"Let's Solve This Problem For You!" Taxes Abroad

0:00English speakers are still a novelty. Here and of course I had two cats who basically destroyed their carriers on days one and. Three, there was a lot of discussion to make sure that we were aligned and that we were doing it for for similar reasons. What are the visa paths? Are you running towards something or are you running away from something And then what? I can't believe we're finally here. This is Americans Abroad.

0:31On this week's episode of Americans Abroad, we meet Nathalie Goldstein to talk about everybody's favorite subject, taxes. Nathalie works with MyExpatTaxes and can help you understand your tax obligations as you navigate your move abroad. Jen, let's talk television. I don't want to talk about taxes. I don't want to. Talk taxes. OK, good. Yeah, it's fine. What do you find these days?

1:00OK, so I just finished watching Widow's Bay twice. I watched the full series and then I watched it again. And that is not like I am A1 and done. You're dead to me. I will never see you again. Kind of a person most of the time unless I'm showing the series to someone or whatever it calls. Yeah, but it is so good and so fun.

1:34I know you just, you just finished Hacks, didn't you? Yeah, I finished hacks like a week or two ago. Did you cry? I I cried so much. Yeah, it was it was a fantastic ending. And I think there's only like a very few shows who do amazing, like amazing ending, 6 Feet Under, one of my favorite ending, my favorite endings. And I, I feel that hacks did that perfect thing where everything was wrapped, but not necessarily in this like beautiful little bow and everybody rides off into the sunset.

2:10Although there was a little bit of that. I, I, I, I cried through the whole, through essentially the whole last episode, especially when they were in Paris. But I think it did an amazing job of shoring up that story and giving us enough of the ride off into the sunset without it feeling trite. It was so good and it was so much better to have a season where those two were working together and having them be the enemies of each other.

2:39I really, if I had to go back and change that show, which I barely would accept, I would take off Robbie Hoffman. But the only thing is, I think that after the first season, maybe a little bit in the second season, I think they could have pivoted to outside enemies because the show was so much more fun when you have those two working together against a common enemy than when they are working against each other.

3:10And that is just one of the best relationships I have ever seen on TVI love them so much. Yeah, same. OK, so Widow's Bay. So Widow's Bay, if anyone doesn't know, which I can't imagine because, you know, it's my whole social media feed all the time, Is is Widow's Bay is Matthew Reece. And he is on an island that is meant to be the next Martha's Vineyard, except that it is terribly, terribly haunted. So it's sort of like if the island from Lost. Gotcha, this little quaint island off the coast of New England.

3:54And at first it plays out like it's just going to be sort of a monster of the week type show. But then it just becomes this bigger overarching story. And I don't know why, but it is just the funniest, most charming. And the main reason is because of the lead actress whose name is Kate O'flynn, Kate Flynn or Kate O'flyn.

4:18I know Ron will know. I think it's Kate O'flynn and she is so funny. And I just read an interview that said that they asked her to come back and do another audition. And they said, be more like Shelley Duvall. Can you be more Shelley Duvall? And she was like, and I knew immediately I locked in and I knew exactly who I needed to be. And Oh my God, she's.

4:46Just. So funny. And Anna. So it's sort of it's, you know, it's not frightening in that sense, the word, but it has some scares in it and it is just so cute and funny and I adore it. I am really excited for you to watch it so that I can see what you think. Yeah, what? So one of the things that I have heard again on social media algorithm or just from people who've watched Widow's Bay, is that if you like a show that I'm actually watching right now, you're going to love Widows Bay. And that show is Twin Peaks.

5:25That if you get the weirdness and quirkiness of Twin Peaks, there is a part of a Venn diagram that the two fandoms can, can overlap. So once I heard that, I was like, OK, I, I need to add this to my 2 watch list. I I get so stuck in my comfort shows or if a new season of something like that gets priority.

5:47But once I heard it's like oh if you liked Twin Peaks better than average chance you're going to really enjoy Widow's Bay. So it it's definitely on my to watch list after I finish rewatching Twin Peaks. Again. Well again, a lot of people online say it's like the parks and Rec of, I don't even know what, you know, horror parks and rec. But I saw someone on TikTok today compare it to Schitt's Creek and I swear that is even funnier. So imagine if Schitt's Creek was scary. Gotcha.

