Inside the Richest Country in the World | Monaco

Monaco is the richest country in the entire world. A microstate that sits right on the coast of the French Riviera that is roughly 4 kilometers long and just half a kilometer wide. A country that is so rich that one-third of its entire population are millionaires. And for decades, Monaco has been associated with wealth and continues to do so by holding the most expensive average price for a home, docking some of the most luxurious yachts in the world, and hosting the iconic F1 Monaco Grand Prix. Everywhere you turn here makes you feel like you're in a James Bond movie. So guys, welcome to Monaco. You know, after traveling to over 50 countries, I never really had at the top of my list coming to Monaco. But after arriving here this morning, this place is absolutely stunning. But there is some good news and some bad news about coming here to Monaco. Where the good news? It's beautiful and also very small. It's actually the second smallest country in the world next to the Vatican. Even myself coming from New York City, this entire country is smaller than Central Park. And the bad news is, it is insanely expensive. Where we couldn't even afford a hotel here in Monaco, so we're actually staying in France and then have to take a train in every day. So after walking around here in Monaco for the past hour, I need to say that this place is just like one giant rich person museum where all you see are these crazy mega yachts like this one with a helipad on it, all these crazy sports cars, and even insane apartments. And I did want to say that Monaco, like a lot of these other rich nations, became rich because it is a tax haven. There's zero capital gains tax here and zero income tax here. But Monaco, unlike a lot of these other countries, the barriers to entry to getting into Monaco is a lot more difficult. Where in order to become a Monaco resident and to reap these tax haven benefits, you need to deposit $500,000 into a bank account as well as own property. And owning property here in Monaco is not cheap, where the average one bedroom apartment is $5 million. So what I'm learning is that in order to even move into this country, you already have to be pretty well off. Yeah, you already have to be a multi-millionaire to even get into Monaco. So just when you thought you made your first million, you gotta do that like five to six more times. But then you're saving so much on taxes, and you get to live in a beautiful place like this. And, you know, I'm not one myself, but I've heard once you make your first million, that next million is easier. Soon, soon. Yup. Guys, make sure to like and subscribe since hopefully soon our AdSense can afford one of these mega yachts. I promise we'll take all the subscribers on it. So typically when I film these travel videos, I like to include a native from that country to share their experience about their own country. But this is probably the first time where I haven't been able to find anyone in this community or even when asking friends of friends of anyone who lives here in Monaco. And I think that has to do with there only being 39,000 people where probably a high majority of them do not watch my YouTube vlogs. But I do have a friend named Fran who just moved here to Monaco from America. So we're gonna go meet up with her and have her share her views and opinions about what it's been like so far living here in Monaco. All right. So we just made it here with Fran. Bonjour. Fran, why did you move here to Monaco of all places, the most expensive place I've ever been? In the world. But it is the birthplace of luxury and it is the best place to study luxury and to learn about it. So that is why I moved here. And now I'm in a program. It's gonna be 10 months long of nothing but yachting, Formula One and luxury partnerships. That sounds pretty nice. And so far from living here, what have you noticed that's interesting and unique about this country? Monaco has taken such good care of its people and its inhabitants. There's let's think there's stairs everywhere, escalators everywhere to get up the beautiful mountains. Everything is the people are so friendly and they're so welcoming to people like me that are studying abroad. So Monaco really is a special place. Wow. So you would say that the people here are actually really nice. Yes. People here are actually very nice. I feel like they expect you as a tourist to not be nice. But then as soon as you are and you smile, they're more than welcoming to you. So for the past 30 minutes, we have just stood here watching all of these crazy race cars and supercars coming up this bend. But now to end the evening, we are about to go on an adventure to see Monaco from a much different perspective and hike with Chris all the way up here. How long should this take? I don't want to promise you anything because then you'll get mad at me, but let's go. All right. Supposedly it's a couple hours up, a couple hours down. So let this Monaco hiking adventure begin. Now Monaco, the French Riviera, this entire part of the world is absolutely beautiful, where right now we are about to go and see it from a completely different perspective all the way up this mountain. Would you call that a mountain? Yeah. Yeah, it feels like a mountain. It's a mountain, for sure. So we got off the train at Cap d'Ai and now it's about an hour and a half hike all the way up to the top of this mountain where we're hopefully going to be able to get an incredible spectacular view of the country of Monaco. And what's amazing about this hike is it's one of those hikes where the entirety of the hike is just overlooking the French Riviera. This is incredible. This is like easily one of the most stunning places in the entire world. I understand how it like attracts people so much that there's a huge reason why they'd want to live here and they would do anything to make that so. And I feel like this hike, haven't seen cover too much. But so far, I mean we're not at the top yet, but even just this half of it has been so amazing. So really excited to see what it's like from the top. If you guys are coming into Monaco and looking for an adventure, highly recommend doing this hiking trail. It wasn't too hard, but it most certainly wasn't easy. Also I'm a little confused because I saw some people here in like nice clean white pants. Pretty sure you could also drive up here. Is that right, Chris? I think there's like, I think there's a different access point from Monaco. Okay, he definitely didn't tell me that before. This was definitely the more adventurous way. And now from up here, you just get the most insane view of the entire country of Monaco. Crazy to see it from this perspective and just see the square kilometers of this place. Only two. It's only two square kilometers, but to come up here and see all two square kilometers, it's just pretty magnificent. And a lot of the things here to do in Monaco are super expensive. So if you're looking for something more on a budget and want an adventure, definitely recommend coming up here and doing this hike. We've already been up here for about 45 minutes and probably not going to leave any time soon because I do not want to do that hike back down. As someone who does usually travel more on