We'll be retiring in about 3 years and one of the issues I've been unable to resolve is how to deal with banking and transferring assets from retirement accounts.
As mentioned in an earlier post, my wife and I will retire to her home country, Taiwan. We don't own property in the US so we will have no physical address here once we make our move. Banks, it seems, don't like that.
I contacted our main bank, ING Direct, and got the following response:
"Additionally, we do not accept international addresses for home or mailing addresses. If you are planning to move overseas, it may be best for you to close your accounts."
Close our accounts?! That doesn't seem like a reasonable solution to me. I will probably continue to do some consulting via the Internet and would like to keep a US account open.
Our retirement assets are mostly held at Vanguard. I contacted them to ask about accessing funds while living abroad and got this answer:
"Vanguard's electronic bank transfer option is for U.S. banks only. However, you can sell shares of Vanguard money market or bond funds and have the proceeds wired to a foreign bank. Please note that the minimum amount you can wire is $1,000."
I've looked into some offshore banks but they typically require you to keep a large balance (paying almost no interest) and are not FDIC insured.
The only solution I've come up with so far is to maintain a US address using a mail forwarding service (e.g., Mail Forwarding and US Address Solution from US Global Mail, International Mail Forwarding). I don't know if that would be acceptable for ING or not.
Does anyone else have experience with this dilemma, and if so, have you found any solutions?
As mentioned in an earlier post, my wife and I will retire to her home country, Taiwan. We don't own property in the US so we will have no physical address here once we make our move. Banks, it seems, don't like that.
I contacted our main bank, ING Direct, and got the following response:
"Additionally, we do not accept international addresses for home or mailing addresses. If you are planning to move overseas, it may be best for you to close your accounts."
Close our accounts?! That doesn't seem like a reasonable solution to me. I will probably continue to do some consulting via the Internet and would like to keep a US account open.
Our retirement assets are mostly held at Vanguard. I contacted them to ask about accessing funds while living abroad and got this answer:
"Vanguard's electronic bank transfer option is for U.S. banks only. However, you can sell shares of Vanguard money market or bond funds and have the proceeds wired to a foreign bank. Please note that the minimum amount you can wire is $1,000."
I've looked into some offshore banks but they typically require you to keep a large balance (paying almost no interest) and are not FDIC insured.
The only solution I've come up with so far is to maintain a US address using a mail forwarding service (e.g., Mail Forwarding and US Address Solution from US Global Mail, International Mail Forwarding). I don't know if that would be acceptable for ING or not.
Does anyone else have experience with this dilemma, and if so, have you found any solutions?