6:23OK. Oh, then I'm then I'm definitely here for it, yeah. Yeah, it's a treat. On this week's episode of Americans Abroad, we're going to be talking everybody's favorite topic, taxes. Today we are joined by Nathalie Goldstein from MyExpatTaxes to talk about what you need to know about your tax obligation when you move abroad. Nathalie, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me.

7:00Thank you for anyone listening and didn't you know already switch to like skip to the next podcast by just giving. So I appreciate being here. Thanks for having me. You are so welcome. So, Nathalie, where do you live? So I am living outside of Vienna in Austria, but I remember back then my husband is Austrian. So that probably answers the next question right? But I remember when I first met him, I told him I would live in New York and I can tell you this is very different than New York. I have absolutely no doubt.

7:32Tell us a little bit about your journey to Vienna. It's been a while. So I moved in 2015, right? So now it's been 11 years and you know, basically I born and raised in San Jose, CA, Silicon Valley, blah, blah, blah, blah. I went to university there and I, I loved finance. I really wanted to be in finance at the time.

8:00You know, I think the whole tech scene was obviously already very popular there, but Wall Street was still very enticing at that moment. So then anyways, Long story short, my husband, who was obviously not my husband back then, but this Austrian exchange student, went to my university. And then one week before he ended his program, I met him.

8:21And then, you know, as the American does, I told him all my hopes and dreams and told him I would be moving to New York City after graduation and working on Wall Street. And what ended up happening is me graduating early and moving to Vienna, Austria. So that that's not really the original plan, but it's OK. We pivot and that's fine.

8:41I moved because I don't know, I think anyone that lives in America probably late. It's it's tough. I think if you want to wake up every day and like truly feel like you can enjoy your day and be flexible in your choices. And if you want to go for running the mill of the day, if maybe you want to take a little bit lighter, if you want to stay home with your kids, if you want to, you know, go on vacations at certain times. Like it's, I don't know, I don't think that it's so much freedom in the daily choices you can

9:13make. And for me, like that was really important for me that I can, I can control my day and control my life And I like working, Don't get me wrong, right? Build a whole company so you it's definitely I'm still a work addict over here, but I prefer to do it on my own terms. I think that's great. Wall Street would not have been that experience at all. Huh?

9:35No, I don't know. I don't think I was smiling as much if I went that route. No no kidding. So where did you start MyExpatTaxes? I know that you are a Forbes 30 under 30. I would love to know when you started it and what how you decided to start this business. So I started MyExpatTaxes when I was 24. So that was back in beginning or end of 2017, beginning of 2018. And I mean, I started it because just like every other American abroad, I had the shock, I had to file my own taxes, right? So I, I moved abroad and then I

10:13remember being told, OK, you have to file your US taxes. And then I was a help. Can you help me? Like I, I moved with a company. So that's the other part of the story. But I moved with my international company. So I worked at an international tech company in San Jose and they moved me to Vienna.

10:31And I remember asking them for help and they were like, well, you can go talk to the Big Four. So they gave me an e-mail and the Big 4 was like, it's €2000 to talk to us. And I'm like, I don't, I don't really make enough to pay you €2000 to have a conversation. And then so obviously then you go on the Internet and you start looking for options.

10:51And I tried to use the option that everyone knows, right? We all know the tax software in the US. And I remember wanting to pull out my hair because it was like 5 times it kept asking me. It seems like you might be living outside the US. And I'm like, yeah, I told you, I live in Austria, OK? Like, I can't.

11:08Like, it's just trying to fit a square. Like, you know, it didn't work for me. So that was terrible. I ended up going with a firm that said they were specialized in expat taxes, paid them, still quite a lot of money to do my taxes. And I remember that year was a disaster. I got like notices from California that were first sent to Australia and then finally sent to Austria because I guess they keyed in my address as being Australia and not Austria.

11:33And I was like, this cannot be the way. And so after that one experience, I already told myself, I'm doing my own taxes. Forget it. I will paper mail. I I will figure this out. I will reverse engineer and I will do my own taxes. And so I did that myself. And then I was talking to my colleagues at Cisco who are now my Co founders.

11:51And you know, they're more technical and they were more experienced and I was complaining about it. And they said, why don't why don't why don't we solve this problem for you with software? And I said, yeah, why not? Let's solve it. And so that was back in 2017. Now we're the leading tax software for expat taxes. So it's it's been quite the journey.

