(Some people might call collecting residencies my “weird little habit”)

In more than one instance, taxes worked differently than I expected.

The pattern was always the same.

The visa process was clear. Immigration told me exactly what to submit, how long it takes, what it costs.

But nobody mentioned the tax side.

No consulate or immigration lawyer ever said:

“By the way, here’s when this country starts taxing your worldwide income.”

So I had to figure that out on my own.

After doing it several times, I started writing the rules down. What triggers tax residency, how different countries treat income, which reporting requirements people miss, and the mistakes I’ve made and watched clients make.

That’s what this article is based on.

A “cheat sheet” I built for people planning a move abroad.

And no, not that kind of cheating.

The goal is to keep you fully compliant, in the US and wherever you land.

I’ll walk through one key concept at the beginning, which is important to understand, and add some helpful resources afterwards.

The full document is available to download at the end.

Residency vs. Tax Residency

If you only remember on thing from this article, make it this:

• A visa is permission to enter a country.

• A residency permit is permission to stay.

• Tax residency is the obligation to pay taxes.

These are separate systems, run by separate authorities, using separate sets of rules.

Mixing them up is one of the most common (and expensive) mistakes people make when moving abroad.

In most countries, the tax office looks at two things:

1. How many days were spent in the country during a calendar year, and

2. What ties exist there (a home, a spouse, a bank account, a registered business).

Cross the threshold, and the country claims taxation rights. Most countries set that threshold at 183 days of physical presence.

When two countries both claim tax residency, bilateral treaties use a tiebreaker:

1. Permanent home

2. Center of vital interests

3. Habitual abode

4. Nationality

5. Mutual agreement between the two governments (if none of the above resolve it)

Obviously, it doesn’t always work exactly like that, and what I wrote above is simplified.

But it gives you a mental model to work with once you start digging into the specifics.

I’ve covered each of these topics in detail in separate articles:

Last but not least, make sure to check out those videos explaining how residency works abroad, how to move your money abroad as well as the bank account in the “neutral zone”.

And if you want help building your plan, or just need to open a bank account abroad, you can book a call with me here.

The Cheat Sheet

After years of explaining tax residency to clients and making my own mistakes along the way, I put everything into a single document. One reference sheet that covers the nine topics I wish someone had handed me before my first move abroad.

The full cheat sheet is available to download below.

Read more

The night before, it had over $250,000 in it.

The bank had frozen everything overnight.

Why?

Because the final page of a rental contract we uploaded weeks earlier was missing.

One missing page, and a bank decided that was enough. It took weeks to get access back (the full story is here).

That’s how fast access can vanish when you bank across borders.

I’ve made plenty more mistakes since I left Germany in 2020. Six of the more expensive ones are here.

The pattern behind all of them is the same.

Banking abroad has rules that don’t apply at home, and most people find out about those rules the hard way.

I talk to people who are about to leave their home country every week (find out more here).

Most are about to make the same banking mistakes without knowing it.

Which is why I put some common ones in this article, so you can know about them (and avoid doing them yourself).

We’ll cover:

• Seven banking mistakes that you should know about (and avoid)

• Where each one shows up (US bank, new country, and the fintech in between)

• The account setup that fixes most of them at once (and only takes a few weeks)

Let’s start.

Mistake #1: Keeping all your money in one country

Most Americans move abroad with every dollar still sitting in one place.

All of it in the same banks and brokerage they’ve used for decades, in the country they’re about to leave.

It feels safe because the setup is familiar.

But when one country holds all your money, one government and one banking system stand between you and everything you’ve saved.

If that system freezes accounts or changes the rules overnight, you find out with no warning. Ask anyone who banked in Cyprus in 2013 (the country seized 47.5% of deposits over €100,000 to keep its banks alive).

Spreading your money across more than one country is simple risk management.

You stop handing a single system the power to cut you off.

Takeaway: One country holding all your money is a bad idea.

Mistake #2: Assuming all US banks work fine from abroad

The plan most people have is “no plan”.

Keep the same US accounts and carry on as if nothing changed.

Then the letter arrives.

In 2025, US banks and brokerages closed an estimated 340,000 expat accounts. Wells Fargo stopped opening brokerage accounts for people living outside the US back in 2021, and Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Vanguard, Fidelity, and USAA have all restricted or closed accounts for Americans with a foreign address. At many banks, a single login from a foreign IP triggers a review.

The same thing happened to me while I was living in Cyprus.

My German broker decided overnight to stop serving clients across most of the EU.

I had 30 days to close every position and move the money out.

Thirty days.

Some of my stocks were down, but it didn’t matter.

The policy changed, and I was simply an inconvenience to get rid of.

The fix is boring (but it works).

Keep a US account, but choose one that accepts foreign residents. Charles Schwab and Interactive Brokers are the two names that come up most in expat circles. Tell them you’re moving, ask in writing (!) whether you can stay on as a non-resident.

Takeaway: Confirm your US bank will keep you as a non-resident before you move, not after the closure letter arrives.

Mistake #3: Treating your local account as a place to store wealth

You need a local account.

It lets you access payment systems where you live, paying rent and tapping the QR code at the corner restaurant.

Always get a local account.

But a spending account and a place to store wealth are two different things.

Your new country has its own ways of making your financial life harder.

• Argentina froze every bank account in December 2001 and capped cash withdrawals at 250 pesos a week, the “corralito.” Dollar accounts stayed locked unless you agreed to convert them to pesos.

• Greece capped ATM withdrawals at €60 a day in 2015 and kept the banks shut for three weeks while it blocked money from leaving the country.

Those are just two examples. There are plenty more, across Europe and beyond.

My two Thai accounts handle rent and everyday spending, and the balances stay small on purpose (my savings live nowhere near them).

Takeaway: Use your local bank for groceries but keep your wealth somewhere else.

Mistake #4: Treating bank selection as a one-time transaction

At home, opening a bank account is “an errand”.

Fill in a form, get a card, and never speak to the bank again.

That works fine in the US, where the system runs on sheer scale. Bank branches are everywhere and a standard process for everything.

Nobody at the bank needs to know who you are for your money to move.

Cross a border and the relationship becomes the actual product. When a wire gets held for review, or a compliance officer wants to know where $80,000 came from, you are “a stranger” emailing a general inbox in a different time zone.

I learned what that costs.

When that company account got frozen over a missing contract page, the mistake was ours.

What made it brutal was having no one between us and the bank.

No guide, no one who could deal with the institution on our behalf. So it took weeks (instead of an afternoon).

Banking has been drifting toward ongoing advisor relationships and away from one-off transactions for years.

But cross-border, the relationship that matters goes through whoever placed you at the bank.

They handled the compliance, they know your file, and they talk to the bank so you don’t have to. For someone running money across two or three countries, that is worth more than a tenth of a percent on a savings rate.

So when you set up money abroad, treat it as an ongoing relationship.

Work with someone who keeps it running long after the account is open.

Takeaway: Set up the account and the relationship behind it.

Mistake #5: Holding everything in one currency

Currency risk is one that you might be aware of already.

There are two versions of the mistake:

1. Holding everything in dollars when your rent and groceries are priced in euros or another currency, so a weak dollar affects your savings.

2. Converting your whole nest egg into the local currency the month you arrive, then watching that currency slide.

I paid for this one directly.

In 2023 I needed 60,000 euros converted to baht to buy a condo in Thailand.

The baht was sitting at 35 to the euro (normally around 37 to 38). I needed the money that month, so I converted at 35 and moved on. That timing cost me about 180,000 baht, close to 5,000 euros, on a single transfer.

The fix is to stop being forced into bad timing. Hold more than one currency so you are never trapped converting everything at the worst moment.

Move money in lump sums when the rate is in your favor.

A multi-currency account lets you park dollars, convert to euros or baht when the rate is good, and earn interest on whichever one you hold.

Takeaway: There is no way to control exchange rates, but you can avoid being forced to convert everything at the worst possible time.

Mistake #6: Expecting it to work like opening an account at Chase

In the US, opening an account takes 20 minutes and an ID. Walk in, sign, done.

People assume the rest of the world works the same way (it does not).

International banks ask for things American banks (almost) never do.

They want proof of where your money came from, a bank reference, sometimes a local tax number or an in-person visit you have to fly in for.

Many set minimums in the tens or hundreds of thousands. And thanks to FATCA, plenty of foreign banks reject American clients outright rather than deal with the US paperwork.

The “source of funds” question alone stops people cold, because most have never had to prove, on paper, where their savings came from.

Offshore banking gets called secretive, but the truth is actually the opposite. The compliance is stricter than anything you deal with at home.

None of this means you did something wrong.

Banks default to caution with a foreign client they don’t know, so the burden of proof lands on you. Show up unprepared and you wait months (or get rejected and start over somewhere else).

The fix is, as you might have guessed, preparation.

Have your documentation ready before you apply. Proof of source of funds, certified ID, the lot.

This is also where working through someone who handles the KYC for you earns its keep, because they know what each bank wants and assemble it before the bank has to ask.

Takeaway: Abroad, the account goes to whoever shows up with the paperwork already done.

Mistake #7: Wiring money every time you need cash

Plenty of people run their life abroad one wire at a time.

Need money this month?

Send a wire.

Need more in three weeks?

Send another.

Each one costs you.

A traditional bank charges $25 to $50 per international wire. Do that every few weeks and you bleed thousands a year, all of it invisible because no single transfer feels big.

The steady drip of small transfers can also draw the kind of compliance attention you don’t want.

The fix is to move money in set amounts on a schedule.

One larger transfer each quarter to your local spending account instead of a dozen small ones, and a fintech bridge converts at favorable rates.

Takeaway: Set up how your money moves abroad once, and you stop paying for it every few weeks.

The account that removes the most risk

Almost all of these come back to one thing.

Money sitting inside your home country and your new one, and nowhere else.

What’s missing is one account that sits outside both countries.

Adding one won’t erase the whole list.

You still have to tell your US bank you’re moving, prepare your documents, and time your conversions. But no single step removes more risk at once.

I call it the “fourth account”, sitting on top of the three most people already have:

• US home base

• Fintech bridge

• Local spending account.

What that one account covers:

• Money stops sitting under a single government (mistakes 1 and 3)

• Holds several currencies so you can convert on good days (mistake 5)

• Works as the funded backup if a US bank drops you (mistake 2)

• Lets you run your spending off one quarterly transfer instead of a dozen wires (mistake 7).

• Set it up through the right people and the compliance and the relationship come with it (mistakes 4 and 6).

Most international banks won’t open these accounts for Americans. FATCA makes US clients expensive to serve, so they pass.

That’s the part I help with.

I work through a Swiss-based family office that manages around $7 billion and holds relationships with more than 50 banks across Panama, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean.

I put the whole setup into a guide.

Download it here for free.

The Untouchable Account Guide

Conclusion

That’s it.

Seven mistakes, and almost all of them come back to where your money sits.

One thing that you can do today:

List every account you hold, which country it sits in, and how fast you can access your money if something happens.

The answer tells you whether you need to make a change.

Appreciate having you here,

— Ben

• Visa launches

• Rule and fee changes

• Travel access changes

• Citizenship & investment news

Here is what changed in the last four weeks.

Thailand Cuts Visa-Free Stays To 30 Days

Thailand is taking back half your stay.

In the third week of May, the Cabinet approved cutting visa-free entries from 60 days to 30 for 54 nationalities, including Americans. Three nationalities drop to 15 days. The Foreign Ministry proposed the cut on May 13, citing misuse of extended visa-free stays.

The change is not in force yet.

It takes effect 15 days after publication in the Royal Gazette. As of early June, that has not happened, so the 60-day rule still applies.

If you are in Thailand right now, your current stamp stays valid. Entries made before the effective date keep their full 60 days.

What this means for you:

If you spend winters in Thailand on back-to-back visa-free entries, that setup is ending. A 30-day stamp plus a single 30-day extension at immigration gets you 60 days at most, with a trip to the immigration office in between.

The cleaner answer is a proper long-stay visa.

The Thailand Elite Visa starts at 650,000 baht (about $19,000) for five years of residence, with no income proof and no quarterly renewals. I hold one myself and live in Bangkok, it is one of the easiest and most hassle-free residencies to obtain.

Visa-free entry was always a “visitor tool”.

If Thailand is part of your residency rotation plan, get something that does not reset every 30 days.

Schengen Countries Started Pausing Their Own Biometric Border Checks

I saw this coming a mile away, and am not surprised at all.

On May 2, the European Commission authorized Schengen states to temporarily suspend fingerprint and facial capture at borders during peak surges.

States can pause biometric checks for up to 90 days after full rollout, with a possible 60-day extension, reverting to old-fashioned passport stamps when queues build up.

Three countries have already used it:

• Italy reverts to passport stamps nationwide whenever queues exceed 45 minutes, in force through September 30.

• Spain paused biometric capture at Madrid-Barajas and Barcelona-El Prat.

• Portugal notified Brussels in late May that it will suspend biometric registration at its airports during peak periods.

To be clear about what this is:

A pause on collecting biometrics at busy moments, not a rollback. The EES database stays active, with 61 million border crossings already logged, and the Commission publicly defended the system while granting the flexibility. Once you register, your record applies.

What this means for you:

If you fly into Europe this summer, your experience now depends on which airport you pick and how bad the queue is when you land. You might get fingerprinted, or you might get a stamp like it’s 2024.

Plan for the slow version. Arrive early, especially for your first entry, when the system captures your full biometric profile.

If you hold a Schengen residence permit or long-stay visa, nothing changed. You stay exempt from EES registration but share the same checkpoints, so the queue relief in Italy, Spain, and Portugal helps you too.

Italy’s Top Court Just Made Citizenship By Descent Easier To Claim

If you have an Italian parent or grandparent, May brought good news.

As you might know, Italy grants citizenship by descent. An Italian parent or grandparent makes you eligible to claim it.

Read more

A US home base, a fintech bridge, and a local spending account.

At the end of that article, I wrote:

“This is the simplest version of the system. But there’s more you can do.”

This is the “more.”

I talk to people every week who are 6 to 24 months from leaving the US.

