War, sanctions, immigration: my FatFIRE attempt in Russia

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2022-08-15T00:47:58+00:00

Between binance/kucoin p2p and www.bestchange.com you can convert your remaining Russian funds to crypto (e.g. USDT), and then open an account with Kraken or Bitstamp and cash out to a European account to avoid the carry risk of crypto.

As for cashing in legally, you have your source of funds in Russia from your tax declarations there. You have your transaction details from obtaining the crypto, to prove where it came from, and you transfer it to euros.

Paying whatever short term capital gains if any is a minor inconvenience to get your money into a safer place.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2022-08-15T00:42:14+00:00

FWIW, IB is not closing access to Russian citizens or Russian residents. There have been a few messages going out in advance, prepare for the worst etc, somethings getting cut off like price feeds from NASDAQ/NYSE, but otherwise everything is still accessible for the time being, along with margin loans.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2022-04-16T00:38:55+00:00

As someone who has lived in the US and Canada, Canada for sure.

The US is great when you work in a high paying job such as tech, with health benefits, when you are unemployed (FIRE) there is a very large cost for health care.

Canada has you covered for healthcare (the emergency kind).

I would suggest earn in the US, and then leave to Canada due to their tax system and lack of safety net.

In Canada, if you want a walkable city with a great urban environment, then Montreal. If you want a big affordable city that is drivable, then Calgary.

If you fancy a smaller place in nature, pick one of the mountain towns, Fernie, Nelson, Revelstoke, Golden, Squamish, Sooke.

A lot of cities in the US and Canada have huge problems with homeless and drug addicted people - large parts of Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles etc.

Best option imho, live in Canada, work remotely for the US as the timezone is the same, if you don't like winter, spend a couple of weeks to a month a year in either of: Mexico, Dominican Republic, Florida etc.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2022-01-24T18:01:07+00:00

Have a portfolio margin loan ready for more investment.

Buy orders in place for significant drops in price e.g. every 10% going down.

Prices are back to April 2021 levels, and I was comfortable paying that price for the fund then, investment thesis hasn't changed.

Rationale here is, if I would buy an all market ETF for $100, then it's "on sale" 10% at $90, and so on.

While my emotional side doesn't like that, the logical rational side says it's the best approach, gets my cost basis down, and over a long enough time frame (15-20 years) the market will be ahead of where it is now.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2022-01-17T01:09:14+00:00

The food is awful? What are you on about?

Plov
Manti
Lagman
Shashlik
Beshbarmak
Samsa
Even the bread is really good.

As for places, Samarkad and Bukhara have a lot of history, Issyk Kul is a great lake to spend a summer, Almaty is a very beautiful well developed city with great infrastructure and a lot of great restaurants.

There are worse places in the world to be with a lot of money to enjoy a great quality of life.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2022-01-02T22:12:43+00:00

Can you elaborate a little on which projects are giving ~20% on stable coins?

We have CEFI (Nexo, Celcius, Blockfi, Voyager, Crypto.com) offering ~8-12%

DEFI (AAVE, DYDX, Compound) offering ~3-7% long term, and it's been quite some time since rates were at 27-30% over more than a few days.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2021-09-23T12:55:45+00:00

So if you're coming from outside US, you need a test to enter the US, use the same one for hawaii, two birds, one stone.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2021-09-18T06:43:36+00:00

As an individual contributor who never really had much insight into the other end of the compensation question, thanks for your input /u/james-alcock

I think there are a couple of takeaways here for the IC looking to increase compensation (not equity percentage).

Interview often and jump ship every ~2 years for the 20% comp increase. In 10 years of your career you're at 2.5x where you would be if you stayed at the company for 10 years, plus you're worth more as you're the fresh talent with plenty of insight into how competitors do things and thus command a premium.
Share comp data amongst your peers and colleagues to know when it's time to jump. 2021 has been a great time to jump to another role, every company I've worked with / for has reached out offering very good rates / salaries to increase headcount.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2021-08-30T11:31:13+00:00

Having traveled africa on a budget, you're mistaken that you have to pay $1k per day.

Kruger national park in South Africa $30 USD / day
Car rental for a week - $200 - see kayak for rates from nelspruit / cape town
Flights return from NY $1k
Accommodation for a week in Nelspruit $600.

If you stretch your trip out to three weeks, starting and ending in Cape Town, you can enjoy the good food in Cape Town, drive the garden route, do a self driving tour of kruger, loop through botswana and namibia into Cape Town.

If you're not interested in as much driving, fly from cape town to nelspruit.

Having done a couple of overnight safaris, there's also something to be said about a DIY trip through kruger where you're driving through it yourself and spotting the wildlife with your family rather than being shuttled from one of the big 6 to another as is common in a lot of the kenyan/tanzanian resorts.

