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.

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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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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…

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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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How U.S. Citizens Can Move to the UK (Residency & Citizenship Explained)

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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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How U.S. Citizens Can Move to Canada (Residency & Citizenship Explained)

Moving to Canada sounds simple until you see the immigration website…

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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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Digital Citizen

How U.S. Citizens Can Move to Malta (Residency & EU Access Explained)

Malta is the only English-speaking EU country in the Schengen Zone…

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5 months ago · 13 likes · Benjamin Hies

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.

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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:

Read more

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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4 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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5 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:

Over the course of my 38 years on this planet, I also visited around 50 countries and consumed more airport coffee than I’d like to admit.

Along the way, I’ve met hundreds of expats.

Students, workers, retirees, business owners, shamans, professors, coaches, people who make nothing and people who make hundreds of millions.

I read constantly.

About visas, taxes, residency law, financial planning, geopolitics.

I love this stuff.

But I also see a lot of advice out there that is flat out wrong.

And it makes me angry.

Because wrong advice about moving abroad costs people real money, real time, and sometimes their entire plan.

So I decided to channel that anger into something useful.

Here are 8 things I think everyone considering a move abroad should know.

#1: “I can just go and figure it out”

I moved to Cyprus during COVID with $11,000 and no job.

I spent my first week in an apartment with no electricity and no wifi, eating takeout by the light of my phone.

I made it work.

But I also made it way harder than it needed to be because I didn’t prepare.

If I had to do it again, I would prepare like my life depended on it (because it does).

Visa timelines take months.

Apostilled documents take weeks and they expire.

Don’t sort out apostilled birth certificates from a beach in the Algarve.

You do that from your kitchen table, three months before you leave.

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7 months ago · 56 likes · 4 comments · Benjamin Hies

The people who move smoothly are the ones who spent six months getting ready before they ever booked a flight.

“Just go and figure it out” is the biggest BS I have ever heard.

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#2: “Banking abroad is impossible”

Fidelity, Vanguard, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley have all closed accounts on American expats.

Their internal compliance teams decide you’re too expensive to service overseas, and they send you a letter telling you to move your money somewhere else.

No law requires this, they just do it.

So you set it up differently.

Keep your US money with institutions that accept foreign addresses (Schwab and SDFCU both do).

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Open a local account wherever you land for daily spending. And keep at least one US credit card active so your credit score doesn’t disappear while you’re gone (or coming back at some point).

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And while we’re talking about moving money: the 1% remittance tax that went into effect January 2026 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is scaring people for no reason. It applies to transfers funded by cash, money orders, and cashier’s checks. If you’re moving money from a US bank account by wire you’re exempt. Most expats will never pay this tax. But almost every headline about it leaves that part out. Scaring people into stupid, rash decisions seems to be more profitable.

#3: “The first step is picking a country”

Most people start by googling “best countries to retire abroad” and falling in love with wherever shows up first.

They spend months planning around a place before they thought about what they actually need from it.

One of my clients spent months researching Italy.

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She had Italian heritage and spoke some of the language.

Then we sat down and went through her actual priorities, and things changed (fast).

Italy dropped off her list within a week.

Start with your life.

Budget, healthcare access, visa eligibility, what your daily routine actually looks like when you’re honest about it.

Once you know those things, the list of countries that work for you gets short fast.

Also this might help.

#4: “There’s only one way to retire abroad”

People picture retirement abroad as one thing.

Sell the house, pack everything, fly to Portugal, never come back.

And while that is one way, there are more ways that can work.

I’ve worked with people doing this in completely different ways.

People who split the year between the US and Europe or keep their house in Florida and spend winters in Mexico.

One couple I worked with keeps a home base in Spain and travels slowly through Southeast Asia four months a year.

The visa options reflect this too.

Some programs need you to spend time in the country, while others allow a high degree of freedom in terms of time being spent there.

I wrote a full breakdown of the four main paths in a previous article if you’re still in the planning stage.

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#5: “I need to be rich”

Golden visa programs cost €250,000 and up.

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8 months ago · 15 likes · 3 comments · Benjamin Hies

If that’s all you’ve seen online, I understand why you assume this whole thing requires serious money.

There are places where you can live on $2,000 a month (comfortably). There are also places where $7,000 can be tight. Which is why I always tell people, to audit their situation, before making a decision on a specific country.

If you need some inspiration for places that don’t break the bank, check this article or this one.

Yes, moving abroad without any savings is a bad idea. No, you don’t need to have $5 million in order to move.

#6: “I’m too old to start over”

Most retirement visa programs are designed specifically for people over 50.

Countries are competing for you.

I’ve met people in their late 60s and 70s who made the move and told me their only regret was not doing it sooner.