12:11I remember we said we would create a software that would be the simple thing that could just at least solve taxes for employees. So very straightforward cases. And now we have this tax software where we can do anything from a very straightforward case of someone that has a salary to people that have limited liability corporations in different countries or foreign investments, PFICs, foreign trusts.

12:32And so it's just, you know, every year we have more people that have different requests, different edge cases. And I think that's the beautiful part about software because you can then learn about the edge case, you can figure out, OK, well what's the right answer? And then you can automate it and standardize it. And so that has been really a fun journey. That's amazing.

12:51That's so impressive. Well, so you mentioned moving from California. Do you still have your tax residency in California? Do you have to pay California taxes? No I'm a non resident so I do still use a mailing address that's in California. Actually still use my parents address there to get mail because I don't want mail sent to Australia and then rerouted to Austria. But even though I have a mailing address in California, I don't have to file a California return because I don't I don't live in California.

13:21And I think that's pretty scary for most people that come from California because I know California is a sticky state. But what I normally recommend is you just have a good paper trail. So then you you move out of California and then you when the year you move out, you file a part year California return. So you clearly make it known that you have left the state and then the next one or two years you just file a non resident return, right?

13:46And then afterwards you can stop because then it's like there's a very clear paper trail of like, I've moved out. And then you also gave California time that if they don't agree with you moving out, they can obviously contact you and say like actually, you know, give us more information about you moving abroad. But normally if you're in California, you file the part year, you notify California you left 123 years, still you file a non resident return.

14:09And then if you really have no more California sourced income, then you can stop filing and there should be no issues anymore. So talk to us a little bit about the scope of what MyExpatTaxes can can do for people. Do you help people just with their US taxes? Can you advise on foreign taxes? Talk to me a bit about that.

14:28Yeah. So it's mainly for US taxes. So whether you are an American living abroad or maybe you're an expat in the US because we also support 1040NR. So for non residents, you can use our software to file US taxes really easily. Now if you're living in Germany, Portugal or France, you actually have now the option if you're in our highest tier premium to add on to work with a German tax partner to do your German tax return or work with a French tax partner to do your French return or work with a Portuguese partner to do your Portuguese return.

15:00And the benefit is that obviously we don't handle those returns ourselves. It's through a partner. But the benefit of that is that we have those returns on file so that we see it so we can apply the white foreign tax. Credits Are you considering adding other tax professionals in other countries in the future? Of course, we actually have quite a big list of people that want to be added. It's just about, you know, how quickly can we scale up and add more partners just because obviously with every partner we need to have people on our team

15:29that make sure like, you know, the process is smooth. And that's the hard thing too, is, you know, I think as an American, like you kind of expect things to be done at a certain pace so quickly, right? Yes, very quickly. And we try our best of MyExpatTaxes to make that process as smooth as possible. Obviously people are more complex, you know, they're more complex, but we can have people in and out the door really within a few minutes, a few hours a day or so, depending on the situation.

16:00So obviously with local tax partners, you can't demand that speed. It's, it's just not the way it works, right? And it's obviously because too, there's a lack of software and automation, which I can understand. But that's the other trouble is when you're finding partners, we define like who's a good fit. And we obviously also have to test out to make sure like do our American clients like working with these people?

16:25Because it is a little bit different when you're working with a local tax consultant and there's I, I can't make it go faster. Nathalie, this is our the story of our lives. We understand this so much working with people around the world. And what we work on is managing our clients expectations of, you know, focus on the things you can control because this ain't it. So do Americans always have to file taxes in the US? And if so, why is that?

16:59It's the age-old question, right? Well, the US is one of two countries that has citizen based taxation. And so it really comes down to citizenship. Like are you a US citizen? Do you have a US passport? Because if you even look at your US passport, it says, you know, like don't forget to file your taxes basically. But in IRS talk where it's telling you to read like all these different publications.

17:21The other tricky thing is obviously if you were living in the US, you maybe you had a US green card and then you left and didn't, you didn't formally exit the US tax process. You could still be liable for filing US taxes. And the IRS really wants you to clear your worldwide income. They also want you to clear, you know, if you meet certain thresholds, how much is in your bank account, your financial accounts to really track to see, OK, is there money laundering going on or what kind of activities going on?