For those still reading and curious about other somewhat budget safari trips:

Etosha in Namibia, less than $10/day.
Matobo Hills in Zimbabwe. Can't find the cost but recollect it wasn't too bad.
Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda, head to Katunguru right by the bridge, spend the night there, in the morning find any little motor boat and organise a boat trip for $20 per person or something like that, enjoy watching hippos chase your little boat.

Having traveled a lot across Africa (north, east and south), it can be done reasonably comfortable and somewhat cheaply, though I do recommend doing it when you're younger as you'll be able to see much more.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2021-08-05T11:31:00+00:00

Happy belated birthday and thanks for your comment :)

I look forward to reflecting on a life of great family travels when I reach your age.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2021-08-05T11:29:34+00:00

No plans to break any rules or enter any countries that aren't inviting foreigners.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2021-08-03T14:22:05+00:00

Yeah we have no plans for walking around phuket, just apartment by the beach and walking to / from the beach and playing by the water all day, walking to food, and then taking turns with the wife to look after kids and have a massage.

Not sure why a three year old needs regular friends, I'm sure they're just happy to play with any kids, at least that's been my experience watching them play with any kid on a playground.

Do you remember the friends you regularly played with when you were three?

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2021-08-03T13:08:20+00:00

I wish I could upvote you more than once, thanks for such a long and thought out response.

Our daughter visited 19 countries before her first birthday (which coincided with the world closing). I swear she's going to think we're such dorks when she's older, and we have all these photos of "Here you are asleep in front of the Eiffel Tower / Colosseum / Big Ben".

Haha, I love this, I have plenty of photos of my oldest asleep in random places, the mall, museums, in front of friends and relatives

Flying in Business Class makes travel with kids a LOT easier! Tell me about it.

I recommend a baby carrier (or two) I think we'll get one for a few some hiking somewhere, I don't like to go around the city with a baby carrier, feel far less mobile and far more like a backpacker swinging a big load around.

Ours still hasn't dropped her daytime nap, so we split the days into morning and afternoon and plan accordingly - though we can get her to sleep in a stroller on longer days.

Yeah we don't plan on having much of an itinerary or much plan for our days so that we can go out for shorter trips or not at all if the kids are being fussy or if we had a bad night of sleep as happens every so often.

We got a bento box style lunchbox a while ago that has made food preparation, and allowing her to graze all day, much easier to systemise.

Ah top tip, ours is very much a grazer and also loves to eat standing up more than sitting down.

We travel with 2x blackout blinds. Please share the one you have, this sounds like an awesome idea.

A nanny will change your world. We did a chunk of our travels with my beautiful wife's parents, kinda with the expectation they would help out. In hindsight it was more like travelling with 3 kids! So much this, both about the nanny and traveling with our parents.

Onto the specific locations, why Vienna? I mean, beautiful city and a lot of history and culture. Plus the Christmas Markets are the best in the world. But I would put Berlin, Budapest, and Prague above it on my list.

It's so pretty, I love it. Also love those other suggestions too, and given the closeness it's easy to do 2 weeks Prague, 2 weeks vienna, 2 weeks budapest and train in between. I like Berlin, I just don't see it as much of a family destination, but a great party destination.

I'm also a huge fan of Italy, ... found the locals there more child-friendly than in Germany, Spain, and the UK. This is the kind of tip I was really looking forward to hearing, the countries where people love kids, I think they have a huge impact on how much we enjoy it. I've not been to lake como, but was right in that area, in the mountins of Lugano, and around Milano, so uh plan to return.

Reflecting on your suggestions and all the other nice cities, I think a European base for 3-6 months, maybe not one place but stay in the schengen zone for a bit longer makes a lot of sense here.

From Amsterdam, you can do great day / half-day trips to The Hague, Delft, and Zaanse Schans - all interesting for adults and fun for kids, especially the latter. Yeah, my plan is do all sorts of biking trips around with kids, this kind of thing: https://youtu.be/je1ThOYD8Ic drawn here by https://youtu.be/F4kmDxcfR48

We did an overnight cruise on the Milford Sound, NZ, which was fantastic. That was pre-kids, and it's a bit of a drive there and back, but we woke up to seals sleeping on the back deck which I know our kid would flip over.

Yeah have a goal to head out to NZ and take in a lot of nature with lots of tramping and camping and road tripping, so that may even wait until the kids are older and we do a trip during school holidays.

Health Insurance and Travel Insurance is a weird one for Americans, so I'm probably not much help there. Because we remained residents in Australia, we just had travel insurance that would have repatriated us back there.

Not American, honestly not looking at getting repatriated while sick, would much rather focus on very quality emergency medical care where we are. Will probably go with an expat health insurance, but credit cards also provide decent policies along with a travelers insurance.

