I'm an American expat living overseas, AMA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you find yourself being friends with people because they are expats and you'd not otherwise be friend with them?

I lived in a country with very few expats (like < 100 Americans in the entire country) so you ended up being friends with Americans that I'd normally not be friends with at home. Good and bad to that.

That is definitely a factor at the onset. I can see it being more common where you lived. In the UK most of our friends were British thanks to already having good British friends, but in HK and Dubai we initially made friends with people who were convenient (not just Americans but all nationalities) and I did spend time with other women I didn't particularly like. But after a while we met others we gravitated to through common interests. DH is a keen sailor and that really helped find like minded people. Some people do have a harder time, depending on personality and interests. There are certainly plenty of lonely expats.

[Anonymous]

How difficult is tax season for you, reporting foreign income and all that, or is it rather simple checking some boxes and filling in the amounts?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How difficult is tax season for you, reporting foreign income and all that, or is it rather simple checking some boxes and filling in the amounts?

The taxes are complicated because we have to report both overseas and US income and the US income comes from multiple sources (rental property, investment portfolio). It's primarily a pain to make sure everything's reported correctly. I don't think it's more complicated than someone in the US with multiple income sources.

The real problematic issue with filing the tax returns are not necessarily for expats working overseas temporarily but for long term residents of other countries who also hold US citizenships. To use as an example, I have a family friend who has lived in the UK since the 1960s, has only ever worked in the UK, is married to a British, but the US tax code requires her to declare her UK pension as income on the US tax forms and her husband's pension and other income also needs to be factored in. I don't remember all the details but there was unfairness in that the spouse's UK assets were having to be declared to the US tax authorities even though he wasn't a US citizen. Fortunately enough it wasn't so much that they had to pay extra taxes but it still had to be reported for her to remain in good standing.

Most American expats in Dubai are jealous of the British expats because they don't have to report any of their overseas income. Not one penny. Have an income of a million a year in Dubai? It's tax free. Because Dubai has no income tax.

[Anonymous]

On the flip side, it's amazing how much money people will spend on shipping just to relocate their Ikea crap from one country to another.

Former expat here . . . actually not amazing at all if your company is paying for the shipping. We have some amazing crap that has moved back and forth overseas multiple times. It's not just the expense of buying new each and every time you move, it's also the hassle.

[Anonymous]

Where is the most hospitable and accommodating place you lived?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP you don’t qualify for this kind of AMA. You are taken care of before you even arrive to your new destination. You don’t have to figure anything out, you don’t need to worry about how things work, utilities, rental agreements, work permits, schools for your kids, nothing. You don’t even have to pack up your things. I admire people that leave everything behind taking huge risks just for the sake of a life changing experience.

And by the way, I lived in 3 different counties, and I was very excited when I read the title.

OP here.

I do see where you come from. My expat experience is a different kind of expat experience than, say, the people teaching English overseas for low pay, or working for NGOs. But what you may not realize is that your expat experience is just different, and not the standard expat experience either. I'd argue people who go through the Peace Corps/NGO experience aren't really expats but a different kind of working abroad existence because they live very closely with the local communities. I base this on the idea that "expats" are people who live and work overseas but whose existence remained removed from the local everyday context, which I think was historically the understanding of expats. I'm sure you reject this view but I'd be intrigued by your AMA, so go ahead and start one and I'll read it with interest.

NP here. OP, the title of your thread was misleading. When I think of an expat, I think of someone who has left the States -- for good -- with all of the risk that entails to *settle* in another country/culture. You are more like a military family in that you work for a company that has stationed you at different locations temporarily.

There's nothing wrong with that, but the title of your AMA thread was a bit misleading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The taxes are complicated because we have to report both overseas and US income and the US income comes from multiple sources (rental property, investment portfolio). It's primarily a pain to make sure everything's reported correctly. I don't think it's more complicated than someone in the US with multiple income sources.

This is quite wrong. Any US citizen living abroad needs to be very careful. You have to work with US tax code, expat country’s tax code, treaty provisions, and any additional legislation, like non-habitual residence. For example, we are in Portugal and did a Roth conversion last year. US tax law applies a penalty, of course. What we didn’t realize was that the distribution from the IRA to fund the Roth is treated as deferred income in Portugal because we are under retirement age and therefore have no mechanism for receiving a retirement distribution, so the only other thing to call it is regular income. So in addition to US fees that we expected, it would have been another 48% tax on the PT side that we hadn’t forseen. We recharacterized and unwound everything in the end to avoid this. But you can see that not knowing all levels of legislation well can lead to a hot, expensive mess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP you don’t qualify for this kind of AMA. You are taken care of before you even arrive to your new destination. You don’t have to figure anything out, you don’t need to worry about how things work, utilities, rental agreements, work permits, schools for your kids, nothing. You don’t even have to pack up your things. I admire people that leave everything behind taking huge risks just for the sake of a life changing experience.

