I've been using TreasuryDirect for years. Upon moving to Germany, I tried to change my address, but there is no option online to add a foreign address. Like many expats, a family members address has been used for such things. Two days ago, TreasuryDirect announced that they will require the use of ID.me. I am concerned that signing up with ID.me with my german address and number will case the account to be frozen. Asking an LLM/AI (yes, poor advice), I was advised that trying to log in from Germany with ID.me may cause issues/freezing of the account. Using my voip number is the USA and USA address will most likely be an issue. I am wondering, is it best to withdraw all my money before the end of October or am I overthinking things? Are there anyways to add an non-us address/number? What are other expats of Treasurydirect thinking about the new change?

Through inheritance I will come into a fair bit of money that is in mutual funds, stock investments and savings. All at the Royal Bank of Canada.

Long ago I filed the papers with the Canadian consulate in Nagoya regarding taxes. I have Japanese PR and will mostly likely spend the rest of my life here. My wife is Japanese. No children.

The accountant currently in charge of the accounts suggested that I move all the savings to Japan.

We would prefer to leave the money in Canada as it will eventually go to my niece and nephew, but we have access to it until then.

Is this possible? if so, how?

My mom is 78 yo and has dual US/Phil citizenship. She lives here in NY during the spring and summer. Then lives in Dumaguete for the rest of the year.

She is renting out our family's property in Dumaguete. She brought the post dated rent check with her to the U.S., during her annual visit to NY. However, her bank --Bank of America--said they don't take checks from the Philippines. So she hasn't been able to deposit it.

MY QUESTION: Which Philippine banks have US branch offices that would let my mom deposit her tenant's foreign check and allow my mom to access her money (like ATM) during her stays in the US? During the rest of the year she would deposit the rent check in a Philippine branch location of the same bank.

EDIT: Thank you everyone for your input. Glad that I now have some options to look into!

My husband and I are residents in Albania, as Americans. I am a stay at home mom to a toddler. I rely on my husband's income. I really want life insurance on him for peace of mind if something ever happened to him, I could support myself and my child. He is 31 with no health problems. I was thinking a 1 million dollar policy for, less than $100 a month? Is this possible? Where do I start looking? Thanks.

Hey all! I’m a dual citizen (US and Italy) with residence in Italy, I’ve been wanting to get into buying etfs mostly (msci world, schd, some tech etfs etc) and a small percentage of single stocks. Is there a way to do that without the US wanting insane taxes? Or an eu broker that offers all this even to dual US citizens? Thanks in advance for any help!

My wife and I are US/French and German, living in Germany, probably close to CoastFIRE. Starting a family soon too. I moved to Germany 7 years ago and it is now home, but the long tail of taxation stuff and hurdles was the „pleasant“ surprise I never anticipated in spite of an otherwise great experience career wise and culturally. It is all quite complicated and often overwhelming.

I have done a lot of research, reading into articles or trying to find experts, but always encounter that they only cover one side. So US tax people don’t know German implications, German advisors don’t know FATCA or PFIC stuff, and the few people who actually understand both charge a lot of money for basic questions or literally turn me away. Very frustrating.

Therefore, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I have been following this community for a while and found many interesting posts that brought some level of clarification for me. I don’t care much for stock tips/crypto investing etc but much more about lifestyle, tools and tactics that fit in the unusual DE/US context. Some of the things we are into are: HomeExchanges, sports/mobility across countries, night trains, and the LunchMoney app

I’m trying to find a handful of people dealing with the same stuff to just have a bit more community: Roth vs FTC/FEIE, pensions across countries, property and rental taxes, inheritance across borders, starting a business and that kind of thing to swap notes with in a small Telegram group. If you’re dealing with any of this and want in, comment or DM me.

I think the way financial identity works across borders is fundamentally broken.

If I move from one U.S. state to another, I remain financially the same person.

If I cross a national border, suddenly years of income, savings, assets, business ownership and financial behavior become extremely difficult for institutions to use.

The standard answer is basically: start building local credit again.

But why?

The underlying financial evidence still exists.

I’ve been working on a system that takes the documents people already have — bank statements, income, employment, business ownership, property and assets — reconciles them and turns them into a standardized financial identity that can be understood outside the country where those documents originated.

I’m curious whether people here think the bigger problem is access to foreign data or simply making foreign financial evidence understandable and trustworthy to the institution receiving it.

The "you need a million to retire" number is an American number, and I wanted to know how much of it is actually about retirement versus just about US prices. So I pulled World Bank data for all 195 countries and worked out what the same purchasing power costs elsewhere.

