Q&A: Should You Keep Part of Your Money Outside the U.S.?

29:09As long as it totals over 183 days, then at least you'd meet the residency portion of that requirement. Takes a lot of fingers to count up to 183. Takes 183 fingers. Might have to bring a few friends over. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you'll need 18.3 friends. Well, depending. That's true. That's true. You can't assume all your friends have 10 fingers. Some friends have different numbers of digits. We don't know. Before we sign off from this question, since we're on the topic of health insurance, I do want to float some of the options that you have out there for anybody who's trying to figure out what to do in 2026.

29:50Great time to do that. Yeah, exactly. So, of course, it's open enrollment. You can sign up for a health insurance plan either through your employer if one is offered or through the marketplace. In the marketplace, there are ACA compliant plans and there are also non-ACA compliant plans. Right now, for the sake of time, we won't go through the distinction between the two, but there are for anything that is ACA compliant must meet this list of 10 particular rules that are set out. So things like it's got to cover preventative care, it has to cover maternal care. There's a certain set of rules that define an ACA compliant plan.

30:31That's available, but you don't necessarily have to get it. And you can buy a non-ACA compliant plan, and those are often cheaper. Those are a couple of options that you have. There's also the option, and this is controversial, but there are some people, particularly in the financial independence community who choose to do this. There's also the option of enrolling in a direct primary care physician plan. So it's a direct primary care physician subscription, also sometimes known as concierge care. It gives you access to members only on demand appointments with a general practitioner. So there's the option of enrolling in something like that, and then also enrolling in a health share and using that as a one-two strategy.

31:23The reason that is controversial is because if you enroll in a health share, you get access to a pooled bucket of money that might pay for your healthcare costs, but you do not have the same legal protections that you would get if you were to enroll in insurance because insurance itself is a highly regulated industry. That regulation is why it's expensive, but that regulation also gives you a certain level of legal protection that you don't get from a health share. So if you do choose to go the health share plus concierge care route, it is a valid option. Many people in the FIRE community do it.

32:09You would save a lot of money by doing it, but there are trade-offs. The point of the show is everything comes with trade-offs. That discount does not come free. Yeah. People see these all the time. In fact, I've seen people in the personal finance community who signed up for these. And then I talked to them about what these share programs, these meta-share programs really are. And it surprised the hell out of them. These people are enthusiasts, they had no idea what type of risk they're taking on. When something costs a lot, lot less and you think that it's just this mispriced thing, it's not.

32:46It never is. Across the top, I think the thing you need to be aware of with these sharing programs is the fact that right across the top of every single one of them, it says the words, not actuarially sound. They're required to say not actuarially sound. What does that mean? That means the actuaries figure out how big that pool of money needs to be for catastrophic conditions that come along. And then everybody needs money at the same time. This says that if your MediShare program gets into a situation where a ton of people need money at the same time, there's not enough money in that pool to handle everybody.

33:26That's the trade-off is that when you need it. Now, have I seen that happen before? No, I have not. I can't think of a case. I'm sure there are because some of these are really small associations. So I'm sure that it has happened. I don't recall it ever happening, but I think I got to know that going in that, you know what? I'm in this thing that's not built on really a firm footing. It is built a little bit on sand, which is how you're getting away with a cheaper price. Right. The other thing is that many of these health shares, not all, but many have certain moral codes or moral requirements and will not pay for something that might be the result of immorality.

34:11For example, if you, heaven forbid, drive drunk and get into a car accident, it may not pay for that. Yeah, if it's religious-based. A lot of these are religious-based. Right. I mean, and please don't drive drunk anyway, but know that there are certain ethical standards, behavioral standards that a person must meet. And if you end up suffering a health consequence that the health share determines is reflective of conduct that they do not approve of, then they may deny your claim because of that immoral conduct, drunk driving being one of many examples. I see this type of program, Paula, and the concierge service that you mentioned as kind of a field goal, like both ends.

