Visiting a U.S. dentist, Alan got a quote of $22,500. As longtime IL subscribers, we knew there were places where we could not only save a lot of money, but have a great vacation, too.

In the past 12 years we’ve created and run nine successful businesses, from managing a vineyard in San Rafael to creating a bustling vacation-rental company in Patagonia. To say the least, we have learned a few lessons along the way. Here are seven tips to help you create your own successful business abroad…

Surrounded by a ring of mountains in the lush Cibao Valley, Santiago makes the ideal staging point for a visit to the Dominican Republic.

I came away from my first visit to Nicaragua, in 2004, with a lopsided image of the coastal lifestyle in Central America’s largest country. There’s another, far more “authentic” and affordable environment to explore along this country’s central and northern Pacific coast.

Darrell and Amy are just two of the thousands of expats who have made a new home abroad in a place where it’s relatively easy to settle in. Should that be your top priority when choosing a locale overseas?

Dividends “pay you” to own a stock…they can give you a regular income and they can help you pick profitable, mature companies that generate lots of cash. My favorite way to “get paid” dividends is in the Brazilian power-generating sector.

Haven nations in which privacy was expected, guaranteed and delivered were numerous just two or three decades ago. They’re many fewer today. But you do still have choices. Which is right for you? It will depend.

“I had no idea it was like this,” my wife Suzan said. “This part of the coast is like Pirates of the Caribbean!” We were standing on the dock of Seagull Cove Lodge, a tidy little boutique hotel just outside the village of Boca Chica in Panama’s Chiriquí Province.

Today, married to a pretty Ecuadorian, Henry is one of Quito’s most successful businessmen. For two years he traveled to Ecuador arranging mahogany shipments for a furniture company.

The knife-edge mountain ridges in Costa Rica’s Southern Zone curve like a dragon’s spine, twisting and turning their way to the horizon and dropping sharply to the long sandy beaches that run along the coastline.