How to Get Access to Your Money When You Retire in Panama

hi this is jackie with panama relocation tours uh before i get started on this live stream if you could please type in and let me know if you can hear me okay is the microphone okay thanks for joining me everybody so just let me know if you can hear me okay because i bought a new microphone and i'm hoping it works but i don't know yes yes yes so good you can hear me so let me get started this is jackie with panama relocation tours and just to give you a little bit of background for those that are new to my channel i moved to panama in 2010 and shortly after i live in boquete panama by the way up in the highlands where you don't need air conditioner or heater that's the main things i was looking for with was a way to not need an air conditioner after living in texas for so long so shortly after moving to panama i got requests from some of my friends and fellow real estate investors that they were interested in moving to panama also so i organized a little tour of panama just a seven day tour for eight people that were all close friends and i thought that was it and then it i got requests for another tour and another tour so um it just sort of led into panama relocation tours i didn't plan on starting a tour company when i moved here it just sort of happened and now we just finished tour number 163 done 163 relocation tours and we've helped thousands of people move to panama the easy way you know i made all the mistakes in moving here i screwed up on a lot of different things that i wish i would have done differently so you're learning from my mistakes and from the mistakes that other people made when they moved here and that will keep you from making mistakes just an example when i first came here i rented a car and i didn't know i was here for three weeks and i didn't know that you needed to have a current that i couldn't just get regular car insurance that my credit card and the other things that i showed for my insurance wouldn't work so i had to buy their insurance and it ended up being about fifteen hundred dollars for my car rental the very first time i came the other thing that i screwed up on when i first came just a minute i'll get on with our topic is i contacted um my cell phone company at t and said that i was going whoops light went out that i was going to panama and i got international calling but i'd failed to get data so when i got home i had a 1200 cell phone bill so all these little mistakes that i've made i'm helping you avoid them by teaching you what to do and how to do things the right way got another light that went out over here i bought all these new lights to try to get better lighting but i'm not sure that it's working very well there we go so the topic today um is going to be how to get your money here to panama to pay for things whether you're going to be here for a couple of months or whether you're moving to panama full-time you're going to need access to the money that you have in your bank account to be able to use here in panama after i'm going to talk for about 20 or 30 minutes and then i'll open it up for your questions that you might have so first of all you need to know that panama uses the us dollar their official currency is the balboa but for about 105 years they've used the us dollar as their official currency so all the paper bills that they have in panama the one dollar bill five dollar bill 20 bill those are all u.s dollars um they do have some panamanian coins that are called balboas um and they have you know what one cent five cent 10 cent 25 50 coins that are the same size and interchangeable with the us coins so when you get changed sometimes you'll get panamanian coins and sometimes you'll get us coins but as far as your change in dollars it's always in the paper bills it's always going to be us dollars there are no panamanian there are no panamanian bills in one second coconut water it's really good for you um so that's the first thing you need to know is the currency um and if you have if you're from canada or from europe and you use other currency you will need to get that currency exchanged when you get here you can either do it at the airport or there are some exchange places most of the banks here do not do any kind of currency exchange so you need to get it exchanged before you get here so let's say that you've just moved to panama and you know you've got to pay your first month's rent and the security deposit for a rental you want to stock your grocery stock up with groceries and um you maybe buy a car you've got all kinds of things that you want to do the easy way to accomplish those things is if you open up a panama bank account and if unless you speak fluent spanish i really recommend that you open up a bank account at a bank that has online banking in english and spanish and there's several banks that do so that's the easy way is just open up a panama bank account when you do that some banks only require a 50 deposit to open up the account and then you can wire money into the account and i'll talk about wiring money shortly some banks are going to require fifteen hundred dollars to open up the account and then you can wire money to be able to pay for everything so opening up a panama bank account is the easy way to do it what some people don't want to open up a bank account so then what are you going to do how are you going to get access to your cash well you can use an atm machine here in panama all the banks have atm machines some of the grocery stores also have atm machines inside it the problem is is you can only get 250 and that's in us dollars each time and there's a 5.25 charge for getting it so if your rent is let's say it's 750. that's going to be a lot of trips to the atm machine and a 5.25 charge every time you're going to use an hem machine so that's why opening a bank account is the easy way to go um and then you can just wire money into the account whether it's five thousand or ten thousand or one thousand you can wire money into the account the two best ways to wire money you can just do it through your bank but they're usually going to charge about fifty dollars if you're from canada there's a company called osx.com and uh their fees are significantly less than just using your bank to wire money or you can also use a company called wise w-i-s-e dot com to wire money and it's going to cost about 17 dollars to use either one of those compared to about fifty dollars if you wire money through your bank so opening up a panama bank account is the way to go the problem is this is the big problem is that if you're just coming here for three or six months as a tourist most banks are not going to let you open up an account unless you have a visa or unless you have well so much for these lights that i