When Your Retirement Goes Global: The Tax Traps and Planning Moves Every Retiree Needs to Know

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicitor implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Welcome to to Ask Good Questions Podcasts, broadcasting live every Wednesday, six pm Eastern Time on W four CY Radio at w four cy dot com. This week and every week, we will reach for a higher purpose in money and light, as well as a focus on health and wellness. Now, let's join your host, Anita bell Anderson, as together we start with Asking Good Questions.

1:01 Hello, and welcome to the Ask Good Questions podcast. I'm your host, Benita bell Anderson, and I am so looking forward to today. I have some questions for myself as this has to do with travel. I've done a couple of travel related episodes, but this is a little different. I think You're going to get a lot out of this. I am excited to introduce you to my guest today, like to invite him to the podcast. Stage, Anita. Jimmy. Jimmy's actually in Florida but recently come back from Bali, and he has the kind of lit you know, I've thought about doing what he's done, but not quite. Haven't ever gotten there. But let me tell you a little bit about this guy. He is a fiduciary financial advisor like me. He's an author, he's a speaker, a lifelong traveler with a truly global perspective. He has lived internationally most of his life, and he understands firsthand the complexities of managing money across borders. He's the author of a book called Divorce the Irs, now in its second edition, and it explores tax time bombs, hidden tax issues that can quietly build over time and impact retirement income and financial flexibility, including for Americans that choose to live or

2:37 retire abroad. So he has a company called Baobab Wealth Abroad and he focuses on educating expats and globally mobile families, emphasizing clarity, long term thinking, and helping people better understand how today's decisions can create consequences years, countries, some you know down the road. So welcome, Jimmy. Do you want to add anything to that. No, I appreciate the introduction, and I'm excited to talk with you about all those different topics. So when someone says to you, I'm thinking about retiring abroad, what would be the first thing that you wish that they would ask you?

3:26 Have they ever been abroad? That's probably the number one thing. Right. There's the idea of living and retiring abroad, and then there's the reality of living and retiring abroad, and it's become much more popular, especially recently. I think the trend really started in my business. Where I really saw a pickup is when Tim Ferriss published The Four Hour work Week and he talked about lifestyle arbitrage and how much farther the US dollar can go overseas, and how amazing it is to live and work and travel overseas retire overseas. I think that's kind of really where I picked up and became quite popular. But recently it's quite it's picked up because of the political scene and different reasons in America.

4:10 So people come to me from all walks of life for all sorts of different reasons of why they might want to live, work, retire overseas. But the first question for sure is have you been overseas or been where you're looking to retire? Yeah, because what I'm thinking of is I get emails and there's newsletters out there about retiring abroad, about living, you know, and it seems like it's almost romanticizing, just oh how lovely this would be to you know, any anywhere else would be better than here. And it's like, oh, you know, I worry about that. What do you think? I mean, Like, I've traveled a lot myself. I've been overseas quite a bit. But and I'm also a snowbird now.

4:58 I go between Washington State and southern Utah. And so what makes an overseas retirement financially different than a long vocation or being a snowbird? Yeah? I think the easy answer to that is tax residency. So there are certainly two levels of retiring overseas for most countries in the world. If you're there less than one hundred and eighty three days or half a year, you don't become a tax resident in that country, And that makes things a lot simpler. So if you're just looking to go over to Spain or Portugal or Italy for four or five months each year to enjoy some time over there in a snowbird fashion, but international snowbirding type of thing, that's a lot simpler and easier because you never become a tax resident in that country. When you truly want to go overseas full time and become a tax resident and live full time, year round overseas, that's where things get a little more complicated for most Americans.

5:57 Wow. So you know, in your opinion, what would be some false assumptions that people might have about moving overseas, what just might not be totally true. Well, from a financial standpoint, which is the way I look at most things, the number one thing would be if I don't live in America, I don't pay taxes in America, and that would be completely false. Unfortunately, America is the only country in the world that taxes their citizens worldwide. Most countries, My wife is, are. We that the US is the only company country that taxes their citizens worldwide.

6:41 Well, there's a little tiny country called the Tria that also does that, But most people have never even heard of this tiny little country. We're the only major country in the world that doesn't. My wife is German. When she leaves Germany, she doesn't use the fire department, the police, doesn't drive on the roads, right, so she can de register from the tax system and she's not responsible to pay taxes in Germany. But an American that goes overseas, even if they've been overseas for ten years, as long as they hold their American citizenship, is still required to file a US tax return and pay taxes in many instances in the United States, even if they're not here. Now most countries, if you live there and you become a tax resident, you still are taxed on worldwide income.