The method is a price level ratio. How many dollars it takes to buy a dollar's worth of goods somewhere compared with the US. Portugal comes out at 0.6037, so the same basket runs you 60 cents there. Multiply your target by that ratio and you get the portfolio that throws off the same local purchasing power. The withdrawal rate cancels out of the comparison, so it holds at 4 percent or 3 or whatever you actually use. Drop to 3 percent and every number just scales up by a third, and the ranking is identical.

What came out of it.

The median country is $457,100 and 108 of the 195 sit under $500,000.

Only 8 come out above the US. Bermuda, Cayman, Iceland, Switzerland, Barbados, Nauru and Israel. Sudan shows up too but that's an exchange rate artifact and I'd ignore it.

I expected a cliff between the rich world and everywhere else and there isn't one, it's a smooth slope the whole way down. The rich world is the tight part, twelve countries sit between $765,700 and $1,178,500, so the entire developed world fits inside a 1.5x band.

Portugal $603,700. Spain $645,200. Japan $648,700, far cheaper than its reputation, though that's mostly the yen having fallen rather than Japan getting cheap. Thailand $306,900, Malaysia $316,300, Philippines $331,600.

Where it breaks down, and this sub will spot it faster than most. Price levels average a whole national basket and most of that gets bought by locals on local wages. Import familiar food, run a car, carry international health cover or put kids in an international school and you're buying a different basket at something much closer to Western prices. Rents in the areas foreigners actually land in run well above the national average too. So it's the ceiling on your discount rather than the discount itself.

It also says nothing about the two things that decide this in practice, which are visas and tax. No treaty analysis, no FEIE or foreign tax credit, no wealth or exit taxes, no view on where your withdrawals get taxed and at what rate. It ignores currency risk as well, and this ratio moves ten or twenty percent in a couple of years without any real prices changing.

And national averages hide a lot. Lisbon is not rural Portugal.

Chart with all 32 countries and the sourcing is in the comments.

I’m moving temporarily overseas today, and a family member sent me about $100 on Venmo. I had just closed my old US bank account and opened a different fee-free US account. I connected that account to Venmo and initiated the transfer, but Venmo said in order to verify my bank, I’ll need to wait until two small deposits and withdrawals are made, and then confirm those amounts to Venmo.

However, it said that this can take 1-3 business days, and I’m leaving in a few hours. I also read that once I’m overseas, I won’t be able to log in to Venmo in order to do the verification. Is that true? If so, what happens to that money/what should I do?

Hello everyone,

I'm kind of running in circles with what to do with my brokerage situation now that I'm living in France. I am here on a work visa and getting a French salary. I already have a taxable IBKR brokerage account (opened in US), and taxable AND Roth IRA accounts with Schwab.

I have an address I can use in the US for my mailing address, but now that I'm going to start claiming Foreign Tax Credit on my tax returns I'd rather keep everything a bit clearer and not pretend I'm living in the US still for brokerage purposes.

What I'm thinking of doing is opening a Roth IRA with IBKR, transferring my Schwab IRA to IBKR (to avoid penalties), and then updating to my foreign address to both accounts. From what I understand, I won't be able to invest in ETFs. My current positions are in individual stocks.

Is this the best way to go about this transition, while not risking any accounts getting shut down or any regulatory issues?

Thanks in advance for your comments and suggestions

So there's this one app I kept seeing everywhere, so I finally downloaded it. Don't wanna name it, but I had the worst experience. Tried to set up an account and it just closed on me automatically before I could even send a single payment. Like I didn't even get the chance to use it.

Now I'm kinda stuck because I'm dealing with a supplier from a LATAM country for the first time. So I need something I can actually rely on, not something that ghosts me on day one.

So what's the best global payments app you guys actually use? Thanks in advance!

I've had various financial hardships throughout my life, so it's been difficult for me to let go of my money. But it's not doing anything, and I know I need it to do something, or retirement won't be possible. I obsessively run calculations constantly on how much money I'll have for retirement.Some info:

I'm 54, married, so Tax Class III. My wife has a small business, but there's been no profits yet. We have no kids, no debt (we finished paying off our student loans last year), no car, we rent, and live a fairly simple life. I'll spend around 2k/year on my hobbies. I also funnel off about 400/month into a subaccount dedicated to travel. I have no relatives that will be dying and leaving me money :).

Salary: 88k€ net

Yearly stock bonus: ~15k net

I put 2k€/month into a subaccount for savings.

