The world’s best investment

The Panama Canal must be one of the world’s best ever investments.  On a par with the USA purchasing Alaska from Russia perhaps.  But the thing about the Panama Canal is that it offers a short cut that effectively misses out all of South America.  Not good news for an entire continent perhaps – but pretty handy just the same.

  I noticed that when that teenager sailed single-handed around the world the other day,  he seemed to go through the Panama Canal and missed out on the dubious excitement of rounding Cape Horn.  I’m not sure how easy it is to do a spot of sailing on the Panama Canal though.  He must have cheated and used his engine.

There is something about Panama and epic journeys.  That canoeist who disappeared off the beach near Harlepool turned up in Panama.  It sounds a long way to paddle – but his rather bizarre subterfuge was just an excuse to invest in Panama real estate.  I would imagine the grieving offspring were a tad surprised to see their presumed-dead Dad gurning with a Panama real estate exec in the daily papers.

 But I don’t think you have to go to the extreme of faking your own death to invest offshore.  Most weeks my post contains at least one unmissable offer from the world of offshore financial service. 

Usually these are high street banks and building societies urging me to get a foreign currency current account.  Sometimes I get delightful brochures on picture-perfect foreign holiday homes, without which my life would apparently be incomplete. 

 But we live in an era when even a bit of spare cash invested with Ing is effectively an offshore investment.  And going offshore is surely one of the key benefits if you invest in Panama real estate.  Thanks to the Panama Canal – you can set sail for the Pacific or the Atlantic just by turning right or left when you leave the marina.

 There can’t be many places in the world which offer you such a great choice.  A wonderful climate, excellent real estate – and the opportunity to sail around the world almost at the end of your garden.

Foreign Money

And so ends another week with the rest of Europe apparently coming out of recession.  And Britain somehow even deeper in the mire.  No wonder all the finance gurus are recommending offshore bank accounts and finance.  In fact with no end to the recession in sight there will surely never be a better time to start looking into offshore financial service.

 

The only snag with all this of course is that you need to have some money to start off with.  Then the benefits begin to stack up.   There is the slight worry that your money is offshore – and might not come back when things get sticky.  Icelandic banks pop into mind at this juncture.

 

But this time things are different.  You see all our banks and building societies seem to have cottoned on to the idea of locating somewhere with conveniently low tax rates.  You don’t even have to send your money anywhere too worrying Jersey seems to do very nicely for most of our high street banks for offshore financial service.

 

 

Then all they need so is bombard their customers with tempting mailers, emails and phone calls highlighting all the potential benefits.  Top of these is the fact that you should make more money because the tax rates are so much lower.  And there in a nutshell you have it.  These little wheezes are for high rate tax payers.

 

But not necessarily.  As well as saving on income tax on any income, there is the small matter of inheritance tax to consider.  It’s a fair bet that you are going to die at some point – and most of us can think of something better to do with 40% of our hard earned savings than give it to the government.

 

I wonder if the rush to make use of offshore financial services is in no small way contributing to the stagnation in this country.  After all, if we are trying to hoist ourselves out of recession…. Investing in our own economy rather than somebody else’s seems a better option.

 

So for now I will just have to restrict my foreign currency speculation to seeing if the cash machine at Sainsbury’s can be fooled into taking unwanted foreign currency.  And I already know the answer to that one – no.