down, and I flag the ones that move so you check them again before you transact.

Malaysia almost never shows up on a Canadian’s shortlist. When I mapped out where Canadians actually buy abroad, the country didn’t crack the list – Mexico, Portugal, and the usual Mediterranean names soaked up all the attention. That’s precisely why it’s worth a serious look. The places everyone buys are efficiently priced. The places nobody thinks about are where the odd bit of value still hides.

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Dominican Republic Real Estate Investing for Canadians

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A country deep-dive in the Sovereign Canadian international real estate series. Like everything here, this is personal documentation of how I work through my own portfolio decisions, not financial or legal advice. The Canadian-side machinery that sits above every country in this series – the CRA reporting, the financing reality, the four reasons any of us do this – lives in the foreign real estate investing pillar post. The Dominican Republic also turned up in my offshore real estate survey as one of the places Canadians are genuinely buying, not just Googling, which is what earned it its own post.

Mexico sells proximity. Portugal sells a legal system you half-recognize and an EU passport at the end of the road. Costa Rica sells titled ownership in your own name with none of the trust-structure friction. The Dominican Republic sells something the other Caribbean and Central American markets in this series can’t quite match at the same time: prices transacted in US dollars, one of the more accessible residency pathways in the Caribbean with a comparatively short ordinary path from permanent residency to naturalization, and – the part almost nobody mentions – an actual tax treaty with Canada.

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