bought um and this one went out too not good today so um unless you have a visa or a letter from your attorney that says you're getting a visa then you may have a hard time getting a bank account open up venesmo bank is the one that's most likely to open up an account for you even if you don't have a visa or you don't plan to get one um so bonismo b-a-n-i-s-t-m-o dot com and they have online banking in english and spanish so that's a good bank and then you can just do an international wire transfer from your bank into banismo to move some money in there to be able to pay for things while you're here at panama once you open up the account they will issue you a debit card so that you can use the debit card from panama to pay for your cell phone bill and to pay for groceries and to pay for restaurants and all those kind of things the other thing about the panama bank accounts when you get a panama bank account is you can set up online bill pay for some of those regular things like your cell phone bill boy am i having lighting problems this time it just doesn't want to come back on there we go um so you can set up online bill pay for things like your cell phone bill for your electric bill any of the regular bills and my water bills once a year uh my cell phone bill is uh once a month um so you can set up online bill pay whether it's once a month or once a year so that you don't even have to think about paying those bills and you don't have to go into this place to pay your bills so it's real convenient if you set up a bank account now for those of you that want to live off of your atm machine you're still only going to be able to get hundred and fifty dollars each time and you can do up to two times um a day with one card so if you have two or three different cards you could get them different times some of you have an account with a a bank like charles schwab or some other ones that they will refund those atm charges uh but you need to check that and see of the debit card that you're using if you're going to get stuck with that 5.25 or if you're going to have to pay it another one went out i'm gonna figure out this live stream thing i don't know how long it's going to take to get it down but i'm working on it i'm trying to get it better so the easy solution is for you to use the atm machine now some of you have like a paypal credit card or paypal account with quite a bit of money in there and if you open up an account with banismo then you can connect that to your paypal account so that you can move money from paypal right over to your banismo account and you'll have access to that also but instead of using the international wiring the two cheapest ways to get money into your account is to either use wise for transfers or ofx is very very popular with canadians if you're a us citizen you can also write a check from your u.s bank and you can deposit that into your kind of my bank account now some banks have a limit of three thousand or thirty five hundred dollars a month and that's more than enough to live on here in panama um other banks uh like benismo you can write a check for twenty five thousand dollars and deposit that into the account i think they charge twenty dollars for that for a check that's that big but if your check is only three thousand dollars then there's no charge for you just deposit a u.s check into your panama bank account so what you want to do is just plan ahead and you know every single month whether you need the money or not go ahead and deposit three thousand dollars into your account if you have the money you're going to put the 3 000 so that you can build up a balance um in your account to pay for things big purchases like if you wanted to buy a new sofa or a new bed or a car or you had some other kind of a big expense now a lot of places will take a credit card if you're going to buy groceries you can use your credit card even from your country you can use your credit card just watch out for any foreign transaction fees that they might charge many of the restaurants except for the fondas many of the restaurants will take a credit card also another light went out over here okay i just bought these today and i think i need to take them back so another you can use a credit card for a lot of different places but um not all places are going to take a credit card so you can't count on that happening you need to always have some cash with you because some places are not like if you go to fruit and vegetable stand you're going to take cash or cash if you go to a little panamanian restaurant that's four or five dollars a meal they're only going to take cash so many places only take cashier but if you go to a big box store to buy clothes or buy groceries or things like that you can use your foreign credit card or you can use your pan in my debit card to be able to pay for anything so let me look at my notes now one of the things that you need to be aware of is luckily canadians don't have this problem but if your u.s citizen and you open up a panama bank account you do have to report that panama bank account to the u.s government if the bank account stays below ten thousand dollars then it's just a check mark on your 1040 tax return they'll say do you have any offshore bank accounts you click a check mark yes i have a offshore bank account if you um if your account goes over 10 000 then there's some special forms that you have to fill out that go to the irs and also another form that goes to the treasury department they actually want to know um what's the name of the bank what's your account number what was the high balance over the last year so all those things you're going to have to report if your account is 10 000 or more even if it's just for one day and it's 10 000 you'll have to report those things the other thing that's really nice about panama bank accounts is that they pay a pretty high interest rate most banks here are going to pay two percent interest uh benismo has a special savings account and i have it and it pays two and a half percent annually but they actually pay you interest every single day so every day it's compounding and compounding and compounding so you earn a lot of interest on your panama bank accounts much more than you would in other countries and this is just a regular savings it's not a cd the problem is um that you that's considered income so canadians if you are a non-resident as a canadian then you don't have to report that income in canada but if you're not considered or deemed a non-resident canadian you'll have to pay in you'll have to pay taxes on the interest that you earn on your panama bank accounts u.s citizens have to report the interest that you earn on your panama bank accounts that's considered income and you're required to pay taxes on your worldwide income in