A chance encounter—and a glimpse of what’s coming next…
“Hey, Jeff! Jeff!”
The call rang out; my head popped up. “Who would be calling my name… here,” I thought to myself. The “here I’m talking about is Caminha, Portugal, an ancient, cobblestoned town hemmed into the northern-most region of Portugal and bounded by mountains, ocean, and a wide river that separates Portugal from Spain.
It’s not somewhere where anyone would or should know me, except maybe for the lady who owns one of my favorite restaurants. (She always recognizes me, no matter how long I’ve been away—one of the benefits of that balmy, slow pace of living here.)
I looked around and saw a guy approaching. I’d seen him moments earlier as I turned to walk across a small park, playing pick-up basketball.
“Hey! Wow—never expected I’d see you here. I read Field Notes; I read you and Ronan. You guys are why I’m here!”
His name is Eros. He’s from San Francisco’s Bay Area.
He’d recently moved to Caminha, he told me. After reading about my life here in Portugal, along with some of Ronan’s insights on Caminha, he’d flown to Portugal to have a look-see, and realized that Ronan and I were right in all that we’ve written about the town—that Caminha really is a great little community for living a comfortable, affordable, laid-back lifestyle.
We had a short conversation—I had to find my wife shopping at a nearby Saturday flea market—but one of his comments really resonated with me…
He told me that he and his family had bought a house in a nearby community and that he was just a few minutes’ walk to the ocean. The price: in the range of €350,000 (~$410,000)… for an eight-bedroom house!
He’s splitting it into three units—one for him and his family to live in, the other two for rental income.
“I’m curious,” I said, “how much would you have had to spend in the Bay Area for something similar?”
“Actually, before we moved, we were looking to buy in Marin (a gorgeous and posh area just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Fran proper). We were gonna have to spend over a million… for a tear-down.”
Like I said—and as Ronan always says—the value proposition in truly beautiful and picturesque parts of Europe is mind-boggling to what American homebuyers are accustomed to. This is not an apples and oranges comparison. It’s more like a Pink Lady to Granny Smith comparison—different in key ways, but still very similar.
Regardless, the main point of today’s dispatch, and what really stood out for me is that this conversation happened at all.
That someone who reads Field Notes ended up living in Portugal—in Caminha, no less, one of my favorite spots in the country.
It’s these moments that I really like, when I can connect with people whose lives I’ve touched in some way. I felt a similar feeling last October in Dublin, Ireland, when International Living held the first-ever “El Jefe Event,” what we officially christened as The Future of Wealth Summit.
I’ve spoken at a lot of IL events over the last seven or eight years. All of them have been large soirees with 200-600, sometimes even more people. Future of Wealth was about 120 or so—a much more intimate affair. I was noticing attendees becoming fast friends and all hanging out and going to dinner together. It was a totally different, almost familial vibe.
I got to spend a lot of time talking with the people who actually read my words—so much so that I lost my voice from all the chitchat the first night and struggled through my presentations the next morning.
Still, it’s why I’m really delighted to let you know that we’re running it back, and the second ever Future of Wealth Summit will be taking place this October, just before the midterm elections. It’s being held in Dublin again, at the same historic hotel overlooking Dublin Bay.
That sounds very salesman-ish, and that’s absolutely not my intention. But the vibe of the original El Jefe Event is one I’m looking forward to rekindling, particularly because of its focus on what comes next—after the midterms and as we move into the crisis years I foresee in 2027-28, and through the end of the decade.
And… what I see coming in the 2030s. Hint: Better than most people might imagine, though for a very different America.
But I’ll save all of that for the conference room of the Royal Marine Hotel in Dún Laoghaire, Ireland (Dun-Leery—Irish spelling and pronunciation don’t always get along.)
Hopefully, I’ll see you there. And you can say “Hey, Jeff! Jeff!” and we can shoot the breeze.