Current assets:

- 55k€ bank account

- 50k€ brokerage (IBKR) (I got lucky with a couple of risky meme stocks)

- 20k€ US 401k

- 120k€ in company stock

- ~40k€ RSUs vesting over the next 2 years

Taxes for 2026 are going to be complicated because I dealt with ISOs this year. I have a final tranche of ISOs I need to deal with next year as well. I'm going to need to get a tax person this year.

My current retirement goal is 600k€, because that will give us enough to supplement US and German social security to continue living our current lifestyle, for 20 years. If I can continue saving 2k/month, I will just make that number at retirement. I KNOW that's an unrealistic way to look at it, but I've been stuck in hoarding mode, afraid to let the market control my money.

I'm looking for advice on where to start. I read about companies like Black Swan Capital who could get me started, but I've done some research on how much it would cost, and it shocks me (see money hoarder mentality, so I don't know if it's a reasonable reaction).

Anyway, thanks for any advice.

Edit: if it matters, I'm expecting to apply German citizenship next year.

I had a situation last year that may be relevant for some in here.

Last year, I was assisting a UK Property Investor with a portfolio in the UK and Southern Europe who was becoming increasingly frustrated with the 90/180 Day travel restriction imposed by Brexit.

As he had a quite significant presence in Europe, he wanted increased access. After assessing his profile, I identified that a Caribbean CBI program would restore his Schengen-Free Access and a European residency program would then give him a base in Europe.

I assisted him to complete a Caribbean CBI program initially for the Immediate Mobility and I am now looking at his options for an EU Residency.

Its quite staggering the amount of times I am hearing International investors say 'I should've done this years ago'.

I do find and I'm sure many in here will agree with me, planning ahead is so vitally important to ensure a smooth continuity of operations.

Without suitable Global Mobility, these problems would have persisted for this individual and led to issues in his business activities.

Hi everyone! I’m from the Philippines and I do freelance work where I get paid in USD through Wise.

Since I only earn relatively small amounts from freelancing, I’m looking for a good USD savings account where I can safely keep my earnings instead of leaving everything in Wise.

My main goal is actually to save the USD for future travel, so I’d prefer to keep it in USD rather than constantly converting it to PHP.

Ideally, I’m looking for a bank/account with:
- Minimal or no fees
- Low maintaining balance
- Good USD interest rate
- Time deposit option
- Easy transfers to/from Wise
- Deposit insurance or good security
- The option to invest the money eventually (if the bank offers this)

I mainly want somewhere safe to park my USD, earn a little interest, and possibly grow it over time.

For those who also receive USD from freelance/remote work, what bank or account do you recommend, and what has your experience been like?

Would also appreciate any advice on whether it’s better to keep the money in USD or convert some of it to PHP and invest locally.

Thanks!

I’m overseas and I need a number for a traditional bank account. I have USBank. I heard that Tello could work, but I would like to know if others used Tello for their account and if Tello didn’t work, which eSIM company did work for you?

I am at lean FIRE stage - I have RRSP, LIRA, TFSA and Non-Reg. I have about 46k room to max RRSP however leaving Canada permanently at the end of this year. I have not worked over the last year and not anticipating too much work in future. My thinking is not to top up that 46k from Non-Reg account as it will be subject to 15% withholding tax as Non resident. Is my thinking on right for this thought or am I missing something?

I'm a US citizen living in Germany, relocating to Spain mid-2027. My partner is Italian. Our daughter was born this year in Berlin and holds both US and Italian citizenship.

I already manage my own portfolio (US-domiciled ETFs — QQQM/VOO/SCHG mix, at Schwab) and want to start investing for her the same way, self-directed, no ongoing advisor relationship. Before I just open an account and start funding it, I want to know how much of this I can actually figure out myself vs. where I genuinely need a professional.

What I think I know, happy to be corrected:

• PFIC rules mean EU-domiciled funds are off the table for her given her US citizenship — has to be US-domiciled ETFs
• Not sure if her Italian citizenship adds any real complexity here, or if it's mostly irrelevant investment-wise since we won't be Italy-resident
• Seems like my only option here is to invest State-side for her?

Questions:

1. Is this actually a DIY-able situation once I know the right account type and brokerage, or is there a real reason to loop in a professional (tax treatment, reporting obligations, something I'm not seeing)?
2. If a pro is warranted, has anyone found someone who'll do a single paid hourly session — not sell a full financial plan or want an AUM relationship — for a question this narrow? Names/recommendations appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

I am trying to find a service which will convert my Euro and Singapore dollar to AED at the least conversion rate. I know that the banks charge somewhere around 3%. WIO bank does not offer Singaporean dollars, but they still charge 1.8% or so. Does anyone know any service or any bank which has the least currency conversion charges for these two currencies? Any advice will be helpful.