panama so um you are going to have to to have this additional filing possibly reporting that's necessary if you have a pen in my bank account but i can tell your life is going to be so much easier if you open up a pan in my bank account i'm sorry about this lighting problem everybody this one used to work good there we go but it's not so um the other thing that you need to take into consideration whenever you're going to move to panama is there's going to be some upfront cost you're going to have to pay your immigration attorney for getting a visa so you need to find out what that is and they may have uh some of them have a bank account that like a chase bank account that you can deposit into some of the attorneys take a credit card uh for payment for getting your visa and some of them will want cash for getting a visa so you need to find out from your attorney um how you need to pay for getting a visa somewhat half of the money up front half of the money after you get your permanent visa so you need to find out what that is so calculate what all those upfront costs are going to be getting a visa is one you know getting here if you're getting pets that you're moving here that's going to be some additional expenses you're going to have to have your first month's wrench plus a security deposit for paying rent um and let's say that's you know thousand dollars a month that's two thousand dollars that you're going to need instead of bringing a lot of cash with you it would be so much easier to open up a pan in my bank account wire the money and then you can use that money to pay for different things so i'm sorry that i'm not very good at this live stream thing and then i'm having lighting problems constantly it's always something here but i'm trying and i'm going to do the best that i can so um the other thing that you're going to have to when you first move here you're going to have to stock up your refrigerator with groceries and you can use your credit card to buy groceries but if you go to a fruit and vegetable stand like i went there today i got two pineapples two papaya i got a sandia it's a watermelon i got some cantaloupe bananas plantains i got all kinds of things and my total bill was 17 they don't take credit cards or debit cards there so you need to have some cash with you whenever you go to these fruit and vegetable stands you get a lot of food for very little money whenever you go there so the other thing is that i want to talk about is getting your insurance whenever you get your insurance here many of those will if you get health insurance here then many of those are going to write a policy for you if you already have a visa you have to already be in the process of getting a visa and all of those will take a debit card or a credit card for payment you'll actually fill out a an authorization form uh for them to ding your credit card and they can be once a month or month a quarter depending on how you've set it up on how you want to get paid insurance you can either pay by the month by the quarter or you can pay it annually or semi-annually so you just let them know how you want to pay it and they can charge your credit card they can charge your credit card in another country or they can charge your debit or credit card here in panama so those are the main things that you need to know about getting money here is that it's so much easier if you open up a pound in my bank account if you keep the balance under ten thousand dollars and you're a us citizen then they're only reporting you have to do as a check mark on your 1040 you don't have to do any additional filing with the irs or with the treasury department so you might want to keep it under ten thousand dollars so you might be thinking oh well what if i have eight thousand dollars in one bank and eight thousand dollars in another bank and they both never went over ten thousand dollars well that's not how it works with the irs it's the total amount that you have in foreign bank accounts so let's say you had eight thousand dollars in a bank in panama and seven thousand dollars in a bank in mexico and seven thousand dollars in a bank in hong kong you'd have to report all three of those even though none of them ever went over ten thousand dollars the total amount that was in them was over ten thousand dollars so that has to be reported so if you are a canadian uh the only way that you can avoid filing tax returns in canada is if you are declared a non-resident if you don't fill out the forms to become a non-resident which means that you also cannot have any significant real estate holdings in canada then you're going to have to file a tax return in canada if you are a u.s citizen unfortunately you have to file a tax return um on everything and you have to pay taxes social security you're going to have to pay taxes on any income that you make anywhere in the world you're going to have to pay taxes on so some of you might be wondering well what about your social security check or that pension that you get in canada you know how are you going to get that money here once again you can open up a bank account in panama then you can wire the money here now the banks in panama because they use the us dollar they only accept checks from u.s banks so if you wanted to get your social security check direct deposited into panama bank account there are some forms that you can fill out and you can have a direct deposited into your panama bank account for social security most other pensions from independent companies they're not going to do direct deposit in japan in my bank account same thing with your military retirement um they're not going to do direct deposit of that into your bank account so you'll still need to maintain an account in your country and then you can wire the money here either using wise or ofx or an international bank transfer which costs even more or get cash out of the agm machine and then deposit it into your pan in my bank account there is one other way that you can get access to money here and that's western union now there are western union offices all throughout panama so you can send yourself money through western union and then go there to pick it up and that might be a cheaper alternative than using an atm machine you just need to determine where the closest atm where the closest western union office is to you so that you can get access to that money so let me check my notes real quick and see if i left anything out so okay so someone had asked me before will landlords accept a foreign check can you pay your rent with a foreign check or can you pay your rent with a credit card if you're renting an airbnb um then usually you can make that payment through airbnb with a credit card but once you get to panama and you're paying your rent they're going to want