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I am thinking of getting life insurance and starting to think seriously about retirement (I'm going to turn 30 next year), but I expect that I will live in a couple of different countries over the next 10 years at least.

What are the implications for this? Do life insurance policies transfer with you if you move from, say US to EU to Singapore to US again? Or will I be forced to always start over?

I understand that most of the advantages of these instruments come from the tax advantages, but if I move from one tax regime to another, will the taxman come back and bite me?

Also, will currency risk dominate all other considerations?

Turukawa
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luispedro
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1 Answers1

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Good question, and increasingly common for professionals.

If you're intending to return to your starting point (i.e. retire back in your "home" country) then your existing retirement vehicles will be fine. However, if not, structured policies don't transfer largely because of tax rules.

Global firms have employees that shift about and sometimes have systems in place to permit their employees to move pensions with them. So a little forward planning may be required if you use an employer to smooth your emigration difficulties.

Otherwise, international currency-denominated equities will make things more flexible. The US dollar doesn't look too good right now and, in 30 years, may no longer be the world's reserve currency, so you'll probably want a currency basket to hedge that far ahead. That means buying equities on a range of different exchanges to gain access to different currencies when you sell (or receive dividends).

Fortunately, that isn't as difficult as it was a few years ago and numerous online investment services can permit you to trade around the world with a single account.

See, for example:

Turukawa
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