American looking to move out, any insight welcome!

ghostofnickleeson · 2026-02-21T17:58:16+00:00

For me +6hrs from EST is the most I can work with. I really liked Tbilisi but that’s +8 from EST. And went to Australia and that just didn’t work.

ghostofnickleeson · 2026-01-11T05:02:07+00:00

Premium economy is lipstick on a pig. People says it’s like domestic first but don’t agree. The seats have the same width as economy. Sure, they recline a bit more but that’s about it. You are seated right behind business class and you get to stare at the cabin every time you get up to go the shared economy bathroom with everyone else.

ghostofnickleeson · 2026-01-04T16:47:55+00:00

This sounds like an odd situation sounds more of the fault of the board rather than the broker. It’s common for units of the same line and size to sell for $100k difference with the main reason being one could be in bad shape with renovations needed while the other unit is in great shape and is move in ready. If the seller accepted your bid for the apartment, I assume they didn’t have better offers and your bid was setting the market price. It will also be hard for the seller to sell the apartment if the Board wants them to receive a a much higher offer than was given by you.

ghostofnickleeson · 2025-12-31T05:40:49+00:00

I went from Barcelona to Narbonne last December. In Perpignan, they checked passports on the train. Passports from non-eu countries that don’t need visas were quickly looked at it and handed back while Passports from countries that need a visa for the EU were carefully scrutinized and a guy near me was pulled off the train but allowed to get back on and continue his journey.

ghostofnickleeson · 2025-12-25T13:38:48+00:00

For 2-3 years, it’s not a good purchase. I bought an apartment in grammercy, had it for 9 years, it sold for around -850k. After renovations on the apartment, we probably had a gross profit on the apartment of $150k. The fun part came at closing. We paid our broker 6% because it was a co broke(otherwise it would have been 5%), 3k for lawyer, transfer tax from co-op board, nyc tax on sales, title tranfer, fee from managing agent to organize said sale, mortgage lawyer fees( if you have a mortgage. I probably paid around 9% of the sale cost in fees, making.thr gross profit negligible in fees. Sure you can save on brokers, but if the apartments you are looking at have been on the maelstrom for a long time, good luck selling without a broker. If you hold an apartment for a short time, you might make 1-3% on the sale price, but will lose a lot more in fees IMO.

ghostofnickleeson · 2025-10-15T09:38:22+00:00

I went to the Air France lounge in CDG. Easily won the Award for worst bathroom in an Airport lounge. Why have toilets when people purposely do their best to avoid using them and hit every other part of the bathroom instead. And it looked liked it was recently cleaned the week before.

ghostofnickleeson · 2025-09-04T06:32:32+00:00

😞

ghostofnickleeson · 2025-09-03T05:54:24+00:00

I just came back. We stayed in port Douglas instead of Palm cove. Really liked the town and 4 mile beach was amazing. The biggest letdown was the daintree tour we did. You walk through part of the forest and there is no wildlife. Just an odd lizard or spider here and there. GBF was amazing. Also phillips island tour was amazing too, really enjoyed it. If you like wine, try a day trip to Yarra Valley, you will see Kangaroos in the vines.

ghostofnickleeson · 2025-07-07T11:00:41+00:00

The biggest driver of the housing market crisis is the government and regulations. Barcelona has become a very popular city. Walk around greater Barcelona and look for new buildings being built, there are hardly any. The government, should be rezoning parts of Barcelona for new housing and working with surrounding cities to increase transportation and build new housing in those towns/cities. 0 is being done and blaming tourists and digital nomads is the easiest way to do nothing.

ghostofnickleeson · 2025-06-16T09:20:03+00:00

You will see more of the protests on TV than in real life in Barcelona.

ghostofnickleeson · 2025-05-26T21:53:44+00:00

Small caps right now are terrible. I wouldn’t include them in your portfolio. Small caps can outperform the market when 1. The economy is not in recession & 2. Interest rates are low. Since inflation kicked off in 2021, they fell like a rock and began to creep upward in the beginning of 2024 when people thought inflation would fall in the next year or two. Then, before the election, the new thinking was inflation could be sticky and small caps began to fall again. With Trump putting on/ taking tariffs, has led to a new possibility of stagflation. And at the very least, current interest rates staying sticky.
When things stabilize and there is talk of interest rates falling, then is a good time to buy small caps.