They chose where to go (or work with me to make that decision), started the visa paperwork, maybe even sold the house. But when I ask where their savings will sit once they leave, the answer is almost always the same:

“In the same accounts I have now.”

That worked 10 years ago.

In 2025, US banks closed an estimated 340,000 expat accounts. Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Vanguard, Fidelity, USAA. All of them restricted or shut down accounts for Americans with foreign addresses.

And the country you're moving to?

The banking system has its own rules, own regulations, and own reasons to make accessing your money complicated.

Your money is stuck between two systems that both have reasons to make your life harder.

Today I’m making the case for a fourth account, one that sits outside both countries.

We’ll cover:

• Why your home country and your new country are both bad places to store wealth

• What a “neutral zone” account actually is (and why it’s legal, boring, and useful)

• How to add this fourth layer to the three-account setup you already have

Let’s start.

The US will cut you off

Account closures aren’t random.

In 2010, the US passed FATCA (the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act). It requires every bank in the world to report American account holders to the IRS. The compliance costs are high, and for most US banks, keeping expat customers on the books costs more than dropping them.

So they drop you.

Wells Fargo stopped opening brokerage accounts for anyone living outside the US in 2021. By 2025, the closures had spread across the entire industry. Some banks send a letter, others just freeze your account. A foreign IP address logging into your online banking is enough to trigger a review at most major institutions.

I talked to a client last week whose banker told her, and I quote:

“I won’t lift a finger to help you with that.”

She was trying to wire her own money to her new country. Pure insanity.

The safety net is shrinking too.

The FDIC is the reason you don’t think (or are not as worried) about your bank failing. For anyone who doesn’t know what the FDIC is, it’s the agency that insures your deposits up to $250,000 per account. If your bank goes under, the FDIC pays you back. That guarantee has kept American banking stable since 1933.

But the agency itself is getting gutted.

The FDIC’s 2026 budget was cut by $487 million, a 16.4% reduction from the prior year. Staffing dropped from 6,723 to 5,386. That includes 21% fewer compliance examiners watching the banks that hold your money. And Project 2025 called for merging the FDIC into other agencies entirely.

As of March 2026, the FDIC still exists. But it’s smaller, slower, and less staffed than at any point in recent memory.

Then there’s what happens if a bank actually fails.

Before 2008, it was simple. The government bailed the bank out with taxpayer money. After Lehman Brothers collapsed, Congress authorized $700 billion through TARP to rescue the financial system. The final cost to taxpayers was $31 billion (!) after repayments.

Congress decided that couldn't happen again. So in 2010, Dodd-Frank introduced a new mechanism:

The “bail-in”.

Instead of taxpayers funding the rescue, the bank uses its own money first.

That sounds reasonable until you realize who counts as "the bank's own resources."

Under the bail-in framework, depositors are classified as unsecured creditors. Anything above the $250,000 FDIC insurance limit can be converted to equity to keep the bank alive.

Where does this leave you?

• In a bailout, you pay as a taxpayer.

• In a bail-in, you pay as a depositor.

Either way, you pay. If you’re waiting for the punchline, there isn’t one.

Has it happened in the US?

Not yet.

But the legal framework is in place. And if you’re over 50 with a retirement nest egg above $250K sitting in one US bank, you’re exposed in a way that didn’t exist before 2010.

Takeaway: The US banking system is built for people who stay. If you leave, you're on your own.

The new country has their own problems

A local account is something you need once you relocate.

It connects you to the payment system where you live. Rent, groceries, utilities, QR payments at the restaurant down the street.

But a local spending account and a place to store your wealth are two very different things.

Your new country has its own ways of making your financial life difficult:

• Spain’s rules changed in January 2026. All banks now report every account to the tax office, regardless of balance. Any transfer above €10,000, inbound or outbound, must be declared in advance. Banks use algorithms to flag patterns that look like you’re splitting transfers to stay under the limit.

• Portugal has seen a steady rise in account closures and transfer difficulties for foreign residents between 2023 and 2025. Non-resident accounts come with restrictions: limited online banking, no credit access, fewer features than what locals get.

And then there’s what happens when things go wrong.

In 2013, Cyprus seized 47.5% of deposits above €100,000 at its largest bank to keep the financial system alive. Depositors at the second-largest bank lost everything above the €100,000 guarantee.

Two years later, Greece imposed capital controls that capped ATM withdrawals and blocked transfers out of the country. Banks closed for weeks.

Mind you, these are EU member states.

Countries with the euro, shared banking frameworks, modern financial systems. Not some local bank in a lesser known country.

So what do you do with local accounts?

I have two local accounts in Thailand. I use them every day. But I would never put six figures in either of them. A local account is for living your life. Wealth belongs somewhere else.

Takeaway: Use your local bank for groceries. Keep your wealth somewhere else.

Fintechs are tools, not banks

On a call last week, a client’s husband asked me a fair question:

“I already have a Wise account. What’s different about what you’re describing?”

(What I was describing is in the next section.)

I use Wise every month.

I’ve used it across six countries over five years. It converts currency at the real exchange rate, charges low fees, and moves money in hours instead of days.

But Wise is not a bank.

It doesn’t have a banking license.

The money in Wise is safeguarded, meaning it's held separately from Wise's own funds. If you opt into their interest feature on USD, you get FDIC pass-through insurance up to $250,000. Without that opt-in, there's no deposit insurance. The money is “ring-fenced”, but not insured.

Wise is good at what they do:

Moving money across borders cheaply and quickly.

But I would never park $50,000+ in a fintech account.

The problem is that people confuse a tool for transferring money with a place to store wealth. But retirement savings need a home with a banking license, deposit insurance, and a jurisdiction that has no reason to restrict your access.

Takeaway: Wise is a tool, not a vault. Know the difference.

The 4th bank account

At the end of the 3 accounts article, I promised more sophistication.

Separate accounts for investments. Physical asset storage in different jurisdictions. Keeping your main reserves in secure places like Switzerland or Singapore.

This is what I was talking about.

The fourth account sits in a country where you don’t live and where you’re not from.

A jurisdiction that has no connection to you other than holding your money. Call it your “own personal Switzerland” (whether the account is actually in Switzerland or not).

Why does location matter?

Because a bank in Panama or the Caribbean or Singapore is not subject to Spanish domestic banking regulations. It can’t be frozen because your residency card expired or because Spain changed a reporting threshold.

And while the bank reports your account to the IRS under FATCA (every foreign bank in the world has to), a US court cannot directly order a foreign bank to freeze your funds if the bank has no US presence. Reaching the account requires international legal cooperation through treaties, not a domestic administrative action.

Both countries know the money is there. You report it yourself on your FBAR and Form 8938. But knowing about an account and controlling the institution that holds it are two different things.

I have accounts in several countries.

Some in Europe, some in Asia, one in the Middle East, one in Central America and one in the US. The European accounts are infrastructure I’ve kept since before I left. The Asian accounts handle daily spending and part of the investment side. The Middle East and US accounts are for business. Central America is where my wealth sits and grows.

It also pays better than you'd think.

Most of these accounts are multi-currency. The one I use holds 10 currencies. You can park money in US dollars, convert to Euros or Swiss francs when rates are favorable, and earn interest on whichever currency you hold.

The account earns interest on USD deposits, and comes with debit and credit cards that work internationally.

And the capital backing is often stronger than in the US. Large US banks hold CET1 capital ratios around 13% on average. Banks in the Eastern Caribbean maintained capital adequacy ratios around 19% as of early 2025, with some individual banks running well above that.

In plain terms, for every dollar of risk these banks take on, they hold more equity backing it than a typical US bank does.

Here's what the full setup looks like:

1. US home base for income (Social Security, pensions, brokerage withdrawals)

2. Fintech bridge for converting and moving currency cheaply

3. Local spending account for daily life in your new country

4. “Neutral zone” account for storing and growing your wealth outside both jurisdictions

Is this legal? Completely.

Of course, you need to report the account annually to the US Treasury via FBAR if your foreign accounts exceed $10,000 total, and also report it to the IRS via Form 8938 if foreign assets exceed $200,000 (for Americans living abroad, double that amount if you file jointly). And depending on where you move, you may need to declare it to your residence country as well.

The reason why US-based financial advisors are not recommending it is because they lose when you move money offshore.

Their revenue comes from layers of fees that are buried so deep in the fine print most clients never see the real number. The median all-in cost for a managed portfolio in the US is 1.5% to 1.85% annually, and that's before you count the bid-ask spreads on every trade, which never appear on any statement.

Most of these fees are deducted before you ever see your returns, reducing what you earn without a single line item or invoice. When you move assets to an international bank outside their ecosystem, those fees disappear from their income statement.

So they don't bring it up.

The stories I've heard from clients about what they were paying their US advisor, without knowing it, would make your head spin.

Takeaway: Your wealth belongs in a jurisdiction that has no reason to touch it.

What comes next

Stop assuming that one country’s banking system will always work in your favor.

The Americans I work with who sleep best at night are the ones who spread their financial life across jurisdictions, not because they’re hiding anything, but because they understand that concentration is risk.

Open the account in your home country. Open the account in your new country. Use the fintechs for what they’re good at. And then open the fourth account in a country where you have no ties, no tax residency, and no reason for anyone to look twice.

That’s the neutral zone.

Your own personal Switzerland.

If you have questions about your specific situation, drop them in the comments.

I read them all.

— Ben

PS

If you want help opening an international account in a trusted jurisdiction where your wealth is actually secured, watch this video. I walk you through how I set up my own multi-country banking structure and how my clients are doing the same. And if you want your own 4th account in a neutral zone, you can book a call with me here, and we get the process started right away.

The advertised numbers are easy to read:

• Portugal’s D7 at €920/month

• Spain’s NLV at €2,400/month

• Panama’s Pensionado at $1,000/month

Those figures are on every listicle, and they’re usually where decisions start.

The income threshold is one of eight criteria that decide whether a retirement visa actually works for you.

This article walks through all eight.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• How to compare 3 visa options side by side in one afternoon

• The 8 criteria that decide whether a retirement visa fits your life

• The 12 questions that separate a visa that looks good on paper from one that fits your needs

Let’s start with the one that looks simplest.

1. Income And Savings: Can You Actually Qualify?

Every retirement visa has a minimum income or savings threshold.

That number is the easy part to find.

The rules “around the number” are often more nuanced.

Three things the headline rarely tells you upfront:

• Whether the figure is per applicant or per couple

• Which income types count (Social Security, pension, investment, rental)

• Whether the money has to sit “seasoned” in a specific account before you apply

Thailand’s retirement visa is one example.

Headline: 800,000 baht in savings.

The footnote: those baht must sit in a Thai bank in your name for 2 months before you apply, stay there 3 months after the visa is issued, and never drop below 400,000 baht for the rest of the year.

I’ve had clients discover that rule halfway through their planning, with flights booked.

Takeaway: The headline number is never the “real” number. Check the specific requirements for the specific income source.

2. Path To Permanent Residency And Citizenship: What’s The Long Game?

A retirement visa lets you in.

That’s not the same as letting you stay.

Three things to check before you commit:

• Whether the visa itself counts toward permanent residency, or whether you’d need to switch to a different permit

• How many years of continuous presence are required, and how “continuous” is defined

• What language or cultural test sits between you and citizenship

Retirement visas fall into two “camps”.

Some are renewable residence permits that never work towards anything permanent. You live in the country as long as you keep qualifying, but the years don’t count.

Thailand’s retirement visa is one example: renewable annually, holdable for 30 years, and it never turns into permanent residency or citizenship. Malaysia’s MM2H works similarly.

Lose the income qualification at renewal and you’re out.

Others are designed to accumulate. Every year of continuous presence counts toward permanent residency, and eventually citizenship.

Portugal’s D7 is one example: 5 years of presence gets you permanent residency, with citizenship on the table after that subject to an A2 Portuguese language test. Spain’s NLV runs on a similar 5/10 schedule.

“Continuous” is doing work in those sentences. Leave for too long in any given year and the clock resets.

Both systems have their place. But knowing which visa leads to which outcome is important.

Takeaway: Residency first, passport later (always). But verify how your visa works towards more permanent paths, such as permanent residency or citizenship.

3. Tax Implications For Americans: The IRS Never Lets Go

Americans pay US tax on worldwide income, no matter where they live. Knowing your destination country’s way of dealing with this fact is important.

Three things to verify before you commit:

• The country’s tax residency trigger (183 days, “center of life,” or something stricter)

• Whether a US tax treaty exists and how it treats your specific income types (pension, Social Security, 401k, rental)

• Whether the country’s “favorable” regime is grandfathered, under review, or already closed to new applicants

Portugal is the cautionary tale. I wrote extensively about the once favorable timeline in a recent article here.

The formula that I use:

Tax system + income type + treaty provisions = your actual situation.

The longer tax breakdown is in my recent article How Taxes Work When You Retire Abroad and in my video walkthrough here.

Takeaway: A visa that looks tax-friendly today may not look that way in two years. Check the current rules and how stable they’ve been.

4. Healthcare Access: Can You Actually Use The System?

A residency visa and public healthcare enrollment are (usually) two separate tracks.

Three things to confirm before you rely on the system:

• Whether the visa itself grants public system access, or only legal residency

• Whether private insurance is mandatory to qualify, and what it costs at your actual age

• Whether the care you need (chronic conditions, prescriptions, English-speaking specialists) is accessible where you’d be living

Spain’s NLV is the good example. You can’t submit the application without proof of private health insurance with no copayments, issued by a Spanish-authorized insurer. Portugal’s D7 grants eventual SNS access, but the wait time requires most D7 holders onto private plans, at least at the beginning.

Most retirees I work with use a combined approach. I wrote up the three strategies expats actually use if you want the details.

Takeaway: “Good public system” and “you personally can use it” are two different questions. Answer both.

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Which residencies are “easier” to obtain than others?

Some programs have short timelines but bury you in paperwork, consulate appointments, and notarized translations.

Others ask for almost nothing, but processing drags on for a year.

The five in this article get both right: low requirements and reasonable timelines.

Here’s what you’ll find for each:

• Country, timeline, and requirements

• What you get (and what to watch out for)

• How to apply and what the process looks like

Let’s get started.