you cannot give them a foreign check they're going to want cash the crazy thing is here in panama is they're going to actually give you um your their bank account so they'll say well here's my bank account at banco general and you can just deposit the bank write the money right into my bank account so that's another thing you can set up with online bill pay is that you can set it up so it goes from your panama bank to their pound in my bank account and you don't even have to go into the bank to make the payment it's really convenient especially if you're out of town whenever it's time to pay rent for some reason you can just use online bill to pay to pay your rent and any other bills that come in on a regular basis so i really encourage you to get a pen in my bank account when you get here um now someone had asked i talked a little bit about paypal if you have a paypal account and you'd like to link that to your panama bank account the only way only bank that allows that is banismo bank and there's something called nick well n-e-q-u-i-l so just do a google search for nickwell and benismo and it has information about how you can link your uh your paypal account to your panama bank account so those are the main things i wanted to tell you you really need to get a bank account um so that it's easier to get everything and it's not that hard if i transfer money from my bank in texas from bank of america to my panama bank and i do it before noon the money's there in about one hour if i do an afternoon the money doesn't get there until the next day i have another account at chase and it's usually if i so long as i make the transfer before two o'clock in the afternoon then it's going to get there right away so it's really easy for you to get the money quickly into your account it's going to cost about 50 dollars if you use international transfers but it's fast and it's easy so now i'm going to open it up for about 30 minutes i'm going to open it up for your questions you will need to type your question into um you're going to need to type your questions in and then i will highlight them and i'll answer it so john zella that's how i paid my landlord a deposit so zella doesn't work in panama unless your landlord has a u.s bank account if they have a u.s bank account then you can use zella but otherwise that's not going to work you also can't do an ach transfer from a canadian bank to a panama bank or u.s bank to a panama bank another question from steve i plan to spend three months in panama later this year do banks accept cashiers check or certified checks no banks and panama do not accept cashiers check are certified checks they do not take travelers checks either and um so they're not going to do any of those things at all you're going to need to open up a pound of my bank account if you want to be able to wire money into your camp but they won't take a cashier's check certified check and nobody in panama is going to take travelers checks so ellen says it's the largest bill uh panama that a panamanian will take so some places they just don't have change for a hundred dollar bill and some places do for example i bought a bunch of flowers a couple of weeks ago and it was like eighty dollars worth of flowers and i gave them a hundred dollar bill because i just happened to have one and she didn't have the twenty dollars in change to give to me so she had to walk over to one of the other vendors that was selling flowers and get changed for the hundred dollar bill so that she could give me the money back so it's better in panama to use smaller bills um 20s ideally 20 is going to be the biggest bill that you're going to use so good question jackie buying a car required up to ten thousand dollars how can us citizens get around that so to buy a car and if it's gonna cost more than ten thousand dollars there's two ways to get around it sometimes if you have a contract and you've already got the car inspected and you know everything's going to be good and you're going to buy it you can just wire the money into the seller's bank account instead of your own bank account also we have some recommendations at panama relocation tours and our complete pattern relocation guide of some car brokers that you can work with the car broker will help you find the car they'll get it inspected they'll facilitate do all the paperwork take care of everything so you can also go through the car broker sometimes your attorney will also offer to get involved maybe for a little fee then your attorney could get involved that they can accept that money and then they could pay the person that you're buying the car from so how long does it take to open up an account that's a good question daniel it takes it depends on which bank that you're going to go to if you go to bonismo bank which only has a 50 uh requirement to open up the account it takes one to two hours if you don't go during lunchtime so don't go like between 11 and 1 to open up the account by the way they close at 3. so you should definitely go earlier in the morning and you should be able to get your account open in less than two hours some of the other accounts like multi-bank are global or some other banks that have online banking in english and spanish it could take five days to get your account open with them because they're required to get all of the initial paperwork and then they have to send it to their office in panama city for them to review everything and approve the account before they can officially open it up [Music] so someone i saw someone but i can't find it they ask if you can open up a panama bank account online and no you have to go in person to open up a panama bank account so it's not possible to open up a bank account they have to meet you you have to assign things um you have to file a bunch of paperwork so you have to do it in person so hey jose says if we travel from panama for two to three months for an exploratory trip what amount of cash would be good to bring for lodging private tours transportation and meals so um you're lodging um you can probably pay for a lot of that with a credit card and um so you know use credit card as much as you can but for other things it just depends on what kind of meals you're going to eat if you eat it fonda's every day and it's five bucks if you're going to eat at some expat owned restaurant or it's 15 a meal um this so the answer is it depends i would figure at least a hundred dollars a day per person to be on the safe side and make sure and bring several debit cards with you by the way speaking of those debit cards it's a good idea to call your bank and let them know that you're going to be traveling in panama that you'll be using that debit card in panama otherwise the very first time you stick it in the machine they may think it's a fraudulent