That line comes up so often it’s almost boring to repeat, but I keep hearing it.

The skills you built over a lifetime, budgeting on a fixed income, reading contracts carefully, handling bureaucracy, those are exactly the skills that make this process easier.

A 25 year old backpacker with a laptop has energy.

A 62 year old retiree with a pension, patience, and a lifetime of problem solving has something more useful: Experience.

#7: “The whole process has to be painful”

I actually enjoy this stuff.

Reading visa requirements, comparing tax treaties, figuring out which banks work in which countries.

I realize that makes me weird.

But even if you’re not wired like me, the process of planning a move abroad doesn’t have to feel like homework.

• Learning how residency systems work.

• Figuring out how to move money across borders.

• Reading about healthcare systems and tax structures in countries you might actually live in.

These are real skills.

They stay with you forever, and they make you sharper than most people around you.

Somewhere along the way, the internet decided that moving abroad is this enormous, stressful, overwhelming thing.

And yes, there are annoying parts. But annoying and painful are different things.

Researching where you want to spend the next chapter of your life should be one of the more interesting things you do this year.

If it feels like suffering, something is off with how you’re approaching it.

#8: “I’ll move when I feel ready”

Did you feel ready on your first day of school?

What about your first job?

When you had your first child?

My guess is no. You were not ready.

But you showed up anyway.

And the confidence came after, not before.

Moving abroad works the same way.

There is no morning where you wake up and think “okay, now I’m ready.”

That feeling doesn’t exist.

I’ve talked to hundreds of expats and not one of them described the moment they felt ready.

They described the moment they decided to start.

It starts with one budgeting exercise, or one scouting trip or a phone call to someone who has done it.

That’s how it begins.

Small, unglamorous steps that build momentum.

So what now?

Those are the 8 misconceptions I see most often.

The best thing you can do today is pick the one that’s been holding you back the longest and learn more about it.

Read, ask questions, talk to someone who’s done it. One small step forward is enough to start.

And if you want to do it with me, I just opened 4 spots for the Retire Abroad Blueprint today.

We start April 13.

The founding round filled in just 6 days.

Spots are first come, first served. Once spots are booked, I will be busy with those, until the next round opens up (not before June).

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:

“The program is so engaging. Ben really explains everything and is always going the extra mile to include details that help you deeply understand every element of your potential new life. The way he lays everything out sparks my imagination and at the same time is full of details that will help make my dream come true.” – Cheri, 60, retiring abroad

Another wrote after our call:

“Ben, you are awesome! Thank you so much for going into all this. I agree that the five you mentioned are the best options right now.” – Rhetta, 61, retiring abroad with her husband

And you can watch someone who did the entire program from start to finish here:

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

— Ben

It became the most downloaded free resource I ever made.

Over 80 shares, 22 restacks, and more than 3,000 reads (all while I had less than 1,500 subscribers).

But questions kept coming up:

• “What about my pension?”

• “Does Medicare work abroad?”

• “Can I get Social Security payments from Portugal?”

The Move Abroad Checklist covers basics that apply to everyone.

But retiring abroad adds a few things that the “old” list does not cover.

So I built a second checklist, specifically for retirees.

Here is what’s inside, and how to get it.

What’s Inside

The checklist covers 25 items across 5 categories.

Legal, Tax & Documents: Apostilles, wills, pension notifications, tax rules (yes, Americans file forever).

Retirement Income & Money: Social Security abroad, the 3 Account System, currency risk, the PFIC and Roth traps, budgeting for costs most people forget.

Health & Insurance: International coverage, the Medicare decision, vaccinations, medical records.

Life & Logistics: Visas, scouting trips, decluttering, virtual mailboxes, rent vs buy, finding your community.

Tech & Setup: Cloud backups, two-factor authentication, a $50 travel tech kit.

Each item has a “Why Care About This,” action steps, a timeline, and a practical tip at the end.

Why It’s Free

Same reason the first checklist was free.

I remember how confusing all of this was when I started.

If this helps you avoid even one expensive mistake, my job here is done.

If you want to do me a favor, share it with someone who’s thinking about retiring abroad.

Get It Here

You can download the checklist here:

Download Checklist

If you want to check out more premium and retirement resources, you can check out this library.

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

— Ben

PS

Let me know in the comments which item is most important to you and what you feel is missing.

I read everything and it helps me make these resources better.

PPS

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.

DHS Shutdown Suspends Global Entry

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been partially shut down since February 14.

On February 22, Global Entry stopped processing new applications and renewals.

If you are American living abroad who relies on Global Entry to breeze through customs, you are affected.

This is actually the second shutdown of 2026.

