What happens when a regular gay man decides he's done with us chaos and ready to build a fabulous plan B abroad?

Meet David Govaker, a medical professional who traded anxiety over politics, inflation and LGBTQ rights for a ticket to Portuguese sunshine, safety and equality.

This is Queer Money episode 611, and we're talking with another David who reveals how he landed the coveted Portuguese golden visa using his IRA and is setting himself up for a freedom filled life without the Trump generated stress or American costs.

Welcome, David, to the show.

We're excited to have you.

Hi.

Hi there.

For our listeners and viewers, let's lay the foundation.

Why are you thinking about leaving the.

U.S. well, I would say I'm not necessarily planning on leaving right now.

I started looking a few months ago for a plan B for possibly getting a passport in another country.

I wouldn't be surprised if a large portion of your audience weren't on the same page.

Every day I listen to the news, it seems like it gets a greater and greater likelihood that it won't just be a plan B.

It won't just be like a second home or a vacation home.

It's more likely that I would want to have a presence or make someplace else my home.

But for right now, I'm not planning on leaving, but I want that off ramp.

Yeah.

Here we have a post right now on Instagram that's going kind of viral for us.

And basically it's about.

We've noticed a significant shift in the, in the, the language that our social media followers are using.

Before it was, hey, if this happens, I'm going to leave the U.S. or someday I'm going to leave the U.S. it was almost like I was always like sort of future looking.

And we've noticed a market shift recently in people saying, predominantly LGBTQ people saying, I've left and I'm leaving, or I'm leaving next week, or my husband and I just sold our home and the next step is to get out.

And it's really striking the shift in the language that the community is using.

So I think a lot of our listeners and viewers are going to be able to understand with what you're dealing with.

There is a marked shift in the culture in America and it's really distressing every day.

You know, many months ago, earlier this year, I was listening to the news and it would be uncomfortable and they'd go on and I'd sort of dismiss it.

And then we get up the next morning and it was more stuff that I never would thought would happen in America.

More stuff That I would say this is wrong.

More stuff that I'd say this is illegal.

More stuff that I would say this is unconstitutional.

And, you know, after so many days, do I really want to have all my eggs in one basket?

Right.

Or do I want to facilitate?

Do I want to have available for myself a plan B?

Like what if it gets worse, etc.

And yeah, it's getting worse.

Yeah.

So you're.

You've become an investor in the.

The Optimizes Portugal Golden Opportunities fund.

Before we get too much into the specifics of that, can you tell us a little bit about your search and how you ended up landing with one, choosing Portugal's Golden Visa, but then two, going with Optimizes Investment?

Yeah, well, you know, like I said, the motivation was really just listening to the news every morning.

So I started exploring the concept in kind of a dreamy way.

And my husband and I have talked about having a getaway place we never considered outside the US but we toyed with that idea for a while.

And then I started researching and thinking, what would it be like if I were to actually have that place outside the US And I started thinking, where have I enjoyed traveling that I might enjoy actually staying or being?

For me, there were certain must haves.

The climate and weather had to suit me.

So that kind of ruled out places that were too hot and too humid, had natural disasters, stuff like that.

It had to be a place with gay rights and marriage equality.

Those have to be solid, not just in the law, but in the culture of the place.

It has to be not just, you know, written, but lived in the streets every day.

I wanted an urban environment.

I live in New York City now, and I love the pace and the cultural opportunities and the ease of living that I find in a major city.

I wanted a large airport, someplace that I can get into and out of fairly easily from New York City while we're dreaming.

I wanted a place where language wouldn't be a barrier, where I don't necessarily have to be highly proficient in the local language to just get along every day.

So I started making a list and I talked to my husband, and his thoughts were pretty much identical to mine.

And a couple other factors came up.

A stable economy and a stable government and an easy pathway to either, like permanent residency or citizenship and a passport.

I didn't want to have to wait a long time, like a decade to make this a reality.

So I started actually city shopping.

First I wanted to find a place where I wanted to live.

Vancouver was the top of the list.

