RetireJapan

For everybody's reference, I heard back from IBKR on this. They confirmed that the funds are held with a US institution and a 1099 is issued, so no separate reporting via FBAR or 8938 required. I am waiting to see if my US tax accountant raises any flags, but looks good for now. IBKR is quite the s...

Have I got this math right? 20/month for a year is, obviously, 240. On 10k, that's 0.024% So close! 240 / 10000 = 0.024, but you have to multiply by 100 to get percent, so 2.4%. I listened in on a Thun Financial webinar recently, and one of the takeaways was (paraphrasing) that if you are going to ...

Does anyone know of any way to set up my own US phone number that will forward the text messages to my phone here (for cheap)? I have a US phone number on an Ooma VoIP phone for voice calls, but it doesn't offer text/SMS. Recently I picked up a second number through TextMe . The app on my phone sup...

We just had our assessment, but haven't heard the results yet. My wife had a day off, so we scheduled it for then. As I understand it, they looked at the floor space and the land. They noted the heat exchange air system (熱交換換気システム), but I don't know if that was strictly out of personal interest or n...

While I think a Roth is okay, a regular/traditional IRA is pretty much "off the table" for expats. Good points, thanks. I have an old (small) traditional IRA stuck at a bank in the US that won't let me do anything with it, so it's looking like moving it to SDFCU may be my best option so I...

RetireJapan wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2018 6:47 am [...]US citizens can use NISA accounts in Japan to buy Japan-listed ETFs?

Has anyone heard anything to support/contradict this? If the information is good, might this mean that US citizens could do the same (Japan-listed ETFs) in an Ideco account?

I have to say, I like the idea of Tesla's solar rooves , and even though they are apparently still sturdier than regular roof tiles, it still seems a bit expensive. I just wish these were available already, since we are looking at building and it would be nice to just install it from the beginning....

Interactive Brokers is the only US based brokerage that I know of that will open accounts for Americans living abroad and I spent quite a bit of time searching. My advise would be to open an account before coming to Japan and "forget" to mention that you've moved here. I've read some horr...