#1 Panama (Pensionado Visa)

Panama’s Pensionado launched in the 1980s. It has run for almost 40 years without changing its core structure.

Social Security qualifies, so do military pensions, SSDI, and federal or state government pensions. If you buy property worth $100,000 or more in Panama, the threshold drops to $750 per month.

Timeline:

• 3-6 months

Requirements:

• Proof of pension income of at least $1,000/month (or $750/month with $100K+ property purchase)

• $250/month additional per dependent

• Valid passport

• Health certificate from a Panamanian physician

• Police record from your country of residence (past 5 years)

Benefits:

• 25% off airline tickets

• 25% off restaurants

• 50% off entertainment

• 20% off private medical consultations

• 15% off hospital bills

• 10% off prescription medications

• 25% off electricity

• No tax on foreign-sourced income

• Dependents (spouse, children under 25) included

How to apply:

• Through a Panamanian immigration lawyer

• Or directly at the Servicio Nacional de Migración

One thing to know:

• You need to visit Panama at least once every two years. Absences beyond 24 months can result in cancellation of your visa and a fine.

Takeaway:

• $1,000/month in pension income gets you permanent residency in a program that has run (more or less) unchanged since 1987.

#2 Paraguay (Temporary Residency)

Paraguay removed its $5,000 bank deposit requirement in 2022. A declaration of your profession or financial means is required, but you don’t need to prove funds.

Timeline:

• 2-4 months for approval (in-person steps take 2-5 days in Asunción)

Requirements:

• Valid passport

• Apostilled criminal background check (past 3 years)

• Apostilled birth certificate

• Apostilled marital status certificate

• Passport-sized photographs

• Government fee: ~$350 USD

• Total cost with lawyer, translations, and apostilles: $1,500-$3,000.

Benefits:

• 2-year temporary residency, renewable

• Permanent residency after 24 months

• Territorial tax (no tax on foreign-sourced income)

• No minimum stay requirement

• Citizenship eligible after 3 years of permanent residency

How to apply:

• In person at the Dirección General de Migraciones in Asunción

• Or through a local immigration lawyer

One thing to know:

• You need to go to Asunción in person. The process can't be done remotely or at a consulate abroad.

Takeaway:

• No income requirement, no investment, under $1,000 in fees. Cheapest entry point on this list.

Continue

#3 Uruguay (Rentista Visa)

Uruguay lets you apply for permanent residency directly. Once you filed, you get a temporary cedula (ID card) within about 10 days, and wait 6-8 months for the permanent approval to come through.

Timeline:

• Temporary cedula within ~10 days

• Permanent residency approval in 6-8 months

Requirements:

• No legally fixed minimum income; assessed case by case, but $1,500 is the standard benchmark.

• Valid passport

• Birth certificate (apostilled)

• Police clearance from your home country and any country you’ve lived in the past 5 years

• Medical certificate (done in Uruguay)

• Proof of local address (rental contract or property)

Benefits:

• Permanent residency granted directly (no temporary residency phase)

• Tax Holiday: 11 years of exemption on foreign-source capital income (year of acquisition + 10 calendar years), but only if you spend 183 days/year in Uruguay or invest ~$2 million in local real estate

• Citizenship eligible after 3-5 years (depending on status)

How to apply:

• Enter as a tourist and apply in person at the Dirección Nacional de Migración in Montevideo

• Or work with a local immigration lawyer

One thing to know:

• You cannot be absent from Uruguay for more than 3 consecutive years, and spending at least 30 days per year in-country is recommended to maintain your status. If you want the tax holiday: 183 days per year.

Takeaway:

• Permanent residency on your first application for ~$1,500/month in passive income. The tax holiday is a bonus, but only if you actually live there most of the year.

#4 Portugal (D7 Visa)

Portugal’s D7 requires €920 per month in passive income (roughly $1,085). For a couple, €1,380. Pensions, dividends, rental income, and investment returns all count.

Timeline:

• Consulate processing: 30-60 days (however, getting a consulate appointment in the first place will take longer)

• AIMA residence permit appointment in Portugal: months-long backlog (400,000+ pending applications as of 2026)

Requirements:

• Proof of passive income of at least €920/month (single) or €1,380/month (couple), plus 30% per child

• Valid passport (6+ months validity)

• Criminal background check

• Proof of accommodation in Portugal (12-month rental or property)

• Private health insurance

• Must spend at least 183 days per year in Portugal

Benefits:

• 2-year temporary residency, renewable

• Permanent residency after 5 years

• Schengen area access (travel across 29 European countries)

• Path to citizenship after 10 years (up from 5, pending presidential signature as of April 2026)

• Dual citizenship allowed

• Right to work included (rare for passive income / retirement visas)

How to apply:

• Schedule an appointment at the Portuguese consulate in your country of residence

• Submit documents and attend in person

One thing to know:

• You need a Portuguese NIF (tax number) before you can do almost anything (sign a lease, open a bank account, buy a phone plan etc). Get one remotely through a fiscal representative before you arrive, or in person at a local tax office.

Takeaway:

• One of the easiest ways into the Schengen area on passive income alone. Just budget extra time for Portuguese bureaucracy.

#5 Thailand (Elite Visa)

Thailand’s Elite Visa (officially the “Privilege Visa”) is a membership program. Pay a one-time fee, get a 5 to 20-year visa. No income proof, no age requirement, no minimum stay.

Timeline:

• 1-3 months (background check takes 4-6 weeks)

Requirements:

• One-time membership fee starting at 650,000 THB (~$19,000)

• Valid passport

• Clean criminal record

• No overstays or visa issues in Thailand

Benefits:

• 5 to 20-year visa depending on tier

• No minimum stay requirement

• VIP airport fast-track and immigration processing

• 1-year stay per entry (re-enter to reset)

• 90-day reporting handled for you

• No income, investment, or employment proof needed

• Option to open local accounts with multiple banks

How to apply:

• Apply online at the Thailand Privilege Card website

• Or through a licensed agent for easier processing (no extra fee)

One thing to know:

• Thailand Privilege has raised membership fees multiple times since the program launched in 2003. The entry-level price today is higher than it was two years ago, and there’s no reason to expect it will stay where it is. If you’re considering this, waiting usually costs more.

Takeaway:

• Pay once, stay for years. No other program on this list is this hands-off.

Conclusion

That’s it.

Five residencies across three continents:

• Panama’s Pensionado has been running since 1987 on the same terms. $1,000/month in pension income gets you permanent residency.

• Paraguay and Uruguay cost the least to enter, but you need to show up in person to apply.

• Portugal has one of the lowest income bars in Europe at €920/month, but it can take a little while until you have your residence permit.

• Thailand’s Elite Visa is the most expensive and the most hands-off. No paperwork, no renewals, no minimum stay.

Don’t forget: Residency programs change. Prices go up. Tax breaks disappear. Banking gets more restrictive every month you wait.

The best time to get residency is when you don’t need it.

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If you have questions about your specific situation, drop them in the comments.

I read them all.

Appreciate you being here,

— Ben

PS

If you’re thinking about retiring abroad in the next 5 years but not sure about where to go, which visa to use, or what happens to your money when you leave, you can book a free call with me ​here​.

I help you figure out which program fits you best, based on a process that I successfully use with all my clients. You won’t wonder about missing out on a great program, what to do with your money or confusing tax questions anymore, and know exactly what works for you (and what doesn’t).

The brand new residency-by-investment program has three tracks, each one including direct permanent residency from day one.

The tracks are:

• Invest $200K in securities.

• Invest $200K in real estate.

• Invest $150K in tourism projects.

Total residency applications already went from 28,000 in 2024 to 47,000 in 2025, with 80,000 projected for 2026.

For Americans looking south of Mexico, this is the biggest residency-by-investment launch in Latin America this year.

I spent a few hours pulling it apart.

What the announcement doesn’t say and what you need to understand before making a decision.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What the Investor Pass actually buys you, and what it doesn’t

• Why the territorial tax structure matters more than the residency

• Which of the three tracks makes sense, and which one I would avoid

Let’s start.

What the Investor Pass actually buys you

In short:

A Paraguayan permanent residency card, granted directly.

(Without the two-year temporary stage like the older programs required under Law 6984/22).

For those of you who are familiar with Paraguay, you might know that there is one other route that avoids that two-year wait.

The SUACE Business Plan, in place since 2022, granted direct permanent residency for $70,000 invested in a Paraguayan company, plus a business plan and five local hires.

The Investor Pass removes the business and hiring obligations entirely.

Once you allocate capital under one of the three tracks you receive permanent residency.

The trade-off is a higher capital threshold: $150K-200K instead of $70K.

So as of April 2026, you have three paths to Paraguayan permanent residency:

1. The standard route (slow but cheap, no investment, two-year temporary stage, then permanent).

2. The SUACE Business Plan ($70K plus running a real business with five employees).

3. The Investor Pass (fast, passive, $150K-200K, no operating obligations).

The benefits of the Investor Pass:

• Permanent residency from day one

• An 8% dividend tax instead of the standard 15%

• Citizenship eligible after three years of permanent residency

• One entry to Paraguay every three years keeps your status active

That citizenship benefit has a condition I will cover in a later section.

What the Investor Pass does not do automatically: make you a tax resident of Paraguay. The pass gives you a “cédula”, which is the prerequisite for opening a bank account and registering for a RUC (tax ID) through SET, the tax authority.

The RUC is what makes you a taxpayer.

Without it, Paraguay is your home for immigration purposes but not for tax purposes.

The tax residency certificate (the document you would actually show another government to prove where you pay tax) is a separate application on top of all that.

Takeaway: The Investor Pass shortens the residency process from two steps to one. Tax benefits are not (automatically) linked to obtaining the PR.

Why the territorial tax structure matters more than the residency

Paraguay has a territorial tax system. Foreign income is taxed at 0%.

For an American retiree drawing a 401(k), Social Security, or dividends from a US brokerage, Paraguay doesn’t touch any of it.

There is no wealth tax and no inheritance tax and local income gets taxed at a flat 10%.

If you’ve been looking at Europe, you know how rare clean tax setups are becoming.

• Spain taxes pension income at rates up to 47%.

• Portugal’s NHR closed to new applicants in 2024 and its replacement excludes pensioners.

• Italy’s flat-tax regime for new residents now costs €300,000 per year.

Paraguay has no cap, no expiration, and no exclusion for pension income.

I know what you’re thinking.

“That sounds great Ben, but it’s Paraguay. I want to spend my retirement in Portugal.”

Fair.

But you don’t have to live in Paraguay to benefit from the tax system.

There are ways to structure your global setup so that you hold a territorial tax residency in a country like Paraguay or Panama, while spending months per year in Italy, Spain, or Portugal without triggering tax residency there.

In a safe structure, you keep the US obligations, add nothing on top, and live where you actually want to live. It takes careful structuring. The 183-day rule, center-of-life tests, and treaty provisions all need to line up. That’s what I work through with clients in the Retire Abroad Blueprint.

One reminder:

Territorial taxation abroad does not replace your US obligations. You are still American. Paraguay eliminates the second tax layer that a country like Spain would add on top. If you haven’t read my full breakdown of how US taxes work when you retire abroad, start there.

Takeaway: Paraguay’s territorial tax system is a great option, and you don’t have to live there full-time to use it.

Which of the three tracks makes sense, and which one I would avoid

Not all $150-200K options carry the same risk. Here is how I view the three present options.

Read more

In the late 1800s, bankers on the Channel Islands (a few small rocks sitting between England and France) figured out they could attract deposits by offering lower taxes and more privacy.

The islands were literally “off the shore”, and the term offshore banking was born.

Other jurisdictions copied the model, lawyers and shell companies showed up, and by 2016, 11.5 million leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm turned “offshore” into a word most people associate with crime.

In most people’s heads “offshore banking” signals “something shady”.

But what is an offshore bank account in “today’s” terms?

HSBC defines it in one line:

“An offshore bank account is one that you have in a country you don’t reside in.”

Tax evaders and money launderers ruined this word, and the concept in general.

And now regular people, the ones who actually need a foreign bank account to live their lives abroad, are scared of it.

Meanwhile, the wealthy still use offshore structures without breaking a sweat.

They have lawyers and shell companies to make it easy, while you get your Fidelity account closed for updating your address.

I’ll cover three things in this article:

• Where the term “offshore banking” comes from and why the word carries more baggage than it deserves

• How the system treats billionaires and everyday people very differently

• How you can access offshore banking yourself while staying 100% compliant

Let’s start.

How “Offshore” Became a Dirty Word

For about 150 years, nobody cared.

Wealthy Europeans kept money in Swiss banks, and Americans with business abroad opened accounts in the Caribbean.

Routine financial planning for people who operated across borders.

Then came April 3, 2016.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published the Panama Papers. 11.5 million internal documents leaked from Mossack Fonseca, a law firm in Panama City.

The documents revealed how 214,000 shell companies helped the world’s most powerful people hide money from tax authorities. More than 140 (!) politicians and public officials were implicated, and Iceland’s prime minister resigned within days.

The message the public absorbed was simple:

“Offshore accounts are for criminals.”

However, The Panama Papers told a specific story about one law firm helping specific clients build shell companies to disguise who owned the money inside them.

The crime was the hiding, not the banking.

To make it clear:

• A shell company with no real business that exists only to obscure ownership is fraud.

• A bank account in Belize where a retired American parks $100,000 in savings and reports it to the IRS every April is just a bank account.

Nobody made that distinction in 2016, and nobody has made it since.

The fraud, the shell companies, the tax evasion, the money laundering: all of it collapsed into one word. Offshore.

Takeaway: Offshore banking is a financial tool. The Panama Papers exposed people who abused it. The tool itself is as boring as a savings account (because most of the time, that’s exactly what it is).

Two Sets Of Rules

If you have enough money, offshore banking is easy.

In 2022, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee investigated how a billionaire named Robert Brockman hid money overseas.

What they found was almost funny.

1. Brockman created a shell company.

2. Then he registered that shell company with the IRS as a “financial institution.”

3. He turned his own company into its own bank.

4. And then that “bank” self-certified to the IRS that it was reporting everything properly.

The IRS approved it and asked no questions about who owned what or where the money came from.