transaction and they might freeze your card and then you can be on the phone for hours trying to get in touch with someone to get it unfrozen so make sure if you're going to use any credit cards or debit cards in panama before you come notify your bank that you'll be traveling in panama and that you'll be using that card so clint says bring three years of tax returns when opening a bank account anticipate all all documents so that's might be true for some banks but most banks only require two years of tax returns or you can just get the tax certification letter that says you've paid your taxes the best thing is is to determine which bank you're going to be opening up an account with and send them an email or call them there's a toll-free number you can call right on their account and ask them what what do you need to open up a bank account many of the banks if you could open it up in chrome if you don't speak spanish and then it'll translate it into english but many of the banks have the requirements for opening up an account right on their website so then you know exactly what's needed before you come so the question is is there western union in boquete there is the western union office is inside the medex pharmacy which is in the sandora plaza it's a new plaza right on main street so that's where the office is there did you say bonismo online banking is available in english yes benismo is available in english but you only get that english part after you open up your account then they give you a special login to the english part of the account does my social security debit card work in panama well first of all i didn't know social security had debit cards but any debit card will work in panama i would just suggest that you call that toll-free number on the back of your debit card and let them know you're going to be traveling in panama otherwise the first time you stick in an atm machine they may freeze it so i've heard kelly says i've heard people having issues when their signature didn't match exactly can you address this yes that's definitely an issue here in panama that whenever you open up whenever you get a visa then you're you have to sign the name exactly as it is on your passport so you have to use your middle name and you have to use the signature has to be exact looking exactly the same same thing whenever you open up a bank account whatever the signature is that's on your passport it has to look exactly like the signature on your passport so you might try practicing signing your name so it looks just like your passport signature before you get here before you go in to open up that bank account so bill says i've looked at wise and it wasn't showing panama as a transfer option for the u.s so it is panama is definitely an option i've used wise to transfer money to panama so i know that it works for panama and anthony says how do you keep a u.s bank account with a panama address so you can keep whenever you move to panama most likely you're going to order things from amazon every once in a while or your kids might want to send you a birthday present every once in a while or get things from walmart sent to panama so the way you do that is you open up an account with a mail forwarding company here in panama it doesn't cost anything to open up that account they'll give you an address in miami and that's where when you order products from amazon or walmart you'll have it sent to miami so you can use that miami address on your u.s bank account uh so dave says can you speak a bit about how our u.s inflation might affect panama so inflation is definitely something that's happening everywhere but it's a little bit different here in panama because in the united states you know they're printing money like it's candy right now they're just printing printing printing money and that's not helping the inflation situation at all even though panama uses the us dollar there's no central bank here they don't print money so panama has a completely market driven society if they don't sell a product like our service like going through the panama canal or selling you a corporation or selling things they have no way of getting getting more us dollars so the big difference is is that the united states they're printing money like crazy and it's causing problems with inflation in panama it's completely market driven yes prices have gone up in panama from when i first moved here almost 12 years ago next month will be 12 um years so deb prices have definitely gone up just because um of supply and demand and because the cost of gasoline has gone up so getting a product from one place to another so inflation is everywhere it's just a whole lot less here in panama because we don't print money so if you have extensive rx needs uh where would you send requests to find out if you can get the rx i'm planning so rx means a prescription i guess i'm planning regular medical procedures every eight weeks in panama city so there's some a couple of different ways that you can find out if your medications are available if you go to our website panamarelocationtourist.com and in the upper right hand corner there's a search feature if you type in the word drug g-r-u-g or drugs we have a report that is the 50 most common medications that are prescribed in north america and if they're available in panama and what they caused in panama some medications are not available here and some of medications in panama cost a lot more here in panama so one of the things that you might do if you have medicare or insurance that you're keeping where you live is you can just get that prescription filled at amazon pharmacy and then using a male forwarding company get it shipped to panama and then you might be able to reduce your cost significantly if you do that okay so juanita you say you are able to wire money from your u.s account to panama account how does it work since if you're not in the usa so if you have a bank account in puerto rico you can wire money from your puerto rico bank account to panama if you have a bank account in canada you can wire money from your canadian bank account to panama if you have a bank account in germany you can wire the money from your german bank account to panama so wherever you are in the world if you have a bank account you can get the money sent to panama it's not just for the united states so hi jackie how about the agenda point on how to get twelve hundred dollars in income tax free when you live in panama so alan thanks for bringing that up so this isn't about necessarily moving money to panama uh how to get your money here but it's how to keep as much money here in panama as possible and it's only for u.s citizens the potential this particular one is only for u.s citizens if you um are still working and living in panama full-time