u/ongoldenwaves

You've got 4 year exemption from FIF to bring funds over, but you've probably ended up with more in your US retirement accounts than you can pull out in 4 years without incurring huge tax liabilities in the US. But if you leave it over there for a 30 year retirement draw down, you've got a ton of taxes to pay every year in an ongoing basis in FIF. The HSA and Roth seem particularly problematic. The US requires minimum distributions from the other accounts, but I think they would be FIF exempt though not income exempt.
What did you do? Any advice?

Right now I have ira/roth ira/hsa/401k and a traditional brokerage. I qualify for US social security and would not draw super.

My traditional/non tax advantaged brokerage is pretty high and the bigger issue. I understand that I have to report 5% of the value as income which will translate to about 2% taxes on the value of the account at the beginning of the year assuming a 39% tax rate. Does that scale past 2% under any circumstance or level of income?

Besides the value of the account, I collect around 30k usd in dividends from my traditional brokerage. My plan was to live off dividends/401k/IRA/Social Security, preserve the principal and eventually fund scholarships in perpetuity from my traditional. But since I'm never going to draw it down, I'd be left paying taxes on that principal sitting in an account and probably growing every year? I could move it into a DAF and start gifting it all away now, but then I wouldn't have the dividend income to live on.

It feels untenable. The NZ taxes on my traditional brokerage account would take all the income I planned on living on. It also means I would not be able to leave anything at all to charity as my traditional brokerage would have to be sold down to live on. As far as I can tell, it's not doable unless there is something I am missing.

Honestly leaves me feeling like I'm locked out. Pretty bummed as I really did want to fund a bunch of scholarships as NZ did a good job of educating me. I did want to bring that money home. I have no children to leave it to. :(

The chats during the live stream have gotten pretty terrible over the last year. People will brigade the chat, posting the same question every minute or so. Copy paste, copy paste over and over and over. Disingenuous questions from people who just want to get picked.

I haven't listened to a live stream in over a month because of it and I'm someone who tuned in every Tuesday for years. Always got some helpful advice from regulars in the chat. Now those voices have just been smothered. You can't even read the questions because 20 are coming in every minute.

BUT I think today might have killed it for me for good. What a shit show.
Very sad. The whole thing has just gotten very sad.

I love seeing all the wildlife in here. Some of the photos bring tears to my eyes. Our wildlife is so awesome and so many people here do a great job with photos.

But IMHO, social media isn't good for wildlife. People will use information you post to hunt animals. Or destroy it by over loving it. Or bring out the hordes who trample it to get viral IG posts. Or start bringing in tour groups to the area. Fact is plants and animals can be taken for free, so it's very appealing for tour operators to sell a tour for a couple hundred bucks with the guarantee that their customers can take a few hundred dollars of sea food out of the rock pools for the price of the ticket.

Love seeing all the photos, but think hard about whether it's worth endangering the life of some of our beautiful creatures when you post their location. I would enjoy seeing them just as much even if I didn't know where they were. And I'd sleep better at night if almost no one knew where they were. You won't get less votes if you only put up a photo with no location. Votes aren't worth anything anyway.

That goes for rare plants like some of our orchids as well. Or delicious mushrooms that are better left in our forests. Because the thing is, no one takes one any more. They tend to strip everything until it's gone.

I don't know if this will be an unpopular line of thinking, but I say it from a place of love for our animals.

See the link. Cat was conducting layoffs in Nashville. The author of the post writes in comments she knew it was going to happen because when they returned to work in May from WFH, there weren’t enough desks or parking for everyone.

Kind of a brutal passive aggressive approach IMHO.

Happened to us a while back. Husband's grandmother left each grandchild money and then each great grandchild the same amount. The money for the great grandchildren was supposed to be "for education" but it wasn't put in a trust. A larger cheque was just cut to the parents with kids.

Not a single one of my SO's siblings saved the extra money they received for their children's education. It was spent on vacations, cars, debt they had run up. So it really was just a breeding bonus.

When his dad died, we had to pay for the funeral. No one chipped in because they "had children". One of siblings that complained the loudest about being asked to share the costs of the funeral rolled up to the funeral in a brand new 80k car.

Have now learned that So's mom has changed her will to leave money solely to the siblings with children, so we will be left out of another generation.

Very strange to be seen as only being an equal member of the family if we reproduce.

We've done okay. Originally we thought we'd be leaving money to our nieces and nephews, but changed our minds. No one in the family is getting anything from our estate. Our feeling is if we aren't "family enough" neither are they.

I despise Bezos. With the near constant rocket launches in Cape Canaveral now, I wonder how it's effecting the mama turtles coming in from Costa Rica. I wondered if any of them were injured by this garbage. No one is even asking the question.

Keep seeing the "woman drivers" ad from Uber and it reminded me how terrible my experience in Fort Lauderdale was with a bad driver a couple of weeks back.

Got picked up from the bright line station by a female. Great driver. Very nice. Opened the trunk so I could get my grandma's walker in.

Needed to go from Los Olas to Mai Kai. This young guy shows up, sits in his car. Doesn't open trunk for walker. Doesn't talk to us. Doesn't make eye contact. Takes us to the back of the Mai Kai property which is very large. I ask him three times to please drop us in the front...the address we put in for. My grandma is 99. He knew we were tourists not familiar with the area so maybe he thought he could pull one over on us. But we are still like a quarter of a mile away from where we need to enter. He keeps pushing for us to walk so he can save the 1/4 mile? Or avoid getting out on 1? I'm not sure. My grandma is 99 years old and has a walker and afib. She simply can not walk that far. It became an argument. He did finally drop us off in front, but reluctantly.

And you know what? I was afraid to leave him a bad review and have it come back on me since it was my first day using Uber. His seats were stained, his car was old. No problem. But I didn't need to guy making some beefed up claim that we had somehow did that.

The ride back from the Mai Kai was fine. Driver was very nice. Very professional. I'm pretty sure though that the experience with our second driver has put me off using Uber forever. What a shit show. I don't know if a woman driver would have been any better but when I see the ad and the woman is opening her trunk to get the stroller in, I get it.

That guys grandma sure as hell did not raise him right.