We both would love to move to Vancouver, but the trouble for Canada, for me was that I don't want to join the workforce.

I stopped working a few years ago, and I'm really happy not working for other people.

And I'm at that place in life where I don't necessarily want to go to work for a big company.

So places that require that, that didn't have some other route to becoming a citizen, like investing there.

So Canada just wasn't an option.

UK and Ireland were on the list.

Most of Europe was on the list.

Frankly, Malta was top of the list for me for a while.

And then I realized that it's.

There's no direct flights from New York City.

And to get there it would take, you know, connections.

And there's one, you know, single airport and living on a single island has its limitations.

And I started reading about how welcome, you know, the, the folks have been, and it wasn't necessarily all positive.

And then the rules changed and apparently Malta's easy citizenship and so forth, that's now a thing of the past.

So Malta, Malta left, and frankly, Portugal came to the top of the list.

When I understood the, you know, when I kind of looked into the what, what Portugal offers both as a country and in their golden visa program, for folks like me, it was, it was a no brainer.

Gotcha.

Thank you for sharing that.

I'm really struck with the words you used, that LGBTQ acceptance.

The gay marriage needs to be not only written, but lived.

And I think, you know, when you said that, it just kind of hit me strong because that's what we've had here, right?

It's, we've had that sort of in the law, but half the country does not respect that and refuses to live that.

And I think that's why many of us in our community are thinking, okay, what is my plan B if things continue to go the direction that they have for the last nine months?

And that's part of why I like living in New York City.

Because whether or not it's the law, it's living on the streets, I feel 100% comfortable, you know, walking down the street.

That may seem foolish to some folks, but, you know, I feel really comfortable here.

There are many cities in the US where that's where that's the case for me.

But you're right, it's not the whole country.

And that's, that's worrisome because it seems like the, that that's coming into question.

Not just the law part, but the cultural part.

Yeah.

100%.

You know, we get a lot of trolling on our social media, and one of the things that we constantly hear is nobody cares if you're gay.

Just, you know, keep it to yourself.

But that's that therein lies the problem.

Because the minute they see us, you know, holding hands while we're walking down the street, that, of course, is throwing our lifestyle in their face.

Even though you see straight couples doing that every single day.

You give your partner a kiss on the mask before they go, a peck on the cheek, whatever, and that's throwing it in their face.

And so there's always this dichotomy of, okay, you say you accept me, but if I actually act like a normal couple with my partner, then of course it's a confrontation for you.

Yeah.

And, you know, what's going on with the cultural viewpoint about trans folks currently in our country is really concerning.

So, you know, I wasn't just looking out.

Frankly, for me and people like me, there's different profiles of folks, of difference.

And if the culture I'm looking for is one of openness, one of inviting, one of accepting, one of cherishing, and one of encouraging everybody to be, you know, to live their whole lives, their whole selves, their whole being there.

And, you know, that's what I've experienced when I visited Portugal, admittedly, the, you know, Lisbon, Porto, larger, larger places.

But, yeah, that's.

That's what I find works here in New York City and, you know, not that many other places.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I appreciate that, too.

One of the things that John and I have noticed, and we've been talking a lot about that over this, over the last year, is it seems to me that there is this, I'm going to get to the red light first, First, I don't care who else they put in danger mentality going on in the United States.

Whatever gets me ahead.

I don't care what happens to other people.

Feel like when you go to some other foreign countries, there is a group consciousness.

There is this, we take care of each other.

We're not pushing each other out of the way to get to the front of the line or to get the last whoop, whoops, whatever it is that's on sale.

Right.

Whereas in the United States, there is this strong push for, I take care of me.

I don't care what happens to everybody else.

And I think that's one of the things that has kind of emboldened some of this mentality that we're seeing in the United States of, well, I'm Going to take care of me.

If that means you lose some of your rights, well, I'm sorry about that, but maybe I'm not sorry about that.

I appreciate that's one of the things John and I have been talking a lot about.

One of the reasons why we are doing our series of talking about foreign countries and what cities in those foreign countries are great places for LGBT people.

Yes, I get that.