7:24 But that's different than being required to file taxes in the country you don't live in. Wow. So let's say somebody has done this and they're happily overseas in Portugal or something like that. What would be the top two or three quote unquote surprises that would show up one to three years after someone relocate. So there could be a lot of them, depending on how much research they did before they went, but one of the top ones is the fact that they still need to file and probably pay tax is back in the United States. Another big one is that most countries around the world won't recognize US accounts the way that America does for tax purposes. For example, most of your listeners probably know and love their WROTH IRA tax free growth, tax free retirement income, but only if you're here in the States, and only in the States. That couple in Portugal that you just described, they're going to find out after they've been there a year or two when they file that first Portuguese tax return that the WROTH income is fully taxable over there. They don't recognize it. Even with the tax treaty, they don't recognize that as a tax free account in most of Europe, most of the world.

8:44 There are a couple places the UK recognizes the WROTH, but most places won't. And that's a real wake up call and that can change your plan completely. If all of a sudden you have to pay Portugal level taxes on an account that you were acting to be tax free. That's a that can make a big difference you receive. Yeah, so you talk a lot about tax time bombs, So what does that mean? I mean, I think of a you know, a cartoon, you know, ticking away. What's it mean in plain English? And why do they catch people off guard?

9:25 Yeah, it's a great question. So I wrote a book called Divorce Irs, and it really outlines eight tax time bombs that catch people off guard before and throughout retirements. And really what tax time bombs are are unexpected tax surprises that pop up at certain points in your life. A couple of them we can control, a couple of them we can't control. But they're things like I often find people get their first Social Security check right and they paid into that system for years with taxes, and then they're very surprised when they find out that eighty five center their Social Security can be taxed. So that's a good example of a tax time bomb, or depending on how they structured their income, that they might have to pay more than somebody else for their medicare premiums when they get to retirement, or when rmds kick in and they have to take out more than they wanted to from a pre tax account and forced to pay taxes on it. The widowers penalties another good example when one spouse dies and the other spouse becomes in the single tax brackets and pays a lot more in the taxes than they expected. And then the final one that I have in the book is paying taxes from the grave.

10:36 Oftentimes the kids will inherit those iras when they're in the highest income brackets of their life, and now they have to take all that money out within ten years, no more stretch IRA and they might get pushed into a higher tax bracket and get that tax time bomb. So those are the examples of some of the tax time bombs that I try to educate people on. I think that in your podcast you're trying to educate people on and make them aware of those things that might become their way down the road. Yeah. I've been married to my husband now for sixteen years, and so when I had gone through a divorce, he had lost his wife, to his first wife, to cancer. And when I met him, he's a retired pharmacist and he was working. He went into the Social Security Administration because of his wife dying, and they said, well, why don't you start your social Security and why not? And so he didn't know. He didn't have a financial advisor to tell him otherwise, and so he was still working as a pharmacist. He's now getting sold security. But then at this point it was still age seventy and he had to start taking iras out of distributions, out of ISIRA.

11:53 So when I met and when we met and we're taught, and we started talking about finances and I did and what and so yeah, he had no idea that he should have done things differently. So what else can you think of when it comes to retirement income tax traps? I mean, the ROTH is a good example, people, I mean you know, like that's like, oh God, I wish I could just change everything in my traditional IRA to a WROTH. And they can, right, So everybody is eligible to do a ROTH conversion. You don't even have to have earned income to do a Roth conversion. There's no income limits.

12:36 I talk about Roth conversions. I don't like to call a Roth conversion. I like to call it refinancing your IRA, because that's really what you're doing, right. Americans do this in another aspect of their life all the time, mortgages. If if somebody has a six percent mortgage on their house and interest rates drop to all time lows, say two or three percent, most Americans will rush out and pay thousands of dollars in fees, usually stretch that mortgage back to thirty years again, so they can take advantage of those low interest rates. Now, converting into a wrath is really the same type of thing, right, It's taking advantage of today's historically low tax rates. And if you google tax rates in America, you'll see very clearly that we are in a historically low tax even though we do it doesn't feel like it. Today's totally get it.