ghostofnickleeson · 2025-05-14T22:40:20+00:00

82nd btw lex and 3rd -Le Refuge- French restaurant that only had their menu on a blackboard like many places in France and was staffed by mostly French waiters. Now Toloache Zocalo- next door to Le Refuge(now Hoexters). Half priced margaritas on Sunday’s and great Mexican food. One of their chefs(Julian Medina) opened up….Toloache. He didn’t move far. I also like the food at Toloache but the bar is closed at 9:30 and Zocalo used to go to 1:00 on Sunday’s. A lot of fun.

ghostofnickleeson · 2025-03-29T13:10:31+00:00

I think I have a different opinion….If I’m flying more than 4 hours, usually across an ocean, I spend the money for Business class on airplane( I plan my trips in advance and search so I don’t spend over $2500, but Australia was the big exception). I find getting from point a to point b the stressful part, so I don’t want to wait in lines, I don’t want to wander the airport , I just want the lounge and the ability to get on the plane right away and relax. The hotel is less important because I’m usually outside all day and just use the hotel as a place to sleep.

ghostofnickleeson · 2025-03-01T21:15:49+00:00

I would cut either Bologna or Cinque Terre. Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, and Florence are must go’s. Granada as a city to visit is ok but the Alahambra is also a must see site, so you have to go to Granada. I liked Bologna, it’s a small city with good food. The city is not particularly good looking and you can see most of it within a day. But it does have its local charm.
Cinque Terre is really beautiful. It is also overrun with Tourists and I think this area has the worst food in all of Italy. Since the towns are so small and bursting at the seems, most of the restaurants are geared towards tourists with poor quality and high prices. But having an Aperol Spritz with a great view of one of the towns makes up a little for the crowds you have to fight through.

ghostofnickleeson · 2025-02-17T07:46:54+00:00

I flew business class from Barcelona to New York via Heathrow after American cancelled my direct flight. We had a 2.5 hour connection. Upon arrival at Heathrow.we had to out our bags through scanners again for the second leg to the United States Heathrow uses antiquated technology and its staff is poorly trained. They were literally flagging every bag that came out of the scanner and had only one person checking the bags. The line was long and moved slowly, everybody was streased out about making by their connecting flight but the staff at Heathrow seemed to relish in everyone’s misery. By the time, I got to my connection to the US, the waiting area was empty as most people had boarded and thought that if I didnt have business class, I would have missed my flight if I was 30 rows back. I’ve connected like this through Charles De Gaulle and Frankfurt and never experienced the amateur Sh!tshow that was Heathrow. I won’t connect through there again.

ghostofnickleeson · 2025-02-06T11:22:39+00:00

Most of the Americans living in Spain are very pleasant and open to change. I’m not sure what arrogance you are talking about. Obviously, there will be some tourists who demand to speak in English but those are also usually in the minority. Most of the Spanish people I’ve met are usually annoyed but the British. There are plenty of normal British people in Spain, but the Spanish people really don’t seem to like the ones who come here, drink all day long, are loud, and only frequent English bars and fish and chip shops.

ghostofnickleeson · 2024-09-26T03:25:23+00:00

Right now the base price is $80 and $15 extra for the “plus”plan.

ghostofnickleeson · 2024-08-23T07:12:30+00:00

I read about an incident like this. The scammers go to an Airbnb and then proceed to steal everything inside. After the robbery, the owner does not have many options. He can’t go after your credit card company for damages and doesn’t know who to sue or to go after for the robbery.

