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Financial Planning

  • Ordinary financial planning assumes one country. One tax system, one set of retirement accounts, one body of law deciding what happens to your estate. Move to Spain and every one of those assumptions has a second version.
  • The articles here deal with the decisions that sit across both. Which account to draw from first, and why the answer is different for an American in Valencia than for an American in Ohio. What happens to a US revocable living trust in a civil law country with forced heirship rules. How Social Security is treated when both countries have a claim on it. What the questions are that you should answer before the move rather than after.
  • These are the pieces that do not fit neatly under tax or investments, because in practice they are both.
  • If you have an estate plan drawn up in the United States, read what does not travel. If you are still in the planning stage, start with the five questions to answer before moving abroad.
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