The first lasted about four days in early February while the House waited to vote on a funding deal the Senate had already passed. This one only affects DHS, but the consequences are starting to show.

Global Entry is the first visible casualty, while TSA PreCheck was briefly threatened but stayed operational.

What this means for you:

If you had a Global Entry interview scheduled, that will be on hold. And if you are flying back to the U.S. this spring, budget extra time at customs.

China Opens Visa-Free Entry to UK and Canada

Starting February 17, citizens of the UK and Canada can enter China without a visa for up to 30 days.

The policy covers tourism, business meetings, family visits, and transit.

This is expected to run through December 31, 2026.

This brings China’s visa-free list to 50 countries.

And it leaves the United States as the only Five Eyes nation that still needs a visa to enter.

Both UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney visited Beijing in January. Both pushed for easier access and got it within weeks.

Air China, British Airways, and Air Canada all added extra flights on Shanghai and Beijing routes almost immediately.

What this means for you:

If you hold a US passport, nothing changes. You still need a visa to visit China.

But dual citizens with a UK or Canadian passport just got a shortcut.

And for anyone (like me) watching global mobility trends, this is China continuing to open its doors selectively.

Thailand Moving Back to 30-Day Visa-Free Stays

Thailand is rolling back its generous visa-free entry policy.

The government confirmed in early February that it will cut the permitted stay from 60 days to 30 days for travelers from 93 countries (including US).

The 60-day window was introduced in July 2024 to boost tourism after the pandemic (and it worked well).

But officials say it also created problems, such as illegal employment, unregistered businesses, and foreign-run tour companies operating without permits.

No implementation date has been announced, so until it takes effect, the current 60-day stay is still valid.

Thailand has a long history of “erratic” visa policy.

Examples include (but are not limited to):

• In 2014, the military government cracked down hard on visa runs after the coup. Weeks later, the Prime Minister told immigration to ease up because it was killing tourism.

• In November 2025, immigration announced a two-entry-per-year limit for visa-free visitors. By January 2026, they clarified that no such rule actually exists.

• And the Electronic Travel Authorization that was supposed to launch in late 2024 was crapped and replaced by a completely different system in 2025.

What this means for you:

If you are planning a longer trip to Thailand, the window is closing on 60-day stays. For most visitors who stay two to three weeks, nothing changes.

If you want a stable Plan B option in Thailand that doesn’t depend on tourist visa policies shifting every few months, reach out to me.

There are proper long-term pathways that give you real legal standing.

Sri Lanka Launches Digital Nomad Visa

Sri Lanka officially launched its first digital nomad visa in February 2026.

This had been discussed since 2021, and now it is finally reality.

The basics:

• You need to be 18 or older, earn at least $2,000 per month from clients or employers outside Sri Lanka, and apply online through the Department of Immigration.

• The visa costs $500 per person, lasts 12 months, and is renewable annually.

• You can bring your spouse and dependents.

• If you have more than two kids, the income requirement goes up by $500 for each additional child.

What you get:

• Legal residence for a full year.

• The ability to open a personal bank account.

• The right to enroll your children in international or private schools.

Applications are handled entirely online.

What you don’t get:

Permission to work for Sri Lankan clients or employers. This is strictly for people earning foreign income.

What this means for you:

Sri Lanka is one of the more affordable countries in Asia, with strong appeal for people who want beaches, culture, and a slower pace without the crowds of Bali or Chiang Mai.

Portugal Can't Get Citizenship Law Across the Finish Line

Two things happened in Portugal this month that matter if you are considering residency or citizenship there.

Read more

The bill is called the “Actual Return in Box 3 Act” and replaces a system that taxed investments based on “assumed” returns, a framework the Dutch Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in a series of decisions beginning in December 2021.

93 politicians voted yes (75 votes were needed).

Starting January 1, 2028:

Dutch residents will owe 36% on the annual increase in value of their stocks, bonds, and crypto.

The bill still needs Senate approval.

But the parties that voted yes in the House hold a majority in the Senate too.

This is (most likely) happening.

The Kobeissi Letter’s tweet about it pulled over 15 million views (as of time of writing this):

Shopify’s CEO called it “the dumbest thing any government on planet earth is pursuing right now.”

But most of the coverage stopped at outrage.

Nobody explained what this actually means if you are an investor, an expat, or someone planning a move abroad.

As usual, the internet did what the internet does:

Plenty of outrage and zero solutions.

Which is why the focus of today’s article will be:

• What happened in the Netherlands, how the tax works, and why it breaks every rule in the book

• The broader pattern and why such laws usually end up affecting the “average person”

• The countries where your investment gains are still taxed at zero or at least not at crazy rates that make investment unsustainable

Let’s start.

