How can you make money grow and invest while working abroad?

Adam Fayed

Founder - helping expats and HNWIs invest and protect wealth

How can you make money grow and invest while working abroad?

Most of the same fundamentals exist as if you are investing back home, but I will deal with some caveats later in the answer.

If you are working abroad, you need to:

• Invest for the long-term. This will compound your gains and reduce your risk

• Invest and not speculate. A long-term, sensible plan is always likely to beat trying to get into short-term trends. We have seen that in recent years, many people have been getting into meme stocks at inflated prices.
• As an expat who might relocate, you need a portable solution as you move around the world - Apply now for a portable, expat-focused, investment plan!
• Reinvest dividends. This makes a huge difference in the long-term

• Be diversified, especially when you are older. Putting all your eggs in one basket doesn’t make sense.

The key differences about living abroad are:

1. You usually can’t get access to your home country's social security system. Back home, investing 10% of whatever you make might be enough for retirement because you are paying into the retirement system. Many expats panic when they are older after not putting enough aside for themselves and their families in the previous years.
2. Tax-efficient local investment vehicles, such as ISAs in the UK, aren’t usually available for expats, so offshore investing makes more sense for most non-American expats. For American expats, most forms of offshore investing have become too difficult due to PFIC and other rules.
3. Many people are on fixed-term contracts overseas. If you are a teacher back home, you can still have a position for life, or at least it is difficult to fire you. Overseas, you are often paid more but on two—or three-year contracts
4. in teaching, oil and gas, intergovernmental organizations, etc. This makes saving and investing even more important.
5. Many investment providers won’t accept for certain overseas countries. Even those who do often have restrictions if they move again. So, finding a genuinely portable, global and expat-friendly provider is key.

So, the same fundamentals apply, but the urgency is often more significant.