And by the way, I lived in 3 different counties, and I was very excited when I read the title.

OP here.

I do see where you come from. My expat experience is a different kind of expat experience than, say, the people teaching English overseas for low pay, or working for NGOs. But what you may not realize is that your expat experience is just different, and not the standard expat experience either. I'd argue people who go through the Peace Corps/NGO experience aren't really expats but a different kind of working abroad existence because they live very closely with the local communities. I base this on the idea that "expats" are people who live and work overseas but whose existence remained removed from the local everyday context, which I think was historically the understanding of expats. I'm sure you reject this view but I'd be intrigued by your AMA, so go ahead and start one and I'll read it with interest.

NP here. OP, the title of your thread was misleading. When I think of an expat, I think of someone who has left the States -- for good -- with all of the risk that entails to *settle* in another country/culture. You are more like a military family in that you work for a company that has stationed you at different locations temporarily.

There's nothing wrong with that, but the title of your AMA thread was a bit misleading.

You're talking about immigrants. Or migrants.

Expats have always only been people who moved abroad temporarily, often by their companies and on work assignments, and who remained closely aligned with their home country. They do not attempt to seek out permanent residency or citizenship in their host country.

Do we consider the Latin American immigrants in the US expats or immigrants? Given that we never think of them as expats but consider them people who are seeking a permanent life in the US, they are justly immigrants. So your definition of someone leaving the US for good to settle in another country/culture is not likely to a justifiable definition because that person is more correctly an immigrant, not an expat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The taxes are complicated because we have to report both overseas and US income and the US income comes from multiple sources (rental property, investment portfolio). It's primarily a pain to make sure everything's reported correctly. I don't think it's more complicated than someone in the US with multiple income sources.

This is quite wrong. Any US citizen living abroad needs to be very careful. You have to work with US tax code, expat country’s tax code, treaty provisions, and any additional legislation, like non-habitual residence. For example, we are in Portugal and did a Roth conversion last year. US tax law applies a penalty, of course. What we didn’t realize was that the distribution from the IRA to fund the Roth is treated as deferred income in Portugal because we are under retirement age and therefore have no mechanism for receiving a retirement distribution, so the only other thing to call it is regular income. So in addition to US fees that we expected, it would have been another 48% tax on the PT side that we hadn’t forseen. We recharacterized and unwound everything in the end to avoid this. But you can see that not knowing all levels of legislation well can lead to a hot, expensive mess.

The question was directed to my own experience as an expat and I responded based on our current experience in Dubai, which has no income tax and does not have a tax system that affects our taxes or income in the US. It is quite simple for us in this regard. Otherwise what you say is valid in that expats in other, particularly developed, countries have to be careful about their double taxation situation. Our taxes were more complicated when we lived in the UK. It became more simple once in HK, and much more simple in Dubai.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP you don’t qualify for this kind of AMA. You are taken care of before you even arrive to your new destination. You don’t have to figure anything out, you don’t need to worry about how things work, utilities, rental agreements, work permits, schools for your kids, nothing. You don’t even have to pack up your things. I admire people that leave everything behind taking huge risks just for the sake of a life changing experience.

And by the way, I lived in 3 different counties, and I was very excited when I read the title.

OP here.

I do see where you come from. My expat experience is a different kind of expat experience than, say, the people teaching English overseas for low pay, or working for NGOs. But what you may not realize is that your expat experience is just different, and not the standard expat experience either. I'd argue people who go through the Peace Corps/NGO experience aren't really expats but a different kind of working abroad existence because they live very closely with the local communities. I base this on the idea that "expats" are people who live and work overseas but whose existence remained removed from the local everyday context, which I think was historically the understanding of expats. I'm sure you reject this view but I'd be intrigued by your AMA, so go ahead and start one and I'll read it with interest.

NP here. OP, the title of your thread was misleading. When I think of an expat, I think of someone who has left the States -- for good -- with all of the risk that entails to *settle* in another country/culture. You are more like a military family in that you work for a company that has stationed you at different locations temporarily.