35:00On one hand, the concierge service is freedom from care. I've got a doctor. I'm on call. I can go get the stuff done, whatever I want. I don't have to worry about insurance, paying for it. I'm just going to pay for it. Some of these programs are super expensive, like incredibly expensive, but you get great care. You get it right when you need it. You're not messing around. And then MediShare is, I'm going to cut just about every corner. I'm going to cut every single corner that I can and get where I need to go. I've seen some people too, this year especially, looking more often at catastrophic care.

35:35And now that catastrophic care coverages can, some of them are eligible for HSA inclusion, which in the past they weren't. So that's a change in the legislation that happened last summer. you know, you can even cut a corner that way where you're in a plan that's actually sound. It's not going to pay for much, but it's there if the worst case scenario happens, you know that it will be there. It would be interesting to run the numbers on direct primary care plus a health share plus a catastrophic care plan. Versus a PPO? Yeah, exactly. And then particularly if you factor for also the tax benefits that you get from HSA contribution, it would be interesting to run the numbers to see if that one, two, three punch of those three, how that would match out against conventional health insurance.

36:33Speaking of running the numbers, one - A PPO or a POS, which is truly a POS. A person in our audience wrote me and said that even in 2025, Paula, the company they work for, which is a major top 50 employer in the United States, he could not do the math where the PPO versus the company's subsidization of the HSA. So they put some money in the HSA for you, plus the major medical that they had. There was no way the PPO ever won. He could not make the PPO beat the HSA. And he said, our company is driving us toward the HSA, which is great, which is fantastic, I think, for everybody. I used to think the HSA and the major medical policies were only for people that were super healthy.

37:29And I had a healthcare expert say, well, no, if you're not healthy at all, you will get to those maximums. You'll get to the amount that you need to spend very quickly. And now you have insurance for the rest of your year, whatever that is. So if you go to the doctor a lot, the HSA still might win with the major medical. And if you don't go hardly at all, well, then it could be a huge win and you save the money into the HSA and let that money accumulate. So either way, this health expert was like, don't rule out the HSA and major medical if you are somebody who has a history of needing to see a physician a lot.

38:11Yeah. November and December are always the most frustrating months to get medical bills because you're like, man, my deductible is about to reset. You're just there. Yeah. Yeah. Do I really have to get sick or injured in like Q4? Can we defer this injury to Q1? Just hold it together, body. Yeah. Just hold it together. Just wait until January 1st. Not the way life works. I swear to God, your body's like, oh, you're almost at, okay, I'm going to do this one more time. Thanks universe. Yeah. Yeah. Your body's like, oh, you said it was December 15. Well, here we go. Hold my beer as I wreck Paula's holiday.

38:56Yeah. I will say, so what I've done and I every year I'm experimenting with what I'm doing with health insurance and healthcare 2025, I did not have health insurance. I was a member of the health share. 2026, I have changed my mind on that. And I've decided that I will enroll in ACA compliant health insurance. I am enrolled in an HMO, which is cheaper than a PPO or a POS. But I am certainly spending, even with an HMO policy, a lot more money in 2026 than I did in 2025. but I'm getting more coverage and taking on less risk exposure as a result of that spend. More coverage, but a lot of HMOs still find a way to be a POS.

39:46Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, thank you, Emma, for the question. Congratulations to your upcoming graduate. We're going to take one more break to hear from the sponsors who pay for my health insurance. So that you can be healthy enough to show up at the mic. And when we return, we will hear from an anonymous caller.

40:21Welcome back. Our final question today comes from anonymous. Hello, Paula and Joe. You can call me anonymous. I've been a longtime listener and I really appreciate how you keep discussions grounded in evidence and timeless financial principles. That said, I have a question that's been on my mind recently. I've always believed that this time isn't different, but I'm increasingly convinced about what feels like a slow erosion of institutional trust in the U.S., especially around agencies and structures that underpin our financial system. From leadership changes at the key government institutions to growing political influence in economic policymaking.

