• Complimentary house, wine, beer, and spirits
• Complimentary coffee, tea and soft drinks
• Complimentary light snacks
• Complimentary Wi-Fi
• Complimentary PCs with Internet access
• Comfortable seats
• Some have showers, a kids room, business center…
• Access to agents who can normally reroute your ticket much faster than on the “outside”

While fifty bucks for a posh place to relax might not always make sense for infrequent travelers, there are a few situations where it could be deemed worth the extra cost. Consider the event that you get stuck with a delay or layover that threatens to last several hours. Would you rather be out with the masses fighting for space in molded plastic seats, having your feet trod upon no matter where you put them, or slide into one of the 40+ Clubs situated around the country in major airports?

An even sneakier way to make use of Admiral’s Club facilities is in the event you’re connecting through several airports within the course of a single day. Yep, you can use a daily pass at any Club you happen to be in the vicinity of as long as it’s on the same day. Additional perks allow the holder of a day pass to bring up to three children under the age of 18 in at no extra cost. If you like the experience so much you decide to spring for the full cost membership, American Airlines credits your day pass cost to the annual fee as long as you upgrade within 30 days.

Fifty bucks to escape the regular craziness of airport travel and relax in quiet professional comfort? Sounds like a good deal to us.

The Jetsetter Show Team

Flickr / CaptBrando

Take the right taxi when you arrive. Look for the pre-paid taxi stand. Do not let anyone approach you and offer you a taxi. They are definitely overcharging by a high amount (up to 300 percent!). The difference is often between one with A/C and one without. In the middle of the night and in cooler periods, it’s is not needed, just more expensive. ‘Luxury cabs’ do not exist.

Get a telephone: Every Indian owns a mobile phone. Getting one takes some patience, but is quite easy. Identify the most reliable mobile provider in your region. Common ones are: Airtel, Hutch (now Vodafone), Idea. Usually you need your residency permit and passport as well as 1-2 passport pictures. You can use your European telephone, but not a US one. But simple mobile phones can be bought starting from 30 USD.

Register at the FRRO. Within the first 14 days of your arrival you need to register at the Foreigners’ Regional Registration Office (FRRO). Usually, your employer helps with that. If not, try to find a reliable Indian who can help you out with the language spoken in the area you live in, as nobody in the FRRO will speak enough English to understand you. Do not forget to fill the simple form with your address and other details. And take passport pictures. In India passport pictures are needed for everything, so make it a habit to carry at least 5 with you at all times.

Get a residency permit. Once the FRRO has worked on your registration, you (or somebody in the company you work for) will be asked to pick up your ‘residency permit’ (stamped form). This paper is very important. Do not lose it and carry it with you when you are traveling, as it is proof that you are an Indian Resident and will give you discounts at many tourist sites (Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi, Qutab Minar in Delhi, Amber Fort in Jaipur and many more). It also proves that you are in India legally. The process for your permit to be approved can take anywhere between 5 days and 2 months.

Learn about transport: If you are not lucky enough to live in one of the cities that has a metro, you will have to rely on the following methods of transport:

• Bike rikshaw: slow, unreliable and usually the drivers do not know their way around. Not advisable after dark for single women. Price: bargain, bargain, bargain! It is cheaper than you think and foreign people pay a higher price than Indians in any case.
• Auto rikshaw: They do have meters, but those never work. If they do, in many cities the drivers have lists that show the rates you have to pay according to the meter. If the meter does not work: bargain, bargain, bargain!
• Taxis: same as for auto rikshaws. There are also taxis that have fixed prices which can be booked for a certain number of hours and kilometres with the driver. Ask your Indian colleagues for the local prices for these (and everything else). And usually, even though a fixed price had been agreed, the drivers will want more money. The only charge that really does apply is the night charge (usually from 11 PM)and parking charges (in Delhi between 10 and 20 RS). Do not pay anything they ask you without asking for proof.