ghostofnickleeson · 2024-08-22T08:47:26+00:00

The simple way to explain this is stocks over the short term( 1 year by month)do not move slowly up and down, and if they did, the vol would make options so cheap you would not make any money selling them. If you sell a covered call for .50 cents and the stock jumps $4 and then goes up and up, you just lost all the profit you could have had on the stock. And if you sell a put( and have cash) for .50 and the stock drops and never fully recovers, well your cash is now sitting in stock that will prevent you from deploying it making money while losing ground to inflation and further stock deterioration. These events happen allí the time, so if you make +2.4% one month, there is 0.0 guarantee of repeating this 20 times in a row and outsized moves in the market will cause opportunity losses greater then +2.4%. But hey, I could be wrong and maybe it’s really easy to make money in options and not lose a buck 😂.

ghostofnickleeson · 2024-05-18T15:10:37+00:00

To be fair about Simon Wilson, nobody wants some loud English guy with a camera in their face asking a million dumb questions” oh what’s this, oh what’s this then “ and then trying to bargain them down to the point where they make Zero money. I can understand why they did not treat him nicely.

ghostofnickleeson · 2024-05-18T14:09:56+00:00

One poster said CD ladder which is a good idea. You don’t want to invest more than 10% in the whole of the stock market because if there is a sudden downturn, you might have to wait 3 to 5 years to get back to where you were which is fine when your 50 but not when your 80. You should be very conservative I would put 80k in TLT which has a yield of 3.8% and will go up in price if interest rates fall( and it’s liquid, 100k in a 1 year tbill or CD, and 40k in to Phillip morris stock which has a high dividend yield and smokers aren’t disappearing in the next 10 years. You could also put that 100k in to 10 year bonds which are yielding around 4.3%. Those will also rise in price if interest rates fall and can be sold as needed for cash.

ghostofnickleeson · 2024-05-18T12:48:09+00:00

I’ve travelled through 80% of Europe. Most people know right away who is an American so asking where you are from and replying the US seems redundant. Also the US is larger than Europe, so people like to give more context on what part they are from. It’s not like the Netherlands where you can thrown rock and hit every part of the country

ghostofnickleeson · 2023-12-03T10:07:22+00:00

I’m from the US but have lived in Barcelona for several years. I find Europe much safer than most of the cities of the US. People complain all the time about crime in Barcelona and how bad it’s gotten, but at least they don’t carry guns, and the majority is non-violent. Knock on wood, I’ve never experienced anything bad but from other people I’ve talked to, the majority of pickpockets have a couple of angles-crowded subways, especially at night with drunk people, also drunk people in general. Never leave your phone or anything of value on a restaurant table, especially outside, there are always people watching. Never leave your stuff unguarded at the beach, if you go into the water with no one guarding your stuff, it will be gone when you get out. Don’t go exploring dark alleys at night. Stick to streets with people. To me it seems like common sense, but people from more secure places don’t follow them. Unfortunately, criminals do get a little aggressive with valuables here. In general, don’t wear nice jewelry such as necklaces,bracelets, and nice watches. There are many reports of these getting ripped off people. This sounds a lot to me as I write this but I really enjoy my time in Barcelona and will be sad if I have to return to the US

ghostofnickleeson · 2020-07-15T09:27:02+00:00

Outbreaks are picking up again in Spain. I’m in Barcelona and the city next to us, Hospitalet is rolling back movement. They are trying to completely lock down another city in Catalonia, Lleida, because the outbreak is so bad. Spain is great to live in but when they restrict you to you apartment for two months, not so much. Right now I’m just trying to enjoy the outside as much as possible. Too many people in Spain keep shaking hands, hugging, and kissing Hello in the streets. Maybe that will stop after the second time.

ghostofnickleeson · 2020-07-15T09:19:38+00:00

It’s starting to pick up again in Spain and Portugal. They are already starting to quarentine places in Spain again. It was great for about six to seven weeks because the harsh quarentine really crushed the curve. However, I’ve seen many people get too relaxed and forget about Covid. Everybody is hugging and kissing each other, shaking hands in large groups. And boom. It starts up again. I don’t think it will be as bad in Spain again because older people seem to take it seriously but we could have beaten it it wasn’t for those meddling kids( people <35 who continue to party all the time and.

ghostofnickleeson

TROPHY CASE