Senator Ron Wyden called it “a glaring loophole.” His investigation found that in just eight countries where Brockman operated, thousands of offshore entities were registered the exact same way.

I describe this as the “wealthy playbook”:

• Create a structure.

• Have a lawyer register it.

• Self-certify your own compliance.

• Nobody checks on the legitimacy of the setup.

But the rules are not the same for everyone.

Here’s what happens to regular Americans who move abroad.

1 - US banks closing expat accounts

In 2025, US banks closed an estimated 340,000 accounts belonging to Americans living overseas. Wells Fargo stopped accepting expat brokerage clients in 2021. Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Vanguard, Fidelity, and USAA have all restricted or shut down expat accounts since 2024.

Why? Because of a law called FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act), passed in 2010. FATCA made it expensive for banks to keep accounts open for anyone with a foreign address. The compliance costs weren’t worth it, so banks started cutting people loose.

2 - Foreign banks might reject you too

FATCA doesn’t just affect US banks. It requires every foreign bank in the world to report American account holders to the IRS. The paperwork is heavy enough that many foreign banks simply refuse US citizens. European brokers almost universally say no.

US banks don’t want you because you moved. Foreign banks don’t want you because you’re American.

3 - Penalties for paperwork mistakes

If your foreign accounts hold more than $10,000 at any point during the year, you must file something called an FBAR (Foreign Bank Account Report) with the US Treasury. Miss it, and penalties start at $16,536 per violation. If the IRS decides you were “reckless” (not even intentional, just careless), penalties jump to $165,353 or 50% of your account balance, whichever is higher.

A January 2026 court ruling confirmed that “reckless disregard” is enough to trigger the maximum penalty.

4 - The IRS isn’t watching the people it should be

Audits of millionaires dropped over the last decade. In 2022, a millionaire’s chance of being audited was 1.1%. People earning under $25,000 were audited at five times that rate.

The IRS brings back $6.29 for every dollar spent auditing the top 0.1%. But enforcement staff has been cut by a third in 2025, and the current administration is preparing further cuts.

Takeaway: The system makes offshore banking easy if you can afford lawyers and accountants. For everyone else, it’s a maze of closed accounts, rejected applications, and penalties for paperwork you didn’t know existed. FATCA was built to catch tax cheats. In practice, it mostly punishes regular Americans who move abroad.

What Offshore Banking Actually Looks Like For A Regular Person

Forget the movies.

Offshore banking for an American moving to Spain starts boring:

A bank account in Madrid to pay rent and a way to get dollars from the US to Europe without losing money on fees.

Wise handles that transfer. Real exchange rate (the same one on Google, not the marked-up version), no monthly fees, and most transfers arrive within 24 hours.

Social Security, pension, IRA withdrawals land in a US bank account, Wise moves it to Madrid.

That covers daily life.

But most of your money is still in the US.

And that’s a risk.

Every dollar you saved, every investment you own, every account you hold is inside a system that is actively closing accounts for people who move abroad.

One policy change, one compliance review, one letter in the mail saying your account will be closed, and you’re scrambling from overseas to figure out where your money goes.

There are three ways to deal with this, depending on how much complexity you’re comfortable with.

Option 1: Keep it simple.

Stay inside the US system with brokerages and banks that still accept expats. Charles Schwab and Interactive Brokers are the names that come up most in expat circles.

The downside: some providers may still restrict your account depending on which country you move to, and the (risky) bet on their expat-friendly policies not changing.

Option 2: Go offshore yourself.

Open accounts in jurisdictions that actively welcome American clients. The idea is geographic diversification so that your money does not sit in one country’s system.

The downside: more research, more paperwork, and investment options for Americans are more limited (thanks to PFIC and MiFID II, two regulations that trip up almost every US expat who tries to invest abroad).

Some offshore accounts have a reputation for paying less interest than US banks. But a properly structured account in the right jurisdiction can match what high-yield US savings pay.

Option 3: Get professional help.

There are specialists who structure international finances for Americans abroad. They handle compliance, account setup, custody, and management across borders.

The upside: access to options and institutions you won’t find on your own, and someone else handling the complexity.

The downside: good firms are selective with clients they take on, and this option typically makes sense for people with $500K or more in movable assets.

Reporting needs to be done regardless of what option you chose.

Once a year, two forms:

• FBAR: required if foreign accounts hold more than $10,000 total at any point during the year. Online form with the US Treasury. Account names, max balances, locations. Due April 15, automatic extension to October 15.

• Form 8938: required if foreign assets exceed $200,000 (living abroad) or $50,000 (in the US). Filed with the tax return.

Takeaway: If all your money stays in one system, you’re exposed. Which option to structure your money is the right one depends on your situation, your assets, and how much complexity you want to take on.

Conclusion

That’s it.

Three things worth remembering:

• “Offshore banking” means having a bank account in a country where you don’t live. The Panama Papers made the word toxic, while the tool itself is ordinary.

• The system makes it easy for billionaires (self-certify your own shell bank, nobody checks) and hard for regular people.

• Three options exist for structuring your money internationally. Which one fits depends on your assets, your destination, and how much complexity you want to take on.

Thanks for reading, and as always, appreciate having you here.

— Ben

PS

I mentioned PFIC and MiFID II in this article without explaining them (two regulations that affect how Americans can invest abroad). I wrote a guide that breaks down both, how they affect your investments, and what your options are depending on where you move.

Reply “MONEY” and I’ll send it to you.

• Visa launches

• Rule and fee changes

• Travel access changes

• Citizenship & investment news

Here is what changed in the last four weeks.

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Portugal Killed The 5 Year Citizenship Path

On April 1, Portugal’s parliament voted 152 to 64 to double the naturalization requirement from five years of residence to ten. EU citizens and nationals from Portuguese-speaking countries get a slightly shorter timeline at seven years.

The vote passed with support from PSD, Chega, CDS-PP, and IL.

Two things make this worse than a simple timeline extension.

• First, the clock now starts when your residence card is issued, not when you applied. If you spent 18 months waiting in AIMA’s processing backlog (and thousands did), that time no longer counts.

• Second, there are no transitional protections. The Socialist Party proposed grandfathering, graduated phase-ins, and application-date counting. All three were rejected.

One thing that did not change:

Permanent residency after five years and the Golden Visa program itself are both unaffected.

President António José Seguro now has 20 days to promulgate, veto, or refer the law to the Constitutional Court. Legal experts expect he may push back, given his Socialist Party affiliation. But a veto only delays; parliament can override it.

What this means for you:

If you hold a Golden Visa or any Portuguese residence permit and you have not yet filed for citizenship, the five-year path is effectively over once the President signs.

Whether pending applications will be judged under old or new rules is genuinely contested. The Constitutional Court’s December ruling said they should be protected. Parliament’s April version says they won’t be.

That conflict remains unsolved.

If you are earlier in your residency, plan for permanent residency at year five (unchanged) and a ten-year citizenship timeline.

I wrote about Portugal’s pattern of pulling the rug on its own visa holders back in December. This is the latest chapter of the same story.

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Italy just made its best tax deal for foreign retirees a lot more practical.

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She walked me through how it actually works.

In this video, we cover:

• Why permanent residency gives you almost the same rights as a passport

• Why the D7 is the most popular visa (and why it beats other options)

• What’s happening with the cit…

Read more

I told myself I’d somehow figure it out.

Six years later, I’ve lived in three countries (Cyprus, UAE, Thailand).

I’ve opened and closed bank accounts on three continents, overpaid $8,000+ in currency transfers because I didn't time it right. I stored furniture for five months that I ended up selling at a loss anyway.

Some of it was worse than that.

A broker closed my accounts and forced me to sell. A business arrangement turned out to be a scam and cost me close to six figures.

Some of it was better than I imagined.

I started successful businesses, built up real savings and investments, opened 3 companies, obtained 5 residencies, bought property, booked 126 flights, and visited over 40 countries.

I screamed, cried, laughed and felt all the emotions out there. But there is one thing I never felt:

Regret.

Because the truth is, for better or worse, all those experiences shaped who I am today.

However, some of the things I did could have been done better.

If I left Germany today, in April 2026, I would do it differently.

I’d do it in a specific order, because the order matters more than any single decision.

This article is that order.

Six phases, from first questions to first 90 days abroad.

Each one builds on the last.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• How to figure out what you actually need before you start googling countries

• How to clean up your financial, legal, and personal life before you leave

• How to research, test, and commit to a destination without wasting time or money

Phase one starts with you.

Know Yourself Before You Pick The Country

I landed in Larnaca in December 2020 with a list of reasons Cyprus was “the right country.”

Low taxes, EU country (needed for my company setup), English widely spoken, warm weather.

I pulled those reasons from a listicle. I didn’t pull them from myself.

By June 2021, I knew I’d picked wrong.

The summers hit 40°C and Larnaca became a ghost town. The social scene was small enough already (and I thrive in big cities).

Cyprus checked every box I had on paper.

But I hadn’t figured out what my actual boxes were.

I’ve watched at least a dozen people who come to me sooner or later making the same mistake.

They look for “best countries to retire/start a business in 2026,” read five articles, bookmark two of them and start comparing visa costs.

The whole process is backward.

You need to start with yourself.

Not the “vacation version” of you.

The “Tuesday-morning-in-January I need this specific kind of coffee this morning” version.

That means answering questions you probably haven’t thought about yet:

• What pace of life do you actually want, and have you tested that assumption? (A lot of people say “slow and relaxed” until they’ve spent three weeks in a beach town with nothing to do.)

• How important is it that the people around you speak English, not just at the hotel front desk, but at the pharmacy, the hospital, and the government office where you’re filing paperwork?

• Are you looking for an expat community of people like you, or are you comfortable being one of very few foreigners in your area?

• How much patience do you have for bureaucracy? Some countries process a residency visa in 30 days. Others take a year and lose your paperwork twice.

I built the “Global Fit Quiz” inside the Expat Country Decision Kit for exactly this reason.

15 questions that force you to be honest about money, healthcare, climate, social needs, proximity to family, and daily logistics.

And to make it easier for you, you can download them here for free.

Download For Free

The answers won’t point you to a country yet (that part comes later).

What they’ll give you is clarity on what you’re actually looking for. Not something vague like “somewhere warm and cheap” but “I want to walk to a cafe every morning, I want a community of people my age, and I need to be able to fly home in under 8 hours.”

That level of specificity changes every conversation you have from this point forward.

Takeaway: Start with YOU, not with a country. Know what you want before you look at what’s possible.

Know Your Situation Before You Make Plans

Now you know what you want. This section is about what you can actually do.

The distance between those two is where most relocations either come together or fall apart.

I wanted to go to Singapore. I had quit my job in Germany, lined up a position, and had a visa approved. Then COVID turned my world upside down. When I had to pivot, I sat down and looked at what I was actually working with: $11,000 in savings, $90,000 in student debt, no clients, no freelancing experience, and a family in Europe that was scared about a pandemic nobody understood yet.

Singapore on $11,000 would have lasted maybe two months. But the money was only one part of it. I’d lived in Australia and the UK before, and both times taught me something: I needed to be close to family, at least for this chapter of my life. During COVID, that meant Europe. So two pieces of my situation (savings and family) had narrowed my options from “anywhere in the world” to “somewhere cheap in the EU.”

Each honest answer eliminates options you thought you had.

I ended up in Cyprus. The cost of living was low, especially during COVID. Rent was affordable. I knew I could survive there longer than anywhere else on my list. What I didn’t know was whether I could find work before the money ran out. I got lucky with a consulting client three weeks in. But luck is a terrible strategy, and I’d never recommend it.

The audit you need to do before picking a country covers more ground than you’d think. Finances are the obvious starting point, but it goes deeper than “how much do I have saved.” What does your income look like when you stop working, or when you work from a different time zone? If you’re on Social Security and a pension, how does that money actually reach you in another country? What about your property: are you selling, renting it out, or letting it sit?

Then there’s your health. Ongoing conditions, regular medications, whether your spouse needs specialist care, your comfort level with a hospital where the doctors don’t speak English. These questions matter more than which country has the best weather.

And then the pieces that don’t fit neatly into a spreadsheet:

• Who is coming with you?

• Is your spouse actually on board, or just going along with it?

• Do you have kids or grandkids whose ages and locations will shape how far you can go?

• Aging parents? Pets? (Yes, pets. Moving a dog internationally is its own project.)

• What ties make leaving hard, and which of those ties are you willing to stretch?

I’m compressing a lot here. This audit is something I do with clients, and it takes a full call and homework. There are layers to each of these that take time to think through honestly. But you can start on your own this weekend. Sit down with a blank page and write out your income, your savings, your debts, your health situation, who depends on you, and what’s keeping you where you are.

Be specific: Dollar amounts. Names. Dates.

The goal is to see your situation clearly enough that when you start researching countries in the next section, you’re comparing them against reality (instead of a fantasy).

Takeaway: Desires tell you what you want. Analyzing the status quo tells you what’s actually possible. The gap between them is where the real planning starts.

Know Your Options Before You Commit

Now you know what you want, and you know what you’re working with. This is the time to start looking at countries, and for the first time, you’ll be looking with filters instead of fantasies.

By the way, this is where most people start their relocation process. But it should be step three.

When I was choosing between Malta and Cyprus in late 2020, I didn’t have a framework. I picked the “bigger island”. That was my entire decision-making process. It worked out, but only because my situation was simple: I was young, single, had no dependents, and just needed somewhere cheap in the EU. Your situation is probably more complex than mine was.

The research phase has two parts: strategy first, then countries.

Strategy means deciding what kind of international life you’re building. Are you moving full-time to one place? Splitting time between two countries? Keeping a US base and spending winters abroad? Each of these has completely different implications for taxes, visas, healthcare, and cost. A full-time move to Portugal is a different project than spending four months a year there on a tourist visa while keeping your house in Florida.

You need to decide which structure fits your situation before you start comparing countries, because the structure determines which visa categories, tax treaties, and residency paths are even relevant to you.