Experiment with eating out: Restaurants are quite cheap and usually the food is fine. Indian food is very spicy and contains a lot of beans. In most of the bigger cities, there is a good variety of Western food available (at higher cost though). Hygiene is a very sensitive topic. Mostly the plates and cutlery are clean.It is only a myth that the food is not cooked in hygenic conditions. Today most Indian restaurants observe the hygiene standards laid down by the central board. Indian chefs work very hard to give you the right quality food. If your concern about hygiene is genuine, try eating at a good restaurant and not a roadside stand. Whether in India or New York, nobody can guarantee healthy food under those conditions.

Be prepared to see poverty: It is everywhere. And even the poor expect more money out of you than of their Indian people. So they might cling to your legs, grab your arms or in any other way with their whining voices try to get your attention. There is no solution for this.

Lastly, remember that cows are sacred in India. They’re liable to be wandering anywhere, but you should always treat them respect. And women, no short skirts, tight clothes, or tank tops. Consider yourself warned.

The Jetsetter Show Team

Flickr / opoponax

As the main broker of Property Center in the Dominican Republic, Tay Oz has assisted countless individuals and families in re-location to the north coast, handling all aspects from real estate purchase to assistance in recommendations for lawyers for residency purposes, etc. Property Center has been active in the real estate industry in the Dominican Republic since 2002, assisting clients from all over the world in purchasing vacation, investment and permanent re-location properties. Tay obtained his real estate license with INFI in 2004. He has been living in the D.R. since 1999 and has immersed himself in the local real estate market and is a well respected team leader.

While we can’t ignore the fact that middle-aged diplomats and missionaries regularly teach themselves to speak a foreign tongue in a short period of time, usually under the tutelage of rote memorization and repetition, maybe there’s a better – read easier – way to acclimate ourselves to speaking in a different language, a method more suited to brains no longer running on youthful plasticity. Actually, there are several ways to go about sneakily learning to speak a different tongue. Here are five we noticed in a recent post at MonkeysAndMountains.com.

1. Scrabble – Bet you never thought of this one. Try combining a traditional language course with a regular schedule of Scrabble playing. Yep, this tried and true board game is available in many languages, and might be one of the best tools around for building vocabulary. It should also help with recognizing letter patterns and better spelling skills. If you happen to be playing with native speakers of your new country, you might need to bring along a dictionary and consider modifying the rules, unless you like getting your lunch handed to you. A better scenario would be to cue up the Scrabble board with competitors at the same approximate skill level.

2. Cooking – What do most of us like to do? Well, there is that, but we were thinking of eating. Food! Glorious food. A big part of life is eating. Most of us do it on a regular basis, and what better way to immerse yourself in your new country’s culture and sample the cuisine at the same time than reading cookbooks? If your local bookstore doesn’t offer a selection of cookbooks published in the language you’re looking for, head online, where you literally can find almost anything. Look for simple recipes with pictures, because you want to give yourself at least a snowball’s chance in you-know-where of being able to eat and enjoy your creation.

3. Television Subtitles – Subtitles are a great language learning tool, one that you probably won’t need for long but are an excellent way to get started. Watching television while simply listening to the audio in your new language is liable to be frustrating because you miss so many words it’s difficult to follow the storyline. However, with most modern television sets, it’s a simple matter to turn on the subtitle feature. Your comprehension factor should skyrocket and remove some of the barriers to listening to foreign language broadcasts from the get-to.

4. Read about celebrities – Yep, believe it or not, vacuous but unfailingly titillating celebrity magazines are not limited to the American culture. We don’t normally suggest expatriates in the midst of a foreign language submit themselves to the mind-destroying effect of this type of journalistic trash, but in this case, we have a good reason. Think about it. Magazines like People or Us are written at an elementary level, probably around fourth or fifth grade, which is perfect when you’re struggling to learn a new language. Don’t forget that college language courses require you to become a proficient reader in your new language first, so have at it and get some lowbrow entertainment at the same time. Many of the magazines you recognize on your local news stand print foreign editions as well.

5. Trivia – Who doesn’t love a good game of trivia, especially when it’s presented in the foreign language you’re in the process of learning? As with our other suggestions, unless you’re a proficient speaker looking to polish your skills, aim for a child’s version which might be more suitable to your current level of understanding. Not only will you get practice in building new vocabulary and reading skills, you’ll likely learn something about your intended country at the same time.