17:48So it is, it's a lot, right? But it's just kind of a duty of a U.S. citizen. It's it's just part of it. Yeah. So what is the foreign earned income exemption and and is it changing? So the foreign earned income exclusion is kind of like the basic expat tax benefit. I think that's the one that gets talked about a lot because it's really easy to make a headline.

18:12You could move abroad and be a digital nomad and pay 0 tax up to $130,000 of income, which is definitely true. You could be a W-2 worker for a company that does not care where you work. You could then move abroad. You could jump around as digital nomad and be abroad for 334 days in the year and then you really exclude up to $130,000 of that income from US taxation and pay $0.00.

18:41So that's definitely true there. That is a really common expat tax benefit that increases every year. So it you know it's going to be 136,000, it's going to keep increasing probably 240,000 as each tax year progresses. For 20/25, it was 130,000, and that's just kind of the common one. But in addition to that, there's also the foreign tax credit, which says, like if you are actually living in a different country, you're a resident and you're paying local taxes, you should never be double taxed because you can claim the income taxes you pay in that country against your U.S. tax bill. Now, obviously you're living in

19:15a country with a lower income tax rate, like in Singapore or in Switzerland. There's probably going to be a gap. And so you'll owe the difference to the US based on what the US tax rate is. But for people that are living in higher income tax countries and this is generally not a problem and you normally don't pay any U.S. tax. And is that what a totalization agreement is? That's different because there's income tax and income tax is covered by the foreign earned income exclusion or the foreign tax credit approach.

19:47However, if you're self-employed, you may be subject to self-employment taxes and that's a Social Security tax that you can get out of if the country you're working in has a totalization treaty. And that's different than the tax treaties. And that basically just says like I live in this country, I pay Social Security taxes in this country, I'm registered as a self-employed person.

20:09I'm subject to all of those type of Social Security taxes on my self-employment income. Therefore I don't have to pay the self-employment tax to the USI just give the caveat that Italy is a little different. It has a totalization treaty, but that one also depends on if you're also an Italian citizen. So what kind of people do you normally work with?

20:31Is it mostly remote workers? Digital nomads? Do you work with retirees? And what about folks who work locally in their new country? We work with everyone. I kid you not. You have people that are using MyExpatTaxes and their English teachers in South Asia. You have people that are, you know, these executives, directors, vice presidents of the biggest tech companies, you know, and they're making millions.

21:00They're using MyExpatTaxes too. You have people that have their own limited company in Singapore or in the UK or a BV in the Netherlands because that helped them get a visa. You have retirees in Mexico or in Portugal that are using US and it's, it really goes on. So anyone can generally use MyExpatTaxes. We really cover, you know, every single year we add more income types, right? But if you have U.S. tax forms, if used to have US investments, if you have foreign investments, if you have rental income, self-employment, like the list goes on. So it's really I, I remember

21:39when I would ask tax companies to help me and I would feel like just because I lived in Austria and I was an employee, I was just overly complicated. And so my goal is that when people come to us and they go like, oh, I have this complicated situation, I can reply to them like, no, you don't. You came to the right place.

21:55Like we are made for you. You are not complicated. This is totally normal. It's fine that you have a limited company. We deal with that, you know, thousands of those situations. It's fine that you have PFICs or foreign investments. We deal with all that. It's fine that you're retired and receiving pension income from two different countries. That's totally normal.

22:14And I just want people to come to us and not feel like, oh, like nobody gets me. I'm so complicated. I'm going to have to pay all this money. Rather they go to MyExpatTaxes and they like OK like this. This was made for me because you know, for expats we have almost nothing made for us, right? That's so comforting.

22:32So if you've been seeing any spikes in growth over the last two years in your business? What was it like? I think that last year was like the year of the Great Migration or something from the US. Oh, sure. This April was crazy. It was insane. Like the amount of new users that signed up to MyExpatTaxes, the amount of people that just moved abroad.

22:56It was I've I didn't realize like how many people really moved and in April we were, we were drowning, but we made it through. We got people's tax returns out. We prioritized everyone that was owing taxes, right? Everyone that didn't we got them the extension and we we did our best, but that I in the eight years I thought was wild.

23:20It's and I assume that's just going to get even crazier because I know people are still moving and I know that we're going. You know, my team is going to the conferences of people moving abroad, right? And there's, I mean, there's conferences now, right? A lot of people. That's right, that's right. We love having you at Move Abroad Con.

