Offshore Banking, Investment & Savings News and Advice for Expatriates

There’s a time bomb ticking and it directly affects you, your wealth status and your potential future financial security.  You may think that working hard and squirreling away your cash into a qualifying recognised overseas pension scheme (QROPS), or into a property at home or abroad is the best you can do towards your retirement income.  But as this report will show, your money is not necessarily safe in traditional investments such as pensions or property.

A great deal is being written on financial forums and blogs about the deep debt and deficit doldrums we’re in, both in the UK and in the US in particular…and if one digs a little deeper one can see that when you add up all the data, we’re in desperately dire straits.

For your information and research purposes, we’ve put together an easy to digest rundown and lowdown on why you must seek investment alternatives to your traditional pension, or face poverty in retirement potentially; and we’ve covered the angles that financial reporters are commenting on – from the budget deficit to the property time bomb, from social security quicksand to the latest banking bailout waiting to happen.

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If you live in Spain, own a Spanish property or you expect to perhaps inherit Spanish assets from family or friends in the future, you could be in for an expensive surprise if you don’t have a clear understanding of the potential future Spanish Succession Tax (SST) liabilities which may arise from your ownership or your inheritance.

If you’re a British expat living in Spain, or a non-Spanish national who inherits or acquires property in Spain, it’s also important to understand how SST liability can impact upon, or operate in conjunction with, your liability for the likes of inheritance taxes in your country of origin as well.  Now, the word on the street (or more accurately, the word on expat forums) seems generally to follow the line of either: “don’t worry about SST, nobody pays it” or “SST is a nightmare and you’re going to be trapped and paying a fortune!”

However, we want to cut through the confusion and arm you with the right knowledge, because equipped with adequate understanding of this particular type of tax, it quickly becomes clear that neither of the above points of view are correct, and that actually you can manage Spanish Succession Tax fairly easily…

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The age-old question on any investor’s mind is whether stocks and shares or property make for the best, most solid investment asset.  You will hear arguments for and against both approaches and indeed, it can be very hard to know which method for the intensive saving of your wealth is likely to return you more and provide you with greater stability.

The past decade has really shown us all that both property and equities have their extreme ups and their dramatic falls – proving that perhaps neither one is ideal for our money?  But there again, we can’t stuff our mattresses with cash because of the erosion effects of inflation…

So what’s the answer for an expatriate who has gone abroad to take advantage of a high paying job and a low tax lifestyle?  Should you buy property abroad or invest offshore to make the most of your expat earnings?  New research provided by both The Halifax and Barclays Capital identifies why really, either approach can work, but that the secret in all of this is the length of time you commit to either approach.  Read on to discover what the in depth and lengthy research has revealed….

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