so if you have an online business if you're working for a u.s employer or a foreign employer um so any kind of work that you're doing in panama as a us citizen you can earn a hundred and twelve thousand 000 and it qualifies for what's called the foreign earned income exclusion so just do a google search for that foreign earn income exclusion and go to the irs website and read about what it takes to qualify for that you need to be paying the live overseas full-time you can't be back in the united states more than 30 days and you also need to um then you can just exempt that much so let's say you made two hundred thousand dollars in one year and this has to be earned income it can't be passive income like social security but if you made two hundred thousand dollars in one year the fir if you live overseas full-time in panama or anywhere else um you can make up a hundred and twelve thousand dollars in income and not pay any taxes on it at all um you only have to pay taxes on the amount that you're over the one hundred and twelve thousand dollars uh so linda says can you give a scenario you're aware of that demonstrates the foreign earned income exclusion so this is a good example so i have um another business that i do online training for real estate investors and i run that business from panama i live here in panama um so um and any money that i make from that that's less than 112 000 then that qualifies i also sell products on amazon i have another i've got i like multiple streams of income so i sell products on amazon ebooks and other things that i sell on amazon so that's all earned outside of panama i can make up two hundred twelve thousand dollars and not have to pay any taxes on it in the united states the other thing is panama this is really important panama has a territorial taxing system which means you only pay taxes on any money that you make on selling products or selling services here in panama so because i sell things on amazon or because i sell online training to people in other countries that product is not being served here in panama so i don't know any taxes in panama and i can exclude 112 000 off my income tax return so next question by the way if any of you have a question you can type it into the chat box i think it's below the video might be to the right of the video but if you try uh type it in then i can see it over there i can't get to all of the questions but i'm getting to as many as i can so how does an ordinary letter to and from the states get mailed i've heard a single letter it's very expensive to mail so just an ordinary letter that you want to send to the united states or send here you've got two ways of sending a letter one is you there's a post office in every town there's a panamanian post office and you can go to the post office and you can mail that letter and i think it's like 75 cents it doesn't cost very much to mail the letter it might take two weeks to get there and may not arrive but you can just use the regular post office to mail the letter the other for receiving letters you can have a letter sent to let's say you lived in boquete you can say bocce panama general delivery and then have your name and you put your cell phone number on there and it would just go to the post office and they would call you and let you know uh whenever your letter comes in the other way that you can do it and it's going to cost just a regular the cost to send a letter or you can use the mail forwarding service and then they charge 50 cents uh for getting just a regular letter so it's still not very much 50 cents to get a regular letter so let me get to this other question first are social security payments affected by the 12 000 income exclusion no sharing unfortunately they're not um the um twelve thousand dollar hundred and twelve thousand dollar income exclusion is only for active earned income and unfortunately social security is not active earned income um you you have to pay taxes on social security you have to pay taxes on pension um you have to pay taxes on anything that's passive income but if you're actually working and earning money um then you can qualify for that income exclusion inheriting law in panama is a real inheriting law impediment is for real state and bank money i'm sorry but i don't understand that question if you could rephrase it and post it again i would appreciate it so clint said if you're coming from california and you're moving here permanently you may want to consider surrendering your driver's license that's a good point and that's something that we talk about during the panama relocation tour if you live in a state like california or new york that has really high income taxes i would say that you need to change your residency um go to florida or go to texas where there's no state income tax and get a driver's license there i think south dakota is another one um you know i don't think you even have to go to south dakota to get a driver's license but go to some state that is um not uh that doesn't have high income taxes before you move to panama otherwise if you're a us citizen not only do you have to file a tax return with the federal government but you may still have to follow a tax return with the state where you are now if you still have significant uh real estate holdings or other assets that are in that state you may not you may still have to file a tax return um best thing to do is talk to a cpa in that state and ask them what you need to do to sever the ties so you don't have to file that tax return or pay taxes in that state anymore um okay how do we get our prescription from a local doctor in david so um no if you so twyla if you get a prescription from a local doctor in panama it can only be filled at a panama pharmacy um you can't fill it through amazon pharmacy amazon pharmacy only accepts prescriptions from u.s doctors now there are some really good canadian online pharmacies that'll take a prescription from anybody so you might do a google search for canadian online pharmacy and find out about that so let me rephrase that how do we get our prescription from a panamanian doctor translated to amazon you don't the amazon will not accept a prescription from a panamanian doctor so some other questions that have come in another question they came in is people have asked me so many times if they have to give up their citizenship whenever they move to panama and you do not have to give up your citizenship so when you move to panama full-time you'll need to get a residency visa to be able to live here full-time and that visa gives you permission to live in panama indefinitely that does not entitle you to citizenship at all there's another process completely different process that you have to go through to get citizenship five years after you get your permanent visa