23:36It is always a big hit and and your session is always jam packed. I know, but you know, 10 years ago that wasn't the thing. At least I didn't know the thing. No, it was agreed. Agreed. But it was great. Yeah, it is crazy. Where do you see people moving in your lot of work? I think it is the UK is a big one, right? A lot of people in Europe, right? And I think it's also we're basing it. So we see that a lot.

24:08But we really do see a lot of people like moving to the UK. We see a lot of a lot of people moving to Spain, to Portugal. There are quite some folks moving to Japan. I did see quite a spike there. So Japan is a big one as well. Singapore is also a big one. Canada, obviously it's that that one's easy to just help cross the border, but I would say those are kind of the popular countries, Netherlands as well.

24:40Nathalie, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see Americans make when they move abroad when it comes to their taxes? Let's see. There's a few. So I think if I really think about like a mistake, right, it's probably handling of IRAs. So like if you want to contribute still to your IR, what you can do, right? Just know that when you move abroad, it might be a little bit more complicated because one, if you're married to a non-us citizen, you probably have to file as married filing separately.

25:13And then that means if you're contributing to a Roth IRA, your threshold to contribute is pretty much non existent. Or if you are moving abroad and you want to contribute to an IRA and then use the foreign earned income exclusion. So say you make $50,000 in wages and you exclude that all with the foreign earned income exclusion, you don't have any taxable income like taxable compensation to contribute to an IRA. So that one is always something that you know that that we help fix for expats, whether it's customizing the use of foreign earned income exclusion or

25:42helping telling them they should, you know, then change to have a back door Roth IRA conversion. But now I'm getting a little too technical into it. I think other mistakes that generally happen is like if people move abroad and they say like people that move abroad in middle of the year, they don't realize that then they can't really use the foreign earned income exclusion for the whole year.

26:05Because when you move abroad the first year, you probably can't use the bonafide residence tests with there's two different tests to use the foreign earned income exclusion. And so you probably have to rely on the physical presence test. And then that just means that basically that when you move abroad, that kind of the starting point. So if you moved abroad in June, you can use that for like June till June of the next year.

26:25But that means that if the foreign earned income exclusion is $130,000, you actually can only use half of that because it's prorated, right? So that's another one. I think also just not really getting a grasp of your pay slips and your income when you move abroad. And I get it like especially I moved to Austria, I got pay slips in German. And really I don't, I didn't understand German right. And like not really understand like, well, how much are you paid?

26:48The gross amount, how much was deducted for your pension? How much did your employer contribute to your pension? How much income taxes did you really pay? So I think that is definitely kind of the common issues that arise when we first move abroad. And then another one is also if you have US property and you decide to rent out your US property, I would just recommend that like if you want to rent it out, that should be the long term plan.

27:12But if you think you're going to sell it soon, make sure you sell it within the five years so that it's that you have lived in that property as your main residence for two out of the last five years prior to selling. Because otherwise you can't get the benefits of, you know, that 250K tax free profit of selling a primary residence. So I have people that have like just moved abroad for too long and they finally decide to sell it and they rented it out. And one, they can't get the exclusion for the tax free profit of up to 250K or 500K for

27:41joint filers. And then two, if you rent it out, when you sell it, you have to deal with rental depreciation can recapture, which just means all of that depreciation you took as an expense that's added back. And so you can't, you know it's going to increase your taxable profit. Honestly, the list goes on. But those are the top of minds, at least the ones that are a little bit more costly. We see that, too, especially when folks move to a place like Spain and then they go to sell their house and now they owe Spain a bunch of money on

28:09capital gains on their house. And to me, that is just, you know, we are all for paying our fair share, but that, to me, is so unfair to end up owing the Spanish government taxes on your American house when you've just gotten there. Yeah, Yeah. Go ahead. Oh, no, I was going to say, yeah, it's just one of those things you kind of have to think about ahead of time is, you know, now you're going to be a tax resident somewhere else.

28:31Do you want to keep your US assets and have them taxable also somewhere else? Or do you prefer off before moving? Yeah, completely. So do you have any tips for people like say, we talked to a lot of people who want to retire, sometimes they're retiring earlier. Any tips for them to save money on their taxes when they move abroad?