13:28 We are historic and historically low tax rates. And you have an opportunity, done smartly through a conferenceive financial plan, to refinance all or part of your IRA and pay some of that tax now at historically little rates and lock in those tax that tax free growth for the future. And it's not just for you. Whoever inherit your roth IRA will also inherit it tax free. But going forward, you know, I tell people, every time you make a dollar in your IRA or your pre tax four oh one k, it's not a dollar for you. It's you know, maybe eighty cents for you and twenty cents for the irs. But every time you make a dollar in your wroth IRA, that whole dollar is for you. Right, So I describe it as every time you put money into a pre tax account, you're not really getting a tax deduction, because really what you're doing is putting the problem off till later.

14:21 But it could actually be more aptly described as a loan from the IRS. When you put one hundred dollars in that pre tax account and you're in the twenty percent tax bracket, just to make math easy, and your paycheck goes up by that twenty bucks from that so called tax deduction, it really wasn't a tax deduction. You just took a twenty dollars loan from the IRS that you will have to pay back someday. You will, and if that account grows, you might have to pay back more, because, of course, the goal that one hundred dollars is to become two hundred or three hundred or four hundred dollars by the time you get to retirement. And if you're in that same twenty percent tax bracket and you've grown to four hundred dollars, you're going to pay eighty dollars of taxes on that twenty dollars loan basically that you took from the IRS in the beginning. Now, the most common argument I hear right away, and probably what all your listeners are thinking right now, is, but I'm going to be in a lower tax bracket in retirement and you're not really, And I call that the myth of the lower tax bracket. That's true. Some people may be, especially those who waited right to the end to save, or they're just unfortunately going to be poor in retirement.

15:31 But for most people that I work with who are planning, and the people that are listening to a podcast like this, they're planning for their future and their savers, and they're not going to be in a lower tax bracket when you factor in that all their tax deductions are gone in retirement. The mortgage interest is gone, the kids credits are gone, the HSA credits are gone, the four oh one K like, it's all gone, and they're in most cases eighty five percent of the solid security is going to be taxable. And so even if they are in a little bit lower tax bracket retirements, it's never generally low enough that they actually save anything on their lifetime tax bill, because in my example, even if they go down to a ten percent tax bracket from the twenty they cut their tax brackets in half, ten percent on that four hundred dollars is still going to be forty dollars of tax for that twenty dollars tax deduction or loan that they took in their working years. Even in that example, half the taxes is they're still going to pay more taxes than had they just put the money in a roth IRA. In the beginning, I used to.

16:40 Many many years I was teaching Social Security retirement income planning classes and one of the things I would ask the class is what does I R A stand for? And if everyone is listening, thinks, now, oh, I know what it stands for. It stands for individual retirement A count And I'd say, no, you're wrong, one hundred percent. And people would do this over and over. They think it's retirement individual retirement account. I said, no, if you go to publication five ninety in the IRS and look at what it is, it's individual retirement arrangement. And who's the arrangement with the arrangements with the IRS, which is just what you're talking about. And people don't realize that they've made an arrangement with the IRS their whole life.

17:30 They absolutely I mean a simple you know, if you and I just made one small difference in our savings, we both worked at the same company. We made the same salary, but I chose the WROTH four one k and you chose the pre tax for one k. Man. Just that one difference when we both signed up for the four one k over twenties or thirty years of working can make a huge, huge difference to retirement income because you know, I don't know if you've ever done a show or taught your listeners provisional income, but that's something really important to learn about. That's the calculation that the IRS does on you when you get to social security age to determine how much, if any, of your social security will be taxable. And most people I find don't ever learn about provisional income till it's too late and they're already a year or two into their Social Security and wondering why they're paying so much taxes on this benefit that they earned by paying taxes.

18:28 So what would you say would be an example of a small decision quote unquote small decision that might seem harmless, but it could be expensive if you change countries. Yeah, that's a great question. So back to the international piece for sure, and that is the roth ira that we already discussed, because in most countries that's going to be taxable. So that's small choice. And what you did thinking that you were going to stay in America and then you decide to go overseas can make a big difference for sure. So I'm wondering if there's a way to get around it, So I'm just going to do it. What if so so say I want to go overseas, but I know about this? Can I do a distribution from my roth IRA into my US bank account and then take distributions from my bank account. Is that a way to get around it or not?