41:01I'm starting to wonder if it's prudent to have a small portion of assets physically and legally outside the U.S. I'm not talking about exotic offshore schemes, just a legitimate way to invest in broad index funds or ETFs through a brokerage account based abroad as a form of geopolitical diversification and personal contingency planning. I'd love to hear your input here. Thank you very much for your time. anonymous that was not where i thought your question was going to go when i when i heard the initial premise of the question before you mentioned assets outside of the u.s i did not think you were going to go there i thought what you were going to say was i'm wondering if it's prudent to have physical assets such as gold bars in my basement yeah yeah or buried in my backyard Yeah, that's where I thought the question was going to go.

41:54About that. But he's an international man. Yeah. We need a name though first, Paula. Yeah, we've got to name him before we tackle this. Anonymous, what should your name be? You know, he's talking about problems in the world. And some of those things are above my pay grade. But one thing that's not above my pay grade, Paula, is problems in financial planning. And when we list top five things that are problems in financial planning, it's kind of wild because right now on the top of everyone's mind, of course, has been inflation, right? Where five years ago, if you ask people about inflation, inflation didn't make the top five.

42:34But one that's always been on the top five and we still haven't solved it is the issue of long-term care. I think long-term care is a big issue. Well, Netflix just released season two of this awesome series that I absolutely loved. I can't wait to watch season two. It's called A Man on the Inside, and it stars Ted Danson, who his wife has passed away. He's older, and this detective pretends she's his, quote, daughter, and they have him go into this assisted living facility to solve a crime, to solve a problem. And so he's pretending that he is a resident of this assisted living facility. And you can just see the comedy, of course, because he goes in with one feeling about assisted living.

43:27And by the end of season one, he really likes it and he makes great friends. So I think we call him Ted because of long-term care. Wow. That was such a long walk. I had forgotten that we were giving him a name by the time you got to it. Paul's like, what are we talking about? Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, wow. He asked a question about where he should house his assets, but now we're talking about long-term care. I'm sitting here thinking that something related to long-term care is your answer to his question. All right. No. Where we were going with that is that Anonymous's name is going to be Ted. That is exactly where we were going.

44:09Okay. The geopolitical premise of the question, erosion of trust in US institutions, I'm making the inference that the reason that that is set up as the premise to the question is that the underlying motivation is the question, will my assets be protected? Is there sufficient rule of law such that my assets will be protected? Because, and I hope I'm understanding that premise correctly, there are many countries in the world in which your assets could be at risk of seizure. There are many governments that will sometimes very arbitrarily seize a person's assets. It's a risk transfer, not getting rid of the risk.

44:55You're trading one risk of one government for risk of another government. Right. And so I think then the question becomes, which nation has the strongest rule of law when it comes to preservation of assets? Well, he didn't really ask us where, though, Paula. He didn't ask us what country. He just said, should I? So I don't know if we got to debate whether it's the Bahamas or Switzerland that he goes to. I had two thoughts about this, just short ones while you're thinking about this. Thought number one is if you're worried about companies in the U.S. and you're worried about institutions not playing fairly or whatever that may be, well, then you buy international positions.

45:45But I don't think that's the question, right? The question isn't buying international questions. The question is, I have my money, my Schwab account, and all of a sudden it's gone because some government official decided to take my money. So I want to have some money in a different spot. Like in an offshore account, Cayman Islands kind of a thing. I hope we're understanding that premise correctly. I think that is the premise. If you look at global capital flows, there is so much capital inflow to the United States. I mean, there's also a ton of inflow to Dubai and the UAE, but there is tremendous inflow to the United States.

46:27Look at how many assets have come from Norway to the U.S. in 2025. It's incredible. And the reason so much global capital flows here is because of two things. Number one, the opportunities here are so immense. And number two, in order for those opportunities to exist, the rule of law around property ownership is so strong. That risk of arbitrary asset seizure, which a person might face in China, does not exist here in the way that it does in other nations. And for the U.S. to remain competitive as a nation that continues to attract global capital, which it must be, we must continue to attract global capital in order to thrive.