The real point with these five suggestions is to give yourself a break from the structured routine of a language course and spend some time with fun, different activities. Our brain tends to become resistant to learning when the approach never changes, so mix it up, play some games, and learn that language faster than you ever thought possible.

The Jetsetter Show

Flickr / Evelyn Saenz

1. Galapagos Islands – If this group of relatively young volcanic islands 525 miles off the coast of Ecuador sounds familiar, they should. This is the spot to which naturalist Charles Darwin traveled aboard the H.M.S Beagle in 1835. The observations he made there provided the foundation for his eventual earth-shattering book called The Evolution of the Species. It’s no small feat to actually reach the Galapagos Islands, and tourism is limited, but do what you must to take a gander at this desolate, pristine aquatic wilderness.

2. Grand Canyon – If you’re a fan of big, deep, wide canyons, have we got a trip for you. Generally considered one of the seven natural wonders of the world, you can fly over the Grand Canyon by plane, raft the roiling waters of the Colorado River that carved it, or even take a multi-day mule trek to the bottom of this magnificent cut in the earth. At 277 miles long, 18 miles wide at some points, and over a mile deep at others, there’s a lot of canyon to see.

3. Great Barrier Reef – Off the northeast coast of Australia you’ll find the world’s largest coral reef system. This 133,000 square mile area is comprised of 2,900 individual reefs, 900 islands, and more sharks than you can shake a stick at. Sound fun? Then get to it!

4. Antarctica – Tired of long, hot summers? It’s always cool – some would say frigid, and they would be right – at the bottom of the world. Antarctica contains the earth’s south pole and is one of the most remote spots on the planet, but don’t let that stop you from booking passage on an icebreaker and heading on down.

5. Mount Kilimanjaro – We’ll keep this one short and sweet. Literary buffs, if it’s good enough for Ernest Hemingway, it’s good enough for you. ‘Nuff said.

If the thought of one of these magnificent spots doesn’t stir your blood at least a little, there’s a good chance you’re not even human. Have fun!

The Jetsetter Show Team

Flickr / Stig Nygaard

Joshua VanDyk specializes in offshore hedge funds, portfolio/asset management, foreign currencies, natural resources, precious metals, and brokerage. His services assist in raising financial capital for IPO’s, private placement and investment banking. After completing studies at Michigan State University he moved to Chicago, and began working as a licensed broker in the futures and currency markets. He spent four years in GFT’s private client group advising clients on futures and currencies markets. He went on to obtain his Series 7 license for stocks, bonds & options trading and began working in the active trader group at TradeStation Securities. During this time, he developed many relationships with major investment banks, trading companies, and Hedge Funds. He has kept close contact with the analysts, traders and investment bankers of Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sax, Man Investments, RJ Obrien, Saxo bank, GFT Forex, and Credit Suisse, to name a few. Currently residing in Grand Cayman, he has become one of the top Investment Advisors at Bateman Financial. He provides asset management, brokerage, and investment banking services to both corporations and affluent individuals.

It’s easy to feel outrage at the idea that your pension plan nest egg will be taxed as ordinary income and, furthermore, you are required to begin withdrawing it from your 401k at the age of 70 and six months. We’d like to suggest you might be looking at this all wrong. Rather than focusing (obsessing) on the taxes you must pay, ponder instead all those years your tax free dollars were allowed to grow without interference by the government. Trust us, your nest egg is much bigger than it otherwise would have been. This is one of those times when you can choose to look at the glass as either half empty or half full. Life is much more pleasant to choose the latter. Expatriating is still might be a great idea, just don’t plan on doing it to skip out on taxes. There are a few rules from Internal Revenue Service Publication 509 to guide your thinking in this area.

Citizenship
The basic fact of the matter is that United States citizens are taxed on income they earn worldwide. No matter where you live, taxes must be paid as long as you retain your American citizenship status. Which brings us to the point we’ve discussed in the past of giving up your citizenship. There’s not enough time to develop that idea here properly but this is not a matter to be taken lightly and probably really shouldn’t be undertaken solely for the purpose of avoiding taxes at retirement. The bottom line is all 401k distributions will be taxed as long as you’re a U.S. Citizen. Keep in mind that some nations might also tax your income should you decide to move there, though many have laws in place to prevent double taxation.

