brin_bellway | (no subject)

[cw: poverty, first-world problems, government bullshit]

So, uh, my brother was looking stuff up and apparently if you're non-rich the fee for renouncing U.S. citizenship is only about USD$2,300.

I am...very conflicted about how to react to that idea. It's...things would be so much easier, so much *simpler*, if I weren't a U.S. citizen. I could just...invest? like a normal person? without it being a fucking minefield of tax-law clusterfucks?

(I never actually posted that earlier draft, did I. The one complaining about how my meta-boss accidentally attached my wages for one shift to the paycheque *after* the one it was supposed to be on, and I couldn't even really be annoyed at him because my current time value of money is *zero*, so what does it fucking matter if I don't get it as quickly as I should. Let him hold onto it for an extra fortnight, maybe he can actually put it to some good fucking use.)

There *are* possible futures where having U.S. citizenship has strong upsides. But in almost *every* future--indeed, in the present--it has moderate downsides. And the possible futures with the strong upsides aren't among the more likely futures.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The last time I tried that, the solution was non-liquid on the order of years, so I don't want to do that again. Probably still worth it.

When I tried it, they asked me "how risk-averse are you" (risk scares me, but suboptimal moves also scare me, so I guess that balances out to "moderately") and "how liquid do you need it to be" (must be available at any time).

(...and then they gave me advice that, if followed, would cause me to break the law, and I learned not to trust them when it comes to myself. But they can still be useful for people with less complicated tax obligations than mine.)

((I dream of one day being able to afford an investment advisor competent to handle my situation. But I only really have a couple thousand dollars to spare right now--to be completely honest, *any* interest I could hope to earn on it is probably immaterial; I'm doing this mostly because *not* earning interest has been eating away at me psychologically--and all the expat-competent advisors I know of charge at least some money upfront rather than a purely "share of the profit" fee like the regular banks do, and pretty much *any* upfront fee is going to be too large for me to safely handle at the moment.))

(((so really, even if renunciation is a good idea I probably can't do it *just* yet: the thing I would do if I decided to do it is place it on my list of things to save up for, next to the porch repairs and more fuel-efficient car)))