47:20Otherwise, China's going to eat our lunch. Those asset protections must remain in place. So I see if you're worried about rule of law, I see the U.S. as one of the strongest places to keep your money. I think so too. I think this is where the system historically has been self-cleansing. We have had scandals and changes where the United States was going down the wrong path in the past and it corrected. It maybe didn't correct quickly. It didn't correct in the timeframe people wanted to, but it changed course. And so you look at this kind of back and forth that the nation has gone through over 250 years, and it hasn't been a steady ship.

48:10I think the feeling that it's been a steady ship is kind of a feeling of what we wish that it had been. But you look at how turbulent different decades have been. I don't think there has been a time where there hasn't been a significant number of people in the United States going, this is going nowhere good. This is going nowhere. So I think it's easy to worry about that. I think you can do whatever you want to do. I mean, you can definitely, Ted, do this. You could easily do it. And if it worries you enough, you could. The problem that I see is that you are changing the set of problems that are in front of you for another set of problems that you may not recognize.

48:51You have double taxation, first of all. The U.S. is going to tax you on those assets outside of the U.S. and you're going to get taxed by the foreign country as well. So you're going to have that. You're also going to need to follow very carefully the rules of that country. There are financial advisors and institutions which handle that type of thing, which means you're going to have potentially some significant fees that'll be charged to help you do this correctly. Either that or you're going to have to really dig into the knowledge base. And then I think, Paula, what you said up top, which is, you know, you're going to have to know the forfeiture and seizure rules, especially, you know, most countries have a two-tier system.

49:34So understanding the two-tier system, if you're not a citizen of whatever country that you're housing your assets in, I think it's really important to know before you go. Right. And of course, that's going to, you know, I'm thinking about Qatar right now. You look at the tremendous success across the UAE, the success that Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, like you look at how successful they have been in attracting foreign investors, foreign capital. And it is because, in part, international investors do have a certain level of security in knowing that their assets have a certain level of protection there.

50:16But is that level of security from the Qatari government significantly stronger than the level of security from the U.S. government such that it would be worth the cost of asset transfer? I don't know that it is. I think the evidence behind that is the amount of global capital inflow that is coming into the US, which is enormous and actually is continuing to accelerate, particularly as we move into an AI future in which it looks very much like the EU is going to be the big loser here because they have so overregulated that they are so far behind the AI curve. that, and I am not an AI expert, but it would shock me if they, in the next five to 10 years, could even remotely keep up with the AI-fueled expansion that you're going to see coming out of the United States and out of China.

51:18There's a lot of evidence that points towards the US and China being the two dominant players in the coming decade. And between the two, you certainly do not want to keep your money under the CCP. My brain continues to think of other things to worry about, which are exchange rates, Forex exchange. Yeah. I don't think Ted, I would tell you not to do it. I just know that you're trying to solve one problem by creating a bunch of other problems. and that's not always bad right i mean that's that's not always bad you may get to 10 years from now and you're like oh thank god i did that i don't know all right show of hands paula are you for it or against it are you for it raise your hand are you against it raise your hand i am against it i'm against it yeah those of you watching youtube could see the hands yeah i like doing show of hands for an audio podcast to keep you guessing which hand went up somebody's walking their dog damn it uh most of our youtube views come on mobile actually something like 70 percent are on mobile so there it is so you get to look down so they might be seeing the show of hands even if they are walking their dog and then because they're staring at the screen they walk directly into a tree yes then they get injured right before the new year so it comes on their 2025 deductible.

52:48Damn it, Paula. You can tell Paula's having fun with comedy classes because that was a good callback. Oh, why thank you. It was a good callback. Thank you. A great comedy essential. Been taking standup comedy for about a month now. Well, thank you, Ted, for the question. And thank you for sparking such a dynamic and thought-provoking conversation. And I hope that we understood your premise correctly. I'll admit there's still a lingering question in my mind. And I think the reason that question exists in my mind is because I was so surprised at the direction that the question took. There is certainly a lack of faith in many institutions.