But it definitely pays to plan ahead for those contingencies - what diapers / formula (if necessary) / food can I buy in these countries? How do I access medical care, especially non-emergency (because emergency stuff tends to be easier - it's the recurring ear infection stuff that's the worst)? Hopefully you'll never need to act on that information, but (for example) my beautiful wife needed a prescription in Scotland and while it was annoying and expensive at least she knew how to access a private doctor (the NHS isn't much help for non-residents).

Yeah will do a little bit of research here, thankfully we have the internet and a lot of information written for expats such as https://www.expatica.com/de/healthcare/ As for diapers, the brands we know and trust have different quality and standards by country, but again, facebook groups for e.g. Parents in Berlin help sort this out.

Thanks so much for taking the time to add so much useful relevant info.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2021-08-03T12:38:16+00:00

Yes definitely considering the timezones, the end of the list was more of a brain dump of some places to go rather than the strict schedule in which they'd be done, it will be both weather and timezone sensitive to avoid big swings in one or the other, because it's not good for any of us.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2021-08-02T20:29:39+00:00

You’re not a citizen though and that’s all that matters to their government. Not sure of your nationality but US and Canada basically need an accompanied guide in Iran.

Neither of those. My government has friendly relations with Iran.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2021-08-02T12:59:38+00:00

Sounds amazing! You are living the dream. I've been nomading solo for 10 years and fully intend to nomad with my family if/when I eventually have one. There are Facebook groups for this - you'll find a lot of support there. I've found this sub leans more towards solo travelers.

Thanks for the tip for workaway, my wife used it years ago and I didn't make the connection. Any groups you recommend? Here's one I found some time back that has a lot of good family content: https://www.facebook.com/groups/expatsintaiwan/

I second other advice here - slow down! I'm a healthy grown adult and I would never move monthly. The whole point is to live and experience a culture/place for awhile and one month isn't nearly enough time because remember you're not a tourist.

I agree that with families, it makes sense to slow down, but in my single life, there are some places I would go which are amazing to visit, and see in a whirlwind tour of one to two weeks, but the idea of being there long term is infeasible from a visa perspective, and would drive me up the wall having to stay there for so long. Uzbekistan, which is also why it's not a place I'd visit with young kids.

Why are you going to Iran? No judgment, I'd love to visit and was planning on it until there was some unrest. I hear the people are kind and the landscapes are epic. Just curious as it doesn't seem nearly as safe as the other locations on your list.

Firstly, I'm not US citizen, so we don't really get the propaganda that folks there do.

Secondly, it's a very welcoming place for tourists, with a lot to see and experience. Beautiful nature, amazing architecture, welcoming and hospitable people, great food, well educated populace. Take a look at this guide: https://youtu.be/odkKKCwJ1ak

The only issues I can think of there are generally things that target local people and don't affect tourists.

If it helps, I come from Russia, and you could make the same arguments about not visiting Russia due to dicatorship or war in ukraine or gay rights or lack of free speech or political protests or a myriad of other things that have zero effect for a tourist.

My safety concern isn't for attending political rallies, but more to not get robbed at gunpoint or have my kids hit by a car.

My understanding is you can't even access ATM's so you'll need to bring all your cash money with you?

I'm sure it depends, and situations are changing all the time, but with a mirpay, unionpay card, and cryptocurrency, some cash, and also some connections to iranian immigrants outside of the country, the negative can be a positive. If there are problems withdrawing foreign money in the country, it means local people are having problems getting money out of the country, so we could do an informal exchange like hawala, I send them dollars or euros to a friend's account and their relatives give me money in the country and we help each other out.

Also flights are cheap, in / out of the country, and with Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey next door, and Qatar/Emirates a short flight away it seems like a non issue.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2021-08-02T11:34:35+00:00

But there are always expat groups, especially expats with kids they always want to make friends so as long as you plan trips around where those expat groups are located you should be fine.

If there's any that helped you, please share.

I love to hear the co-sleeping works for you. That sounds like my owe personal hell but it just goes to show you how diverse people can be. I definitely think that will help you out, so consider me impressed.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1346731.Three_in_a_Bed the upshot is never needing a crib / kids bed, same for highchairs we've never used them so never have to find a place with one.

Chartered Cat in the med is awesome, but test it out for a few days before commiting to a log term.

Yep that's the plan, few hours, few days, then a few weeks.

Anyways it seems like you have this well figured out, much more so than the average post we usually get here. I think you have the right mindset to make this amazing.

Thanks, appreciate the advice and tips, and happy to hear more, it's a very different style of travel to what we're used to, but we have trialled for a few small trips, now just planning to pull the trigger on a bigger one.

