this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
355 points (93.8% liked)

You Should Know

33116 readers
285 users here now

YSK - for all the things that can make your life easier!

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with YSK.

All posts must begin with YSK. If you're a Mastodon user, then include YSK after @youshouldknow. This is a community to share tips and tricks that will help you improve your life.



Rule 2- Your post body text must include the reason "Why" YSK:

**In your post's text body, you must include the reason "Why" YSK: It’s helpful for readability, and informs readers about the importance of the content. **



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-YSK posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-YSK posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

If you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- The majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Partnered Communities:

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

Credits

Our icon(masterpiece) was made by @clen15!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

why: so the government won't be able to use your money for whatever the fuck they're planning for the next 4 years.

as a traveler, none of my money has been funding Israel, for example.

one-step method: you basically fill out one extra tax form called FEIE while you're doing your taxes, write down the dates you were outside of the country, and then since you aren't in the country and are not receiving any services from the US, you don't have to pay income tax up to a certain amount (it's a little over 125k this year).

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

However, since you don't pay taxes on that money, it can impact which kinds of retirement accounts you can use based in the US, if any. Also, trying to invest as a US citizen outside the US can suck because of all the agreements with US banks. Many Japanese platforms, for instance, won't touch me because of US reporting requirements. I also can't functionally use the tax-advantaged retirement accounts here because many amount to what are called PFICs by the IRS which requires paperwork and are taxed punitively more than wiping out any advantage the retirement accounts would have.

You're also going to have a rough time getting a US investment account if you don't have one already. Then you have to figure out how to have a US phone number because two-factor auth basically requires it for any bank or anything that will touch you.

There are other "fun" things about being a US citizen living abroad.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Do you live abroad? I'm expatting in a few weeks (long planned, not in a pure panic due to Trump) and would love ask a few questions if so!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I can try to answer. I've lived in Japan for almost a decade (this is my 10th year).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's so cool!

How old (ish) were you when you moved?

Did you speak any Japanese before?

Any consideration towards relocating again?

Any other stories you want to share?

ありがとうございます、友達

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago
  • moved in my early 30s
  • had studied Japanese in a couple of classes and then mostly on my own, but I could navigate and order food. My reading was (and still is) fairly bad
  • not really. Partly due to age, but I do quite like it here. It would take something huge to make me move again
  • no real stories that I can think of. Expect communication issues and accidental hurt feelings due to language/culture issues at first as it's pretty unavoidable whilst learning.
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

"However, since you don't pay taxes on that money, it can impact which kinds of retirement accounts you can use, if any"

The math works out in your favor.

wouldn't you rather have that money earning interest now rather than receiving a few hundred later on when you probably don't need it as much?

"Also, trying to invest as a US citizen outside the US can suck because of all the agreements with US banks."

it can suck, and it can also be awesome.

I see you're speaking specifically to Japanese banking standards, which I would agree are one of the more difficult countries for a US citizen to interface with.

but that's a great thing about there being about 200 countries.

Bank somewhere else if you want to.

try Hong Kong or China or Thailand or Portugal or Sweden or you know, a lot of countries.

you don't have to live in the country you bank in.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Yeah, some is specific to Japan, though there will be similar hurdles anywhere the US has an agreement (and that the target country's institutions actually follow it, I suppose).

I have a couple of retirement accounts in the US that I contributed to before (I moved overseas in my early 30s) that I basically can't touch for a number of reasons right now. Just wanted to throw it out there.