53:30Media, for example, there's a tremendous lack of faith in major media institutions. And that has given rise to things like podcasting, where you can sit down and have a long-form conversation with somebody. Rather than getting a 15-second news soundbite, you get a two-hour deep dive. And in the span of one or two hours with someone, you get to see who they really are. I mean, that comes out in a two-hour interview in a way that it just doesn't in a 10-second soundbite. To a certain extent, people will criticize the role of podcasts in today's society. But I do think that lack of faith in some standard institution, I'm thinking about media specifically, has given rise to something that I think is very positive, a development that is very positive, which is consumer demand for a two-hour conversation, a one-to-two-hour conversation with officials, experts, decision makers, thinkers.

54:34you know you've taken what was once a university lecture series and democratized it and made it free and available to the public and on that note universities as well like there's a lack of faith in the standard university system and while that system must exist I think what a lot of millennials were taught we millennials grew up in an era where we were taught that if you don't go to college you won't have a future. And I think it is a very positive development that now there is a recognition that college is great for people who want to become dentists, doctors, engineers, lawyers. Absolutely, you need a college degree and then after that a graduate degree.

55:18But you can also have a wonderful career as an electrician, an HVAC technician, a plumber. And in an AI world, that is something that AI is unlikely to be able to replicate. That combination, you know, they say that jobs that are purely cognitive are likely to get replaced by AI much faster, but jobs that have some combination of cognitive ability plus physical dexterity, such as being an electrician, those are the jobs that are much more protected. So, you know, when we look at doubt in institutions such as the media or the university system, there's certainly a lot of discord and tearing at the social fabric that has happened.

56:04But I think there are also positive developments such as the two that I just described that have come out of the fact that we question things now that we did not question 30 years ago. Now, how that translates, you know, when we talk about media and higher ed, we're talking about private institutions or state schools as well. But that is a very different conversation than when we discuss public, purely public, you know, federal institutions. And then it becomes a question of how strong is our rule of law? And again, is Qatar's rule of law any stronger? Is Oman's rule of law any stronger? Is Saudi Arabia's rule of law any stronger?

56:52Do you think his question, though, is more about diversification, about sure, they may have risks, but they're different risks. It's almost like having different asset classes. He's talking about having different government entities. So while he's putting some money at risk under one regime, he's also deflecting some risk from another form of government. Hmm. It could be, but there would be so many risks associated with transferring a sufficient quantity of assets. That was my next question to Ted was, how much money are we talking about? Right. Because when I was a financial planner, you know, we need to be significant millions of dollars to really begin thinking about, to me, the risk of regimes versus all the other risks that we talk about.

57:41Right, exactly.

58:11have to still turn. Now, could they turn quickly? Potentially, maybe. I just think that we've got a lot of dominoes to go before we get to the point that the probability of what Ted's talking about happens. Certainly the magnitude would be huge, unbelievably huge. So gigantic magnitude, but probability doesn't put it on the map of my top 25 things I'm worried about, about Ted's portfolio. What would be in that list of top 25? Well, long-term care, which is why I brought up Ted. What are you going to do about long-term care? I would worry about that. And if you're still working, disability. What if you get disabled?

58:55All these things that could happen to you. What if you're unemployed? Unemployment risk, I think, is higher now than it was three years ago for a lot of people listening to us right now. The risk that you're unemployed is huge. If we see the Fed reduce interest rates two more times in early 2026, we may see inflationary pressure again, right? Even though the inflationary numbers have been a little lower over the short run, I think that inflation rears its head again, right? As we're starting to get used to the fact that a Big Mac costs way more than it did just a couple of years ago. inflation could take off again.

59:38So I think that's a big risk. Yeah. And it's likely the Fed will reduce interest rates because employment, as we close out the year, the employment rate is now 4.6%, which is about half a percentage point higher than it's been for the last many years. You've heard me on the first Friday episode say, hey, unemployment is at 4.1%. Oh, it's ticked up a little bit. Now it's at 4.2%. Okay. Well, now we're at 4.6. And that is uncomfortably close to the highest that we really want it to be. Well, and you can also then throw in what Ted was talking about, the political pressure from the executive branch to have a Fed that's going to lower interest rates.