How The Dutch Tax System Works

The Netherlands taxes income in three separate buckets, called “boxes.”

• Box 1 covers employment income and homeownership.

• Box 2 covers income from owning a significant share (5%+) in a company.

• Box 3 covers savings and investments.

Box 3 is where this gets ugly.

Until now, the Dutch government didn’t tax your actual investment returns.

Instead, they assumed you earned a “fixed percentage” on your assets and taxed that fictional number (which is absurd already).

In 2025, the government assumed you earned 5.88% on your investments.

Translation:

“How is Box 3 income for 2025 calculated?

These are the return percentages for 2025:

Bank deposits: 1.37% Investments and other assets: 5.88% Debts: 2.70%”

The Problem With This Calculation

If you portfolio dropped 15% you still owe tax on gains that never existed.

Which is why in December 2021, the Dutch Supreme Court said that’s illegal.

Taxing people on money they did not earn does not make any sense.

The ruling forced the government to refund billions in overpaid taxes and come up with a new system.

Their solution was to tax actual returns instead.

Which sounds reasonable.

But what they came up with, is completely backwards.

The new law taxes all actual returns at a flat 36%.

That includes dividends, interest, and rent you actually received.

But it also includes the annual increase in value of stocks, bonds, and crypto you didn’t sell.

If your portfolio goes up €50,000 on paper, you owe €17,352 to the government.

Without selling a single share.

There are some concessions:

• €1,800 tax-free threshold on annual returns

• Losses above €500 can be carried forward indefinitely

• Real estate and startup shares (companies under 5 years old with less than €30 million in revenue) are exempt from the unrealized gains portion.

But let's be honest.

Those are cosmetics to disguise the fact that the government is plugging a €2.3 billion budget hole with their citizens' portfolios.

And here the kicker:

State Secretary for Taxation Eugène Heijnen admitted during parliamentary debate that the government would have preferred to tax only realized gains.

But he said this won’t be feasible by 2028.

Taxing unrealized gains was easier to implement and fix the annual budget hole.

Let that sink in.

The government chose this system not because of fairness, but because it was faster.

A Brief History of Taxing Your Gains

Capital gains tax has been around for over a century.

The US started taxing investment profits in 1913.

The UK introduced it in 1965.

Most developed countries followed over the next few decades.

The logic was always simple.

1. You buy something.

2. You sell it for more than you paid.

3. You owe taxes on the difference.

The key word is sell.

Taxes are only due when money actually enters your account.

Some countries skip this tax entirely.

• Singapore has no capital gains tax.

• Neither does New Zealand, Hong Kong or the UAE.

• Belgium doesn’t tax individual stock market gains.

• Switzerland doesn’t tax capital gains for private investors.

And then there are the countries that pushed too hard and paid for it.

When Governments Got Greedy

France ran a wealth tax from 1982 to 2017.

It was called the ISF (Solidarity Tax on Wealth).

Between 2000 and 2017, this led to around 60,000 millionaires leaving the country.

Total capital flight between 1988 and 2007 was estimated at €200 billion.

GDP growth dropped by an estimated 0.2% every year because of it.

French economist Eric Pichet calculated that the exodus cost the government nearly twice the revenue the wealth tax actually generated.

Governments took notice:

• Macron killed it in 2018.

• Germany scrapped its wealth tax in 1997.

• Denmark the same year.

• Sweden in 2007.

• Finland in 2006.

• Austria in 1994.

Every single one faced the same problem:

Aggressive taxation pushed capital + people out faster than revenue came in.

And just to be clear:

This is not an argument against taxing wealth.

Wealthy people should pay their fair share.

But when the tax is designed so badly that the wealthy leave (because they have more freedom of mobility), guess what happens next?

Everyone else (who stays) picks up the bill.

By now you might think:

Ben, where does the Netherlands fit in all of this?

My main point is this.

Every country I just mentioned, whether they tax gains at 0% or 40%, shares one thing in common:

They tax you when you sell.

The Netherlands just abandoned that principle.

They want to tax before you sell.

No major economy has pulled this off.

And the reason is always the same:

A number on a screen is not money in the bank.

The Netherlands is going to learn this lesson the hard way.

Where Your Investments Are Still Safe

Not every country treats people like an ATM.

Here are some places where capital gains are taxed at zero or close to it:

• UAE (0%) No income tax, no capital gains tax, no inheritance tax.

• Singapore (0%) No capital gains tax on stocks, bonds, or crypto. However, getting in is not easy.

• New Zealand (0%) No formal capital gains tax on shares or most assets. Income tax tops out at 39%, but portfolio growth is untaxed.