And that drive for personal success and excelling and making it and so forth is not a bad thing in and of itself.

But when it starts to be at the expense of other folks who really are either not thought about or they're thought about and disregarded, that's a problem.

I think you see that in the results in our healthcare system.

Everybody wants, I want more care.

I want that pill.

I want that opera.

I want it all for me.

And then they wonder why health insurance rates are so high.

And you look at other countries, like Portugal.

Citizens in Portugal have health insurance provided by the state.

If you pay a health insurance premium, it might be about what I would pay for one month in the United States that would pay for my health care in Portugal for a year.

People see that we are all in a community, and that flavor, that culture, it's just not here as much.

In the United States, it seems much more tribalized into a bunch of little tribes.

Instead of recognizing we're really all the same tribe, we don't have to have an enemy to feel connected and united.

And in the US it seems like we've got to find an enemy to validate myself, to know that I am me, to know that I am valuable, to know that I am powerful, I have to be in the process of somehow, you know, vanquishing somebody, fighting somebody, opposing somebody.

It's just not that way elsewhere.

Yeah, it's just like a marketing strategy.

And that's how you get power.

Right.

You got to have an enemy, and I'm the superman for you to protect you from this enemy.

Yeah.

So let's maybe get to the fund itself.

How was it that you discovered this pathway to getting to what you want in.

To get to Portugal?

Yep.

I kind of shopped for countries in Portugal, came to the top of the list for a lot of reasons.

Then I said, okay, what.

You know, to get.

To get all this, what do I got to do?

And essentially, you know, it turns out that it's, you know, kind of completing some paperwork, and I'm filling out forms, getting copies of my marriage certificate and passport stuff.

Stuff like that's gathering.

Gathering Information about me, you know, getting a criminal background check.

And then there's a required investment in Portugal of €500,000, which, you know, may seem like a lot is a lot, but.

And so I thought, well, I do have, you know, I do have savings here in the United States.

Let me shop for investment vehicle that might suit my investment style.

Part of the reason I could retire at the age that I did was because I'd been kind of a saver and I always put my money in the US Stock market and it's always done well.

So I was looking for an investment in Portugal that would largely be diversified in major companies in Portugal and in Europe that, you know, they're all stable.

It's not risky, it's not concentrated in just one sector or, or investing in like one or two.

I wanted that kind of safety and diversification.

There's, there's market risk, but you know, taking that market risk got me where I am today.

So I'm anyway, so I.

Of all the funds that were around, most seem to be private equity funds, hedge fund that would fund projects or certain sectors of the economy.

They wanted me to lock my funds up for, you know, typically 7, 8 to 10 years.

There was a, you know, 1 or 2% or more fee to get into that investment.

And then the profits were capped at a certain percentage every year.

And after that the fund managers would have a major share in the profits past a certain point.

That point might be 6%.

Then I found this Portugal Golden Opportunities fund that was diversified in major companies in Europe and Portugal that, you know, was an open ended mutual fund.

You can buy and sell as you please.

And the real advantage for me when I started looking into that fund was I could actually invest money that is currently in my IRA in the United States and it can stay in the ira, it doesn't have to be taken out and then have a distribution and taxes and all that.

I can actually use money, my own retirement money to make that investment.

And I looked around at what's happening in the marketplace today and what seems to be happening to the value of the dollar, the opinion of the United States by other countries and other investing, the what's going on with the Fed and interest rates and inflation and so forth, and I realized that I actually should probably be diversifying my investments into, for example, Europe or other places like that, that I should probably be doing that anyway.

So it became pretty clear to me that the major reason I need to do this is it's actually what I should be doing financially and Permanent citizenship and the pathway to a passport, that's all just a bonus.

I like that you came to the conclusion that way.

I mean, that makes a lot of sense for an investor.

Yeah, definitely.

Do you mind ask if I ask?

David, is your retirement, are your retirement assets the largest portion of your assets?

Is this by far 40 of your money?

Is that by far?

That's the same with us.

And I think that that's one of the reasons why we find this fund so appealing is that for most folks, it's either their home or their retirement accounts.