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Once you have a strategy, the country comparison gets much tighter. Instead of browsing “best countries for retirees” listicles, you’re asking specific questions. Which countries offer a retirement visa that fits my income level? Which ones have tax treaties with the US that work for my situation? Where can I access the healthcare I need? Which ones let me bring my dog without a six-month quarantine?

The part that you need to accept: Every country is a trade-off.

Portugal has good healthcare and an easy residency path, but the tax situation has gotten more complicated since they ended NHR in 2024. Mexico has proximity to the US and low cost of living, but healthcare outside the major cities has gaps. Thailand is cheap and the food is incredible, but you’re 20 hours from the East Coast.

No country gives you everything.

The question is which trade-offs you can live with, and you can only answer that because you did the work in Sections 1 and 2.

I’d also say this: don’t trust a single source. I’ve read country guides that were three years out of date, blog posts written by people who visited for two weeks, and YouTube videos from creators who make money by selling you on a destination. What was true 18 months ago might not be true now.

By the end of this phase, you should have a shortlist of less countries that you were considering before, and a clear strategy for how you’ll structure your time, and a rough sense of the visa path, cost, and timeline for each.

Write it down this way:

• I’m looking at X and Y, because of Z.

• My strategy is [full-time / split-time / seasonal].

• The visa I’d apply for is [specific visa name].

• The estimated timeline is [months].

That’s your working plan. The next step is to go test it.

Takeaway: No country is perfect. Simple as that.

Test Before You Commit

I cannot stress this enough: do not sign a lease or apply for a visa until you’ve spent real time in your top choice. Not as a tourist, but as someone testing what daily life actually feels like.

I read it over and over again: people who skipped a scouting trip and say everything worked out fine. And maybe it did. But why would you skip it? You wouldn’t buy an expensive car without a test drive. Relocating is not trying out a new restaurant where a miss costs you $100 and a wasted evening.

It changes your life.

I didn’t do many things I now recommend when I relocated for the first time. But even I scouted Cyprus a month before my move.

So, what is a scouting trip? A scouting trip is not a vacation. It’s a research project with a deadline. You’re checking apartments, visiting hospitals, opening a local SIM card, figuring out how the grocery stores work, and eating at the places you’d actually eat at on a Tuesday.

I recommend a minimum of three weeks. The first two weeks, you’re still in vacation mode. Everything is new and exciting. Around week three, the novelty fades and you start noticing the things that will matter in month six: the noise at night in your preferred neighbourhood or the commute to the nearest hospital.

I wrote a full scouting trip playbook with a 21-point checklist covering logistics, housing, healthcare, finances, legal, daily life, and social environment. It walks you through exactly what to do, what to check, and what to document during your trip.

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When you come back, you should be able to answer one question clearly:

“Can I see myself living here for a year?”

If the answer is yes, you move to the next phase. If it’s “maybe,” go back for a second trip, ideally in a different season. If it’s no, that’s valuable too, since you just saved yourself a very expensive mistake.

Takeaway: A three-week scouting trip cis cheaper than a wrong move.

Commit And Set Up Before You Go

Now comes the phase I skipped entirely 6 years ago: the preparation between deciding and leaving.

When I left Germany, I sold most of what I owned in about two weeks, didn’t organize my documents, and boarded a flight with almost nothing in order. I had to get papers shipped from Germany during COVID. Slow, expensive, and completely avoidable. I didn’t cancel subscriptions I wasn’t using. I didn’t set up a power of attorney. I didn’t think about what would happen if someone needed to act on my behalf back home.

This phase is boring and it takes longer than you think.

Here’s what goes into it.

Get your documents in order

Passport (with at least 12 months of validity), birth certificate, marriage certificate if applicable, medical records, insurance policies, recent tax returns. Anything that might need an apostille, get it apostilled now. The process takes weeks in some states, and you cannot rush it. Make digital copies of everything and store them somewhere you can access from anywhere.

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Sort out your money infrastructure

This is where banking comes in. Set up a Wise or Revolut account before you leave. Research whether you can open a bank account in your destination remotely, and what documents you’ll need if you have to do it in person. Keep your US bank account open. I use a three-account structure: a US home base, a fintech bridge for transfers, and a local account in the country I’m living in. Plus I use more sophisticated advisors for my investments. Have a look at the article below, or download the US Expat Money Guide for insights on different strategies for your investments.

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Health and insurance

You need international health insurance or a local plan in your destination. Research this before you leave, not after you arrive with a toothache and no coverage. If you take regular medications, figure out availability and bring enough supply to cover your first months.

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Handle the loose ends

Cancel subscriptions and services you won’t use. Forward your mail or set up a virtual mailbox. If you own property, decide whether you’re selling, renting, or holding. If renting, get a property manager in place before you go. Set up power of attorney for someone you trust back home. Get a will that works across jurisdictions, because most don’t.

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Visa application

By now you know which visa you’re applying for. Some you can apply for from the US. Some require you to be in-country. Some have processing times of 60 to 90 days. Some require proof of funds sitting in a specific bank account for a specific period. Start the application as early as the rules allow. The number one mistake I see with clients is underestimating how long visa processing takes.

Most of this is logistics and none of it is exciting. But every item on this list is something that becomes ten times harder to deal with once you’re in a new country, in a different time zone, with limited access to your old systems.

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Takeaway: The best time to get residency is when you don’t need it. Prepare while your life is still organized.

Build Your Life In The First 90 Days

The preparation is done.

Now comes the part nobody can fully plan for.

The first 90 days abroad will be the hardest stretch of the entire process. Not because anything goes wrong necessarily, but because everything is new at once. New grocery stores, new pharmacies, new SIM card, new landlord, new bank, new language for the guy fixing your internet. It’s exhausting in a way that a two-week scouting trip doesn’t prepare you for.

A few things I learned across four countries.

Get your administrative setup done in the first two weeks.

Residency registration, local bank account, SIM card, utility accounts. Front-load the bureaucracy while your energy is high. After week three, you won’t want to sit in another government office.

Then build a routine. I don’t mean a productivity schedule. I mean something that makes a Tuesday feel like a Tuesday. A coffee shop you go to. A walk you take. A gym or a pool. The people who struggle most abroad are the ones who never build a daily structure and spend their first six months feeling like they’re on an extended layover.

Meet people early. Join expat groups before you arrive. Show up to things even when you don’t feel like it. My first real friend in Cyprus came from a Facebook cycling group. It felt random at the time. Looking back, it was the single thing that made Cyprus feel like home instead of a temporary stop.

I’ll write a full first-90-days playbook in a future article. For now, know this: the move itself is the “easy” part.

Building a life takes longer. Give yourself permission for it to be messy and slow.

Takeaway: The life you build in the new place takes work. Start on day one.

Conclusion

That’s it.

Six phases.

1. Know yourself.

2. Know your situation.

3. Know your options.

4. Test it.

5. Commit and set up.

6. Build your life.

In that order.

The sequence matters more than any single decision. Skipping the self-audit is how people end up in countries that look good on paper and feel wrong by month four.

Also never forget that every country is a trade-off. The goal is finding the trade-offs you can live with, not finding a place with no downsides.

One thing you can do this weekend:

Sit down with a blank page and write out what you want (Section 1) and what you’re working with (Section 2). Be honest and put numbers on it. That single exercise will tell you more about your move than six months of browsing Reddit threads.

Where are you in the sequence right now? Still figuring out what you want? Deep in country research? Already done a scouting trip?

Reply and tell me. I read every response.

That’s it for this week.

Thanks for reading, and as always, appreciate having you here.

— Ben

PS

If you are an American 50+ and want to move abroad within the next 0-5 years, and don’t want to navigate healthcare, banking, visas, taxes and country selection by yourself, reply to this mail with “RETIRE”.

You’ll get an invite to the “Retire Abroad Priority List” with some of my best tactics for retiring abroad.

And if you would like to have someone in your corner to build your custom roadmap with options you might have never heard of, you can book a call with me here.

One of the common mistakes he sees?

Americans idealizing Uruguay without thinking through the logistics.

• Taxes.

• Banking.

• Healthcare.

• Where to live.

In this interview, we cover:

• The difference between legal residency and tax residency (and why it matters)

• The 11-year tax holiday and what changed in December 2025

• Where expats actually live (Montevideo vs Punta del Este)

• Cost of living reality (hint: not typical LATAM prices)

• How banking and real estate work for foreigners

• Healthcare options from public to private

• How to prove income for residency

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I assumed it was the same as a visa.

Or something lawyers use to confuse people into hiring them.

Then more words started appearing.

• Golden visa.

• Investor visa.

• Retirement visa.

• Digital nomad visa.

• Center of vital interest.

Each one added another layer of confusion.

I would read one article and think I understood, then read another that used the same term differently.

Eventually I figured it out.

I moved abroad, obtained residencies, dealt with tax filings in multiple countries, and now I help people do the same thing.

But sometimes I forget that people are just starting their journey.

I’ll throw out a term like “Plan B Residency” and assume everyone knows what I mean.

Last weekend, I watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory (one of my all-time favorite shows).

Sheldon was explaining one of his theories in his usual condescending way, and I caught myself thinking:

Am I doing this too?

So I recorded a video explaining the core terms every American should understand before moving abroad. This article breaks down those same concepts in writing.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• The difference between citizenship, residency, tax residency, and money residency

• Why these can all be in different countries (and why that matters)

• Some tangible examples of what those terms mean in practice

Watch the video below, or keep reading for the written version.

The Terms Everyone Should Know

Let’s start with the basics and work up from there. Six terms, each one building on the last.

Citizenship

If you have a US passport, you file US taxes no matter where you live.

This is the American reality. Most countries only tax you if you live there, while the US taxes you because you’re a citizen.

This is called “Citizenship Based Taxation” and only applies in two countries in the world (the second one being Eritrea).

Primary Residency

This is where you actually live.

If you move to a country, spend most of your time there, build your life there, that’s your “primary” residency.

When you establish primary residency somewhere, you’ll usually become a tax resident of that country too (although not always).

Plan B Residency

A Plan B Residency is one you can “keep in your back pocket”.

You obtain the residency, maybe spend a week in the country going through the process, get your residency card, and leave.

The country says:

“No need to stay here full-time. But when you want to come back, we’ll take you.”

The key difference from primary residency is the presence requirement.

A good Plan B Residency doesn’t force you to spend 6 months a year maintaining it.

You hold it until you need it.

And if things go sideways at home, you have somewhere to go.

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Tax Residency

Tax residency determines where you owe taxes based on where you live.

Most people know the 183-day rule: spend more than half the year in a country, become a tax resident.

But that’s not the only “trigger”.

Several countries also use domicile rules and something called the “center of vital interest” test.

Germany, for example, can claim you as a tax resident if your family lives there, even if you personally stay under 183 days.

Other factors that can trigger tax residency:

• Business ties.

• Owning property you have access to.

• Where your closest personal relationships are.

If you move to a country that has a tax treaty with the US, the treaty explains how different income sources get taxed (Social Security, pensions, rental income, dividends).

The goal is to avoid paying taxes twice on the same money.

It gets complicated fast, which is why most people shut down when it comes to the topic of taxes (I love it).

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Money Residency

Guess what: your money can live in a completely different country than you do.

You can be a US citizen, live in Portugal, and keep your bank accounts in Switzerland.

Some people set this up for banking access, currency diversification, or because they are concerned about leaving their hard earned assets with an unpredictable regime.

It adds complexity, but it can also give you peace of mind.

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If you want to hear me explain all of this out loud, I recorded a short video walking through each term.

You can find it here.

PS

If you are an American 50+ and want to move abroad within the next 0-5 years, and don’t want to navigate healthcare, banking, visas, taxes and country selection by yourself, reply to this mail with “RETIRE”.

You’ll get an invite to the “Retire Abroad Priority List” with some of my best tactics for retiring abroad.

About getting your paperwork sorted before you need it.

About building options when everything is calm so you have them, before you need them.

I haven’t written much about citizenship by investment.

The $100k+ price tag puts it outside what most people are considering, and the industry is full of agent marketing dressed up as advice.

But the thinking behind CBI is the same thinking behind everything I write about:

Optionality.

Having doors open before you need to walk through them.

Darr Kadłubowski did something I haven’t done.

He spent $130,000 on a Vanuatu passport that ranks 88th in the world for visa-free access.

On paper, that sounds like a bad deal.

After reading his reasoning, I think his move is one of the cleanest examples of the optionality mindset I talk about here.

What I like about this piece:

• He’s honest about who this isn’t for.

• He’s skeptical of the industry selling it.

• He’s specific about costs and timelines.

Most CBI content is either sales material or surface-level listicles.

This is different.

Darr is a Polish-American entrepreneur who went through the Vanuatu process in 2025 and documented the whole thing.

I’ll let him take it from here.

I Paid $130,000 for the 88th-Ranked Passport

Vanuatu’s passport ranks 88th globally for visa-free access.

I paid $130,000 for it anyway.

The low ranking was irrelevant for me.

I was not optimizing for total visa-free count, but solving for a specific strategic gap:

Visa-free access coupled with geopolitical neutrality that my American citizenship cannot provide.

Passport power rankings measure aggregate access.

They do not capture specific positioning requirements between blocs.

I became a citizen in June 2025, barely six months after the European Union formally revoked Vanuatu’s visa-free access to the Schengen zone, citing security and “migration” risks from its citizenship-by-investment program.

I would argue that someone who spends $130,000 for a passport is probably not migrating to Europe for the wages, but alas I do not set Schengen Zone policy.

This was the first time the EU fully revoked a visa-free agreement due to an investor citizenship program.

The EU revocation did not matter to my decision, as I was already solving EU access through my Polish background.

Vanuatu was never about Europe.

But the timing matters because it reveals the broader context:

Citizenship by Investment is under structural pressure.

Mere months after I became a citizen, Norway escalated.

Beginning in August 2025, Norwegian border officials denied entry to Caribbean CBI passport holders from Saint Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, and Saint Lucia, treating their passports as invalid despite formal visa-free status.

Notably, Vanuatu itself has escaped direct Norwegian border enforcement . . . so far.

