Of all the promotional emails I’ve received, the one that I got in February from St. Kitts and Nevis is probably the strangest. For a limited time only, it said, this small island nation in the Caribbean could offer me citizenship at a $25,000 discount.

Why I wound up getting an email like this is a minor mystery. I cover wealth, and I find the logisticsof being richextremely amusing. But being able to drop $125,000 on a second passport — which was the sale price — and laughing about it are not the same.