Why I stopped looking for the best country to live in

Over the past few years, I have moved 87 times. I do not mean 87 holidays. Some of those places became home for my family, in others I built businesses, and a few looked promising until I spent enough time there to realise they were not for us. My children were born in Miami and Thailand. I have lived in Cyprus and Budapest, seriously considered Italy, tried Spain, and set up companies in the UAE, Hong Kong, Georgia and several other countries.

Ten years ago, I still believed there must be a country where everything came together: good weather, safety, sensible taxes, strong schools, reliable banks, pleasant people, property with some upside and, ideally, a government that did not change the rules halfway through the game.

I no longer think that country exists.

Thailand, for example, is a wonderful place to live. But when I look ten years ahead at the education of three children, the picture becomes less simple. The United States can give them a very different path, and two of my children are already American citizens. It also brings a different cost of living, a different tax system, expensive healthcare and the unresolved question of my own status. Dubai works extremely well as business infrastructure and can be useful for capital, but I am not sure I want to spend the next twenty years there. Italy offers a quality of everyday life that feels very close to me, while solving a completely different set of problems.

At some point, I realised I had been asking the wrong question. I did not need to find the best country. I needed to understand which countries were best at solving the different problems my family actually had.

Once you see it that way, Dubai is no longer competing with Italy, and Thailand is not competing with America. Each country can have a job. One may be right for business, another for daily life, a third for the children's education, and a fourth for banking or part of the family's capital. This does not mean collecting ten residence permits and five passports. A good international structure should be as simple as it can reasonably be.

For a long time, I treated relocation as a choice of country. Most people probably do. You open another ranking and compare taxes, living costs, healthcare, schools and climate. Then Portugal catches your attention, you spend a week reading about it and almost convince yourself the answer has finally appeared. A month later you are looking at Italy. Then Dubai enters the picture. A friend moves to France and tells you how happy he is. Soon there are twenty tabs open on your laptop and less clarity than when you started.

The problem with these comparisons is that a country wins or loses according to the question you ask. The list for building an international business will not be the list for raising three children. Where you might enjoy spending most of the year is not necessarily where you should buy property. A long-term citizenship strategy creates a fifth list again.

So when someone asks me, “Valery, where would you move?”, I first want to understand how that person's life works. The children's ages, the source of income, how closely the business is tied to a particular place, existing passports, tax preferences, climate and tolerance for large cities can change the answer completely. Only then does it make sense to talk about countries.

This becomes especially clear when children and meaningful capital enter the picture. On your own, international mobility can be quite simple. Rent a flat, buy a ticket, bring the laptop, and you are living somewhere new. A family has schools, children's friends, activities, healthcare, childcare and the routines that hold daily life together. As children grow older, a bad relocation decision becomes more expensive, and not only in money.

Capital changes things in much the same way. Small amounts allow you to pay less attention to geography. Later there may be companies in several countries, property, multiple banks, investment accounts and tax obligations. One day you notice that your life has become international, but you are still managing it as if you had never left your home town.

My own version of this was not designed from a textbook. Decisions appeared one at a time: a company here, a bank account there, a period of living in another country, children born somewhere else, a school to investigate. Each decision made sense at the moment. It took years before I stepped back and asked what the whole structure was supposed to look like.

For our family, the children are now one of the main constraints. My two older children were born in the United States and are American citizens. Our youngest was born in Thailand. We currently live in Thailand, where I value the climate, the service, the safety and the ease of daily life for a large family.

My eldest daughter, however, is approaching an age when education cannot simply be postponed for another five years. That changes my assessment of Thailand. A place that works beautifully for a family with young children may no longer be the best fit when a child is 13, 15 or 17.

I now want to begin by understanding the educational and life path we hope to give each child, and then decide where the family should spend the next seven to ten years. The map looks very different when you start there.

Taxes have taught me a similar lesson. I have been interested in international structures for years and have created companies across a number of jurisdictions, including the UAE, Hong Kong, Georgia, China, Thailand and the United States. Each structure had a purpose at the time. I also spent years learning how an entrepreneur can organise an international business legally without paying more tax simply because nobody thought about its geography early enough.

The further I go, though, the less I want to start a relocation conversation with the tax rate. You can find a country with nearly perfect taxes and discover six months later that you do not want to live there. Then the tax structure lives in one place, the family in another and the business in a third, while the owner spends half his time maintaining a system that was meant to make him freer.

To me, good optimisation is something you barely notice in ordinary life. If saving a few percentage points requires constant day counting, flights you do not want to take, a home you do not need and anxiety every time the rules are reinterpreted, I would calculate the true cost again. Sometimes paying more is cheaper.

Property works the same way. When someone says, “I want to buy an apartment in Dubai,” I first want to know what job that apartment is meant to do. A family home, a store of capital, an income-producing asset, a backup base, a residence strategy and a future home for a child are different purchases. They should not be judged by the same criteria.

Nomad Nova grew out of all these observations. I realised that I wanted someone I could sit down with and show the entire picture: the family, the children's ages, our passports, the business, the capital, the countries we love, the constraints we cannot ignore, our view of taxes and our idea of a good life. Then we could work out which few decisions truly mattered.

Most advisers see one part of that picture. An immigration specialist understands residence. A tax adviser sees the tax structure. A banker sees capital. A property adviser knows a particular market. An education consultant understands schools. Each may be excellent at their work, but someone still has to bring the advice together and see how it behaves inside one family system.

That is the role I see for Nomad Nova. I am interested in finding specific people I trust and assembling the right mix of expertise around a family: a strong lawyer, a banker who answers the phone, a property adviser who understands the client's interests and an education specialist I would trust with my own children.

After all these years, I think family architecture comes down to a small set of connected questions. Where do we want to spend most of our time? Where must the family have a legal right to live? How should the business and capital be distributed? What path are we creating for the children? What job is the property doing? What happens if the plan we rely on suddenly stops working?

Simplicity matters more to me now as well. After several years of international life, it is easy to keep adding countries, accounts, companies and statuses. Freedom is not the number of structures you own. It is having enough options without spending half your life looking after them.

I am no longer searching for the best country. I am building the best combination of decisions for this period of my family's life. In ten years, that combination will probably change. The children will be older, the business will be different and we may be drawn to other places. That is perfectly normal.

A good life architecture should leave room to change your own mind. More than any ranking or tax table, that freedom is what I now want for my family, and what I hope Nomad Nova can help other families create.