Perhaps because Vanuatu’s beaches are considerably nicer than Norway’s, so the traffic pattern works in our favor.

The enforcement mechanism:

Border officials applied Norwegian passport issuance standards to foreign documents, declaring CBI passports invalid because applicants did not appear physically before authorities when applying.

Considering I renewed my American passport by mail, I may need to hop the (nonexistent) border fence keeping the Swedes out if I ever want to see Bergen.

Humor aside, larger states are constructing a two-tier citizenship framework where “natural” and “investment” citizens of the same country receive differential treatment at borders.

I bought Vanuatu citizenship understanding this reality, accepting that the utility could be revoked at any time by any major power that decides investment citizenship threatens their interests.

This is what buying a second citizenship actually looks like:

Strategic value for a specific use case, under active threat from the same powers whose mobility regimes it was designed to navigate.

What follows is an analysis of why CBI remains valuable despite mounting pressure, what the process reveals about citizenship as an instrument rather than identity, and what small states are leaving on the table by treating these programs as revenue extraction rather than sovereignty-building tools.

The Strategic Gap: Why Vanuatu

I hold US citizenship.

Polish citizenship is pending via application.

Both could be politely called “high-visibility” passports in Eastern Europe.

But what I needed was a persistent, visa-free access without the baggage that comes with a passport associated with specific foreign policies.

Operating in the region, whether for business, policy research, or intellectual exchange, requires the ability to move without the friction Western citizenship creates.

Every border crossing with a US passport in high-friction jurisdictions comes with assumptions about background, politics, and (sadly) the risk of a classic shakedown in some countries.

These assumptions are not paranoia.

They are rational responses to documented realities of how countries look at people when they hand their passport over at the border control booth.

The question is not:

“Can I get in?”

The question is:

“What does this passport signal about me, and what assumptions does it create?”

Standard CBI advice optimizes for aggregate visa-free count.

Malta delivers EU access. Caribbean programs (St. Kitts, Dominica, Antigua) provide strong Western hemisphere and Gulf coverage.

But they do not solve eastward access, and they carry geopolitical markers.

Caribbean programs are perceived as US-adjacent in spaces where that distinction matters.

Malta ties you to EU institutional structures and the geopolitical assumptions that come with them.

Vanuatu checked three requirements:

1. Visa-free to countries not covered by my American passport

2. Geopolitically neutral; no formal alignment with any major power bloc

3. Fast acquisition timeline (under three months)

On tax optimization:

Don’t get your hopes up.

Americans are in the privileged position to be among one of only two peoples compelled to pay taxes on their global income (a prestigious position we share with the other major financial powerhouse, that being Eritrea).

You can collect passports like trading cards, the IRS will still expect its cut on your worldwide income.

While my British friends are enjoying 0% tax in the Dubai Marina, I am forever tied to sending 41% of it back to Uncle Sam.

As an American, the decision becomes purely about geopolitical positioning and mobility access.

Neutrality as Strategic Doctrine

Geopolitical neutrality is not merely the absence of baggage.

It is a deliberate positioning choice in a global environment where passport signals matter as much as passport access.

When you present a US passport at a any border, you are immediately identified with US foreign policy.

This creates friction.

Not because of your individual background, but because of assumptions about what passport you carry.

Border officials, business counterparties, and regulatory authorities respond to the document, not to you.

When you present a Vanuatu passport, there are no preloaded assumptions.

Vanuatu has no sanctions regime, no military alliances, no contested claims.

The passport signals nothing beyond “this person is legally a Vanuatu citizen”.

What matters:

The passport you carry increasingly determines market access, regulatory treatment, and personal exposure.

Neutral citizenship becomes a positioning tool, it doesn’t eliminate scrutiny, but it manages the initial assumptions and institutional friction that come before anyone looks at your actual record.

Small state citizenship as a strategic instrument has historical precedent:

• Irish passports during the Cold War.

• Swiss neutrality in European conflicts.

• Singapore’s careful non-alignment despite Western economic integration.

The innovation of modern CBI programs is that they have made this positioning accessible through investment rather than ancestry, residence, or naturalization timelines.

The vulnerability, as Norway and the EU are now demonstrating, is that major powers can simply refuse to recognize this neutrality when it becomes inconvenient.

The Process Is Genuinely Fast (But Legitimate)

Timeline from initial contact to passport in hand:

11 weeks.

• May 18: Initial consultation

• May 21: Document submission

• May 22: First payment

• May 27: Interpol clearance (9 days)

• June 3: Second payment

• June 4: Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) clearance

• June 11: Citizenship granted (under 4 weeks from application)

• June 12: Final payment

• July 7: Citizenship certificate

• July 10: Oath of citizenship

• July 23: Passport issued

• August 7: Passport received

The industry markets “1-2 months.”

This is accurate if you measure citizenship conferral and stop counting.

Passport delivery adds another two months for administrative processing and international shipping.

Agents are not misrepresenting, they are answering the question: “when do I become a citizen” rather than “when can I use this for travel.”

A subtle but meaningful distinction if you have meetings scheduled.

Payment structure de-risks the investment.

Which means you are not transferring $130,000 blind.

Three installments are tied to clearance gates:

• First payment after document submission.

• Second after Interpol clearance.

• Final after citizenship grant.

If something flags during due diligence, you are not committed to the full amount.

I was lucky to have completed an unrelated visa application just before this process so I had most of my documentation on hand already.

Due diligence was legitimate.

I have a completely clean background.

No criminal record, no sanctions exposure, no violations (except for an egregious amount of skipping class in 9th and 10th grade, but it appears that our “permanent record” lapses at graduation).

I also spent years in compliance work, including writing the book on crypto compliance in the UAE.

I know what thorough vetting looks like.

Vanuatu’s Interpol and FIU checks were professional and substantive.

Who Does This Actually Work For?

The profile this serves is narrow for Americans, but when Vanuatu works for you, it works well.

Start with what I was solving for:

Expanded access where my US passport creates immediate friction, coupled with geopolitical neutrality that neither American nor Polish citizenship provides.

• I was not optimizing for tax.

• I was not chasing an aggregate visa-free count.

• I was solving a specific positioning problem in a specific region.

That use case generalizes to a clear profile:

Someone who needs to operate in spaces where their primary citizenship creates assumptions they cannot afford, who has already solved access to other regions through different means, and who understands they are buying contingent utility that can be revoked at any time.

Who Should Look Elsewhere?

Maltese citizenship or a digital nomad visa in Croatia is a better path if you want easier access to Europe.

If you’re from a country with a weak passport and want better visa-free access in general, your existing passport may already be more powerful than my new one, and the Caribbean programs offer better aggregate coverage.

And if you’re an American hoping to reduce your tax burden (my lawyer prefers I use the term “reduce my adjusted taxable income basis”), a second citizenship won’t help.

Also, it certainly does not work for anyone who assumes CBI confers permanent privileges.

Vanuatu lost EU access six months before I became a citizen.

Caribbean programs face mounting Schengen pressure.

Norway is already discriminating at borders despite formal visa-free agreements.

CBI holders face skepticism from border officials, financial institutions, and regulatory bodies. (I’m sure someone at my bank’s compliance department will have an aneurysm when they read this article).

If you cannot survive that scrutiny, or if the friction exceeds the value of the access you are buying, this deal does not make sense for you.

Where Did My Money Go?

Part of the $130,000 goes to a development project.

In my case, a green bean plantation.

I have received zero updates on my beans.

I have no idea if the beans are growing.

I worry they are not.

I suspect nobody else knows either.

I can theoretically reclaim this investment in five years with an expected IRR of ~3%. US Treasury bills are yielding 5% risk-free.

Either the green bean farmers are capturing a massive spread (congrats to them), or (more likely) CBI investment requirements are regulatory compliance theater with a weak connection to actual economic development.

Whatever it is, the last time I heard from Vanuatu was when my passport arrived in the mail.

They have my resume, they have my email address. I don’t believe anyone is asking what’s next.

In truth, I don’t think CBI programs have a “next”, and this is why CBI programs are sitting on two unrealized assets:

The capital itself, and the network of people providing it.

The capital problem:

Programs are raising funds from globally-connected entrepreneurs who deploy capital professionally, who have networks across multiple jurisdictions, who could function as LPs or advisors in growth-stage investment vehicles.

Instead of pooling this into sovereign venture funds that invest in Vanuatu startups, infrastructure, or export-focused businesses with compounding returns, the money gets scattered into random agricultural projects and real estate developments that generate one-time construction employment and negligible multiplier effects.

The network problem:

Consider who buys citizenship through investment . . . entrepreneurs operating businesses across multiple jurisdictions, people solving specific geopolitical positioning problems that passport rankings do not capture, high-agency individuals with cross-border families and operations, people sophisticated enough to navigate international compliance and citizenship law.

This is a high-value network. And it never meets.

There is no CBI holder summit. No directory. No deal flow channel. No investment syndicate. No advocacy network.

The solution is obvious:

Establish a Vanuatu sovereign VC fund capitalized by CBI investments.

Target early-stage companies in sectors where Vanuatu has competitive advantages or strategic needs: ocean tech, climate resilience, digital services, offshore finance. Leverage the expertise and networks of CBI holders as LP advisors. Target 15-20% IRR. Create an entrepreneurial ecosystem that compounds over time rather than extracting revenue once.

This would accomplish multiple objectives simultaneously:

1. Deliver actual returns to investors rather than participate in compliance theater

2. Build real economic capacity in Vanuatu rather than temporary construction jobs

3. Create a sophisticated diaspora advocating for Vanuatu in international business and policy circles

4. Strengthen the legitimacy argument for CBI programs by demonstrating tangible development outcomes and ongoing community engagement

Small states, under immense climate and economic threat, have used CBI programs as a revenue generation tool.

This is their right as sovereign nations.

This is also a failure of strategic imagination.

These programs could be sovereignty-building tools:

Creating investment ecosystems, building diaspora networks, developing institutional capacity. Instead they function as one-time passport sales with no compounding effects.

The EU cited security concerns when revoking Vanuatu’s visa-free status.

But the structural critique is economic: CBI programs look like passports-for-cash schemes because that is how they are structured.

If Vanuatu (or any other CBI nation) builds a track record of deploying CBI capital into measurable development outcomes, the EU’s arguments would face more resistance.

As implemented, the programs validate the critique.

They are selling a product when they could be building an institution.

Conclusion

Citizenship-by-investment works.

Vanuatu’s works exceptionally well and every step of the process was handled efficiently and professionally.

I believe it’s the right of every nation to extend citizenship how they see fit.

The process is legitimate when executed through professional agents.

For narrow use cases CBI delivers real strategic value.

But the industry is leaving compounding value on the table. Small states treat these programs as revenue extraction when they could be building institutions: sovereign VC funds, diaspora networks, entrepreneurial ecosystems.

The capital exists. The network exists. The infrastructure does not.

Western pressure on CBI programs will continue.

Norway’s border discrimination and the EU’s Vanuatu revocation are precedents, not anomalies. The two-tier citizenship structure is emerging. This does not invalidate the strategic logic of CBI, it clarifies the trade. You are buying contingent access, held at the discretion of powers who can revoke it when geopolitically convenient.

For someone who needs what CBI provides, that trade may still be worth making.

For me, it was worth it then, now, and likely into the future.

The question is not whether these programs are legitimate (they are).

The question is whether small states will evolve them into sovereignty-building tools, or whether they will remain passport sales that validate every critique major powers level against them.

And even if they don’t, I would still rather spend July on Vanuatu’s beaches instead of Norway’s.

This is a sentence I heard from more than one client in the last months.

The last person who said this has a net worth north of $2 million.

A paid-off house.

A portfolio that took 30 years to build.

When I started to speak to people about retiring abroad, I assumed politics was the main driver.

And even though I refrain from speaking about politics openly, I guess it’s fair to say that America has been rough lately.

People are frustrated, anxious, looking at their options.

But the deeper I dug into these conversations, the clearer it became that money was driving as much of this as politics.

At the very top, money is no object.

At the bottom, you can retire cheaply if you make big trade-offs.

But that comfortable middle, the retirement with a nice house and decent healthcare and enough cushion to not stress every month, is gone.

I want to walk through what changed.

Why healthcare got more expensive.

Why the retirement your parents had is a relic of the past.

And also why moving abroad will not magically fix everything.

Healthcare Costs Are Up 121%

Between 2000 and 2024, general inflation in the United States rose about 86 percent.

Healthcare costs rose 121 percent.

If you retired in 2000 with $1 million saved and budgeted $500 a month for healthcare, that same coverage now costs over $1,100 a month.

Over 20 years, that gap is $144,000.

In 2025, the average family health insurance premium hit $27,000 a year.

That number does not include deductibles, which have climbed 17 percent since 2020.

Neither does it include copays or the prescriptions (that your plan decides not to cover this year).

Fidelity ran the numbers for a 65-year-old retiring today.

Average lifetime healthcare costs: $172,500.

And that assumes you stay healthy enough to avoid the really expensive part, which comes later.

Most people worry about the stock market, about inflation, about whether Social Security will exist.

But markets go up and down.

Healthcare only goes one direction.

You can move to a cheaper state.

You can downsize your house.

You can drive an older car.

You cannot opt out of getting older.

Healthcare costs outpaced general inflation by 35 (!) percentage points.

That single fact reshapes what retirement costs.

And it follows you no matter where you live in the United States.

And Then You Get Old

Seventy percent of Americans who reach age 65 will need some form of long-term care before they die.

Most people assume Medicare will cover them when they get older and need help.

But it only covers the things that “fix you”.

It does not cover the aide who helps you shower after a stroke or the facility where you live when your memory starts to slip.

The government calls this “custodial care” and considers it non-medical.

And looking at the cost, it makes your stomach turn.

A nursing home now costs around $130,000 a year. Assisted living about $75,000. If you want to stay home and have someone come to you, expect $80,000.

Only about 4 percent of Americans over 50 have long-term care insurance.

The policies are expensive, hard to qualify for, and the industry has been shrinking for two decades.

Most people who look into it decide they cannot get approved or cannot afford it.

The uncertainty is the problem.

