A vivid sunset over water, with the words Operation Shamrock Falcon and the tagline Tax, freedom, family and reinvention
Visit the YouTube channel Discover the book

What is Operation Shamrock Falcon?

A plan born from chaos.
A family testing it in real life.

Edinburgh is home. The plan may still take us abroad.

What began as an attempt to rebuild after financial catastrophe became a long-term plan involving pensions, residency, international tax rules and an apparently unreasonable quantity of spreadsheets.

Now the spreadsheets meet reality: schools, housing, tax, cost of living, family life — and whether the places that work on paper actually feel like somewhere we could live.

Can an apparently brilliant spreadsheet survive contact with reality — and is the plan worth the human cost?

Follow us to find out

The experiment

From rebuild to real world

The route can change. The test stays the same: does the plan create a better life for the family?

Rebuild

Recover from divorce and financial collapse, create a home and reconstruct long-term security.

Research

Read the rules closely: pensions, residency, tax treaties, mobility and the limits hidden in the small print.

Explore

Visit the places, tour the schools, price the homes and ask what ordinary family life would really feel like.

Decide

Keep what survives contact with reality. Change what does not. And know when staying home is the better answer.

The upcoming book

Operation Shamrock Falcon

A true(ish) story of divorce, tax, exile, heat, rain — and reinvention.

Part memoir · Part investigation · Part live experiment

The full story behind the improbable plan

The book begins after everything has already fallen apart. It follows the collapse, the family rescue and the long rebuild — then opens the machinery beneath the story: pensions, residency, tax, property, geography and the stubborn attempt to turn instability into architecture.

  • Part IThe collapse and the rebuild
  • Part IIThe research, rules and modelling
  • Part IIIThe beginning of execution
Currently in development

Watch the journey

The spreadsheet is leaving the house.

The YouTube channel will follow the places, questions and family decisions that cannot be settled in a model — beginning with our reconnaissance trips and the reality behind the numbers.

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About us

A family from Edinburgh, with a plan that refuses to stay simple.

I’m Simon, an actuarial contractor living in Edinburgh with my fiancée Nicole and our two children. Edinburgh is home. The plan may still take us abroad.

Some years ago, divorce comprehensively destroyed my finances. Without significant family support, I would have been homeless with a newborn baby.

With my life in tatters, it was time to rebuild. We lived through a five-year renovation and created a lovely family home. I rebuilt my finances too, largely through pension contributions.

Along the way, I looked closely at tax, residency and where we could access the pension tax-efficiently outside the UK. Because I can’t do anything normally, the plan acquired a name: Operation Shamrock Falcon.