The Weekend Vigilante December 28, 2013

Hello from a catamaran in Cancun,

I’m on a boat!  

It’s amazing how much things can change in 24 hours.  I received an email from John McAfee two nights ago letting me know that he has to go in for knee surgery on the day (today) we were supposed to meet in Colorado to film an episode of Anarchast.  I was supposed to be there today (Saturday) for that… instead I find myself temporarily living on and sailing on a friend’s catamaran in Cancun.. and soon with 20 Brazilian girls (that’s a whole other story).  Luckily I hadn’t even thought of booking my ticket to the US yet when I received his email… I rarely book any flights more than one day ahead of time for reasons precisely like this.

A few minutes after I got John’s email I got an email from Russia Today (RT) letting me know they had some major schedule screwups and that they were going to have to cancel my segment on their New Year’s Eve show in New York.  I was going to go there from Colorado but hadn’t even looked into flights for that yet either… and, truth be told, I was kind of relieved.  I really don’t like New Year’s Eve much and I really don’t like New York City much either and the thought of being in NYC for NYE was like the worst of both worlds!  The only flight I had even considered looking into was on a flight straight out of New York prior to the ball dropping!

So, all of a sudden all my plans had changed and I knew it was not going to go over well with my wife.

I walked up to her, shyly, and murmured, “Uh, I have some bad news… I won’t be going to New York for New Year’s with those beautiful RT Russian girls.”

She really has that latina blood and she started to almost shake in anger.

“Berwick!” she yelled.  ”You promised me you wouldn’t be with me on New Year’s!”

“I know, I’m sorry,” I said.

“No no no,” she said in Spanish, “I don’t want you in Acapulco for New Year’s!  I don’t even want you in Mexico!  You always ruin New Year’s for me!  You are a man of your word and you promised me,” she said.

It’s true, I always do ruin New Year’s.  I’ve ruined New Year’s for almost every woman in my life for at least the last 20 years.  The most notable was when I took my girlfriend on a vacation to Puerto Vallarta for the big 2000 New Year’s bash.  Around 10pm I mentioned to her that I was tired and didn’t feel like going out and suggested we watch a movie in our room or just get some sleep.  Her, a 19 year old girl, on her first real foreign vacation for the millennial New Year’s celebration… she could not believe what she was hearing.

“Why don’t we stay in tonight and go out tomorrow when it is a lot quieter, cheaper and a lot less amateurs?” I asked.

I am not sure there is a word to describe the perplexed look on her face.

We fought a bit about it (mostly her just physically trying to drag me out of bed) and finally I acquiesed and she drug me out where I moped around for most of the night complaining about how crowded and expensive everything is and how many idiot amateurs were out.  

My aversion to New Year’s Eve is so bad that my wife doesn’t even want me in the same country as her now on New Year’s!

But, a promise is a promise so I had to figure out somewhere to go.  Right as I was trying to figure out where to go I got an email from a good, entrepreneurial friend who I met when he was living in Acapulco and he invited me to come spend a few days on his boat in Cancun.  He mentioned he has two of his other enterpreneur friends there at the moment and said there is a lot of business we can do together.  I told him I’d think about it as I figure out my plans.  Then, he mentioned, “and I am taking out twenty Brazilian tourist girls between the ages of 25-40 on the boat on Sunday.

“I’ll be there,” I said.

“But,” I added, “I have to leave the country by the 31st.”

“Oh, where are you going?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet,” I responded… leaving him at a bit of a loss for words.

“Long story,” I said.

So, I will leave Cancun on December 31st and leave the country to appease my wife.  My tentative plans are to go to Guatemala City for NYE and then stay a few days after to meet up with some of the people from the Free Cities project and get some updates from them and also look to meet with some lawyers and government people on some potential business.  And then, after that, I’ll likely go to Tegucigalpa, Honduras to do the same.

How is that for a total change of plans, all within 24 hours!  I have always tried to live quite spontaneously for all the reasons above.  If I had made big plans and booked flights and hotels well in advance it would have been a big pain to cancel them all.  Instead, I just went with the flow.

I don’t understand people who plan out things like a vacation a year in advance.  How do you even know what you’ll want to do a year from now, I ask.  Or even a week from now, really!

A lot can change in a year.  Yet, some people will plan out the details into minutae, sometimes down to the hour.  ”We will take this jungle excursion from 10am to 3pm on Sunday December 28th… then we will go to dinner at this particular Italian restaurant we found on Yelp…” they write and plan.

How do you know you will feel like Italian food on that particular day?  How do you even know you will want to take a jungle excursion on that day.  What if you are tired that day and want to just lie on the beach?  Or sick?

I see a lot of these types of people from time to time when I am in vacation resort towns.  They usually look totally frazzled and upset because some thing they had planned didn’t go as expected… or was cancelled.  Well, no kidding!  Sure there are certain things you can plan in life but trying to overly plan anything is an exercise in futility.