There's nothing wrong with that, but the title of your AMA thread was a bit misleading.

You're talking about immigrants. Or migrants.

Expats have always only been people who moved abroad temporarily, often by their companies and on work assignments, and who remained closely aligned with their home country. They do not attempt to seek out permanent residency or citizenship in their host country.

Do we consider the Latin American immigrants in the US expats or immigrants? Given that we never think of them as expats but consider them people who are seeking a permanent life in the US, they are justly immigrants. So your definition of someone leaving the US for good to settle in another country/culture is not likely to a justifiable definition because that person is more correctly an immigrant, not an expat.

Expat is short for expatriate. The connotation of that word is one who has settled abroad, out of their country. We don't usually consider military families stationed in Germany expats. The connotation is that the person has settled elsewhere, not just temporarily moved for a job wherein the job pays for housing, etc.

A person can be an immigrant and an expatriate. They are not mutually exclusive terms. Also, there are Americans who settle abroad and don't renounce their U.S. citizenship or apply for citizenship in the new country, but they are still settled there for the long haul. An example would be people who retire to Costa Rica or Mexico, etc. Or even people who marry a Brit and move there.

I'm just saying her title is misleading. I consider her experience to be more akin to a military spouse, albeit with better pay/higher standard of living.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP you don’t qualify for this kind of AMA. You are taken care of before you even arrive to your new destination. You don’t have to figure anything out, you don’t need to worry about how things work, utilities, rental agreements, work permits, schools for your kids, nothing. You don’t even have to pack up your things. I admire people that leave everything behind taking huge risks just for the sake of a life changing experience.

And by the way, I lived in 3 different counties, and I was very excited when I read the title.

OP here.

I do see where you come from. My expat experience is a different kind of expat experience than, say, the people teaching English overseas for low pay, or working for NGOs. But what you may not realize is that your expat experience is just different, and not the standard expat experience either. I'd argue people who go through the Peace Corps/NGO experience aren't really expats but a different kind of working abroad existence because they live very closely with the local communities. I base this on the idea that "expats" are people who live and work overseas but whose existence remained removed from the local everyday context, which I think was historically the understanding of expats. I'm sure you reject this view but I'd be intrigued by your AMA, so go ahead and start one and I'll read it with interest.

NP here. OP, the title of your thread was misleading. When I think of an expat, I think of someone who has left the States -- for good -- with all of the risk that entails to *settle* in another country/culture. You are more like a military family in that you work for a company that has stationed you at different locations temporarily.

There's nothing wrong with that, but the title of your AMA thread was a bit misleading.

You're talking about immigrants. Or migrants.

Expats have always only been people who moved abroad temporarily, often by their companies and on work assignments, and who remained closely aligned with their home country. They do not attempt to seek out permanent residency or citizenship in their host country.

Do we consider the Latin American immigrants in the US expats or immigrants? Given that we never think of them as expats but consider them people who are seeking a permanent life in the US, they are justly immigrants. So your definition of someone leaving the US for good to settle in another country/culture is not likely to a justifiable definition because that person is more correctly an immigrant, not an expat.

Expat is short for expatriate. The connotation of that word is one who has settled abroad, out of their country. We don't usually consider military families stationed in Germany expats. The connotation is that the person has settled elsewhere, not just temporarily moved for a job wherein the job pays for housing, etc.

A person can be an immigrant and an expatriate. They are not mutually exclusive terms. Also, there are Americans who settle abroad and don't renounce their U.S. citizenship or apply for citizenship in the new country, but they are still settled there for the long haul. An example would be people who retire to Costa Rica or Mexico, etc. Or even people who marry a Brit and move there.

I'm just saying her title is misleading. I consider her experience to be more akin to a military spouse, albeit with better pay/higher standard of living.

You are being pedantic. You can possibly win the official definition argument but the widely accepted and common understanding of expat and immigrant are two different things. A well off family moving from global city to global city every few years due to the husband's corporate relocation is definitely an expat family. They are not immigrants. A family that moves from Honduras to the US and settles for good in the US are immigrants, not expats. That's how most people understand and use the terms.

The Financial Times definition is the classic definition: http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=expatriate

[Anonymous]

2 questions..

Do you have family stateside and if so, do you regret not having them heavily involved in your kid's lives?

