Jean Galea

Health, Wealth & Happiness

  • Start Here
  • Guides
    • Beginner’s Guide to Investing
    • NFTs
    • Cryptocurrencies
    • Stocks
    • P2P Lending
    • Real Estate
    • Forex
    • CFD Trading
    • Start and Monetize a Blog
  • My Story
  • Blog
    • Cryptoassets
    • P2P Lending
    • Real estate
  • Consultancy
    • Consult with Jean
    • Consult a Lawyer on Taxation and Corporate Setups
    • Crypto & NFT Consultancy
  • Podcast
  • Search

Spain’s New Wealth Tax in 2023 – How To Drive Talented People Out of the Country

Last updated: January 01, 20232 Comments

wealth tax spain

Spanish politicians just introduced a draft law for a new wealth tax. They say it’s a temporary tax, but we all know what a lie that is, considering the previous wealth tax system was also supposed to be temporary when introduced in 2008, and it exists to this day.

This is just another pig-headed populist move to appease the ignorant masses who believe that robbing Peter to pay Paul is a sustainable and good way to achieve prosperity.

What will happen is that more and more entrepreneurs and high net worth people will move to other countries, perhaps neighboring Portugal which treats them much better. Others will just implement structures that eliminate their wealth tax liability. Wealth taxes have been abolished the world over, precisely because they are unjust and don’t even achieve their purported aims of helping grow the government coffers during tough times.

How Will it Work?

Net wealth will be taxed from 3.7 million, throughout all Spanish regions (including Madrid and Andalusia which had previously discounted all wealth tax for their residents), the rates are tiered and go up to 3.5%. The valuation rules are the same as those of the current Wealth Tax, with the possibility to apply the family business exemption and the Income Tax/Wealth Tax limits of 20/60. Both rules are a relief for many. For those under Beckham regime, the tax calculation remains similarly unchanged (based on Spanish assets only). Otherwise the wealth tax is based on worldwide assets unless the double taxation treaty in place between the two countries implies any exceptions.

If the law is approved before the end of the year, it will apply in 2022 (payable in 2023). As mentioned, they say it is temporary for 2 years, 2022 and 2023, but with the possibility of extension.

For tax residents in Catalunya, it will only impact those with assets above 10 million euro, as that will trigger the 3.5% rate versus the 2.75% applied in Catalunya. This is due to the current wealth tax implemented by autonomous regions being fully deductible in the new state wealth tax.

I expect that the new wealth tax regime will be challenged in the courts by Madrid and Andalucia, who have worked hard over the past years to promote freedom and friendliness towards entrepreneurs. They had abolished wealth tax in their regions, and the new wealth tax system is mostly a reaction to that fact.

A change in government whereby the socialists are no longer in charge is the only real possibility of removing the wealth tax once and for all and put an end to this stupidity.

Filed under: Expat life

My Favorite Podcasts in 2023

Last updated: January 01, 2023Leave a Comment

Here’s a list of my favorite podcasts in 2022. I’ve noted down my favorite crypto and NFT podcasts separately.

Politics & Economics

  • The Reason Interview – Nick Gillespie
  • EconTalk – Russ Roberts
  • Free Thoughts
  • Infinite Loops
  • Intelligence Squared

Tech

  • The a16z podcast
  • Building at the edges
  • Interdependence – Mat Dryhurst. Holly Herndon

Psychology, Philosophy and Spirituality

  • The Michael Shermer Show – Michael Shermer
  • Making Sense – Sam Harris
  • Skeptoid – Brian Dunning
  • You are Not so Smart – David McRaney
  • On Being – Krista Tippett
  • Where Should We Begin? – Esther Perel
  • Heart Wisdom – Jack Kornfield
  • No Stupid Questions – Stephen Dubner, Angela Duckworth

Life Mastery

  • The Tim Ferriss Show – Tim Ferriss
  • The Knowledge Project – Shane Parrish
  • The Better Human Show – David Rachford
  • The Productivity Show – Asian Efficiency
  • Lex Fridman Podcast – Lex Fridman