That is their, their primary source of assets.

And for those of us who did buckle down and save or happen to work for a company and made good money because that company either went public or something like that, having a lot of money in your retirement accounts is probably the way for most people that we would see getting into this.

Unless you are already independently wealthy.

Yeah, so what, let's talk about the logistics of that a little bit.

Because my assumption is, and correct me if I'm wrong, you probably amass most of this money in sort of a 401k type of account, a company sponsor.

And then at this point, you probably maybe rolled that over into a traditional IRA or rollover.

But to actually make the investment into the optimized Golden Portugal Golden Opportunities Fund, you had to open up a self directed ira, Is that that's correct?

Yeah, Right now I have it all at one financial institution that, you know, they don't, they don't have a self directed IRA operation.

There are other companies that do.

So, yeah, I did some shopping.

I actually asked for recommendations from the folks at Optimize.

They gave me a list of three or four.

I also did my own research, tried to look for others.

The suggestions provided by the fund seemed to be the most reliable and very reasonable costs.

The one that I chose.

I got better rates, a better fee structure because I was referred by Optimize.

So yeah, I established a self directed ira, made a simple rollover of the amount of money I need from my traditional IRA at, you know, where all the other money is, just did a simple rollover to that.

All it took was filling out some paperwork, took about three business days.

And then once the money is in that self directed IRA account and then it's, you know, invested in the Golden Opportunities Fund.

And when it's invested there, they can verify that, yes, he has fulfilled the requirements for the Golden Visa program.

They have a certification of that.

It goes off and that satisfies the requirement.

You did not in that rollover you did not receive a check that was transferred automatically for you.

So then that should negate anybody's concern that they're creating a taxable event.

It's all done electronically.

And the IRS.

You'll get a 5498 at the end of the tax season to confirm that your funds have been redeposited into an IRA account so that the IRS knows that you did not receive a distribution.

Correct?

Yeah, I think it's really important to make sure that, you know, if I'm doing that, I don't actually receive the check.

It's just really.

It's not only easier, it's simpler, and it's got a very clear, you know, paper trail, as much as there's paper with wire transfers.

Yeah, that's really important.

Now it's a 1099 when the money comes out and the 5498 when it arrives.

No, 1099R is for your.

Oh, you're right.

It's the distribution.

Okay, can you repeat that?

David, My husband is correct.

So was there any surprises, any concerns, any hiccups that you maybe weren't necessarily prepared for going into this that maybe other people might want to be prepared for?

The only surprise was, was, you know, how, you know, kind of easy and reliable.

It was once I kind of picked the right fund and made the right choices.

So I did a lot of my own research, and I would encourage everybody to do that.

So you feel like you have turned over every rock and that what you're doing is, you know, the right thing for you, because that's what I did.

And so now I look and, you know, I watch the TV in the morning and I go, I have an escape route.

You know, do bring it on.

Do what you want.

Right.

And, you know, I don't have my.

My permanent residence certificate yet.

That.

That's a process on the Portugal end.

But, yeah, that getting that process started when I did the.

My only regret is I didn't start earlier.

But, yeah, I would definitely, you know, talk to your partner, talk to other people, gather whatever information you might want to do, Consult, AI, you know, listen to this show, whatever you need to do to make yourself well informed and comfortable and is what you need to do.

And not everybody's going to want the golden visa.

If you want to go work someplace, you know, start a company or go to work for a company, there are many good options.

And I would still put Portugal probably at or near the top of the list.

It's just that wasn't What I needed.

Right.

No, that definitely makes a lot of sense.

But what would be the trigger to say we're actually going to make the move?

And how exactly would you maybe start that process?

What would be your first step or two?

Yeah, you know, I think it's kind of like the process that got me here.

There wasn't one day when one of those incredibly outrageous things happened.

It was just the constant.

The constant flow of.

And I just listened to my mind and listened to my heart.

And at some point, it became, you know, more painful to contemplate actually starting the process than to continue to live with no off ramp.