28:55Let's see. So usually if I think about retiring, I think it's important to know the tax treaties, right? Because tax treaties, there's, there's more than sixty of them. They're very lengthy. But the thing about tax treaties is that if you're a US citizen, pretty much 99% of the treaty you can't use because every tax treaty has a savings clause which just says if you're a US citizen, this is this doesn't apply to you. We can still tax you however we want to tax you. But the one benefit that's normally exempt from that is about Social Security benefits.

29:31And so it is important to know, OK, which country gets to tax my Social Security benefits because some countries, it depends on your residence. So like if you move to the UK, it could be that your US Social Security is taxable in the UK and not in the US or vice versa. So I think that's important to know if you have Social Security, where is it going to be taxable and still by the US or by your new country?

29:53And then when you are, you know, if you're living still, you know if you're living off investment income, right? Just to kind of understand, like, you know, do you still have access to all of your 1099 forms? Because we actually have a lot of people that they get investment income, but because they moved abroad, they don't have access to their mail or they don't, maybe they don't check it and then they file a tax return thinking that they didn't earn that much investment income.

30:21But then one or two years later, the IRS will send them a notice and say, did you forget some income? And that's the tough part because if the IRS gets to that point, they usually charge you an understatement penalty on top of it. So it's definitely if you are retiring or anyone moving abroad, like if you're having a lot of investment income to live off of, just make sure you have access to the US statements because what you think you earn might be different than what's being reported on the 1099.

30:48And so you have to make sure you match it exactly. Otherwise, you can get a penalty from the IRS because obviously they have a record of it, right? And then it's of course, if you have IRAs, just understand like how is that taxed abroad, right? If you're starting to withdraw from IRAs or pensions from the US and maybe you had a Roth IRA and that's supposed to be tax free in the US and then you go to a country that it's not tax free in that country and that defeats the entire purpose, right? So just those things to think

31:17about is where is the taxability of your retirement income, your investment income and especially the Roth IRA you that might be tax free in the US, but that does not mean that it's tax free in a different country. Amazing advice. Good to know there's a lot to juggle when it comes to taxes because now you're dealing with two different countries.

31:42Now you have to absolutely made my day letting me know that not only can you help with my US taxes, but you also have a trusted tax professional for Portugal because I was about to start posting on all the Facebook groups and who do you recommend? So having that one stop shop and knowing that that's an option for for some of the popular countries that people are moving to.

32:00Before we let you go, I want to end with kind of a fun question. Beyond friends and family, what is one thing you miss about living in the US? The convenience of life, right? I, I mean, it's also, I don't live in Vienna, I live on the countryside. OK. I just want to go to a reformer Pilates Class A degree and the the the only one that is close to me in Vienna, I would have to be on public transport for an hour and like I have no kids.

32:33I don't, I don't have three hours, right. An hour to get there, an hour at the class, an hour to get home. And so that I missed just being able that no matter where you are, it's like there's a Pilates class 15 minutes away by car no matter what. And I miss sun. I don't know if I don't think this is a problem in your countries, but in Austria and Germany, everything's closed on Sunday, everything except restaurants, right?

33:00But like I remember being in California, Sunday was like our day to go shopping. Like that's the day we go shop. I go shopping with my mom, we go to Starbucks and we just enjoy the day and just walk. You don't have to buy. Just just be able to see people walk around. And then here on it's, it's just closed.

33:19And then on Saturday it closes at 6:00 PM. So it's like you're, there's like this mad rush to just get everything done by Saturday, 6:00 PM. And then Sunday you're, it's just you and your house, man. Yeah, the the 24 hour day, seven day a week lifestyle of the US definitely has not expanded to most other countries.

33:39It's, you know, not everything is closer on Sundays, but it is definitely a much slower pace of life on Sundays and all holidays, it's summertime, all the holidays this summer and we just close on a random Tuesday. So I feel you. I know. And it's good. I'm that's part life quality, right? So you can't have both. But I, I do enjoy going back to the states for two weeks and I just get it out of my system, right? I see Starbucks in every single corner. I go to every school workout class. I get class pass.

34:12I hit up all the different workout classes that are like within the block, right, that you can just walk to. And then I, I go on an adventure every day. I get out of my system and then I go home and I go. I'm so glad I don't have to sit in a car anymore. Absolutely. Well, Nathalie, thank you so much for joining us today on Americans Abroad.