Health & Fitness

  • Huberman Lab – Andrew Huberman
  • The Peter Attiah Drive – Peter Attiah
  • Mind Pump – Various
  • Muscle Intelligence – Ben Pakulski
  • Neuro Athletics – Louisa Nicola
  • Rich Roll Podcast – Rich Roll

Business & Investing

  • Hidden Forces – Demetri Kofinas
  • Money For the Rest of Us – J David Stein
  • The Tropical MBA – Dan Andrews & Ian Schoen
  • Macrovoices – Erik Townsend
  • Masters in Business – Bloomberg
  • Odd Lots – Weisenthal, Alloway

Parenting

  • Respectful Parenting – Janet Lansbury

Science

  • Crowdscience
  • Science VS – Gimlet

Future

  • Interdependence

Filed under: Thoughts & Experiences

Living in the City Versus the Suburbs

Published: November 05, 20224 Comments

A question I’ve been contemplating lately is whether we should continue living in the city center or move to a house in the suburbs. The distinction between a city and a suburb isn’t clear-cut. While a city is the core of a metropolitan area, a suburb is an area on the periphery of city limits. Generally, cities have large populations over a small area, but suburbs can have even larger populations of hundreds of thousands or a million residents — just spread across a lot more square kilometers.

Here are a few thoughts on the subject.

Lockdown Experience

The COVID-19 lockdown has given us a taste of how life could be without the noise and air pollution produced by cars, trucks and most of all scooters/motorcycles in big cities. As a person who works from home, it was fantastic to be able to keep windows open during the day, breathe fresh air at any time and even smell the sea when the wind was blowing inland. Along with those novelties, I started to cycle and exercise outside and found it extremely enjoyable. The streets were pretty much taken over by bicycles and runners in fact, and cycling shops recorded record sales during the lockdown months.

The day the lockdown was partially lifted was a big contrast. Cycling suddenly became much more dangerous and frankly, the noise and pollution killed all the joy of it. Moreover, being on lockdown also offered another perspective on how important or not it is to be surrounded by shops and activities as well as the importance of having a home that you enjoy.

I was born and raised in Malta, where the concept of cities and suburbs is blurred since you don’t really have a big central city; there are parts that look more like a city and others that feel more like rural living, but you never get the same feeling as living in a real city. Using personal means of transportation is a must and you get accustomed to needing 15-40 minutes to get anywhere important such as the university, work, beach, gym, etc.

City Life Experience

Although I’ve traveled a lot and visited many big cities, my first real experience of living in one was Barcelona, and I fell in love with the lifestyle instantly. I liken it to the experience of drinking Vodka and Red Bull mixed together (a favorite from back in the clubbing days in my early twenties although I wouldn’t recommend it). It’s exactly that feeling of losing some inhibitions and being more open to new ideas, plus the buzz and excitement of new opportunities that abound in a city like Barcelona.

Chiang Mai was another big city I had the experience of living in, although in a funny way it feels both more rural and way more congested and polluted than the typical city in Europe.

The upsides of living in a city:

  • More meetups and new experiences than you can even keep up with
  • Possibility of meeting an incredibly diverse set of people
  • Being challenged in new ways and possibly having to face some inner demons. I see this as a good thing if addressed correctly.

Looking back, I can see how life in a city has taken all the attributes of my character and amplified them. That meant that I was able to advance very rapidly in work and fitness due to the people I met, inspirational work spaces and meetups, and the wealth of sports facilities, athletes, and coaches. On the other hand, it also meant that some of the weak points of my character were also severely put to the test.

For example, it has always been really important for me to have a safe space, which I usually found at home and more specifically my room at home. As long as I had that one comfortable space where I could shut off the rest of the world and recharge (reading, writing, video games, etc) I felt safe and at peace. I am very sociable but I need to be able to retreat to that space when I need to. Life in the city for the most part robbed me of that space. This brings me to the next point.

Life with Kids

When you have kids, you really need more space, and city apartments start looking much less attractive. Kids can still benefit of the proximity to things in the city and the multitude of things they can do, but home life can be challenging especially if one or both parents are working from home.