My favorite is when you see someone on the news who is trapped in an airport because of some hurricane or volcano eruption which has closed the airport and the news crew interviews them and they are almost in tears, “This has ruined our entire vacation,” they cry.

Trying to plan things too much in a world as dynamic and chaotic as ours really doesn’t make a lot of sense.  Sometimes people forget that we are on a rock flying through space at about 66,600 miles per hour… in one of just many galaxies all chaotically spinning around seemingly out of control.

When you realize you are “here” in this image it puts things a bit more in perspective.

After I sunk my sailboat in El Salvador in 2005 I made a pact with myself to not have more than what fit in one small backpack and to live as spontaneously as possible for at least a few years.

I would literally just go to airports when I felt like going somewhere and ask for their “next flight”… usually to confused looks.

“To where?” they’d say.

“Wherever the next flight out is going,” I would reply.

On two occassions I didn’t even know the place I was going.  Once, in Sri Lanka I asked for the next flight out (while the airport was being bombed by the Tamil Tigers too, mind you, which didn’t even delay flights!) and they said “Chennai”.

“Where’s that?” I responded.

“India,” she said.

“OK, let’s go,” I said and had to wait until I got to a hotel to look it up on the internet to see where I was.  Turned out to be Madras, which I had heard of.

And the other was when I was in Kathmandu, Nepal and asked the same question.

“Sharjah,” he said.

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“Not sure,” he said, “Middle East I think.”

“OK, let’s go,” I responded and had to go through the inflight magazine to even figure out where it was.

My point being, though, is that is how I lived for nearly five years and it went almost amazingly well.  Everything seemed to always go perfectly.  I always seemed to be in the right place at the right time and had countless experiences that I would never have imagined, like somehow helping produce a movie in Panyu, China with Jackie Chan (the worst movie I have ever seen, by the way!).

Now, with business and family I can’t live quite so spontaneously but as my experience showed in the last 48 hours, I still try to leave things as open as possible.  Some people might be upset that two of their appointments cancelled on them on such short notice.  

My wife was the only one who was actually upset but a few seconds later a message came on my screen from a friend in Cancun and now hear I sit.  On a boat, in Cancun.  Soon, with 20 Brazilian girls.

If you live spontaneously, when life gives you some lemons, you make a vodka lemonade.

INVESTORINTEL.COM RANKS TDV AS #4 INVESTMENT NEWSLETTER IN 2013

In other news, InvestorIntel.com has ranked myself as the #4 investment newsletter writer in 2013.  There are some mighty fine people also on that list including Doug Casey so I was happy to be included!

You can see the whole list here.

SOME PLANNING IS NECESSARY

I am not saying “planning” is bad.  Everyone needs a target or goal and many people due to their own requirements of work or life do need to book vacations or trips somewhat ahead of time.  But, the thing is to keep exact details of those things as loose as possible.  As my crazy Thai ex-girlfriend used to always say, “Things change, baby.”

But, when it comes to your financial situation some sort of planning is definitely in order.  If you want to grow your wealth or, as we often talk about here, just salvage as much of it from rapacious governments over the coming years as possible you should definitely be planning.  As quickly as possible.

Here at TDV we write about how the doors are shutting at an ever rapid pace in terms of being able to get a significant portion of your assets outside of the control of the government that purports to own you.  With FATCA coming into effect on July 1, 2014… if you live in the US and don’t already have your financial affairs organized by that date you will have severely limited options.

So, I do plan, to that extent and I have… having internationalized my assets as early as 1995.  And I advise you to as well.  If you have significant assets in the millions and are American or Canadian (those are the only two groups we can currently help with the proprietary internationalization trust and secession planning program offered by TDV Wealth Management) I urge you to read more on why you should be rushing to get your affairs in order (click here for more), at the TDV Wealth Management Crisis Conference from February 5th to 9th in Rio Hato, Panama.

I, personally, won’t be planning too much about that trip (and, luckily for me, the amazing people at TDV Wealth Management are organizing nearly everything)… but I will definitely plan to be there.  In fact, being our first ever conference I may even book a flight a week ahead of time, rather than my usual 1-2 days, just to make sure I am there.  Once there, beyond helping those who attend to help them with our team of experts to make them financially free in a very unfree world (with unbelievable tax benefits as well) I will do as I always do, go with the flow.

I won’t be planning a deep sea fishing expedition for the morning on Wednesday, February 5th, from 6-9am… I will just wait and see what happens and what others are doing and… go with the flow.  

Everything always seems to work out for the best that way, in my experience.

Until next week, from Guatemala or Honduras… unless things unexpectedly change again, keep yearning for more freedom… both personal and financial.