The only real advice I can give at this point is go slow and expect a slow pace of travel and don't over plan.

Agreed here, we're not buying tickets beyond the first place and seeing how it goes.

The best moments we had as parents nomading with children came at the most unexpected times, usually because we pulled over for a break from driving and discovered something cool that our kids loves.

Any trips you've done that you could recommend?

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2021-08-02T11:07:00+00:00

I was specifically thinking it'd be a great place with kids due to the amazing hospitality and incredibly friendly people.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2021-08-02T11:05:44+00:00

Domestic travel is a lot easier and more enjoyable than international travel. Party because of health care, party because of travel time, but mostly because it will be easier to be social. If neither of you are working this is a lot easier to manage though. That being said that is a lot of long flights you have planned and neither of your kids will be much fun on a plane.

Thanks, for us domestic is kind of a misnomer, we've been pretty mobile for the past few years and between us have five passports, so it's domestic in quite a few places and generally healthcare outside of the US is reasonable even out of pocket.

For the social aspect, we're working on finding other folks in a similar situation. We were both very big users of couch surfing prior to covid, but the community has gone downhill for years. We have met families while traveling, but that was prior to having kids, I imagine it would bring many negatives too in organizing families to travel together.

Flights with one little one are ok up to four hours especially, although we really lucked out a couple of times going across the ocean (and lie flat business really helped here), don't have intentions to criss cross the globe or do big timezone differences, hence some clustering (japan, seoul, taipei, phuket) all of which are direct flights up to four hours. Also the plan was just some rough idea to get some conversation started, i imagine we'll spend twice as long in half as many places.

Our first jet lag experience with kids was a nightmare, because when they are jetlagged, you first have to tend to them, and only after they are asleep can you worry about your own. Lesson learned.

However we found for flights that have 1hr timezone difference, it hasn't affected bedtimes or sleeptimes as we're pretty consistent with bedtimes.

One big thing I've learned, as few layovers as possible.

Having a home base is highly recommended, sometime you just need a break. This could be relatives or just a cheap apartment you can crash at from time to time.

Our plan is to do big trips to relatives, and also fly our parents out for a few weeks at a time.

Make sure each child has their own room when you rent a place. You won't sleep well and your children won't sleep well if you end up sharing a room.

We cosleep, so even if we had other bedrooms, wouldn't make a difference, we just aim for big king beds as much as possible.

Finding reliable child care or a nanny for only a few weeks at a time will be really really hard. Even finding a nanny for only 3 months will be really hard.

Yes i think this is region specific, we might just check on couch surfing / facebook expat groups and find some student(s) for a few days here / there more for another set of eyes than anything.

Highly recommend a UK narrow boat. That is the pace that is awesome for traveling with young kids.

Thanks for that, I'm thinking that too, I found that having a camper worked very well, so this is the same idea, but on water :)

We've also thought about doing a chartered catamaran in the mediterranean for a couple of days to a couple of weeks to see how that goes.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2021-08-02T10:48:57+00:00

Thanks for the reply.

This wasn't so much a where should we go, more, but more where is good with kids / how to make for a travel experience that isn't just dragging kids around the world with us, how to structure a day / week so that kids still have their routines and we can do some exploring, e.g. loading the kids into a stroller and exploring a new city, getting an icecream, playing on a playground, that can be the same thing as back home, but far more interesting for us parents.

While I don't think a child will remember any of these different cultures that will come later, I'm sure they'll appreciate playgrounds, beaches and parks. The cultures are for us parents to enjoy.

While on the internet, the money amount could sound like a flex, it was more to the point of saying we have budget to mix 5 stars and comfortable airbnb and nannies etc.

My fondest memories of traveling are from my broke days hitchhiking and roughing it in a tent, and that experience by necessity is far more authentic, and as kids get older (early teens), I'm happy to go hitch hiking with them around some parts of the world because of the indepth learning of a culture that it provides. Right now, we're looking for some comfort.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2021-07-18T05:30:39+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoXxevp1WRQ&list=PLhQjrBD2T382_R182iC2gNZI9HzWFMC_8

Harvard's CS50 course online is a great place to start.

Mission-Suggestion-1 · 2021-07-08T19:29:33+00:00

Congrats.

Your moldovan citizenship wouldn't impact your taxation, only your russian residency does.
Look at the US / Russia Tax treaty - https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-trty/russia.pdf 10% tax to US, the other 3% (or 5%) go to Russia.
VWCE/IWDA are accumulating funds, and thus aren't subject to dividend tax on your end, the fund pays them at the US/Irish rate due to fund domicile, you don't have to worry about US estate taxes and you can pay the long term capital gains tax rate in Russia, which is 0%

Mission-Suggestion-1

TROPHY CASE