Then there’s the question of schools. In our case, we ended up choosing a school that was quite far from the city center. That means a longish commute to and from the school on a daily basis, which gets tiring and expensive if you’re using taxis. I’ve since learned that for young families, proximity to their kids’ schools is usually the number one factor when they choose where to live.

Safety

One can argue that life in the suburbs is safer. There are fewer people, less traffic, and potentially a stronger neighboring community. On the other hand, if you’re being targeted by thieves, a house can in many cases be more vulnerable than an apartment.

Pollution

Suburbs clearly win out on this point. There’s less noise and less air pollution when compared to life in the city.

Transportation

With most suburbs, due to the fact that everything is much more spaced out, you will need to have one or more cars to function on a daily basis. This can mean less time spent walking and biking; two essential activities for health. You might need to regularly drive back to the city if you attend any activities there such as gyms, music or art lessons, etc.

Depending on where you live, the suburbs might also be hilly parts which make moving around even more uncomfortable and oblige you to use motorized transportation. This is the case in Barcelona and its immediate suburbs, for example. Cities tend to rise around flat plains and access to water historically, so they are more or less flat and easy to walk around, although there are exceptions of course.

Bottom Line

The main points in favor of suburb life are less pollution, more space, and perhaps a safer environment. In favor of cities, we have easier access to hospitals, restaurants and other institutions. We have definitely more cultural activities and diversity.

School proximity is also a factor but since some schools can also be within the city it really depends on what school you end up choosing.

I am still torn between the two options, so if you have any thoughts and have tried both, please do leave a comment below.

Filed under: Thoughts & Experiences

Where To Buy NFTs – The Biggest and Trusted Marketplaces

Published: October 29, 2022Leave a Comment

nft marketplaces

A question that most beginners in the NFT world face is this: where to buy NFTs from? The answer in most cases is: through an NFT marketplace. There are nuances, so we’ll be going through the landscape briefly and trying to make sense of things.

In this article, I’ll be dividing NFT marketplaces into two: Open and Curated.

I will also mention some tools that can be used to trade NFTs securely in a peer-to-peer fashion.

Open Marketplaces

An open marketplace is one where anyone can mint and sell NFTs. There is no need to apply and get accepted – creators just connect to a wallet and mint the NFTs. Existing owners of NFTs can list their NFTs for resale.

OpenSea

OpenSea is easily the largest NFT marketplace. When you see people talking about buying and selling NFTs, 99% of the time they are referring to doing this on OpenSea. The platform has seen trading volume skyrocket into millions of dollars during 2021.

By being an open marketplace, scams abound, so you need to be careful to get the right URL for a project, as there are usually copycats posing as the real project and trying to trick users into buying them. OpenSea verifies the largest projects and adds a checkmark next to their name. Look out for that, although some projects are having to wait days to get the checkmark, so not having a checkmark doesn’t mean the project is not trustworthy either.

Some alternatives to OpenSea are LooksRare, X2Y2 and Blur. All these marketplaces can be used to trade NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.

Objkt

Objkt is the equivalent of OpenSea on the Tezos blockchain. If you’re new to OpenSea, it’s probably a better idea to stick to buying NFTs on the Ethereum chain, but if you’re into generative art, it’s worth having a look at what’s available on Tezos. Typically art on this chain is much cheaper. For generative art on Tezos it’s also worth looking at FX Hash.

Rarible

Rarible is another open marketplace, however, unlike OpenSea, it is more focused on art assets such as books, music, albums, digital art, movies, photography, games, metaverses, domains, and memes.

Rarible integrates with OpenSea – minting on Rarible can populate the NFTs on OpenSea. Users can view the collectibles they created on Rarible on OpenSea and manage the NFTs on OpenSea as well. However, unlike OpenSea, Rarible only lists NFTs that were minted on Rarible.

If you’re looking for a higher risk/higher reward investment, look into the RARI token, which you can buy on Kraken.

Buy $RARI on Kraken

RARI has a total supply of 25m and is considered to be a utility token. By owning RARI tokens, users gain the ability to submit and vote on proposals to change its rules. This includes voting on possible fee changes, how those fees are spent and the rules governing creator promotion.

