This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with David von Rosen, 50, the founder of the online lottery company Lottoland. Business Insider has verified his residences and net worth. The piece has been edited for length and clarity.
Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve played a game of imagining all the places I’d like to live.
I grew up in a very small town in central Germany, a rural and safe place, but I knew very early on that I didn’t want to stay there. I wanted to explore the world.
Now, I’ve traveled widely and lived on six different continents. Eventually, in my 40s, I found the perfect combination of two places to call home.
I lived in North America as a teenager
In 1991, when I was 15, I did an exchange trip to Walla Walla, Washington. I stayed with a loving family, and it was a great experience. That’s where my love for the US grew, and I thought I wanted to live there forever.
That changed at 19, when I started an undergraduate degree at Northwestern near Chicago. It quickly felt like I was relearning things I already knew, and I felt socially out of place.
I left after a semester, returned to Germany, and enrolled at the European Business School near Frankfurt in 1996, which had a strong emphasis on studying abroad.
Buenos Aires was beautiful, but too far from family
As part of my studies, I spent time in Buenos Aires, a beautiful city. I learned a new language and visited places like Patagonia. Argentina was out of the ordinary, but I was never tempted to live there. It was simply too far away from my family in Europe.
Interning in Australia made me fall in love with Sydney
I also got the opportunity to live in Sydney while at EBS, interning for a bank from late 2000 to early 2001. I lived on Bondi Beach and fell in love with the city’s casual vibe. After work, we’d often have a beer on the beach.
Everyone was friendly and relaxed, and I loved the combination of city and beach life. I wanted to live in Sydney again one day, but that never happened.
I still think about owning a small beach house in Cape Town
After graduating in 2001 and working in the US for a short while, I came up with a business idea to launch in Germany. I moved to Munich in 2002 and launched my student loan company, CareerConcept.
In 2008, when I sensed CareerConcept was coming to an end, I wanted to try something new.
My then-girlfriend, now wife, lived in Cape Town, South Africa, for almost six months. I loved the city, especially the morning runs where I could smell and see the ocean.
I never moved back to South Africa, but I still think about one day owning a small beach house in Cape Town.
When I started doing well financially, we explored more of the world
In 2012, I already had the idea for Lottoland, the online betting company. It made sense to launch it in Gibraltar, where I worked with regulators to get a gambling license. We moved there in 2013, and the company did very well, significantly changing my financial circumstances.
By 2018, I had stepped back from day-to-day operations. My wife and I decided to spend a few months each year in different places with our two children.
We spent time in Costa Rica, where the kids attended an American school, and I surfed and explored Central America.
We also went to Dubai for a semester. I got to know the city well. There are a lot of business opportunities, as well as money and ambition. It’s what I imagine New York was like in the 1920s. I really fell in love with it.
The combination of Switzerland and the UAE is unbeatable
We’d lived in a lot of warm places. In 2020, at 45, we decided to go somewhere colder. We found a school in Verbier, Switzerland, and moved that January. We’d only planned to stay a couple of months, but when COVID-19 hit, we ended up staying longer.
Verbier is an international community, with a small-town vibe that reminded me of where I grew up. In the winter, we got to ski, and in the spring, we discovered so many other new sports, like mountaineering and downhill biking. By summer, we’d decided to stay for good.
I came to realize that there’s probably no single place to live that ticks all the boxes. That’s why, if you have the freedom to live in more than one place, it can be a wise decision.
We split our year between Dubai and Verbier, and decide how long we spend in each based on the weather, work opportunities, and the kids’ schooling.
Verbier is a small town that’s all about outdoor activities. Dubai, by contrast, is a buzzing city full of energy and opportunity. The combination of the two places, I realized, was unbeatable for us.
It’s no secret that both are low-tax jurisdictions, but that should never be a deciding factor on where to live. I’d rather pay more tax and live in the best place possible. It just happens that these offer a great quality of life without exorbitant taxes.
Together, Dubai and Verbier offer the best lifestyle combination I could ever imagine. I hope that they will be my family’s bases for many years to come.
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