then you can apply for panamanian citizenship but you're not going to lose your citizenship in the country where you are just because you got residency in another country so dickie says va disability is tax-free and i don't file with the irs how to go about getting a bank account so that's right your va disability is tax-free but if you're getting social security then you're going to have to pay taxes on that so to get a bank account you can look on any of the we have a list of the different banks in our complete pattern my relocation guide that we recommend because they have online banking in english and spanish and you can look on there to see what their requirements are one of them is that you're going to have to prove that you don't owe any taxes to whether you filed a tax return or not you have to prove that you don't owe any taxes to the irs and if you go to irs.gov there's actually a little form that you can click on and you can fill out and they will send you something that says that you don't owe them any taxes so that information's on irs.gov so after residency visa how much time do we have to move personal goods valued at 10 000 also is that 10 000 per person it's 10 000 per household but keep in mind this has to be used items it can't be brand new things that you're shipping into panama so i've heard i've heard conflicting information so the best thing is talk to your immigration attorney i've heard that you have to move it within a year and i've also heard that you have two years to be able to move your household goods to panama but check with your immigration attorney to get the latest information i don't know what the latest news is on that i'm sure it's less than two years and probably not more than one at the very least so i don't know that must be a personal conversation going on with some people here um are there good elementary schools for my nine-year-old son in vulcan boquete or dolega puerto rios so um greg there are some if you just go to the public schools they don't have a very good reputation for the public schools and it would be in spanish or spanish and my guess is that your nine-year-old son probably doesn't speak spanish fluently um so there's some really good schools in vulcan um that's 75 dollars a month for your nine-year-old son to go to a school in vican there's an international school in bulkache also and there are some international schools in david but they cost a lot more than 75 dollars so i think david has two international schools boquete has one it's a little south of town close to al francis and then there's a really good one in vulcan also so trial if we find a car to buy in panama do auto dealerships finance a car if the car is more than ten thousand dollars so no that's not the way that it works in panama dealerships do not do any financing for cars at all what they'll do is send you to a bank and you have to get financing through the bank the bank is usually going to want 30 down and they're going to charge like 15 interest rate so it's not the best way to buy a car uh but it's not like buying a car in other countries where you just go in the dealership does all the paperwork you walk out with the car and the keys and everything you have to go to bank it could take 30 days to get approval for that financing for a car purchase from a bank also so linda says what's the best time of year to move to panama and why so any time of year is a good time to move to panama because it's just such a beautiful country however i can tell you that in october and november we get more rain in those two months um it usually doesn't start raining until about two o'clock in the afternoon so you're going to get need to get all your things try to get all your things moved into the house and get your running around done before two o'clock in the afternoon if you want to avoid being out in the rain but ever you know people move here in october november all the time with no problems at all anytime is a good time to move to panama so gerald said can you import a car you can import a car if you have a visa if you don't have a visa you cannot import a car however you might not want to import your car go to our website panamarelocationtours.com and look at the very top where it's the search feature is and type in shipping a car and read the article that i have about shipping a car and you'll understand why perhaps it's better not to ship your car here so gabby says i understand charles schwab offers no fee atm transaction um so is that a good banking option that's a very good banking option but it's actually not no fee atm transactions what they do is they reimburse you so every time you use your atm card uh your charles schwab a debit card here in panama you're still going to get charged 5.25 per transaction and then at the end of the month or within 30 days charles schwab will reimburse you for that transaction so it's not that you don't have to pay it up front you do so john does your tour take you to a place to get a panama prepaid sim for your cell phone so our tour whenever the tour starts then we get we start in panama city and there's a mall right next to the place where we start and on the third floor there's five different cell phone companies there that they're all places where you can get that prepaid sim card for your cell phone but you may not need that you may have depending on what your cell phone service is right now you may be able to just use your regular cell phone it may already have international calling and international data this is something kind of crazy my cell phone here in panama is i think 27 a month with unlimited data and unlimited calling when i travel outside of panama anywhere in the world i still i don't need to get anything special my cell phone works just fine in other countries i was in mexico for the whole month in november i could do calling my data whatsapp everything uh for no additional fee no additional charge at all to use it in other countries so you might want to check with your cell phone provider first and see what coverage that you have overseas before you get a sim card so we've got about five more minutes for me to answer your questions how much cash can we bring on arrival so bobby you can bring an unlimited amount of cash with you but the current rules and restrictions are that if you bring more than ten thousand dollars in cash might even be seventy five hundred that might have changed it you have to declare it so if you have a lot of cash with you there's a declaration or customs form that you fill out make sure you declare it because if you bring that money in and you don't declare it they'll confiscate it so make sure and disclose disclose disclose be honest um are there lots of used cars available there are plenty of used cars available greg i've