• Hong Kong (0%) No capital gains tax, no dividend tax, income tax capped at 15%.

• Panama (0% on foreign gains) Territorial tax system. Anything earned outside Panama is untaxed. Plenty of attractive visa options to chose from.

One thing to remember:

Americans are taxed on worldwide income no matter where they live.

Moving abroad won’t change that.

But foreign residency should at least not make your life more complicated.

Conclusion

That’s it.

I hope this gave you some clarity on what's actually happening and what your options are.

Three things worth remembering:

• The Netherlands is about to tax wealth that only exists on a screen. This is NOT a tax just on the wealthy, but something that will affect the average citizen.

• Countries that tried aggressive wealth taxation watched their richest residents leave and leave the rest of the population with the bill.

• There are still countries where your investments grow at reasonable rates. Getting residency in one of them is easier than most people think.

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 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.

She had picked the region she wanted to move to.

Sicily.

She started learning Italian and had already started researching apartments.

Italy was the plan.

How did she get here?

She had spent two years to get to this point.

Citizenship by descent application, genealogy research and of course the paperwork.

All of it pointed in one direction: Italy.

But then, she started reading about Italian taxes.

Not the 7% flat tax regime, but ones that apply when you’re an Italian citizen living in Italy.

Which meant:

• 26% on dividends.

• Worldwide income reported and taxed by Italy.

• Pensions taxed at progressive rates up to 43%.

Plus US filing obligations on top, because Americans pay taxes no matter where they live.

She looked at those numbers and said something that changed her entire plan:

“Why am I going someplace where I have to do more work? And pay more taxes?”

She realized that her plan was not as solid as she thought.

And suddenly, Italy went from “where I’m going” to “where I’ll visit.”

And then, the whole world opened up.

This is the story of what happened next.

What she built instead, and what her journey teaches about how to actually construct a life across borders.

Here’s what we’ll cover today:

• Why getting a passport and living in that country are two different decisions

• The exercise that reveals your real priorities (and how you can try it today)

• What she is building now (and why it’s not just one country)

The Passport Trap

So Italy was out.

Two years of research, consulate appointments and Italian lessons pointed to one country that doesn’t make financial sense anymore.

One thing that she kept from her initial plan was this:

She is still getting her Italian passport.

By mid-2026, it should be official.

But she separated two things that most people treat as one.

1. Getting the passport.

2. Living in the country.

Getting an EU passport is a great move:

• Visa-free access across the EU.

• No Schengen limits or visa applications.

• Freedom to travel, visit, stay for a few months.

But just because you are getting an EU passport doesn’t mean you automatically have to become a tax resident in that country.

After all, Americans are dealing with all sorts of tax forms in the US every year.

Doubling that workload in a tax-heavy EU country didn’t make sense.

So the plan changed to this:

1. Getting her Italian the passport

2. Staying in Italy under 183 days a year.

3. Avoiding any of the other criteria Italy has to assume her as a tax resident.

But her decision left her with a much bigger question.

If not Italy, then where?

She spent two years narrowing everything down to one country.

Now that country was off the table and every other country on earth was back on it.

She texted me:

“Do you have any advice for me? Somebody who could help me figure this out?”

I said: “That’s my job.”

That’s when we started working together.

Start With Yourself (Not a Country)

After Italy was off the table, she had the same reaction most people would have.

She started researching other countries.

Latin America, Europe, maybe somewhere in Southeast Asia.

She was collecting destinations (again), saving articles, reading blog posts and watching YouTube videos.

Same thing she did with Italy, just with different country names.

I told her to stop.

Not because the countries were necessarily wrong, but the order was wrong.

She was starting with “where”.

But we needed to start with “what”.

So we did an exercise.

I gave her 100 coins and three “buckets”.

1. Money.

2. Lifestyle.

3. Freedom.

She had to distribute all 100 across the three.

She needed to prioritize (even splits are not allowed).

She put 60 on Money. 30 on Lifestyle. 10 on Freedom.

That exercise alone told us a lot.

If saving retirement dollars is your #1 priority, moving to an EU country (as a citizen of that country) is a conflict.

Because residency programs (such as the 7% regime) are not for citizens, but for (you guessed it): Residents.

Once that was clear, the next step was non-negotiables.

These are the things that “kill” a destination immediately.

Her four non-negotiables:

1. Affordable live-in help with quarters for her family

2. English-speaking community

3. Dog-friendly infrastructure and housing

4. Simple, low-cost tax structure

If a country failed even one, it was out.

Italy failed #4 (and possibly others as well).

And so did a lot of other countries she’d been researching.

With this 2-part exercise alone, you can go from “the whole world is an option” to a handful of destinations in about a week.