Long-term care is not a fixed cost you can plan around, but a variable that ranges from zero to six figures annually, for a duration nobody can predict.

And nothing in the system is set up to help you plan for it.

The Rest of the Math

Healthcare and long-term care are the big ones.

But they are not the only numbers that changed.

People are living longer.

A 65-year-old today can expect to live into their mid-80s. That means your savings need to last 20 to 25 years, not 15.

This is a good thing.

You will have more time with the people you love.

But it also means an extra 10 years of housing, food, insurance, property taxes, and medical bills.

The math that worked for your parents does not stretch that far.

For a decade, the “safe part” of your portfolio paid almost nothing.

Between 2010 and 2020, anyone relying on CDs, bonds, or savings accounts watched their “safe money” earn close to zero.

Meanwhile, inflation ran at 2 to 3 percent annually.

Retirees who followed the rules got punished for it.

Housing costs keep rising even after you pay off the mortgage.

Property taxes across the US are up 30 percent since 2019.

In some states, the increase is higher.

Homeowners insurance has increased 40 percent nationally.

In California, some insurers have stopped writing new policies entirely.

A paid-off house is still an asset.

But it is an asset with carrying costs that increase every year.

Social Security is not keeping up.

Benefits have lost 20 percent of their buying power since 2010.

Every year, the check covers a little less.

And then there is the question of how much is “enough”.

Ten years ago, a million dollars felt like a comfortable retirement.

Now the consensus number is $2.1 million.

Which brings me back to the client I mentioned at the start.

Millions in the bank, and still worried.

Three Reasons I Might Be Wrong

I can already hear the objections.

“Americans are richer than ever.”

This is statistically true.

Median household wealth hit a record in 2022. The stock market has climbed for 15 years.

If you owned a house and held index funds, your balance sheet probably looks better than your parents’ did at your age.

But healthcare costs went up faster.

You can be wealthier than your parents on paper and still have less security.

“The middle class is shrinking because people moved up.”

The American Enterprise Institute made this argument a few years back.

The middle is disappearing, they said, but mostly because households graduated into higher brackets.

More people earn over $100,000 today than in 1970.

Adjusted for inflation, the upper-middle class has grown.

I want to take this seriously before I take it apart.

Yes, more households crossed the $100,000 line.

But crossing a line is not the same as reaching safety.

The bracket might “look” comfortable on a chart, but doesn’t reflect reality.

“Just save more. Work longer.”

Does that work?

Let’s check.

A 65-year-old today faces an average of $172,500 in lifetime medical costs.

If they need long-term care for three years, add another $390,000.

Saving an extra 5 percent of your income for a decade does not close that gap.

It barely makes a dent.

Apart from the fact that not everyone can (or wants to) work until they are 70.

So Will Moving Abroad Fix Everything?

I run a publication about living abroad.

And I help people relocate.

But I will be the first to tell you that moving to another country does not solve your problems by default.

What I do believe is that leaving a system that no longer works for you is a legitimate choice.

If you have saved for 30 years, done everything right, accumulated a portfolio worth seven figures, and the math still does not add up for a comfortable retirement in your own country, something is not right.

And you are not obligated to stay and hope it fixes itself.

Moving abroad can be one of the best decisions you ever make.

People who were stressed about money in the US now live well in Portugal or Spain or Mexico on half the budget.

People who dreaded healthcare costs now pay a few hundred dollars a month for private insurance that covers everything.

People who thought retirement meant downsizing and worrying now travel, learn new languages, and wake up without financial anxiety.

It happens because they planned.

They asked the same questions about their new country that we asked about the US.

How fast are healthcare costs rising?

What does insurance actually cost?

Can I afford long-term care if I need it?

What are the problems here that might catch me off guard?

Every country has problems:

• Portugal has bureaucracy that moves slowly.

• Mexico has infrastructure gaps outside major cities.

• Thailand has visa rules that change without warning.

• Spain has regional tax rules that confuse even the locals.

But here is the difference.

Some of those problems are easier to plan around, than simply not being able to afford retiring.

You can learn a language.

You can hire someone to navigate paperwork.

You can structure your visa situation with a backup plan.

What you cannot plan around is simply not having enough money.

My point is:

Moving abroad is not a “magic solution”.

But it is one solution.

And hundreds of thousands of Americans have already decided it is the right one for them.

And maybe it is the right one for you too.

Thanks for reading, and as always, appreciate having you here.

— Ben

PS

If you are an American 50+ and want to emigrate within the next 0-5 years, and don’t want to navigate healthcare, banking, visas, taxes and country selection by yourself, reply to this mail with “RETIRE”.

You’ll get an invite to the “Retire Abroad Priority List” with some of my best tactics for retiring abroad.

• Visa launches

• Rule and fee changes

• Travel access changes

• Citizenship & investment news

Here is what changed in the last four weeks.

US Citizenship Renunciation Fee Drops 80%

The State Department just cut the cost of giving up US citizenship from $2,350 to $450.

The final rule was published March 13 and takes effect April 13.

This reverses a controversial 2015 decision that made renouncing US citizenship the most expensive in the world.

At $2,350, it cost more than 20 times the global average.

Why do people renounce?

Mostly taxes.

US citizens must file tax returns no matter where they live.

Add FBAR reporting, FATCA headaches, and foreign banks refusing American clients, and the paperwork becomes a full-time job.

The process itself stays the same.

You still need an in-person appointment at a US embassy or consulate, multiple written and verbal confirmations, a formal oath, and months of waiting.

Some consulates have backlogs over a year.

What this means for you:

If you’ve been holding off on renunciation because of the cost, that excuse is gone.

The $450 fee puts it back in line with other countries.

But remember: renunciation does not erase past tax obligations.

You’ll still need to file a final return and possibly pay an exit tax if you qualify as a “covered expatriate.”

UK Overhauls Immigration Rules

The Home Office published its Spring 2026 Statement of Changes (HC 1691) on March 5, with major provisions taking effect March 26.

The headline is the “visa brake.”

Starting March 26, the new policy mechanism that lets the government pause visa routes for specific nationalities.

For now, it only affects a handful of countries.

But the brake can be expanded at any time, and it signals a shift toward tighter, more reactive immigration control.

Visitor rules also changed.

Nicaragua and St. Lucia have been added to the visa national list, meaning citizens now need a visa for short visits.

Sponsors have new obligations too.

For employers, salary compliance rules get tighter on April 8. Sponsors will face stricter checks on whether they’re actually paying the wages they promised.

One bright spot:

The Global Talent visa expands to include a design pathway, also effective April 8.

If you’re a designer with an international reputation, now a dedicated route is available to you.

Looking further ahead, the English language requirement for settlement rises from B1 to B2 in March 2027.

What this means for you:

The UK continues to tighten the screws.

If you’re planning to sponsor workers or settle in the UK, review the new salary thresholds and language requirements now.

And if you hold a Nicaraguan or St. Lucian passport, add the UK to your “visa required” list.

For anyone thinking about relocating to the UK, read more here:

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Canada Changes Super Visa Income Rules

Canada is updating how it calculates family income for super visa eligibility.

The change takes effect March 31.

The super visa lets parents and grandparents of Canadian citizens and permanent residents stay for up to five years per visit.

To qualify, sponsors must prove they earn enough to support their relatives.

IRCC says the new calculation method aims to be “more equitable.”

The exact formula hasn’t been published yet, but expect changes to how household income is assessed.

What this means for you:

If you’re sponsoring parents or grandparents for a super visa, check the updated income requirements before March 31.

The threshold may shift depending on how IRCC redefines “family income.”

Anyone with an application in progress should confirm their numbers still qualify.

For anyone thinking about relocating to Canada, read more here:

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New Zealand Investor Visa Sees Massive Surge

New Zealand’s Active Investor Plus Visa is having a moment.

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Last week, I sat down with an immigration attorney who’s been helping Americans relocate to Malta for years, and she walked me through how it actually works.

One of her clients came to Malta “temporarily.”

That was 19 years ago.

He’s still there.

In this video, we cover:

• The three residency paths (and which one fits your situation)

• The biggest misconceptions people who move to Malta have

• What you’ll actually pay in taxes, how healthcare works, and the lifestyle

The attorney in this video is Liana Falzon.

She works in Malta and handles all three residency programs we discussed.

You can find their website here:

ACT Malta

As Liana mentioned, the first consultation is free.

Those in depth interviews will become a regular part of Digital Citizen from now on.

We will speak to:

• Tax specialists

• Relocation attorneys

• International banks who serve US citizens

• People who migrated from the US successfully

• Anyone else, who has insights on retiring abroad safely

This first interview is available for free to everyone.

If you are a free subscriber, and want to have access to all future editions, consider upgrading your subscription.

Upgrade to Paid

That’s it for this week.

Thanks for reading, and as always, appreciate having you here.

— Ben

PS

If you’re an American 50+ with a meaningful retirement nest egg and you’re seriously thinking about retiring abroad in the next 0–5 years, hit reply and write “RETIRE”.

You’ll get a private invite to the “Retire Abroad Priority List” with some of my best tactics for retiring abroad.

I was 26, fresh out of university, working at a consulting firm in Frankfurt.

My salary looked decent on paper.

Then I saw what actually landed in my bank account.

About half my salary was gone.

I read things on the paycheck such as:

• Income tax.

• Church tax.

• Health insurance.

• Solidarity surcharge.

• Pension contributions.

And I wondered, why did we not talk about those terms in school? Or university? What do they mean, and why am I paying them? And why in those exact percentages?

That moment turned me into a “tax nerd”.

I started reading tax codes.

When I moved abroad in 2020, I learned how different countries handle all sorts of money flows.

And once I started this topic at dinner conversations, I realized most people have no idea how any of this works.

No abroad, but also not at home.

And that is by design.

Tax systems are designed to confuse you.

To not ask questions, but get so overwhelmed, that you simply hand them over to a professional.

And if you are reading my newsletter, you’re probably thinking about retiring abroad.

And now, someone mentions another tax system on top of your US obligations.

I can understand, how this alone makes you rethink retiring abroad entirely.

But I won’t let that happen.

Which is why we are taking a “first step toward clarity” today.

And at the end, as always, there will be practical advice.

After reading this article, you will understand taxes abroad better than 99% of people I speak to on a regular basis.

In this article:

• The five tax systems countries use (and what each means for you)

• Why different income types get treated differently

• What tax treaties actually do (and what they don’t)

• A simple way to think about taxes when choosing where to retire

One thing before we continue:

• I am not a CPA.

• I am not a tax advisor.

• I am not licensed to give financial advice in any country.

What I am:

Someone who has lived in seven countries, holds five active residencies, and has spent way too much time reading tax codes that normal people avoid.

This article is about clarity.

About understanding concepts and knowing what questions to ask before you sit down with a professional.

Do not make any tax decisions based on what you read here.

Talk to someone who is licensed to help you with your specific situation.

The 5 Tax Systems

Tax professionals might slice this differently.

Some would say there are three core systems, with variations.

Others would argue there are even more than 5.

For our purposes, five categories cover what you need to know.

What matters is understanding which category the country you’re considering falls into, and how that affects your income.

Once you know that, you can start asking the right questions.

1. Citizenship-Based Taxation (“Always Taxed” No Matter Where You Live)

Two countries on Earth tax based on citizenship:

The United States and Eritrea.

If you hold a US passport, you owe taxes to the IRS on your worldwide income, no matter where you live.

Even if you spend 20 years in Portugal without setting foot in America.

You can reduce what you owe through the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE), which lets you exclude a 6-figure amount every year, but that’s about it.

And of course, you can also claim Foreign Tax Credits for taxes paid abroad.

But you cannot stop filing.

The only way out is to renounce your citizenship, which comes with its own tax consequences (the exit tax) and is a decision that cannot be undone.

Takeaway: If you are American, you file with the IRS for life.

2. Residence-Based Taxation (Worldwide Income Taxed Based on Where You Reside)

Over 130 countries use this system.

Most of Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, and some countries in Latin America fall into this category.

The rule:

If you become a tax resident, you owe taxes on your worldwide income (in principle).

That includes income earned outside that country.

US pension, rental income, dividends from a brokerage account. But what you actually owe depends on the type of income and whether a tax treaty changes the treatment.

We’ll get to treaties later (this can get quite complicated).

But what we can remember so far is the term “tax resident”.

So, how do you become a tax resident?

Usually by spending 183 days or more in a country within a calendar year.

However, some countries have stricter rules that “days spent in the country”.

Portugal and Spain look at where your “center of life” is.

If your spouse lives there, or your kids go to school there, you might become a tax resident even without the 183 days.

Tax rates vary and can go up to 40%+ (e.g. Portugal, Spain, Germany).

These are among the highest in the world.

And yes, they are progressive, meaning you’re not paying those rates on every single dollar.

Some countries within this system offer special regimes that reduce the burden:

• Greece has a flat 7% tax on foreign pension income for retirees.

• Italy has a similar program, for people willing to relocate to a small Italian town.

• Malta has programs for non-doms.

• Spain has the “Beckham Law” for certain workers.

These regimes are there to attract people for retirement (or living off independed means before retirement).

But those regimes can also change.

Portugal’s NHR program, which offered a 10% flat tax on pensions, ended in 2024.

If you are planning around a special regime, understand it could disappear whenever the government “feels like it”.

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Takeaway: In residence-based countries, you pay tax on everything you earn, everywhere. Look for special regimes, but do not depend on them lasting forever.

3. Territorial Taxation (Only Taxed If You “Earn Within Borders”)

Around 40 countries use this system.

Panama, Paraguay, Costa Rica and Malaysia are among them.

The rule:

Pay tax on income earned inside that country, while foreign income stays untaxed.

To give an example:

• If you live in Panama and collect Social Security from the US, Panama does not tax it.

• If you have rental income from a property in Florida, Panama does not tax it.

• If your brokerage account in New York generates dividends, Panama does not tax it.

The only income Panama cares about is income generated inside Panama.

For retirees with US-based income streams, this can be very attractive.

Once you establish residency, you pay local taxes only on local income (which may be zero if you have no Panamanian clients or businesses), and your US income flows in without a second tax layer.