seen cars for as little as three four thousand i'm not sure i'd want to buy one of those i wouldn't trust it i would say to get a good car that's pretty reliable on the low end you're probably going to spend about six or seven thousand um if you want to get a like the last car that i bought is a hyundai santa fe um and i bought it in 2021 but it was a 2020 car that only had about 3 000 miles and i paid 20 000 dollars for that but you know there's plenty of cars you can buy for seven eight ten thousand dollars here in panama so if bank doesn't charge sofi bank doesn't charge a foreign i've never heard of sofi bank but it's nice that they don't charge a foreign transaction fee that might be true but the problem is when you put your debit card in the atm machine in panama um it doesn't matter what that where that debit card is from it's going to say if you want this 250 dollars you have to pay five dollars and twenty five cents and you have to click yes i agree that's the only way you're going to get the money and then this other bank whoever they are charles schwab or sofi or whoever they might be they will reimburse you just because it says no foreign transaction fees doesn't mean that you get out of paying it up front you're going to have to pay it up front and then get reimbursed for it so okay good good advice clint yeah whenever you buy a car in panama and that's why we recommend using the car brokers because they know which cars um are the most reliable here which ones they have parts for toyota hyundai um kia those are all cars that are very very common here they also have ford dealerships and chevrolet dealerships but it's not as common but they do have those dealerships the problem with many cars here though is that the only parts that you can get you have to get them from the dealership and they cost a lot more so make sure and investigate that a little bit too on not just the cost of the car up front but talk to a mechanic and say this what i did whenever i was buying my last car i said i'm considering getting a hyundai santa fe or the other one was a cbr or crv i don't remember who makes it and i asked my mechanic which one is better because i've heard really good things about both of them and he said well i can tell you that if um which one you see in the shop the most he said we don't see that either one of them in the shop very often but if a crv and it might be cbr i don't know cars if that car comes in here that the parts for it costs four times more than it does for the hyundai santa fe so that was my deciding factor on going with the santa fe um do you offer tours for renters so these are the kind of tours that we have we have um one tour that is the our signature tour that we've been doing for 12 years it's an all-inclusive six day seven night tour that goes all the way across the country showing you the most popular places to live during that time we show you a rental property every single day in the different areas sometimes it's a six hundred dollar rental sometimes it's a fifteen hundred dollar rental so we show you different price points so that's one kind of chore that we do and if you go to our website and click on book a tour you can see the dates that we have available we were completely sold out for 2022 so we added eight more tour dates um the other tour that we offer is our private tours and those are only two hundred dollars a day for a couple and it's just for specific area so we get you acquainted with the area all the different neighborhoods the pros and cons we show you where the best grocery stores are the best restaurants and then we can show you five ten rentals a day that are in your price point so if you want someone to help you find a rental a private tour guide is a good way to do that if you just go to a real estate agent they might have two or three rentals in your price point then you have to go to another one and then you have to go to another one so your private tour guide will get all these rentals lined up for you to see and you'll be able to see a lot of rentals in a short period of time so if you go to our website panama relocation tours and under the tours tab um click on private tours and you can learn a little bit more about our private chores so love the tour i'm so glad you did so another question what can a single person expect to spend per month so john that's a very subjective question you know i know one single person that they are perfectly happy in their one bedroom one bath um house that they're renting for 300 a month and they love it another person would never want to live there um and they're i know someone that's spending 1700 a month for a one bedroom condo with an ocean view and coronado so the prices are all over the place and what the thing is about panama is regardless of what your budget is whether you have a thousand dollars a month to spend or four thousand dollars or two thousand dollars there's a good place for you here in panama regardless of what your budget is there's a good place so that's the important thing to know um so i'm pretty sure jackie said there's no chart charging points i don't know what you mean by charging points if you mean for electric cars um in the whole country there are six places to charge an electric car now six in the whole country so electric cars haven't really caught on yet here it's not a thing yet um having gone on a tour a few months ago was extremely helpful to hear the daily topics on the bus with the group worth every penny thank you jackie lisa thank you so much for your comment and i'm so glad you enjoyed the tour and sounds like you're going to be moving to panama pretty soon we look forward to having you down here so i know that there's a lot of other questions that you guys have and i can't stay on here all night long because i have um some other plans for this evening that i have to get to in just a little bit but i want to thank you so much for joining me for our saturday live stream we'll be doing this every single saturday i'm still working on learning how to do a live stream getting the lighting right it keeps going out getting the microphone right it might take me a little while but eventually i'm going to get this figured out and if any of you have tips on how to do a better on all ears to learn how to do it so thanks again for joining me for the live stream today i hope this information about how to get your money to panama to pay for your rent and to pay for a car to pay for groceries i hope that was helpful for you to understand these things up front thanks so much hope you have a great weekend everybody bye

Channel: Panama Relocation Tours

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Id: 3QSH2YBdg2U

Length: 62min 41sec (3761 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 06 2022