I'm an expat with Mega-corp, have been for the last 8-1/2 years. Mid-40s. Housing and local expenses paid by mega-corp, so almost all of my salary, bonuses and stock options in the past few years have gone to Schwab. Before that most of salary/bonus went to building our dream home, which is paid for (
).
Came on a one year assignment, and HR advised us to keep our home in the US, which we did and now cannot sell without being eaten alive by taxes. We will live there for two years when we return to the states in about 18-24 months so we can sell without too much tax impact. We can't rent it out either without most of the proceeds going to one form of tax or another because the US would tax the rental income as well as the local country (if you live here over 5 years you pay tax on worldwide income...company takes care of all taxes here and equalizes us so we don't pay any more total tax than we would have if we stayed in the states, but that does not cover personal income on investments etc).
So far we have kept most investments in growth funds and stocks with low yields, but now beginning to add to higher yield investments and bonds.
Someone mentioned the extravagent lifestyles of expats...it is so true. Many of our acquaintances live like there is no tomorrow, and when tomorrow comes many will be sorry for it. We do take some nice vacations from time to time, but usually they are either tacked onto a mega-corp function to which DW is invited, so we have seen a few places for not too much cost. Airfare for most of our own vacations is usually paid for with my air-miles (I was a heavy traveller for about 5 years, thankfully slowed down a bit now).
We always have been LBYMers, but it took a while for DW to understand that LBYM is the best way as she grew up in a family that were definitely NOT LBYMers. But now that we have been living this way for so many years, and since she can see that by doing so we can FIRE before too much longer, she is grateful that we have lived this way.
We have no debt, and if we sold the new house and lived in the older one, we could FIRE now, but it is hard to sell your dream home. Ultimately we will probably sell it and downsize to a less expensive location, but that is a good 10-15 years down the road. We also have a daughter still in HS, so really that is a very strong consideration for me to stick it out for another 18 months. We would like her to finish school here. Then we will go home to be closer to both of our children.
Rambler
yawn) while shows about the military are big hits.