What She Is Building Now

Over the next few weeks, we worked through her full situation.

Finances, fears, timelines, what she needs for her family’s care, and for herself.

The result was this:

• Florida stays her base, meaning keeping her US address, bank accounts, and avoiding no state income tax.

• Panama will be her new Plan B base. The Friendly Nations Visa suited her best, and she is also buying property there.

• To further diversify her residency portfolio, she is getting the Thailand Privilege visa (Thailand’s version of a “Golden Visa”).

• For EU access, she will be getting her Italian passport by mid-2026. This will only be a “lifestyle play” without significant ties to any EU country.

In addition, she moving a sizable portion of her money outside the US.

We found a suitable option in my network of specialists, who can facilitate the transfer to her new offshore accounts efficiently.

But countries and visas were not the biggest thing she got out of it.

She told me she finally understands how all the pieces connect.

How taxes, residencies, passports, and banking work together.

How to structure a life across borders without breaking something in the process.

Which mistakes to avoid and why people make them.

Before, she was collecting information.

Articles, Reddit threads, YouTube videos, bookmarks.

Lots of input, no structure.

She knew “a little about a lot” but not how any of the knowledge applied to her.

In her own words:

“Everything that I was working on on my own, when I worked with Ben it came together.

What This Means for You

Her situation is specific.

Her finances, family’s needs, Italian citizenship.

But the mistakes she almost made are universal.

1. She picked a country before knowing her priorities.

2. She assumed a passport meant she should live there.

3. She spent two years researching without a framework to evaluate what she was finding.

Most people start exactly where she started.

With a country.

That is not how it works.

A plan starts with you.

• What does your money situation actually look like?

• What can you absolutely not live without?

• What scares you about this?

• What are your priorities?

And only after being clear on all this, you go further.

She went from “the whole world is an option” to a solid global setup.

If you are interested to do the same, reply to this mail with “BLUEPRINT” and we can have a chat.

And whether we work together or not, I will give you some pointers for your specific situation that you can use on your journey.

Conclusion

That’s it.

Three things to take from her story:

1. Citizenship and residency are two different things, and one is not automatically “better” than the other.

2. Know your priorities before you pick a country, ideally by doing the “Coins Exercise” above.

3. Get advice for your move (whether that is from me or someone else) and don’t rely on research alone.

If you want to try the “100 Coins Exercise” right now, grab a piece of paper.

Draw 3 buckets: Money, Lifestyle, Freedom.

You have 100 coins. Distribute all of them. No even splits.

Where the coins land will tell you more about your next move than any country guide.

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 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.

I was 21, on a working holiday in Australia, and I needed an account for my paycheck to land.

It was incredibly easy to do.

A few years later I lived in China for a couple of months.

I tried to open an account the same way I did in Australia.

Impossible.

As I was “just an intern” there with no special status, and there was no way for me to get one.

It was the first time where I got curious about how banking abroad works.

I didn’t understand why something (in my view) so “simple” as having a bank account is such a hassle, once you leave your home country.

2020, I emigrated to Cyprus.

At the time, I had a few bank and brokerage accounts in Germany, and Wise as my first “international” banking layer.

Since then I’ve opened accounts in more countries, bought real estate abroad, set up hardware wallets for crypto, and made plenty of mistakes along the way.

I wrote about some of them here.

Now, my money sits in 7 countries.

What I want to talk about today is:

• How to think about your money when you live in another country

• What can break (and what catches people off guard)

• What still works fine from overseas

Let’s get into it.

Two Principles

There are two ideas that changed how I think about money abroad.

Or about life in general.

They are simple, but many ignore them until something goes wrong.

Principle 1: Never have a single point of failure.

Most Americans have one bank, in one country, in one currency.

All their retirement accounts with one custodian.

They have one residency (their US presence).

You would never put your entire retirement into a single stock.

So why keep your entire financial life in a single country?

Principle 2: Set it up before you need it.

Opening a banking structure abroad is easier when nothing is “on fire”.

Residency works the same way.

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

Banking is no different.

Have options before you need them.

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What Is Your Moving Abroad Strategy?

Before I change anything in my life, I ask myself “what strategy does this fit”?

Because everything comes back to this question.

In the case of moving abroad, the fact is, that not everyone moves abroad “the same way”.

Digital Citizen

The 4 Ways To Retire Abroad

Many people still think moving abroad is a single decision…

Read more

4 months ago · 27 likes · 11 comments · Benjamin Hies

Some people sell their house, cancel their lease, forward their mail, and leave.

This is what is called “Full Expat”.

Others keep a foot in both places (“Snowbird”).

Six months here, six months there.

And some are just “testing” living abroad.