If you do decide to expatriate and are wondering about the tax ramifications, the IRS loves to weave their verbal gobbledygook, and you should feel free to read about it to your heart’s content. Just remember to bring your lawyer and a thinking cap. It regards a little something they call the Expatriate Tax.

The law is quite clear on income earned in the United States and stashed in a 401k account, but the plot thickens, and becomes considerably more complicated, if we’re talking about income earned overseas. Once again, this goes beyond the scope and expertise of this column. You definitely should be talking to a tax professional if this condition applies.

Custodial Requirements
Since your 401k retirement plan is an apparatus of the United States government, it must be formed and administered by U.S. Law. The custodian in charge of administering your account is required to withhold taxes as directed, no matter what your opinion on the matter might be. Should your custodian choose to disregard these laws, let you have a break, he will likely find himself either the subject of legal action or being forced to pay the taxes himself.

The effect of ever-increasing budget deficits shouldn’t be ignored either. As the federal government finds itself more squarely behind the financial eight ball with each passing year, expect that all effort will be expended to collect taxes due. In short, you’re probably not going to be able to fly under the radar when it comes time to pay what has deemed to be your fair share.

But once again, focus on the fact that you were allowed to invest tax free dollars for decades, in some cases, allowing your account to grow by hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars if you were a savvy investor. Some battles are certainly worth fighting, but under current law, this one is not. Could you physically withdraw all your money, run and hide in the jungles of Borneo and hope that the IRS never finds you? You certainly could try that, but unless you plan to rob a bank at gunpoint of the exact amount of your 401k retirement account (an action we strongly discourage), expect that the taxes will be taken out before you ever see a red cent of the money.

What we’ve presented here are the facts of life related to retirement plans as we understand them. If you feel compelled to spend your Golden Years exploring ways to avoid taxation, be our guest, but there are many, MANY more pleasant ways to spend your precious time on this planet.

The Jetsetter Show Team

Flickr / 401K

Jeff D. Opdyke is the Investment Director and Editor of The Sovereign Individual, and an Emerging Market Strategist and Global Growth Strategist. As a lifelong world traveler, Jeff has been investing directly in the international markets since 1995, making him one of the true pioneers of foreign trading. These days, he is the editor of the Emerging Market Strategist investment advisory and The Sovereign Individual, the Sovereign Society’s monthly asset protection and investment newsletter. Jeff’s passion is finding the renegade plays “on the ground” in overseas markets, and uncovering those explosive trends long before they become mainstream. In addition to his passion and talent for investing “in country,” Jeff has written about personal finance, family finance and the investment markets for The Wall Street Journal for almost two decades, including the Journal’s nationally syndicated “Love & Money” column. His work has been published in upward of 80 newspapers nationwide. He is also the author of six books, including Financially Ever After and Piggybanking: Preparing Your Financial Life for Kids and Your Kids for a Financial Life.

We’re not kidding here. Even with comparatively light air time usage, Mr. Grunski ended up incurring an $800 cell phone bill through his carrier T-Mobile. Too bad he didn’t realize there are a few simple ways to avoid sticker shock when traveling outside the United States. The first thing an international visitor should be aware of is the chance their cell phone will work fine in many exotic locations without any sort of adaptation at all. The problem, as Grunski discovered, is that a radically different rate schedule often applies. That makes our first bit of advice this: contact your carrier and ask what the rate is for incoming and outgoing calls in your destination country. This way, at least you’ll know what you’re getting into.

In the event you run into a Tanzania-at-five-dollars-a-minute scenario, don’t panic. There are reasonable cost ways around the issue. One option to consider is buying a temporary SIM card in the country from which you’ll be calling. It’s a simple matter to trade out your American SIM for a foreign one, then switch back at the end of the trip. A temporary SIM card provides a local number for the duration of the trip and effectively lowers the rate for both local and calls back to the United States. If Mr. Grunski had switched to a temporary SIM for the duration of his trip, his cell phone bill would have been $184 instead of $800.