19:28 Great thought? Yes and no. Depends on where you go. So that is a strategy to let's just take all the money out of the wroth tax free before we go put it into a non qualified or bank account. That definitely works in some countries that follows the letter of the law for sure. Other countries will only tax on the cost basis. So for a few countries you can just sell everything in your wrath and then buy something new in your wrath to raise your cost basis for all your investments in there and get away away with withdrawing only above cost basis. Some countries won't allow you to do that. They'll look at the actual cost basis of what you contributed to the wrath, not just the cost basis of the investments inside of the wrath.

20:12 So each country has its own playbook. In the real world, I also see a lot of expats still use their wrath and not report it in the other country. Now, technically that's against the law in that country, but the wroth income doesn't show up on your tax return. So even a country that's part of FATCA or has a tax treaty and they can request your tax return in America, oftentimes they can slide that wroth income under the rug because they just feel like that country shouldn't be able to tax something that they work so hard to have tax free in their own country. Now, I tell people, you know, I'm agnostic to help people do their taxes, right, there's always the letter of the law, but there's always people doing their own thing out there as well. Some people roll through a stop sign. So there's there's things that you should do, there's things that I see people do.

21:04 It's there's a lot of gray area as well when it comes to those expat tax rules. Well, so we're talking about you know, and I think probably this might be the reporting rules might be one of the biggest misunderstood things about this whole thing. What are the most overlooked issues around you know, reporting rules which you were just talking a little bit about that can create stress or god forbid, penalties. I can't imagine what that would be like to be having this wonderful retirement overseas and then have penalties from the US.

21:46 The two big ones are the f BAR and the p FECT. We have lots of abbreviations for everything, so financial bank account reporting the f BAR or FINN send one one for to get real technical, if you have a bank account overseas, and most people who are going to retire overseas, even if they snowburn, retire overseas. We'll open up a bank account and so they can, you know, do regular life banking pay bills get euros out where Japanese CN or Australian dollars. So the US says, if you have a bank account overseas, that's totally fine, but if you ever have more than ten thousand or the equivalent of ten thousand US dollars in that bank account on any single day of the year, you need to report that bank account voluntarily to the IRS, and you do that through the f BAR or the finsen Form one one four. You can do it online. It doesn't have to be filed with your taxes. It's a lot of people do file it with their taxes, but it's a separate reporting just to let the IRS know that you have that bank account overseas. And the reason they want to know is because you're obligated as a US citizen to pay taxes in America on worldwide income. So if you have a bank account more than ten thousand dollars, you're probably earning some interest somewhere and the IRS wants their share of that foreign interest that you're in that bank account.

23:04 Of course. Wow. The other one that I mentioned, Yeah, the one. The other one that I mentioned is what we call the PFIIC or passive foreign investment companies. A lot of people that go overseas to be expats. They want to be local, right, they want to buy property, they want to have a bank account in their currency. They also oftentimes want to invest locally. So somebody who goes to Europe, for example, might see EI their local bank or financial institution that they can buy Vanguard or I Share ETFs right there in Germany, Italy, Portugal, wherever they're at, and so they get the idea, well, I'm already buying Voo, I'm buying S and P five hundred at Vanguard. Why not just buy it while I'm over here in Italy or in Germany. And that's a mistake that a lot of them make because although it's literally the same ETF managed by the same company company, has the same five hundred stocks in it, same manager that oversees it, probably even the same expense ratio, the US version of that ETF and the European version that ETF, called the U sits are legally different entities, and the IRS is not too happy with people that buy the non US versions. Now, technically it's not illegal to buy that version, but in order to discourage Americans from trying to move all their money overseas to hide it or shelter it from taxes, the IRS says, if you buy the foreign version of ETF,

24:35 or a mutual fund, or really any pooled investment, cash failure, life insurance, money markets, anything that we can considered a pulled investment, it's going to fall under the p FIT rules, which basically means you have to report it. In America, there's about twenty pages of reporting for each individual mutual fund or ETF that you have, and you don't get the long term capital gains rates. They tax you with either ordinary income learn in some cases you basically have to pay half of whatever you make in taxes to the IRS. So it's just it's not as great as just keeping your money US based and taking advantage of those long term capital gain rates that we get here in America. And that's one that sneaks up on people, usually after several years, because most of the people that are going overseas are buying hold type investors like I imagine a lot of your listeners are, and you know they'll buy or they'll buy lots of that over time, and they don't realize till they go to sell those investments over there that they're going to lose so much money to the IRS and have so much reporting to do on them that it wasn't in their best interest to do that. So it's a common mistake.