Three months in Portugal, maybe a winter in Mexico.

Still filing taxes from their home state and getting mail at their house.

Each of these looks completely different from a banking and money perspective.

If you keep a US residential address, most of you might worry about doesn’t even apply.

Friction starts when you go fully abroad.

That is when banks get nervous and start asking questions.

Someone going abroad, someone who has the audacity to leave their home country, and trying to use banking services from another country?

Most banks don’t like that.

So as you read the rest of this, keep your own strategy in mind.

Some of this will apply to you right now.

Some of it won’t apply for years.

Some of it might never apply.

Share

The 4 Roles Of Money

Every dollar you have is doing one of four things.

Whether you think about it that way or not.

GROW

Build wealth over time. This is your 401(k), your IRA, your brokerage account, maybe rental property.

Principal is at risk.

It goes up, it goes down.

Usually you are not touching it for years.

PARK

Protect what you’ve got.

Savings accounts, CDs, term deposits. Nothing exciting.

You won’t wake up to minus 10% on a Tuesday.

That’s the point.

MOVE

Get money from A to B.

Convert currencies. This is the “plumbing”.

In the US you have Venmo, Zelle, bank-to-bank transfers.

Used to move money, not to store it.

SPEND

Walking around money.

Checking account, debit card, ATM.

Money that’s actively going out the door.

What you probably have today:

• Your GROW money is in retirement accounts and maybe a brokerage.

• Your PARK money is in a savings account.

• Your MOVE money runs through domestic tools that stop at the border.

• Your SPEND money is in checking with a US debit card.

This works fine when you live in the US.

One thing people get confused about: Social Security and pensions.

Those are income sources.

The government or your former employer sends you money each month.

That money lands in SPEND.

From there, the four roles apply.

What Changes When You Cross The Border

The US side of that equation doesn’t have to disappear when you move abroad.

What changes is how you access that money, how it gets to you, and what your new country “thinks” about it.

The money can stay in the US, or it can go abroad.

“Can stay” doesn’t mean “has to stay.”

Some people move retirement money into a self-directed IRA with an offshore custodian.

Some keep retirement money with an expat friendly custodian.

And there’s no single right answer which of those is better.

It depends on your strategy, your tax situation, and your comfort level.

However, in my personal opinion (not tax or investment advice) a good global money setup is somewhat spread out.

Think of it as two sides running at the same time.

The US side is what you already have. Accounts, retirement money, savings. Some of it will stay, and maybe needs to be re-arranged.

The international side is what you build. What that looks like depends entirely on your situation.

There’s no template that fits all equally.

But to give you an idea of what’s possible:

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And the one thing I can tell you is that year one looks nothing like what you planned for.

Then way you design your first months abroad will shape your experience more than you might think.

Here are 6 things I tell every new expat about making year one count.

#1 Landing Is The Starting Line, Not The Finish Line

Most expats spend months preparing to leave.

Which is great.

I am all for preparing your move the right way.

But the work does not stop after you land.

It just started.

The first 90 days in a new country are your highest-leverage window.

This is when you test things.

When you meet new people.

Where you try three different grocery stores to find the one that fits your budget.

Where you walk into the bank and learn how transfers actually work on the ground, not how some blog said they work.

When you say “yes” to that awkward coffee with the neighbor you don’t know very well (yet).

Maybe you sign up for a gym, a language class, or decide to join the weekly weekend hiking group.

You are designing a new life.

The difference to before is, you’re not doing in on paper anymore.

My advice is this:

• Treat it like a “project” with energy and curiosity, but also structure

• Note down the things you learned and what you did right and wrong

• Treat every “new thing” you do (as basic as it might be) as the chance to learn

• Be prepared for everything taking more work, that you planned for at the beginning

Takeaway: Your first 90 days set the tone for everything that follows. Use them. Do things. Experiment. Go into everything with full energy and curiosity.

#2 Budget More Than You Think For Month 1-2

By the time you leave, you will have spent plenty of time on your budget.

Rent, groceries, transport, healthcare, and all the rest.

You will land on a number.

Let’s say $4,000 a month.

Great.

Then you get there and realize you have no idea where anything is.

Chances are, you buy groceries at the closest supermarket because you don’t know a cheaper one exists three blocks away.

You eat out more because your you want to meet new people and explore new places.

Weekends turn into little exploration trips, which means taxis and coffees in neighborhoods you did not plan for.

You need a fan, a power adapter, the nice bedding that actually fits the mattress.

None of it is expensive on its own.

But in month one and two, your planned budget won’t match your spending.

And that’s fine.

If your target is $4,000 a month, set aside an extra $1,500 to $2,000 for the first two to four months.