the budget side of things, I never really had Monaco on my list for traveling. But now after coming here, seeing the French Riviera, Monaco, I would highly recommend it, especially with doing this hike and getting a view like this just is something I wasn't expecting. So we may have a new job opening up here on the channel. Someone who can look into if you have to actually hike or not. Listen, think about all the pizza we ate in the past couple of videos. That's true. We needed that. All right. No, I'm glad we got the hiking. Just funny that we could have drove here. So we were just up here flying the drone and we met a really nice local named Razmik and he wanted some shots of him with the drone. And now in return, he said he's getting us pizza, bringing us pizza. You got the pizza? Oh my gosh. Incredible. I'm going with this one. Wow. This is beautiful. What do you do exactly here in Monaco? I'm working as a private banker assistant. Wow. That's cool. How do you like living in Monaco? I like it. Yeah. Can you feel that a lot of people in Monaco, you can sense all the people who have a lot of money. That's like seeing the sports cars, the yachts. Most of them. Yeah. They're going to get used to it. Most of them are kind. Like they don't care. So you would say the people are nice? Definitely. Yeah. I mean, I can tell you got given us pizza. Thank you. Now to start off day two here in Monaco, we're doing another free thing to do by coming down to the public beach. This is where you can get amazing views of the city and the sea and just experience the French Riviera or maybe here it may be called the Monaco Riviera. And I did want to mention that we grabbed food before this and I was shockingly surprised that the prices weren't too ridiculous where we were able to get a burger, fries, a drink and even a coffee for $22. I was expecting everything to be just ridiculously expensive and we even stopped by a McDonald's because we thought that would be the only option for an affordable meal. But luckily things around town, you can find some good bargains. And I must say that this has to be the fanciest McDonald's I've ever been to or even right behind me, we have a beautiful view of the Monaco Harbor. So if you do want to travel here, there are ways to do this place in a more affordable manner. But next up, we are about to head over to the F1 area where the track is and even go inside one of the famous car museums. Excited to check this out. So I was just looking out at all of these insane mega yachts and decided to look up the richest people here in the country of Monaco. And I saw that a lot of the people here gained their wealth from art collection, which I'm not entirely surprised by since contemporary art is a great addition to anyone's investment portfolio. Since if you take a look at the numbers, contemporary art prices have outperformed the S&P 500 by 164% for the past few decades. But when have you ever been able to afford a Picasso? Traditionally, this is an asset class that only billionaires can get in on. But thanks to Masterworks, they are democratizing the process and allowing normal people like you and me get in on the action. It's actually really simple. They buy some artwork, securitize it with the SEC, and then you're able to buy shares of it on their websites. And if you ever need liquidity, you can easily sell your shares on their secondary market Now legally, I do have to add that past performance is no indication of future results, but this definitely sounds like an interesting opportunity to me, especially because it's not correlated to stocks, bonds, and crypto. So start diversifying your portfolio today with art by going to masterworks.art slash Brett Conti or by simply clicking the link down below. So guys, this right here is where Tony Stark almost got assassinated in Iron Man 2. And also where they have the racetrack for the Formula One Monaco Grand Prix. Now Monaco wanted to participate and have their own Grand Prix, but one of the rules is that your racetrack has to be within your country's border. And Monaco, as we know, is relatively small compared to France, Spain, Germany, and Italy where they have vast countrysides. But this did not stop Monaco and encouraged them to use their own streets with their beautiful landscapes and crazy horseshoe bend turns and having that be their Grand Prix racetrack. And within just a couple of years, this had huge success and made the Monaco Grand Prix probably the most iconic and most successful race in the entire world. And that is why today, this one event attracts some of the wealthiest and well-known figures from all over the world as a symbol of status. So they can dock their Megagods in the Monaco Harbor, which give them the best seats in the house as the F1 cars race just a couple feet from the water. Guys, my mind is blown right now. I was just thinking to myself, how they afford all of these crazy cars. And then I just learned that all of these cars are owned by one person. And that person is the Prince of Monaco. So this museum is essentially just paying to look at his car collection. This has to be worth tens, if not hundreds of millions of euros, all in this one museum. Now the origin of Monaco's wealth comes back to right here, the Monte Carlo Casino. And back in 1861, France and Monaco set up a treaty that made Monaco a sovereign state. But in exchange for this, France took away Monaco's biggest GDP contributor, which were the citrus farms, which essentially made Monaco broke. So Monaco needed to figure out new ways to make money, and they noticed that casinos were illegal in pretty much all the other countries in Europe. So they decided to open up one right here in Monaco, the Monte Carlo Casino. And this casino became so successful so soon that in the year 1869, that's when they decided to drop income tax, and they were able to make all their money from this casino right here. People really do love the gamble. And this then resulted in a lot of millionaires and very wealthy people to come here to Monaco and set up shop and live here. And now this casino is still here today and featuring a lot of famous movies, including my personal favorite, James Bond Casino Royale, which is exactly why I bought this bow tie, brought this suit all the way from New York, and ready to go live my James Bond dream. So until next week, remember to like, subscribe, and we're going all-in on black on my accent, so let's do this. So after exploring the entire two-square-kilometer country of Monaco and seeing what it has to offer, there is no doubt that this place is the richest country on earth. And it turns out, once we dug deeper in research, it seems that the catalyst for this country's wealth all stems from the Grimaldi family and the creation of the Monte Carlo Casino, which then followed by the nation eliminating income tax and attracting tycoons to move to Monaco. Even though this country is super expensive, it's also super beautiful and unique as well. So whether you can afford a hotel here or want to take a 20-minute train ride from France like us, this country has a ton to offer. If you guys enjoyed this video, please make sure to like and subscribe as it truly helps me out a lot, and I will see you next week from Prague, Czech Republic.