There are two basic types of technology that carry the world’s cellular talking traffic. The most widely used, GSM, serves as the infrastructure for about 82% of all cell phone calls made. The other major system, CDMA, is incompatible with GSM (of course). Sprint and Verizon customers have the misfortune to be stuck with CDMA, which means your cell phone only works in about 26 countries overseas. Luckily, you can rent a GSM phone, good in more than 100 countries, for about $70 for two weeks, and per minute calling rates that will probably fall between $1.99 and $4.99. Cheap? Not by a long shot, but it at least gets you a working cell phone for your travels.

Keep in mind that owning a GSM handset doesn’t mean you can breathe a sigh of relief when it comes to calling internationally. The fly in the ointment is that GSM technology operates on different frequency bands and – depending upon your global location – there might be a problem. For example, the United States and Europe use different wavelengths. If you have a triband or quadband phone, you should be covered almost anywhere. Otherwise, you’re out of luck.

Also keep in mind that most major carriers put an electronic lock in place on your cell phone that prohibits international calls. Done to protect against fraud, the lock is easily taken off but you’ll need to call your cell company to have it done. In most case, this should not be a big hassle.

If you think the cost of international roaming is high for voice calls, wait until you get a load of the charges to download data whilst surfing the Internet or sending images remotely. If you expect to be doing more on your phone than voice calls and texts, explore buying a plan that allows you to transfer a specific amount of data per month at a prearranged rate. Otherwise, a rate of two cents per kilobyte will likely apply. A kilobyte is tiny, especially if you’re in the habit of sending uncompressed vacation pictures back home to friends and family. If you decide to sign up for a data plan, pay attention to the point during the billing cycle at which you add it. Most cell carriers prorate the cost (and number of megabytes available!)

The big picture, when it comes to traveling internationally with a cell phone, is to spare the few minutes it takes to call and ask your carrier the appropriate questions before you go, and have a game plan in place. Don’t make the assumption that everything will simply work out. When it comes to international roaming, ignorance can be very, very expensive lesson indeed.

The Jetsetter Show Team

Flickr / compujeramey

Jetsetter Show #33

Glass-Steagall Act
The Glass-Steagall Act was enacted in 1933, and mandated the separation of commercial and investment banking in order to protect depositors from the risks of risky investments and market speculation. The Act was repealed in 1999. Many economists directly place the blame for the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis on this repeal. According to Wikipedia, “The repeal enabled commercial lenders such as Citigroup, the largest U.S. bank by assets, to underwrite and trade instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations and establish so-called structured investment vehicles, or SIVs, that bought those securities.” Mr. Butler believes the removal of this check and balance on the banking industry has changed the economic stability of the United States permanently.

National Defense Authorization Act
Anybody scared about this one? You should be, unless you are in favor of a federal government with the power to designate anyone a terrorist and allow the military to hold and interrogate them indefinitely without trial. What was that old-fashioned phrase from the Consitution? Innocent until proven guilty? Forget it. Won’t apply any more in Obama’s brave new (fascist) world. Is the unwinnable War on Terror worth ripping every last vestige of civil liberty out of our founding documents? The Jetsetter Show sure doesn’t think so, which is reason #2 we say it might be time to seriously consider a second passport and dual citizenship. In short, get ready to run when America goes careening off the rails. By the way, this act also tosses out the Posse Comitatus Act, thereby allowing federal and local law enforcement to work in cahoots against the populace.

Habeas Corpus Act
And, oh, by the way, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (read more about it in Forbes) recently signed into law by Obama, also scraps the concept of habeas corpus, which sort of puts the icing on the cake of totalitarianism and allows the federal government to classify the “homeland” as a battle front in the War on Terror. Say goodbye to your right to appear before a court to contest your detention or arrest.

If you’re not scared yet, you should be. This ain’t your grandfather’s America any more. We’re suggesting that about NOW would be a good time to take Jay Butler’s advice and read up on the Dominican Republic’s citizenship process.

The Jetsetter Show Team

Flickr / cliff1066