25:45 Well, okay, so when one more little we're gonna you know, I think even though it's like, oh, this sounds like a lot of work, it's still this is so important for people to understand. Let's talk a little bit about you know, you talk about restrictions. What does that mean when an expad gets hit with account restrictions or what if their US bank says, hey, your account is closed. Yeah, So it's a comment one. I get a lot of phone calls for that because people will often call me when they run into a problem. And one of the major problems for expats, for sure is how do I keep my US based accounts if I'm not in the US anymore. Now. Some custodians are very friendly for US expats and some are not. So there's a couple tips I can give your listeners here. For sure, if you are going to go overseas and really break ties as much as you can with the States, not be a snowbird international expet or something like that, then it's important to find a custodian that's going to be happy having a foreign address on their account. So a couple examples Interactive Brokers, and I don't recommend any one of these over another. I'm just giving this for advice here.

27:01 Interactive Brokers is a really good do it yourself platform that works well with international expats in many countries. Charles Schwab is probably the biggest expat friendly custodian out there. And if you're working with certain financial advisors. Some the financial advisors have the option to use a custodian called Pershing, which you might not have heard of, but they're owned by the Bank of New York Melon. They're very big, but they only work specifically with registered investment advisors. So those are the big three that work really well for expats. Now, other ones that you can think of, like Fidelity and e Trade things like that, they're not so expat friendly. They just don't want to have to follow all the rules and do all the tax treaty stuff. So oftentimes I find expats come to me because they have their accounts of Fidelity. They've logged in too many times from overseas.

27:49 Fidelity tracks those IP addresses and once you have so many, they put a freeze on your account and ask you to prove that you are here US based in order to unfreeze or account. So that's a very think about it. Boy, that would hit you, wouldn't it, man, that you you're logging in from overseas and they're tracking it. So I recommend to anybody that's doing that if they want to keep their Fidelity account, either keep a US based address on there. But when they're overseas, make sure they use a VPN to put themselves back in America when they're on the web, so they log in, they look like they're they're in America. That's a that's the easiest way to not to not get your account frozen. Wow.

28:36 Well, so okay, so let's back up. Everybody might be going, oh my gosh, so what should they do before they move to reduce the odds of losing access or you know, having issues like what we've been talking about. Yeah, that's a great question. They should. They should educate themselves. There's a lot of content out there. There's several companies besides behind that specialize in Americans going over going overseas, and there's YouTube channels about it, there's guides, there's books even or parts of books about it. So to educate themselves, right, And a lot of people they come to me just to do a side by side comparison. They say, Hey, I'm thinking about moving to Italy and I want to learn from somebody who does it every day like I do.

29:26 Or another professional like me, and so they can see what would life look like financially if they lived in Italy full time versus if they stayed in America, side by side, tax comparison, side by side, tax reporting, all the things that they would have to report to go over there, tax traps like the roth Ira in some cases. So that's a really good place to start if they're thinking about going overseas, is to start educating themselves as soon as they can about all the issues that we're talking about. So we've talked a little bit about addresses and stuff, So what what would you say would be common mistakes? Well, another commitsion's residency and like phone verification, that is those things or can be triggering.

30:14 Absolutely absolutely. Another common mistake that I see is people will leave from a state that has state income taxes. Right, So forty three of the fifty US states have state income taxes, So likely you're a listener out there in a state that has state income tax. Now, not all the states are equal and how they treat it, but some states are very aggressive, especially the high tax states like New York and California and Hawaii. Right, if you go overseas and you're not living in that state anymore. Are you're still subject for sure to federal taxes, but are you subject to state taxes? And that's debatable in some states. Now, most states would say as long as you're not here and you've severed ties from the state, you don't have to pay state taxes. Other states have a little bit more stance on it that if they can prove that you have any intent in the future, at any point in time to return to the state, then you're still subject to the state income tax while you're overseas. California is the state that's known best for this one, and so if somebody still has their bank accounts and still owns property, their family is there, California can make a case that you have an intent to return to California someday, and if they can show that there's an intent to return, you're still subject to the California state taxes while you're overseas. So I always recommend, especially if you're in one of those states, you might want to think about changing your US domicile before you

31:46 go overseas. Change it to one of the states that doesn't have income taxes. At Washington, Alaska, Tennessee or Florida. That's why our tax residency is Washington State because there is any state income to though they are trying to change that right out. They are they are well, So Florida is a safer bet. Alaska is a fretey safe bet. There's even services that help with that. There's one out there called the Savvy Nomad and that's the only thing that they do, savvy noomad dot com. He helps people, especially that are already overseas and having this problem, domicile themselves from whatever state they came from to Florida legally while they're overseas, and make sure that they don't have to pay state income taxes going forward.