34:32If you are interested in getting help with your taxes or the tax advice you need as you make your move abroad, you can find MyExpatTaxes on expatsi.com. Nathalie, again, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Jen, do you know what time it is? Why don't you tell me for a change of pace?

35:04Jen, it's time for some listener questions. Amazing. I love listener questions so much. So much so that I. Side of your. Face a ballad just to encourage people who want to move abroad. Would you like to hear it? Let's bring it to just. Bring up my lighter. We'll get the lighter going. It's a vibe. OK, maybe ballad is not the right word.

35:34OK. Nonetheless, I wrote this for our listeners who are thinking about moving abroad, and I'm going to tell them what I want them to do. OK. I want to see you out that door, baby. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. And I'm doing it. The dance. Thank you. Love it. I don't know the dance. When you are here, because Jen's going to be coming to Portugal in September, when you're here, I will, That'll be our team building event as I will teach everybody the choreography from bye, bye, bye.

36:08Amazing. Our marketing person has to film it. Oh, oh, absolutely. For for the gram, for the reels. OK, so we had somebody write in and ask, how do you know if you're actually ready to move abroad versus just needing a really long vacation and a break from the news? So how do people do that litmus test of is it just a wild idea or am I actually ready to do this thing? Wow, what a great question and here is what I think the answer would be.

36:43How are you going to feel when you come back from vacation and nothing has changed? You know, if it is listen, getting out and touching grass is about the best thing I think you can do in this life today. I do think that we all spend way too much time online embroiled in it and I think that there is the compulsion to feel like you have to be hyper vigilant and that if you are not being vigilant, that you are being complacent. And I fully agree with that on every level, that we all need to get out in the real world

37:27because what is going on in the real world has No 0 zilch, nothing to do with what is happening online. It is night and day, different worlds, but that said, what is going on is going to still be going on when you come back from vacation. So is what's is what's going on in the world going to affect your long term happiness and goals? A&B You know, we have an Expatsi policy where we don't predict the future.

38:12However, things are trending in a certain direction. So how do you feel about things trending in that direction? Now, what I would caution is that some of the things that are not delightful about the US are also trending in other places. In my opinion, there are better guardrails in most of the other countries we help people move to so that there is, you know, a floor under which things cannot fall.

38:47But I, I will be perfectly honest, I don't think 1 midterm election at this point. I had great hopes for that early on in the latest 10 years of American history. I had early hopes that we were constantly going to stop things in course correct and for me, I think that ship has sailed. What about you? I think.

39:11I think the other thing to think about is which will I regret more taking this leap and it doesn't work out completely according to plan or will I regret more not making this attempt in the 1st place? And that was that really good dividing line of OK, just what do I just need a break? Or am I just living in this like fantasy of it would be cool if, or, you know, not to get modeling, but will I be, you know, on my deathbed and going like, oh, I had this opportunity to live this dream of, of moving abroad and, and fear or a sense

39:51of obligation or whatever stopped me in my tracks. And that's the thing that I would would miss out on is not making that attempt. So I think that's a great way to just kind of question yourself of, you know, at the end of the day, which one would I regret more? And then also recognizing not only does it have to be running from something, is what you're running to really exciting, You know? It's not going to be every day, you know? I go to the bank, I go grocery shopping, I still have to do dishes, I mop the floors.

40:23You know, the day-to-day life here is for all intents and purposes the same. I still, you know, I work everyday, It's still the same as it was back in the US, but I just everything around me, it's, it's just a much better backdrop to what I had living in the US, whether it's here, we talk about the 24 hour news cycle and just how deregulating that can be regardless of what's going on. And so running towards that and going, I'm moving to being able to maintain my peace.

40:56I am moving to like we talked about in a in a previous Q&A about not having to drive a car anymore, moving to healthcare that I can afford and not give a second look to how much is this Med going to cost? Do I have insurance? Do I not have insurance? Moving to a place that values the same thing that I value, that was the bigger driver to get me to move is what I get to move towards and what I was leaving behind was felt more like the bonus.

41:28So I think it's just another thing to look at is are you just looking to get away or is it sunnier on the other side? Americans Abroad is an Expatsi production. Please like, share, subscribe and leave a review. Are you thinking about moving abroad? Start with our quiz at expatsi.com. That's expatsi.com.