Imagine owning an exotic beachfront retirement home on a lush tropical island—purchased with the tax-deferred dollars you have been saving. Add to that the salary your retirement plan will pay you to manage the property. The icing on the cake is the freedom from the worries that plague most Americans when they think about their dwindling retirement plan assets.

Most of these opportunities are never made available to the average U.S. citizen—few people aside from the ultra-wealthy have ever even known of their existence. Trust me, your regular U.S. broker will never tell you these opportunities exist, probably because he’s simply unaware of them himself.

Why Take Your Retirement Plan Offshore?

1. Investment diversification. Many of the world’s best investments and money managers will not do business with U.S. citizens directly. They have simply made the choice that it is easier to do business with the rest of the world than to comply with the draconian U.S. rules. 

2. Higher returns. There are opportunities in the traditional financial markets, such as offshore mutual funds and London-traded investment trusts with much higher returns then are generally available in U.S. markets. For example, the BFS Income and Growth Fund returned 75% over the last year; and the Jupiter Financial Fund has a one-year return of 57.1%! These "split capital" trusts aren’t normally available to U.S. investors. 

3. Currency diversification. Investors looking to stabilize their portfolios can protect their wealth against the falling U.S. dollar by simply holding other currencies (like Japanese yen or Swiss francs). And opportunities in foreign currencies are plentiful—like earning nearly 20% this year on the declining dollar versus the euro.

4. "Insurance" from closure of U.S. securities markets. We all learned the need to have part of our assets outside of the United States when our markets were shut down for five full trading days following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But although U.S. markets were closed, individuals with foreign accounts were able to trade securities on foreign exchanges.

5. Asset protection. All types of retirement plans have come under attack in the courts. If a creditor gets a judgment against a "qualified plan" that’s not properly administered, or a "non-qualified plan" in a state where such plans aren’t protected, the judgment is easily enforced.14 In contrast, if you invest your retirement plan in a suitable jurisdiction—Switzerland, for instance—it can be configured to be essentially judgment-proof.

How about offshore funds? Most offshore funds won’t sell directly to U.S. investors, and even if they did, the U.S. tax consequences of owning most offshore funds can be punitive—unless you purchase them through your IRA or pension plan. 

For many investors, their retirement plans have become one of, if not, the largest asset they have. Clearly, it is vitally important to have these assets in a position where they can provide access to the global trading markets, the world’s best investments and money managers and added asset protection. I urge you to act now while you are still able.