But remember from earlier:

You are still American.

Territorial taxation abroad means you avoid adding a second layer of tax on top of your US obligations.

Which means you are not paying less than you would in the US.

You are paying the same to the US, and nothing extra to the country you moved to.

Takeaway: Territorial countries only tax local income. If your income comes from abroad, you may owe nothing locally (exceptions apply).

4. Non-Dom And Remittance-Based Taxation (Taxed When You “Bring It In”)

A tax professional would classify these countries as residence-based systems.

Technically, they are.

The UK, Cyprus, Malta, and Ireland all tax residents on worldwide income in principle.

But they offer a carve-out for people who are “non-domiciled.”

I’m showing this as a separate category because understanding it will help you see options that pure residence-based countries do not offer.

So what is “domicile”?

Domicile is different from residence.

• Residence is about where you live now.

• Domicile is about where you permanently belong, your long-term home, your roots.

You can be a resident of one country while being domiciled in another.

Each country defines domicile differently:

• In Cyprus, you are considered non-domiciled if you were not born there and have not lived there for 17 of the last 20 years. You can benefit from non-dom status for up to 17 years.

• In Malta, domicile is based on your domicile of origin (typically where your father was domiciled when you were born). There is no time limit and you can maintain non-dom status indefinitely (or until Malta changes the program).

• In Ireland, domicile works similarly to Malta. Your domicile of origin follows you unless you take deliberate steps to change it.

If you qualify as non-domiciled, you can choose to be taxed only on income you bring into the country, while foreign income that stays outside remains untaxed.

This is called “remittance-based taxation”.

Let’s make Malta’s system more tangible, since it is the clearest example of remittance-based taxation.

Read more

I won’t repeat the whole story here (you can read about it here).

But it took me four years to work my way out of it.

And about two years ago, I was sitting in my usual coffee shop in Chiang Mai after a morning ride in the mountains.

There were other cyclists there who just come back from riding too.

I said hello to one of them.

His name is Paul.

He owns a real estate agency in Chiang Mai for over 20 years.

We started riding together.

Over a few weeks, he walked me through how the Thai property market actually works:

• What yields look like

• How the rental market moves

• What separates a “good building” from a bad one.

At some point I asked him to show me some condos.

He told me what to check, what to skip, and what most buyers get wrong.

I probably learned more from Paul in a few rides than most people learn before they make the decision to buy property overseas.

Since I actually had some cash sitting around, I thought maybe I should put it to work.

I ended up buying a condo a few weeks later, for less than $100,000.

But before I signed anything, I had a checklist.

(Lists are a big part of my life, if I had to make a list of things that make me calmer, “lists” would be on top of that list.)

I verified a lot of things before purchasing, and today I’m sharing those with you.

Why I Bought (And Why Chiang Mai)

At the time, I invested “like everyone else”.

My portfolio mostly consisted of ETFs, stocks, and crypto.

But I never owned property.

After talking to Paul for a few weeks, I liked the idea of putting money into something I could actually “walk through” and that’s not just sitting as a digital number on a screen.

And after looking at all the facts about the Thai rental market, I got curious.

Rental yields on condos in Chiang Mai sit between 4% and 8%, depending on the building, how well you furnish it and whether you are renting out short term or long term.

Also, I was living in Thailand anyhow and was on my way to my long-term golden visa when I started looking.

Buying in the country where I actually live made sense.

I can visit the building myself, meet the seller, go to the land office in person.

The condo I ended up buying was maybe 15 minutes from my apartment.

I could check on the renovation, deal with problems in person, and keep an eye on things without booking a flight.

At that point, there was no “grand strategy” yet.

I simply had cash, local knowledge, and the math worked.

What Most People Get Wrong

The first thing Paul told me when I said I was interested in buying was:

“Ben, the numbers need to work out.”

If you walk into a condo, love the view and the vibe, that’s great.

But if the numbers don’t add up, the view doesn’t mean much.

A nice unit with a view might return 4% while a less pretty one in a better location returns 7%.

Buy for yield, not for how it looks in photos.

Emotional buying is probably the most common mistake you can make purchasing property abroad (at least when you’re buying as an investment).

Paul flagged some other things too.

Buying doesn’t always means “owning”.

There are terms like freehold, leasehold, usufruct, foreign ownership quotas.

In some countries your “ownership” expires after 30 years.

In others, foreigners can buy condos but not land.

You need to know what you’re actually purchasing before you wire money.

I was lucky because Paul was already a friend by the time I bought.

He told me the truth because he wasn’t trying to close a deal (most buyers don’t have that).

Another thing to keep in mind is total cost.

Apart from the purchase price of the property / the condo, there are other factors you need to consider.

Transfer fees, taxes, legal costs, currency conversion, furnishing, renovation (just to name a few).

All of that eats into your first-year yield if you only budget for the purchase price.

I wrote about currency risk specifically, because it caught me off guard too.

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Also, you need to think about your exit strategy.

• What happens when you want to sell?

• Is the resale market liquid?

• What are the exit costs?

• Can your heirs inherit the property, or does local law complicate that?

Some might bring up Thailand-specific risks, like earthquakes, the Cambodia situation, political instability.

I’ve been through two earthquakes in Thailand, one in Bangkok and one in Chiang Mai.

This is what insurance is for.

As for geopolitical tension, there are conflicts all over the world right now.

If you’re waiting for a country with zero risk, you can buy in New Zealand or Iceland (good luck with budgeting in those).

Every country has trade-offs.

What matters is that you know what you’re getting into before you sign.

So I made a list.

10 things I checked before I put any money down.

As always, written from lived experience.

The 10 Things I Checked Before Signing

Here’s what was on my list.

1. Ownership type

In Thailand, foreigners can’t own land.

But you can own a condo in your own name, freehold, as long as the building is registered as a condominium.

Some are classified as “apartments”, which looks the same but don’t give you freehold ownership as a foreigner.

There’s also a cap, meaning foreign ownership in any building can’t exceed 49% of the total floor area.

I asked the juristic office (the body that manages the building) for a written letter confirming there was still space in the quota before I put any money down.

This applies way beyond Thailand.

Every country has its own version of this.

Different ownership structures, different restrictions on what foreigners can buy, different rules on how long your ownership lasts.

In some places what you’re “buying” is really a 30-year lease.

Make sure you understand what you’re actually getting before you commit to anything.

2. Title deed and seller

Paul told me to check the “title deed type”.

In Thailand, the one you need is called a Chanote.

It’s the highest level of land title, gives you full rights, and has properly surveyed boundaries.

There are “lesser titles” that are weaker legally and less precise on where your property actually starts and ends.

Whatever country you’re buying in, the title system will look different.

• In Portugal there’s a land registry called Conservatória.

• In Mexico, you’re dealing with a notario público and the public registry.

The names change, the process changes, but the question is always the same:

Does the person selling this actually own it, and is it clean of obligations?

3. How your money gets there

Thailand requires you to wire the purchase funds from overseas in a foreign currency.

The bank in Thailand converts it to baht and issues something called a Foreign Exchange Transaction form, or FET.

You bring that form to the land office when you transfer the title. If you don’t have that form, you won’t get the title deed transferred in your name.

I had to coordinate with my bank, get through KYC checks, and raise my transfer limits.

It took some back and forth over a few weeks, but it got done.

Most countries have specific rules about how foreign money enters for a property purchase:

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I’ve watched this happen over and over.

Portugal ran its Non-Habitual Resident program for over a decade, offering a 10-year tax holiday on foreign income.

Then too many people found out about it, the political winds shifted, and the government killed it in 2024.

Spain ended its Golden Visa entirely in April 2025.

“Too much pressure on housing prices” was the official line.

Golden Visa holders in Spain actually only made up only a tiny fraction of real estate owners, and scapegoating them was nothing but a political move. But that’s a topic for another day.

The pattern is predictable and always the same:

Generous program attracts attention, attention attracts scrutiny, scrutiny leads to changes.

This time: Uruguay.

On January 1, 2026, the new Frente Amplio government passed Ley 20.446 as part of its national budget.

The real estate threshold went up and the minimal presence path disappeared, while some of the offshore structures people were using got closed.

I’ve seen a lot of panicked headlines about this.

Most of them don’t make an important distinction:

If you were planning to move to Uruguay full-time, nothing actually changed for you.

But if you wanted Uruguay as a “Plan B” (a backup residency you could activate without relocating your whole life), that’s where things got more expensive.

Since many people don’t even know what a Plan B residency means or why it’s different from just emigrating somewhere, we’re going to cover that too.

Today, we’re going to look at:

• Why full-time movers to Uruguay can relax

• What “Plan B” residency actually means (and who it’s for)

• What changed for people who wanted Uruguay as a backup, not a home base

Full-Time Expats Can Relax

If you want to actually live in Uruguay, nothing changed.

The Rentista visa still works.

The requirements are about $1,500 a month in passive income from outside Uruguay, whether that’s a pension, rental income, or dividends.

Once you’re there and spending more than 183 days a year in the country, you qualify for the 10-year tax holiday on foreign income.

There is no need to buy $2 million in real estate or put money into a government fund every year.

You just need to actually be there.

The law raised the bar for people who wanted Uruguay’s tax benefits without relocating.

But if you’re genuinely moving, the path looks exactly like it did on December 31.

So if nothing changed for full-time movers, why the panic?

Because some people researching Uruguay’s tax holiday weren’t planning to move there full-time.

They wanted a “Plan B”.

What is a Plan B?

When people picture moving abroad, they usually imagine packing everything and starting over somewhere new.

That version exists and is valid.

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5 months ago · 29 likes · 11 comments · Benjamin Hies

In this version of becoming an expat, you sell the house, get on the plane and land in your new destination and your daily life happens there now.

If you spend more than 183 days a year, you become a tax resident.

Easy.

A Plan B is different.

You get legal residency in another country, but you keep living where you already live.

The second residency sits in your “back pocket”.

You visit a few weeks or months a year to keep your status active, but you never trigger tax residency because you never cross the 183-day threshold.

Okay, but why would someone want this?

I can think of at least five reasons:

1. Having the “exit option”

   If things get weird at home (politically, economically, personally) they want a place they can go without needing to apply for anything. The residency card is already “in the drawer”.

2. Having better travel access

   A Schengen residency, for example, lets you move freely across 27 European countries. That matters if you travel a lot for work.

3. Starting a path to citizenship

   Some people want a path to citizenship in a country they like. But they want to earn it “slowly” without relocating their whole life. Portugal, for instance, lets Golden Visa holders apply for citizenship after five years with an average stay of just seven days per year.

4. Diversifying assets

   Some people want to diversify where their assets and legal ties are located.

   One country is one set of rules and options. Golden Visa holders, or residency holders in general, have more options that people on tourist visas.

5. Tax flexibility

   If you structure things carefully, you can hold residency in a low-tax or no-tax jurisdiction and spend time there strategically while keeping your life elsewhere.

The common thread in all of these is minimal presence requirements.

You get the legal status without having to actually move.

Takeaway: A Plan B gives you legal residency in another country without requiring you to live there full-time. You maintain it with a few weeks per year, you stay under the tax residency threshold, and you keep the option open for when you need it.

Portugal Example

Let’s look at Portugal as an example.

Someone who wants to move there full-time would probably apply for the D7 visa.

It requires about €920 per month in passive income (a pension, rental income, dividends).

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7 months ago · 13 likes · 6 comments · Benjamin Hies

The D7 is one of the most affordable passive income visas out there.

But, D7 holders need to spend the majority of their time in Portugal.

Immigration expects six months or more per year and checks actual presence at renewal.

Once someone is there that much, they become a Portuguese tax resident. Portugal then has the right to tax their worldwide income.

The Golden Visa works differently.

The investment is €500,000 into a qualifying fund or a donation (which is less than that). In return you get a residence permit with a minimal presence requirement of 7 days per year on average.

At seven days, no one triggers Portuguese tax residency.

The holder is maintaining a legal status, not living there (although they could).

After five years, citizenship becomes possible.

The Golden Visa costs more upfront, but has less strings attached.

That’s a Plan B.

I’ve set my own life up this way.

I hold a Thailand Elite Visa and spend about 60-70% of the year in Thailand.

I also have a company and residency in the UAE, which requires me to enter every six months.

Neither country tells me I “have to” be there (for long).

Thailand doesn’t care if I leave for months.

The UAE just wants to see me twice a year.

I could spend three months in Europe (which I sometimes do), a month in the States, and neither residency would be at risk.

That freedom is the point.

Legal status in places I want to be, without being told how long I have to stay.

Back to Uruguay

So where does Uruguay fit?

Until December 31, 2025, Uruguay had one of the more accessible Plan B paths in the world.

Buy about $590,000 in real estate, spend 60 days a year in the country, and qualify for an 11-year tax holiday on foreign income.

The presence requirement was light.

On January 1, 2026, the new government passed Ley 20.446.

The $590,000 real estate threshold jumped to approximately $2 million.

The 60-day requirement tied to that lower investment is gone.

At $2 million, the investment itself qualifies you for the tax holiday without a presence requirement.

The alternative is $100,000 per year into Uruguay’s National Innovation Fund for 11 consecutive years ($1.1 million over time, with no property at the end).

For anyone who doesn’t want to invest, the physical presence path remains.

Spend 183 days a year in Uruguay and you qualify for the tax holiday with no investment at all.

But that requires actually living there.

For Plan B seekers who wanted the option without the commitment, Uruguay just got a lot more expensive.

Takeaway: Uruguay’s Plan B path went from ~$590k + 60 days to $2 million with no presence requirement. The “affordable” entry point is gone.

To Sum It Up

Uruguay isn’t the first country to change their rules (and it won’t be the last).

As I always say:

The best time to get residency is when you don’t need it.

That’s it for this week.

Thanks for reading, and as always, appreciate having you here.

— Ben

PS

I just opened 4 spots for the Retire Abroad Blueprint.

We start April 13.

Spots are first come, first served.

Once spots are booked, I will be busy with those, until the next round opens up.

Book a discovery call here.

If you can’t find a time, reply “BLUEPRINT“ and I’ll follow up personally.

Here’s how one current client described it: