Maybe this isn’t a thing in South America? I’ve never met an expat here who pays taxes here for interest made in accounts abroad. Usually the government here is just happy with what you’re moving into the country and spending on the local economy every month.

I’m still a US citizen. Even if I live abroad, I have to pay capital gains taxes to the US. That’s why I use the Roth IRA.

Why would it be a liability?

Expenses are kept low by living in a low-cost-of-living country and volunteering several months per year at intentional communities with work-trade programs. Usually you do 20 hours of volunteering (per week) in exchange for free food and accommodation. Great way to travel, meet cool people, and lower your annual expenses.

My plan is to rent out the condo half the year, which should cover condo and tax expenses. I’m still looking, but I think the combined taxes & fees would be <$4,000 per year, and I can charge $1,000 per month if I get a condo in a good location (in South America, taxes are very low). I don’t expect passive income, but I do think it’ll pay for itself and give me (and my friends) a place to sleep for free whenever I visit the city.

Also you probably don’t want most of the money in the condo, so you may have a mortgage as well.

I don’t like debt. I’m currently thinking of putting $500k into the land and $300k into the condo. What would be the benefit to getting a mortgage?

Sorry, I do appreciate advice in general – but I do not take kindly to people who tell me to invest in mass murder and genocide.

Too often in these spaces do people take that in stride; we need a culture that condemns such advice. It’s not okay to invest in companies like Lockheed or UnitedHealtcare.

Sure, but that’s not what’s happening.

I’ve submitted my passport and all the KYC info required by law. I was denied before they ever asked me for the source of the income. This isn’t related to KYC/AML. If it is, then they’re not doing their job of even trying to collect the data. I’ve asked if they need any further documents, but I’m just told to apply again. I apply again, it doesn’t ask for additional documents, and I get denied. Every time.

Correct about credit unions, but not about the bitcoin earnings. I was denied before I was asked the source of my income or even how much I’d be transferring-in. This was an application just for a standard savings/checking account.

Unless the AI that is denying me learned that I used to work for a company that does cryptocurrencies. Or read my blog and saw the word “bitcoin” and put me in a “high risk; deny” bucket. It scares me to realize that’s possible in 2024 :(

https://2fa.directory/

I have 3 banks that use TOTP. It’s common in credit unions.

I started a business a few years ago :) I don’t like living idle. Retirement for me means contributing to open-source.

Thanks. Is a tax accountant different than a CPA? That’s definitely my priority now.

I’m still waiting for them to pencil me into a meeting, but so far it looks like three’s not much I can do to reduce my capital gains tax burden.

If all global monetary transactions moved to Bitcoin, the amount of energy used by bitcoin would not increase, and global emissions caused by financial transactions would decrease by nearly 100%.

This analogy is only valid if you don’t have a bank account.

It is valid criticism for me to say that I’m moving the bitcoin into the bank account, because that is the equivalent of dumping a truck load of motor oil in the lake, whereas bitcoin is the equivalent of dropping one drop of motor oil in the lake.

I also fly once per year. Honestly that’s worse. I’m aware of the harm that I’m causing. I try to minimize it. But bitcoin is far better for the environment than tradfi companies.

The key to your misunderstanding is the “per transaction” part. It’s a common misconception.

Now look at how much energy the whole financial industry uses. Put it on a line graph next to bitcoin’s energy usage. You can almost not even see the blip of bitcoin’s energy usage compared to the harm that the financial industry is causing.

Then learn how the energy does not increase as the transactions increases. This is a fact. The difficulty increases. It’s mathematical. Read the white paper.

Then maybe you can finally see the lie perpetuated by the financial industry, which is a disaster to our environment compared to the greener alternative of bitcoin.

Do you also think smoking tobacco doesn’t cause lung cancer? Or that burning fossil fuels doesn’t cause climate change?

I am the one thinking rationally. You seem to be incapable of detecting junk science published by big corporations.

This is misinformation.

My guess is AI.

I can’t say for sure because when I ask them, they won’t tell me. But it seems like they use some third party to process their applications, and that third parry is probably using some sort of machine-learning or private AI algorithm that’s throwing a false-positive. Two things would fix this:

1. Legally prevent banks from deferring account opening decisions to AI-powered systems, or
2. Legally require all banks to have a human-override in-place for when such systems inevitably throw false-positives

Right now it appears that the third party that tells the bank “yeah, don’t open this account” doesn’t really say why. Kinda like how AI doesn’t tell you what it was trained-on to decide what word it should say next. It’s incredibly frustrating.

Update: one time a bank did enumerate exactly which pieces of information that I supplied caused the rejection, due to not being able to verify its authenticity. One of them was my email address. One was my employer. I was never asked to prove the authenticity of this data. I emailed them asking what they need to authenticate my information, and they send me back another generic message that I had been rejected.

Be careful. You run many of the same risks as a lotto winner.

I’ve been spending $5k per year for the past 7 years. I think I might go all crazy and spend $10k this year lol. I’ve already bought like 8 bottles of $3 wine!

cash management account

what do you mean by “cash management accounts”. Is that just a checking account split with other banks?

I’ve wondered about this a lot. We saw recently the mismanagement of Synapse. It’s true that their customers would have been insured by the FDIC if they actually had put their customer’s money in these FDIC-insured bank accounts. But they didn’t.

These US banks have a history of fraud. If they didn’t actually keep your money spread-out in different accounts, staying under the $250k limit, then you would only be insured up to $250k, right? I’d love to see that theory tested – but I don’t really want to risk it with my own $

I’m planning on using most of it to buy land as soon as I can. I do have retirement funds, but I don’t plan to contribute to them from this windfall – other than my usual yearly max Roth IRA contribution.

My biggest concern about Apple, Amazon, Tesla, and Walmart is their history of abusing workers.

Bitcoin uses magnitudes less energy than the financial industry companies, it doesn’t use any additional energy as it scales-up, and most of that is renewable energy. So bitcoin is definitely the ethical option for the environment when it comes to non-physical money (despite the disinformation on the net about this).

I prefer to put my money in credit unions (non-profit banks in the US) that do not invest in war, animal exploitation, or fossil fuels. Most credit unions loan out their money to their local community to support small business. That, bitcoin, and buying stocks in other ethical companies has been my approach to ethical investing.

The $250k FDIC limit has been a bit of a joke for decades. If the bank goes under, FDIC covers all deposits, basically everything.

Wow, that’s a very interesting take. One I’m very skeptical-of…

Open a Vanguard account put most of it on VTSAX their total stock market index.

I try very hard to avoid investing in anything unethical, and when I look at the holdings of VTSAX, I see Apple, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, Tesla, JPMorgan Chase, Exxon, Walmart. Fuck, they’re even holding stock in UnitedHealtcare.