The Five Things That Almost Kept Me Home

What nobody tells you about taxes, healthcare, money, visas, and loneliness before you move your whole life across a border.

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The accountant in Atlanta told me I was making a mistake. He had a corner office and a view of a parking lot and a way of folding his hands that meant he had already decided I was a fool. “You leave the country,” he said, “the IRS still owns you.” He was not wrong. He just was not the whole story.

That was years ago. I live in Buenos Aires now. Fourteen years of it. My wife Alejandra makes coffee in the morning and the city hums outside the window like an engine that never shuts off. The five fears that sit on every would-be expat’s chest at three in the morning turned out to be smaller than the fear itself.

Smaller. Not gone.

Start with the money the government wants. Taxes are the first ghost in the closet. People think they will get hit twice, once by Washington and once by wherever they land. Mostly that is not how it works. If you still earn a paycheck, the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion wipes out a big chunk of what Uncle Sam claims. Pay tax to your new country and the Foreign Tax Credit hands you back a dollar for every dollar. The trick to avoid double taxation as an American abroad is not a trick at all. It is filing the right forms and not pretending the rules do not exist.

Some folks go further. They pick a country that taxes only what you earn inside its borders. Panama. Costa Rica. Your pension lands untouched. Italy waves a seven percent flat rate at anyone willing to live in its southern towns. The money math is real. It just is not loud.

Then there is the body, and what happens when it breaks.

I used to lie awake on this one. Healthcare in a foreign tongue, an ambulance you cannot argue with, a bill with too many zeros. Here is what I learned. You can carry a high-deductible global policy for the first stretch, the kind with a clause that says they cannot drop you when you get old and inconvenient. Read for that clause. It matters more than the price.

Or you do what I did eventually. You buy into local public healthcare as an expat, legal and cheap, a slice of your income paid into the system every month. Costa Rica has the Caja. France lets you in after three months of holding still. The doctor learns your name. That part nobody warns you about. The good part.

Money again, but a different kind. The kind that melts.

If you want a master class in Currency going sideways, move to Argentina. I have watched the peso lose its mind more than once. Prices that change between the menu and the check. The lesson burned in early. Do not keep everything you own in one money in one bank. I run a multi-currency strategy for retirees that is nothing fancy. Dollars and euros sit in accounts I can reach from anywhere. I move money into pesos only when I need to spend it, never to store it.

Some people skip the whole headache and land somewhere dollarized. Panama runs on the greenback. So does Ecuador. No exchange rate to wake up sweating about. I did not choose that road. I chose the one with the wild money and the better steak. Make your own peace with that.

The paperwork is its own animal.

Visas turn grown adults into nervous children. Laws shift. Minimums jump. A clerk has a bad morning and your renewal sits in a drawer. The move I respect most is going straight for permanent. Panama’s Pensionado hands you residency at the door, a permanent residency visa with no renewals waiting to ambush you every two years. And whatever the country asks for, bring more. If they want fifteen hundred a month in proof, show twenty-five hundred. Keep six months of living money liquid and boring and untouched. Call it your exit fund. You probably will not use it. You will sleep better knowing it is there.

Which leaves the thing that has no form to file.

You can solve the Belonging problem on paper and still sit alone in a beautiful apartment feeling like a stranger in your own life. The language locks you out of the small things first. The pharmacy. The bank line. The plumber. Then it locks you out of the big thing, which is people. What helped me was landing somewhere with other foreigners already in the ground, a soft place to fall while I found my feet. And learning the boring words before the pretty ones. Rent. Account. Appointment. How to beat expat loneliness comes down to this. Hire a local fixer for the first six months so the paperwork does not break you, then put yourself in rooms where you have to talk.

I still do not have all of it figured out.

There are mornings the city feels like home and mornings it feels like a place I am visiting that will not let me leave. Alejandra laughs at me when I get the verb tenses wrong, which is daily. The accountant in Atlanta is probably still folding his hands at someone. He was right about one thing. The country I left never fully let go.

I just stopped letting that be a reason to stay.

Author Bio: J. Andrew Nelson writes about expat life, money, and late starts from his apartment in Buenos Aires, where he has lived for fourteen years with his Argentine wife, Alejandra. He crossed the United States twice by bicycle and once on foot, beginning at fifty-four. His work has appeared in CNN and Forbes.

Call to Action: Follow me here on Medium for more dispatches on the money and the mess of building a life in another country.

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• Taxes

• Healthcare

• Currency

• Visas

• Belonging

Five Search-Intent Keywords:

• avoid double taxation as an American abroad

• buy into local public healthcare as an expat

• multi-currency strategy for retirees

• permanent residency visa with no renewals

• how to beat expat loneliness

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