It is important to note that voting with RARI is non-binding, and that the Rarible company still needs to accept user decisions and implement them. However, Rarible’s goal is to eventually transfer power to a software-based system controlled by users called the Rarible DAO.

The idea behind buying the RARI token is to gain exposure to the growing NFT and digital content market or to have a say in how one of the leading NFT marketplaces develops.

Curated Marketplaces

A curated marketplace determines which NFTs are allowed to be minted, posted and sold on it.

Compared to an open marketplace, a curated marketplace is more limited and exclusive, requiring artists to apply and be accepted before being able to mint or sell NFTs in an attempt to keep fraud down and quality high.

SuperRare

SuperRare’s marketplace focuses on a limited number of hand-picked artists. Though aspiring creators can submit an artist profile form, entry barriers are high. Artists must submit their work for approval before it can be minted and listed on SuperRare’s marketplace.

Foundation

Foundation’s marketplace is community-led, so artists invite new artists to join the platform and mint their NFTs. Creators can access the “creator invites” feature after selling their first NFT. Foundation also has OpenSea integration, so by minting on Foundation, the NFT can automatically be displayed on OpenSea.

KnownOrigin

KnownOrigin focuses on digital art. It is more difficult for creators to get accepted onto its platform. Artists submit their artwork in .jpeg or .gif format to the KnownOrigin gallery. As of April 2nd, 2021, applications are closed to creators.

Nifty Gateway

Nifty Gateway offers crypto assets and art called Nifties. Nifty Gateway partners with top creators, brands, athletes and artists, so it is difficult to get accepted for crypto art – only famous artists, brands, and celebrity creators will be selected to use the platform. Collectors can even buy items for sale on OpenSea using Nifty Gateway and pay using a credit card.

MakersPlace

MakersPlace also offers digital art. MakersPlace is invite-only, so an invited artist will fill out the creator application and sign and mint its NFT.

P2P Trading

You can also exchange NFTs in a P2P fashion on the following platforms:

  • NFT Trader
  • Sudoswap
  • Swap.kiwi

This is useful if you strike a deal with someone who is willing to buy/sell within a project’s Discord channel. This happens a lot and is a great way to find good deals.

Filed under: Money, NFTs

Net Worth Goals For Investors and Entrepreneurs Aged 35-45

Last updated: November 09, 20222 Comments

net worth 35-45 years old

Over the past years, I’ve spoken to many entrepreneurs and investors in my age group (35-45), and one of the questions I like to ask is what their net worth goal is, irrespective of where they’re currently at. It’s a question that is designed to make them think about what is the amount of money that would cover all their dreams at the moment and foreseeable future, while also being believable.

Interestingly enough, it turns out that almost everyone’s answer falls around the same figure: 10 million dollars.

Now, that’s a lot of money, especially if you come from a modest background. My net worth in my mid-twenties was practically zero, and if you were to talk to me about these kinds of figures they would have been hard to conceive. However, once you start forging ahead in your financial status, you start revising your goals and relationship with money.

Here are a few ways that people in this age group have been able to achieve that net worth figure:

  1. Gain leverage at your job: become a unique and indispensable player in your company and in your industry. You can then break free of the typical salary ceilings that exist within any company and industry.
  2. Open your own business: here you assume higher risk in the hopes of higher returns. The higher theoric risk is reduced by your mastery and knowledge of the industry. Put simply – you’re more likely to succeed than the rest of your peers, because you are already one of the best people in the space.
  3. Start to invest: when the job or business starts to give off more money than you need for your living expenses, invest the rest.

Why is the $10 Million Figure So Attractive?

I believe that it is the most commonly mentioned figure due to being a nice round number, and the fact that most young entrepreneurs and investors tend to have amassed a few million during this age bracket, but have enough knowledge of their skills and the niche they operate in to see themselves getting to that $10 million figure. Sometimes it might mean having to sell their business, and that comes with its own disadvantages, but they typically see it as an attainable figure.

With $10 million dollars, if you have high aspirations and love the finer things in life, you won’t be set for life, but rather you will have a very nice platform to launch off from to even bigger things.