1:00:20As we change Fed chairman, I think we might get a Federal Reserve that's a little friendlier toward lowering interest rates than maybe Jerome Powell. And those reduced interest rates could reduce unemployment and spur new jobs and spur the economy. It may or may not also lead to inflation. So yeah, that is definitely a concern, right? There's no free lunch. That's why the Fed has that dual mandate. So that is going to be one of the major macro stories to look for in 2026. So there's a handful, Paula. Yeah. I just went, well, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. There's a bunch. I'm worried about all those.

1:00:58Yeah. And if you transfer assets to another nation or a portion of your assets to another nation, what's the inflation rate there? And how is that going to be controlled over the span of the next 40 years? Well, and the other question is already, and we've already seen this from federal officials, if the United States decides to seize your assets now, because he said legally move it to another country. If you legally move it to another country and the U.S. government decides to go after your assets. Could they repatriate it? Historically, you've seen the FBI go after assets that are housed in other countries.

1:01:39I didn't even think about repatriation of assets. That's a great point, Joe. So you might not be reducing the risk as much as you think you are. So don't do it legally, Ted. That is not the takeaway. You heard this on a Ford anything. I do not. I do not. I, Paula Pan, hereby disavow Joe's statement. Paula, what are you doing? I want nothing to do with that statement. Yeah. And with that, Joe, we close out 2025 and go into the new year. I can't believe it. 2025, as we said at the top of the show, just went too fast, Paula. It went too fast. I've enjoyed every minute of hanging out with you. I've enjoyed hanging out with the Afford Anything community.

1:02:25Thank you for all the nice notes people have had for me and for us. It has been truly a good year. It's been a really good year, Paula. Yeah. Yeah. It's been an incredible year for this community. I've loved hanging out with you, Joe. I'm excited to hang out more in 2026 to answer more of these questions and bring financial knowledge to the world. It's really about the dad jokes, but I'll go with financial knowledge too. Well, Joe, where can people find you as we head into 2026? Boy, Paula, we're kicking it off on January 2nd with the first time ever Stacking Benjamins has released two episodes in the same day.

1:03:05Whoa. Yeah. We are going back to our number one episode of 2025, and we are replaying them on Friday. So if you missed it the first time around, you will get this. I flew out to Las Vegas and I interviewed a gentleman named Alex Hermosi. And for people that don't know who he is, he teaches people how to make more money. And whether you work for somebody else or you work for yourself, the episode title was How to Make$100 Million in 2025. This works in 2026. And there's a reason why it was one of our most downloaded, well not even one of our most it was our most downloaded up two episodes of the year but we're kicking off 2026 with that and then next week we kick it off with new material from a woman you and I both love Laura Vanderkam time management expert because if we're gonna have the goal that I have of trying to be present more often and get more life out of 2026 nobody I'd rather kick it off with than Laura Vanderkam because as you know Paula she knows all that stuff and that's at the Stacking Benjamins podcast, where finer podcasts like Afford Anything can be found.

1:04:14Beautiful. Well, I'm looking forward to listening to all of that. Well, thank you, Joe. And thanks to all of you for being part of the Afford Anything community, for being with us in 2025, and for continuing this FIIRE journey in 2026. As a member of this community, please do three things. First, join our newsletter, affordanything.com slash newsletter, completely free, affordanything.com slash newsletter. Second, chat with other members of the community, affordanything.com slash community. All of it totally free. Third, open up Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, open your favorite podcast playing app.

1:04:54Make sure that you've hit the follow button. And while you're there, please leave us up to a five-star review. These reviews are incredibly important in helping us bring amazing guests onto the show. Thank you again for being part of this community, being an afforder. I'm Paula Pant. I'm Joe Salcihai. And we'll meet you in 2026.