expat finance

I'm new to ExpatFinance subreddit and would like to introduce myself. I'm a 31 year old former Marine officer and a graduate of Texas A&M w/ a degree in Agricultural Engineering. I'm currently a partner and manager of an agricultural investment in Argentina. Our investment manager lives in...

I'm slogging through IRS publication 514 trying to understand the Foreign Tax Credit. I have a question that I'll try to put in basic terms: Since I am a German resident and my German income tax is always higher than my US tax obligations, will the Foreign Tax Credit (FTC) generally ALWAYS...

Hello everyone. I've tried to be compact with my writing. US expat in UK for the long-term, probably 'forever'. Working a normal office job in the UK for a global company (no plans to relocate so not factoring that in here). I am aware of the extent/magnitude of IRS reporting duties, and the...

Hey everyone, I’m totally new to investing and honestly not very interested in it either. I just want something easy to use and to invest in ETFs for retirement. I’ve lived a few years abroad and I’m going back this year after being stuck in the US due to COVID, so my retirement options are...

Hello everyone, I’m an expat living in Vietnam and I teach for a living. It’s a modest amount that I earn and I don’t get the benefit of a retirement plan with my workplace due to my foreigner status, so for the past few years I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck and it’s only now I’ve started...

I am an American living overseas (in Germany) and my children are now preparing to enter university. They will be going to universities outside of USA and are not on the FAFSA list of qualifying schools. This means their expenses are not eligible for 529 plans. I am trying to find the best way...

Disclaimer: I’m not investment savvy at all so please bear with me. Context: I’m from the U.K. but am moving abroad soon so will not be able to pay into an ISA. I’m looking to save a portion of my salary for my future (retirement, house purchase, etc). I have been advised to open both a SIPP...

I live abroad, so with an IBR plan and the FEI exclusion my compulsory payments to my 90k in student loans are at 0. At the moment, my wife and I have a fair amount of money saved up, and are thinking about looking for a house, but this lingering debt which will only get higher with a 6.5%...

Hi All, I’m a German citizen living and working in the US for many years with a green card. I have some questions regarding taxes if, hypothetically, I would move back to Germany. While giving up the green card could be an option in future to make everything easier, I would not consider this at...

Hi! I'm working on my tax forms and need a U.S. bank account for any returns. Are there any digital banks that won't require me to have a phone number to open an account - I at least have a family member's address I can use and that I do send random mail too. But I left the U.S. as a teenager...

Hi all and thanks in advance for information and advice. Trying to get some things straight after researching online... it’s a lot and I’m anticipating I may get the response ‘pay a professional to answer these questions!’, which I’ll do if that’s the consensus 🙂 Many recommend...

Hello all, I signed up for Generali Vision Plan for 15 years on Oct 2015. I was confident I could pay my monthly premiums of $1350 for 15 years. I am an expat in UAE and the 'respectable Independent Financial Advisor' sold this to me as I was 28 then and ;I should do the smart thing by starting...

Hi! So, I have a lot of savings piling up and I want to know: what's a sufficient Emergency Fund for an American living and working n Indonesia? As in, at what point do I stop saving and start looking for other saving/earning vehicles? Background information: Personal Info: 36yo, F, single, no...

I hope this allowed in this sub; apologies if goes against the rules. FinCEN, the U.S. Treasury Department bureau that's responsible for overseeing the receipt of Foreign Bank Account Reports, is inviting comments "on the proposed renewal, without change, of existing information collection...

Hi, I'm a US expat living in the UK for the last 20 years and I'm looking for advice around investing (stocks? crypto?). I do my FATCA reporting every year like an obedient little citizen and want to avoid making that more complicated than it needs to be so I'm specifically looking for tips...

Asking for a friend. She’s sending quite a large sum of money (maybe £10-20 thousand, not sure exactly how much). She currently has this money in her Turkish bank account. Her Turkish bank has quoted her something ridiculous and the U.K. bank says they may charge on their end too, but she...

Some time ago I posted a query re ways of minimizing FX loss when sending funds from US-based banks (Bank of America) to foreign banks (South Korea in my case). It seems there is no way to get around the below-market FX rate which really amounts to a fee. The USD-KRW rate started going up...

When people reach out to our team of US expat financial advisors, there’s a good chance they’re either living or planning a move to Portugal. And it’s not just something we’ve seen. It’s something the Wall Street Journal & LA Times have written about, too. So as Portugal continues to grow in its...

In a rather swift and harsh judgment, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s decision in favor of the IRS, which assessed an approximately $1.2 million penalty against a taxpayer for failing to disclose her financial interests in an overseas account. The decision, U.S. v...

What I mean by the "adverse exchange rate" is the lower (or higher) exchange rate that is really a fee for the transaction, even though the bank claims not to have charged any service fee. I am a US expatriate in South Korea who last transferred funds from Bank of America to a local bank (Hana...