Call it your “figuring-it-out fund”.

After a while, the spending calms down.

But if you budget tight from day one, you rob yourself of the joy of discovering your new home.

Say yes to the dinner invitation.

Try the weird restaurant on the corner.

Take the day trip.

The savings come later, once you know where you are.

Takeaway: Your real budget starts around month three. Give yourself room until then.

#3 Be The Resident They Want To Help

Once you arrive, you will spend time in government offices.

That’s just how it works.

Residency permits, tax registration, maybe a local bank account.

Every country has its version of “take a number and wait.”

And yes, some of it is slow.

Some of it makes no sense.

But something most expats don’t think about is this:

The person sitting across from you sees hundreds of stressed, frustrated applicants every week.

People with missing paperwork, bad attitudes, and zero patience.

That’s their entire day.

Now imagine you walk in with this:

• A smile.

• A “good morning” in the local language.

• Copies of every document that is needed.

• The understanding that they are a human being, not an obstacle in your way.

I did this in Cyprus.

First appointment, I showed up with extra copies of everything, made small talk, was genuinely pleasant.

Nothing over the top.

Just respectful.

I got my next appointment weeks ahead of schedule.

Not because I knew someone.

Because I was the one person that day who didn’t make their job harder.

You can’t control how fast the system moves.

But the system is made out of people.

And you can control how you show up for them.

Takeaway: Be the resident they want to help. It costs you nothing and it opens doors.

#4 Build Your Social Life Around More Than 1 Person

The first week in a new city, something predictable happens.

You meet another expat, you click, grab dinner, coffee a few days later, then suddenly they are your best friend.

Which is great (hold on to that person).

But then in month three, they tell you they have to leave for the summer.

And you realize you don’t know anyone else.

This happens constantly.

Expat life moves fast.

If you put all your social energy into one couple or one friend, you are building on sand.

I’m not saying don’t make close friends.

Of course you should.

But in the first few months, spread your energy.

Go to that meetup even when you don’t feel like it.

Say yes to the group hike.

Have coffee with different people instead of dinner with the same one five times a week.

No need to know the whole town.

But you need more than one phone number when Saturday night rolls around and you’re sitting alone in your apartment wondering what happened.

Takeaway: Build a circle of friends, and not just “the one” that might not be around forever.

#5 Friendships Back Home Fade Faster Than You Expect

I learned this the hard way.

I had to repair some relationships, and would act differently today.

The first few weeks, everyone checks in with you.

“How’s the new place?”

“Send photos!”

“We miss you!”

It feels like nothing has changed.

Then life happens (on both sides).

Everyone is busy with work, kids, weekends.

And you are busy figuring out a new country.

The time zone makes a quick call feel like a scheduling exercise.

Time passes.

Then you realize you haven’t talked to someone for months.

And while there is effort needed on both sides, YOU are the one who left.

So there is a case to be made, for showing friends at home, that you still care about keeping in touch.

What worked for me:

I keep a short list of people I want to stay close to.

And I reach out with intention.

Not just “how are you” but something specific.

“I walked past a bakery today that smelled exactly like that place we used to go after work.”

“Saw a guy on a scooter with a golden retriever and thought of you immediately.”

It tells them you’re thinking about them in your new life, not just sending a lukewarm “How’s Things?”.

They probably miss you.

Show them that you miss them too.

Takeaway: Friendships don’t survive distance on autopilot. Make an effort.

#6 Stop Filling Every Day With Activities

There’s a version of year one where you do everything.

Every weekend trip, every meetup, every restaurant recommendation, every walking tour.

The calendar is packed.

The camera roll is exploding.

Slow down.

Take a day with nothing on it.

No plans, no trips, no coffee dates.

Just you and the place you chose to live in.

Walk around your neighborhood without a destination.

Sit somewhere and watch how the city moves.

Then ask yourself a few questions.

• What gave me energy this week?

• What drained me?

• Which parts of this new life feel right, and which ones am I doing just because they were available?

This sounds simple.

And it’s very easy to skip.

I do this every day.

It helps me to constantly adjust my life towards the life I actually want to live.

Being in a new place can distract you easily.

Always come back to why you moved here in the first place.

And check regularly, if your current life still aligns with those reasons.

Takeaway: Have “empty” days. This is where clarity comes from.

How You Show Up Matters

That’s it.

Six things.

None of them require a visa, a lawyer, or a spreadsheet.

They’re all about how you show up.

Show up right, and the rest gets easier.

Not perfect. Easier.

You will still have bad days, confusing paperwork, and moments where you question the whole thing.

But you gave it your best.

And that makes all the difference.

If I could boil it down to one line, it would be this:

“How you show up matters”

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 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.