For example, you can afford to:

  • Buy a very nice house in a great neighborhood, cash payment
  • Get yourself some nice cars and other toys
  • Send your kids to the best private schools
  • Travel first class or even using rented private jets
  • Eat out at fine dining locations regularly

It basically allows you to do whatever you want with your life while also giving you the opportunity to make some expensive capital acquisitions like a house and cars.

I describe it as a launchpad because I wouldn’t personally be sitting on my laurels at that $10m level without having a plan in place to double or triple it within the next decade. Cashflow is extremely important to sustain a high flyer lifestyle, and the biggest mistake one can do is to think they’ve made it when they hit a goal like a $10mm net worth, when in reality they have no cashflow.

That’s why getting a big amount of money from an inheritance, fantastic investment, or sale of your business is actually quite hard to handle. Yes, you end up with a lot of money, but if we’re thinking long term, upgrading your lifestyle to the points I just mentioned means the money will run out in a few years at best, and it’s much harder downgrading your lifestyle once you’ve gotten used to better quality all around you.

Meanwhile, some NFT holders don’t even fancy selling their JPEG profile pic for almost $10m:

Why I rejected a 2500 ETH ($9.5M USD ) offer from @poapxyz on CryptoPunk #6046

This could have been the largest ever on-chain NFT sale in USD, but I chose to reject the offer.

Here is the story and why 👇 pic.twitter.com/zeURo4C5z6

— richerd.eth (@richerd) October 16, 2021

Let’s Talk Liquidity

Having a high net worth is great, but unless it is liquid net worth, it can be quite hard to really enjoy it.

For example, you might own a business that is worth $8 million, but that doesn’t really translate into anything practical in your life, since you can’t spend any of that money, and there’s also the risk that the valuation might change at any point in time. We’ve seen how the valuations of public companies can change drastically from one year to another in recent years. For private companies, you have the same story. This is especially true if you’ve been working towards building a company that can be acquired. At certain times the economical circumstances might mean that venture capital dries up, or this is a general dearth of acquisitions in your industry, meaning you’ll need to wait a few more years for the exit. For some companies, this can indeed drive them to the verge of collapse if they haven’t been managing their runway and cash flow property. In short – it’s a treacherous journey and you can’t really change the way you live based on your company’s theoretical valuation.

It’s worth noting that a well-known financial trick of the super-rich (typically $25m+) is to leverage their best assets to obtain loans, but this is not that easy to work out for younger people with lower net worth figures and typically in risky assets. The super-rich can leverage their own private company stock, or their public stock portfolio, real estate, etc, but again they tend to have lower-risk assets and much bigger amounts, making them way more interesting for banks and institutions who are considering lending them money.

In conclusion, the dream state seems to be $10 million in liquid assets plus a healthy cash flow that covers all your monthly costs. Even better if that monthly cash flow is as passive as possible, which would give you the free time to actually use that higher purchasing power and enjoy material possessions, travel and other experiences.

I would also like to add that having lofty net worth objectives does not mean that there are no intermediate stages and that one would only be happy and satisfied if they reach that goal. I do believe that money does buy happiness to a certain degree, but there are diminishing returns the higher you go. Financial strife is one of the most common problems for people, even contributing to the breakup of marriages, and we should all be trying to attain a level of net worth that eliminates or lessens those kinds of basic financial problems.

Once the lower levels of the hierarchy of needs are covered, we’re already in a great position and can now think of fulfilling dreams and ambitions rather than worrying about basic needs. At that point whether it’s time to kick back and relax or continue to work very hard on achieving a higher net worth level depends entirely on one’s dreams.

What’s your take on this topic? Leave a comment below to continue the discussion.

Filed under: Thoughts & Experiences

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • …
  • 93
  • Next Page »

Latest Padel Match

Jean Galea

Investor | Dad | Global Citizen | Athlete

Follow @jeangalea

  • Padel
  • Affiliate Disclaimer
  • Cookies
  • Contact

Copyright © 2023 · Hosted at Kinsta · Built on the Genesis Framework

Please share your location to continue.

Check our help guide for more info.

share your location