Christopher Saxman “always knew,” he says, that he wanted a coastal home somewhere with a warm climate. He ticks off the places he visited and considered: Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Portugal, southern Italy…

As a long term investment, Paris property is low risk and has always appreciated steadily. Give or take a small bubble bursting in the mid 1980s and late 1990s—it’s not a speculative market. Property prices for the city as a whole rose a healthy 8.7% in 2007—good enough to attract hard-nosed investors and romantics.

Stockmarkets in chaos. Foreclosures, inflation, unemployment. The R word. Gloomsters proclaiming the new property hotspot is Skid Row.

“This is a lousy time to be living off investments,” my retired economist friend Arturo told me. “The S&P 500 still needs to get to where it was in March 2000. Bond yields are negative—that is, they don’t even match inflation.

If you want to build a huge pot of money for your retirement, there’s only one thing you need to do. It’s a simple strategy, and anyone can do it. I’ll tell you exactly how in a moment. But first, consider this…

Last week, I received a note from a reader who was searching for a second home in Latin America: “…of course I’ve eliminated Panama from my list,” he writes, “since everyone knows it’s become too expensive. I had my sights set on Panama for years, but from what I hear, I don’t think I can afford it anymore.”

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They have a foreign way of doing things in other countries. Come to think of it, they have a foreign way of doing things in Nebraska sometimes. At least, if you’re not from there…