US expat in Belgium seeking information regarding investing

[mytruth73]

Hi, My wife and I moved to Belgium about 9 months ago. We are in our late 20's/early 30's, employed with large multi-national companies, and now that we are getting settled in, we are turning to our investment strategy. We do not have a return date and are discussing having our children here so our minimum time horizon in the EU is 5-10 years. In addition to our investments, we are saving to buy a house as well as keeping some liquid assets for travel home and emergency fund.

We already move part of our income back to the US and, similar to this thread, will be making part of our investments in the US. We would like to diversify and avoid some of the currency conversion fees by investing in Euros. This is the beginning of our investigations and we have not looked into the tax implications of doing all our investments in the US vs part in the EU.

We plan to invest about 1000 EUR per month in the US (converted to dollars) and about 500 EUR per month in the EU in ETFs and similar vehicles. These amounts are based on a percentage of our gross income which will (hopefully) increase with time and we plan to keep the approximate 2:1 split. Both portfolios are meant to be passive and a 20yr+ investment timeframe for retirement. We are not looking to generate income now so dividends paid out are not important for us.

For brokers, I've looked into Degiro since it is mention on this sub quite a bit but it does not seem possible for me because of my US citizenship. This thread mentions some others.

My questions are: Are there others here in the sub who are in a similar situation and are willing to share some lessons learned? Are there any suggestions for a broker given our situation? Are there "blind spots" I'm not considering where I should look into more details?

Thanks for sharing and any help you may be able to offer.

 

[danayah]

@mytruth73 Are you using Transferwise to get you money back to the States?

I'm in a similar situation in a neighboring country, but only invest in the US. I would also suggest looking into the tax situation. Some countries charge you a percentage of your wealth every year (e.g. 2% on amounts over 30k). Also, keep in mind that the US collects taxes on worldwide income, and you have to apply for the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion or the Foreign Tax Credit to avoid double taxation. These may also impact your decision. Also, while they've made it pretty easy with an online form, you have to declare all foreign accounts (and their amount) that had over $10k in them in the preceding year.

 

[mr_unemployed]

@mytruth73 Maybe look at binckbank? As far as I know they do everything for you (pay the correct taxes) they aren’t the cheapest tho...

But if you were to go the Degiro route for example, if you don’t speak dutch/french, you might have a hard time figuring all the taxes out.

For the etf, I would probably end up with capitalising ishares euro focussed etf. Or maybe another liquid etf with low costs.