32:30 So talk a little bit more about where money should be held, you know, because that seems like wow. You know, you want to be able to have access to your money to pay monthly expenses and stuff. But liquidity, safety, simplicity, you know, those are all going to be things that are going to be hard to deal with. What do you think? Yeah, and the other one is exchange rate risk. Yeah a lot. So as a general rule of thumb, if you're a US citizen, you should keep all of your money except your day to day banking money, all your investments, retirement accounts, all your that's up US based. US still has the low, most complex, most liquidity, most regulated financial system in the world.

33:21 I can still build an all European portfolio for somebody living in Europe for lower cost and less liquidity than you can do on any of the exchanges in Europe. Now, Europe has been coming down in cost as they've been maturing financially, but they're still not to the level of the financial markets in America. So Americans always want to keep the main all their investments for sure US based, avoid the PFI rules and things like that. It's okay to have that bank account. We've already talked about that report it with the FBAR and most of the custodians that are that are happy to take Expats like Charles Schwab for example, will easily convert money to euros and send it across US to Europe and euros or Australian dollars or Japanese n I keep talking about Europe because it's a popular destination for Americans. There's also a lot of Americans going to Southeast Asia or Australia. There's lots of destinations, so custodian like Schwab will convert to whatever currency that you need, send it to your bank accounts over in that country. It's pretty easy to manage it online. Now, we also mentioned currency risk there. When you're holding cash or cash equivalents, you're always going to be subject to currency risks. Currency is always fluctuating, and some months you're going to get more euros or Japanese n and other months less, and there's not much you can do about that.

34:41 That's just part of that expad lifestyle. Most of the countries that people are going to, the currencies are fairly stable, so it's a manageable thing and it doesn't impact their life that much. When you're thinking about their investments, like they're roth their Ira, they're old four oh one k. There is no currency risk. And this is one of the big mis inceptions that I see out there. There is no currency risk when you're holding investments like stock ETFs or individual stocks. People always think there is, but there's not. You know, let's use a Microsoft or Apple, you know, big, a big company for an example. You know, Apple is a big company. It's worth exactly what it's worth and you can measure it any day in any currency.

35:25 It's not worth more in one currency over another. Currency is only a measuring stick. And so I explained it often like it's like if you had a small tree, right, if we measure that tree, it's exactly as tall as it is, whether we use centimeters or inches. The tree isn't taller in one measurement over the other. And if the tree grows, that's great. And maybe the relationship between inches and centimeters has changed over time when you measure your tree again. But again, the tree is just as tall as the tree is. It's not taller in one currency over another. So that's something that expects don't need worry about in their investments, their stock ETFs and things like that. There is no currency risk when you're looking at those long term type investments.

36:10 Wow, I'm just I'm thinking just to let everyone know we are, we're getting short on time. There's still a whole bunch of questions around this that we haven't even covered yet. So I think we are going to do a part too. But before before we start wrapping up, what about if somebody gets sick financially? What what do you think about about that? With visa and residency rules. How can getting sick impact people? Yeah, that's a really good question because that's part of real life. You know, if you travel internationally, you're going to get a little cold. You could also use your age.

36:53 Especially retirees, healthcare is an important issue and they can get sick. Healthcare is different in every country, So for most retirees, like especially in Europe, you're either required to buy private health insurance in order to qualify for the retirement visa, or the retirement visa comes with access to their public health care system, and then often retirees will buy insurance to supplement that public system as well. Now most retirees will also be eligible and keep their Medicare. In America, not many people on medic you know, there's not many people on Medicaid that are going overseas, but Medicare. Now, Medicare doesn't cover you while you're overseas, so some people elect not to have it because they feel like it's a waste depending on how long they're going to be overseas, but a lot like to keep it for when they do travel back to America or if they did get a serious illness that's life threatening, cancer heart attacks broke, they can still come back immediately to America and have that Medicare insurance in place. Most of the world, the insurance is cheaper as well, and healthcare is less expensive.

