When making a move abroad for retirement, it’s important to consider a few important things including your finances. Making sure arrangements are in place to make managing finances as secure and efficient as possible is one of the biggest steps you need to take. To accomplish this, we recommend that you do the following ways.
Having your financial life easily accessible online is one of the first steps you need to take before moving abroad. When you go paperless with as many of your investments accounts, bank statements, credit cards, and state-side billing accounts as possible, you will be able to avoid delayed or even lost mails from snail-mail deliveries abroad. We literally can only think of very few countries that don’t have an internet connection, it’s pretty much everywhere so take advantage of it. The most popular expat destinations are popular in part because the internet connection they offer is reliable. You will never be blindsided by a paper statement or bill that fails to reach you when you have electronic access to your accounts.
A mail forwarding account is especially helpful if you have a paper mail that you must reliably receive. You can find several services through a quick Google search on “mail forwarding and scanning”. Your state-side address will be used as the address for snail mail delivery from which it can be scanned & forwarded to you or recycled or disposed of.
It’s recommended that you set up an internet telephone service for you to make calls from abroad. It will allow you to get in touch with your family, friends, banks, brokers, airlines, and other contacts. You will learn that the easiest and most affordable way to make those calls is with one or more of the Voice-Over Internet Protocol such as Vonage, MagicJack, Skype, and others. You can make and answer calls from your home overseas through a state-side telephone number as well for a modest fee.
While this is not always necessary, setting up a foreign bank account can give you a lot of advantages as well. Once you have instant and easy access to all your financial resources back home, you can start thinking about whether or not you want a foreign bank account in the country you’re moving to. You do need to have personal references to open an account since banking is different abroad. The rules and timelines for deposits and withdrawals often vary and the amount covered by local bank insurance can be different as well. There are also cases where branches of the same bank in different cities will not have to records that are common resulting in difficulty in accessing funds outside your hometown.
Many expats prefer to use the ATM cards of their state-side banks so that they can access their daily or weekly funds. Several banks in the U.S now offer ATM services that refund foreign transaction fees, which makes the service free essentially. Not all overseas banks accept direct deposits of Social Security and other automatic payments although there are still a lot of them that do.
A lot of people make the mistake of not setting aside cash reserves and start-up costs before they actually make their move. It’s important that you set aside an amount of cash enough for six months to one year of your projected overseas budget. Don’t be like other expats who think their cost of living will be instantly cut in half the moment they step off their airplane which is a common mistake. The reality is you will be dealing with start-up costs, rent, and rental deposits, visa and legal fees. You will also have to pay for fees for anything shipped to you, start-up costs for furnishings, appliances, and a lot more. You need to have more than enough cash set aside for these costs to be paid off not to mention any other unforeseen costs including emergency medical situations make you make your move to another country.
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