Are you ever worried about your kids not having a home base or staying in one school system?

DH and I lived abroad until we decided to have DS. Then we wanted to be near family. As DS is getting older and our parents' health is failing, weve started to discuss moving abroad again at some point. But we are concerned about the impact on DS because he will likely be around 12 when that would happen

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:2 questions..

Do you have family stateside and if so, do you regret not having them heavily involved in your kid's lives?

Are you ever worried about your kids not having a home base or staying in one school system?

DH and I lived abroad until we decided to have DS. Then we wanted to be near family. As DS is getting older and our parents' health is failing, weve started to discuss moving abroad again at some point. But we are concerned about the impact on DS because he will likely be around 12 when that would happen

We are fortunate with family. I am in the US for most of the summer with the kids in part because it's too bloody hot in Dubai. We literally move in with my parents, who are very happy to have us around. My inlaws are exotic travellers and try to organize flights through Dubai enroute to Africa or India or Asia so they can see us for a few days, and both my parents and inlaws have come out to see us during the winter months, staying for a few weeks each time. We've had family trips to Europe with my parents and sister/BIL and their kids. So we do see family and keep in touch with them.

It's not quite the same as my sister, who lives a mile from my parents and whose kids are over at my parents all the time. My sister is.... as much as I hate to admit this, closer to my parents because of the distance factor and I do miss out on the proximity of having grandma down the road. But on the other hand we probably see more of our families than many people in the US (just look at the family sub forum on here!). DH gets six weeks vacation a year and that helps tremendously. Even if we had never left the US we may very well still have moved to another city in the country and wouldn't be seeing family as frequently.

I am also fortunate that my parents and inlaws are all in excellent health, even in their 70s. It will be very interesting to see what happens if their health starts to decline and we are still abroad but we will cross that bridge when we get there. That would be the difference between being only just a few hours' flight away and a 14 hour flight away.

I know plenty of expat families who moved their kids abroad in their teens. It's a mixed result. Some kids blossomed living overseas while others did not and fell into the spoiled expat kid syndrome too quickly. 12 is probably a good time to do it. High school would be more challenging.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP you don’t qualify for this kind of AMA. You are taken care of before you even arrive to your new destination. You don’t have to figure anything out, you don’t need to worry about how things work, utilities, rental agreements, work permits, schools for your kids, nothing. You don’t even have to pack up your things. I admire people that leave everything behind taking huge risks just for the sake of a life changing experience.

And by the way, I lived in 3 different counties, and I was very excited when I read the title.

OP here.

I do see where you come from. My expat experience is a different kind of expat experience than, say, the people teaching English overseas for low pay, or working for NGOs. But what you may not realize is that your expat experience is just different, and not the standard expat experience either. I'd argue people who go through the Peace Corps/NGO experience aren't really expats but a different kind of working abroad existence because they live very closely with the local communities. I base this on the idea that "expats" are people who live and work overseas but whose existence remained removed from the local everyday context, which I think was historically the understanding of expats. I'm sure you reject this view but I'd be intrigued by your AMA, so go ahead and start one and I'll read it with interest.

NP here. OP, the title of your thread was misleading. When I think of an expat, I think of someone who has left the States -- for good -- with all of the risk that entails to *settle* in another country/culture. You are more like a military family in that you work for a company that has stationed you at different locations temporarily.

There's nothing wrong with that, but the title of your AMA thread was a bit misleading.

You're talking about immigrants. Or migrants.

Expats have always only been people who moved abroad temporarily, often by their companies and on work assignments, and who remained closely aligned with their home country. They do not attempt to seek out permanent residency or citizenship in their host country.

Do we consider the Latin American immigrants in the US expats or immigrants? Given that we never think of them as expats but consider them people who are seeking a permanent life in the US, they are justly immigrants. So your definition of someone leaving the US for good to settle in another country/culture is not likely to a justifiable definition because that person is more correctly an immigrant, not an expat.

I've lived as what I have always called an expat life for 15+ years. Never intended to settle permanently and most of my friends didn't, either, and they always called themselves expats.

[Anonymous]

^^ immediate PP here. I've also lived as a Peace Corps volunteer, NGO worker, and now as an accompanying spouse. My Peace Corps experience was VERY different but otherwise I'd lump in professional-level NGO jobs with the rest in terms of the personal experience (not military as I don't know much about that). All of these have been sponsored, though, including the Peace Corps in terms of finding housing, paying most bills ,etc.