38:03 So I also see a lot of expats just paying for out of pocket expenses when they're overseas for health care. And there's a lot of world class healthcare out there that it's much less expensive than America depending on what country you're in. Yeah, so that's a whole other beg of beg of chips that I can see that you could delve into that in a big, big way. Well, say somebody, So, I think what we're going to do is we're going to wrap up for today and then we're going to go into some other issues another day. Probably in about a month or so, we'll do a part two. But what I want to do is say, Okay, say somebody's thinking about all the different issues that you brought up today, what would be like a minimum starting point plan for someone who wants to test drive retire abroad.

39:02 Yeah, try to spend as much time in the country or countries that you're considering going as go visit as possible. Right, I've got I know a couple that recently retired to Portugal. They'd been there several times. It was their dream destination. But when they were there, it wasn't the burning season for the crops in the field. So the part of Portugal that they chose to live in, in the countryside, they didn't realize it for three or four months of the year. They clear all the fields and then they burn all of it to get it to get rid of it in that part of the country, and they had COPD and asthma, and they bought a house and everything, and then realized they can't even live in that part of Portugal because it was giving them terrible coughing and respiratory problems. And unfortunately, within a year I had to sell that house and move somewhere else. So there's lots of things like that that if you've never lived in a place, you just don't know. The more time you can spend where you're thinking about going or renting for a year before you decide to purchase a house and get excited about that place is always a smart move for expats going overseas for retirement, right.

40:10 I mean, well, like we've been in Hawaii for a year doing a mission. Well, it's a whole lot different living in a place than it is going to a resort on a beach for a week. And we've seen the good and the bad and the ugly of We've seen the storms, you know, there's that's been in the news, the storms and the horrific flooding and all these things that have happened. And we have seen how people who were visiting here were impacted by all the bad weather that Hawaii was having. So that is not something that's you know, you know, just Hawaii, that could be anywhere around the world. And so I think that's wisdom Jimmy to go visit and maybe go visit a couple times at different times of the year.

41:00 Absolutely. Yeah, Well, so let's wrap up today. What would you like to leave people with today to you know, besides let's see so I'm thinking there's two big things. Educate yourself. No, so what kind of education do you provide you have, like exporce or something like that. Well, your book would the book being worth. Yeah, the book is worth it for I think for anybody. I mean it's it's a book about taxes, which I get is not the most exciting thing people want to read about, but it's very beneficial. It'll really teach you about those tax traps going forward and give you that starting education that we just talked about is so important.

41:50 So reading your book plan a couple of maybe two week three week vacations at different times of the year. Is there anything else that you would think of that would be a good thing to do now? If you're looking to go overseas, there's also quite quite a few forums about living overseas in different places, and that's also a good place to explore trying to make some friends through some of the forums that maybe already live there or I've already ahead of you in your journey. You know, I get people all the time that come to me and because they're interested in going somewhere that I've already lived or been, And I'm always happy to help another person by sharing the experience, learning a little bit more about him, pointing them in the right direction, or introducing them to other people I know that have done what they're trying to do. Right, So most people have already done what you're trying to do out there, and if you find that person, you can learn a lot from them. The mistakes they made, the things that they were happy about. The Other thing I really want to leave people with is I feel like we've talked about all of these things that can get you, these tax traps and report issues and things like that, and I don't want to discourage anybody from going overseas. For sure, it's wonderful out there. The world is an amazing place, as most of your listeners probably know. And most people want this number one thing that I hear as the goal for retirement, probably you as a financial planner as well.

43:18 I mean, when you talk to people at retirement, it's always about that world travel they want to do. So get out there, get out there and do it. It's not that hard, it's not that complicated, you know. And if you don't want to do it yourself, find an expert like myself. There's lots of others ones out there that can help guide you along the way. Make sure that you're educated, that you don't make any of those mistakes that we've talked about, and get out there and live your best life. Well, Jimmy, there are several other things that people can say. What could they possibly also? Well? There, trust me, there's a whole bunch more that we haven't even touched on today, so watch for when that second part two will be happening, happening.

43:58 So with that, Jimmy, thank you so much for joining us today. Yeah, my pleasure great to be here. Great And so thank you everyone for joining the Ask Good Questions Podcast and we will see you next time. Today's episode is over. But we need to ask good questions again, didn't We don't miss out as we broadcast live every Wednesday six pm Eastern Time on W four CY Radio at w fourcy dot com. Joined Benina Bellmerson next week for more conversations with experts on finances, retirement, behavioral finance issues, health and wellness, and more. Until then, remember to ask good questions.