And I would imagine it's going to be similar to make that decision about actually potentially relocating or spending a lot of the year outside the US because one of the other things about the Portugal opportunity, you don't need to move to Portugal.

You don't need to spend more than half the year there, which is the case for most of these other Golden Visa things and most of the other citizenship things.

You have to spend a lot of time.

There's.

The Portugal Golden Visa only requires that you spend, I think, 14 days every two years.

You know, would I want to take a week's vacation in Lisbon every year?

Yeah, probably more so.

Again, it's stuff I would do anyway.

So, yeah.

I don't know what would be the.

I do have a feeling that as soon as the Golden Visa comes through and I have my permanent residence certificate, you know, we'll probably go over for a little while and kind of look for the purchase of an apartment to have as a.

That second home that we toyed about for so long, to have a place that's ours with our stuff that we can go to whenever we want.

I'm not one of those folks who probably run an Airbnb out of a place like that.

I kind of like my stuff in my place.

I would imagine investing in property in pretty much anywhere in Portugal has been a really good investment and probably will continue to be so, both for enjoyment and investment purposes.

I think as soon as the permanent resident certificate comes in, it'll probably be property shopping and then maybe kind of a slow glide in that direction.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

The last logistical question I wanted to tackle is, did they give you an estimate on how long it would take to get the residency card?

When I was doing this research earlier this year, there were a lot of concerns and complaints that it was taking more than a year to do this.

My understanding is that Portugal recognized that there was, you Know, an opportunity for improvement here.

And so they have, they have sped up the whole process.

One step is actually a visit to Portugal, to the offices in Portugal, the Portuguese government, to get a biometric assessment.

I guess they take your fingerprints and maybe other biometric assessments and that's part of the process.

And shortly after that, you are given a two year certificate.

Know that for residents and that two year certificate is renewable.

And then when you get out to five years, then you actually get your, you know, permanent resident certificate.

But so, yeah, that the time to get the biometric appointment is probably the, the thing I understand now it's down to a matter of months instead of more than a year.

And so, yeah, I would imagine that in the next few months I'll be, I'll get the word to, you know, make an appointment and we'll see you, fingerprint you and get the card in production.

Nice.

Very cool.

And I'm very excited.

I bet.

No doubt.

I can hear it.

Trip to Portugal coming up.

I have to go to Portugal once a week for the next couple years.

Horrible.

Twist my arm.

So for our listeners and viewers who may, what's your piece of advice for those who are thinking in their heart and their mind, they're thinking, I might need a plan B, I might need an off ramp.

What's your biggest piece of advice for them?

Yeah, start your homework now.

Talk to, you know, talk to whoever you got at home who would be coming with you.

Because this, this Golden Visa thing, you can bring more than just your partner under the same investment.

You can bring parents, you can bring kids, stuff like that.

So, you know, if you're, if you're starting to look at that, look at whoever else would be invited, get their input and views, look through your old travel photos, think about your prior vacations, figure out places that you have been that you think you would enjoy.

You know, Australia might make it for you.

I don't want to be halfway across the world to get to my happy place.

I want my happy place accessible to me.

So, yeah, figure out what you want, take a look at your options, check in with yourself, but don't dally.

I can tell you from somebody who's further through the process, it's a hassle to get all this stuff together.

But just keep yourself on track.

You'll be so happy.

You'll breathe so much easier when you're past some of the administrator.

Nice.

Well, David, thank you so much for being willing to share your personal story.

I know that makes a lot of people uncomfortable to do that.

And we appreciate you being so open.

I know our listeners and viewers would definitely appreciate it as well.

And thank you for making this more visible.

I'd never heard of this stuff before I started looking, so I know that your audience is probably made up of folks for whom this might be a really good thing.

Don't delay.

Start checking your mind, check your heart and check what's around you and what's available.

Do your homework and take action.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining us.

Join us next week when we share the top five places in the Netherlands for gays to retire.

And in two weeks we're going to share the specifics of how you can take advantage of the same tools and resources that David did to get the Portuguese golden visa.

If you love this episode, please like subscribe and share it with your friends who also want to retire abroad.

And until next time.