worshipnico1
New member
Hello.
We are a US couple, early 50s, and we moved to MX early this year for many reasons, one of the biggest being financial (we are on a tight budget, lean FIRE). We make about $500 usd a month (now, after I left my job) from side hustles and the rest of living expenses are covered from DIV and INT.
Sold the house and cars, kept the sold house address on all financial account - schwab checking/brokerages, fidelity 401k, another 401K, and vanguard IRAs, plus on Chase checking and 2 HYSA (Marcus and Ally), and a small HSA. We don't own anything physical anymore, just financial assets.
We got a traveling mailbox service for all mailing needs, but that address we realized we have to be cautious how we use it with the accounts (only add it to accounts when they specify "mailing address" and not "permanent address", otherwise you run the risk for the account to be shut down). After we added it, we got an email saying that the credit history was updated with this mailing address...
My questions are:
1) Are there just 2 options for expats: lying by keeping our old home address on all accounts vs putting our mexican address on them - and if we do the latter what are the implications?
a) will Chase close us?
b) what about Marcus, Ally?
c) Schwab seems will transition us to Schwab International... Fidelity? Vanguard?
2) Say we continue keeping our USA address. Then can we file non-resident for part of the year so we avoid paying 5% and can we file FEIE, which would mean we were out of country??? Isn't that saying to the Schwabs, vanguards, etc that we were not in USA, which can close our accounts? I know the databases from IRS and from financial institutions may not be linked, but what if they will be 5 yrs from now and we'll be asked questions? Is anybody concerned about this or am I the only paranoid person here?
3) For the DIV (mostly SCHD) and INT (Vanguard Settlement fund VMFXX, Marcus, Ally, tbills) - do we need to pay any Mexican tax on these, assuming we keep our IL address on files? We pay USA tax but people on FB were saying one may need to pay the expat country tax too? Does anybody know from experience, I spend an hour online and can't understand anything I see...
4) Talking about VMFXX, will we even be allowed to hold it if we declare at some point we are non residents in USA? If we are not (being a mutual fund), can we still buy tbills from TreasuryDirect or via Schwab International maybe?
5) This is not a question, just expressing my frustration with the hundreds of thousand of people that move to Mexico and there is no financial heads up or deep dive into implications - all FB, Youtube is filled with stories like "best tacos in city X" and crap like this, barely any discussion about residency etc. I think 95% of people are clueless and as de facto they are keeping their address in USA and hope their accounts won't get closed (I mean how can Schwab not know we live in MX while we use their card at ATMs here every week? Isn't it obvious???). Same with Wise card...
Sorry for the rant and thank you for your input...
We are a US couple, early 50s, and we moved to MX early this year for many reasons, one of the biggest being financial (we are on a tight budget, lean FIRE). We make about $500 usd a month (now, after I left my job) from side hustles and the rest of living expenses are covered from DIV and INT.
Sold the house and cars, kept the sold house address on all financial account - schwab checking/brokerages, fidelity 401k, another 401K, and vanguard IRAs, plus on Chase checking and 2 HYSA (Marcus and Ally), and a small HSA. We don't own anything physical anymore, just financial assets.
We got a traveling mailbox service for all mailing needs, but that address we realized we have to be cautious how we use it with the accounts (only add it to accounts when they specify "mailing address" and not "permanent address", otherwise you run the risk for the account to be shut down). After we added it, we got an email saying that the credit history was updated with this mailing address...
My questions are:
1) Are there just 2 options for expats: lying by keeping our old home address on all accounts vs putting our mexican address on them - and if we do the latter what are the implications?
a) will Chase close us?
b) what about Marcus, Ally?
c) Schwab seems will transition us to Schwab International... Fidelity? Vanguard?
2) Say we continue keeping our USA address. Then can we file non-resident for part of the year so we avoid paying 5% and can we file FEIE, which would mean we were out of country??? Isn't that saying to the Schwabs, vanguards, etc that we were not in USA, which can close our accounts? I know the databases from IRS and from financial institutions may not be linked, but what if they will be 5 yrs from now and we'll be asked questions? Is anybody concerned about this or am I the only paranoid person here?
3) For the DIV (mostly SCHD) and INT (Vanguard Settlement fund VMFXX, Marcus, Ally, tbills) - do we need to pay any Mexican tax on these, assuming we keep our IL address on files? We pay USA tax but people on FB were saying one may need to pay the expat country tax too? Does anybody know from experience, I spend an hour online and can't understand anything I see...
4) Talking about VMFXX, will we even be allowed to hold it if we declare at some point we are non residents in USA? If we are not (being a mutual fund), can we still buy tbills from TreasuryDirect or via Schwab International maybe?
5) This is not a question, just expressing my frustration with the hundreds of thousand of people that move to Mexico and there is no financial heads up or deep dive into implications - all FB, Youtube is filled with stories like "best tacos in city X" and crap like this, barely any discussion about residency etc. I think 95% of people are clueless and as de facto they are keeping their address in USA and hope their accounts won't get closed (I mean how can Schwab not know we live in MX while we use their card at ATMs here every week? Isn't it obvious???). Same with Wise card...
Sorry for the rant and thank you for your input...
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