The First Steps Are Not What You Think — Practicality Guide
Before You Can Leave, You Have to Know Where You Stand.
Most of the content written about moving abroad starts in the wrong place. It starts with country comparisons, cost-of-living tables, and descriptions of charming neighborhoods in cities you’ve never been to. It starts, essentially, with the destination — as if the obstacle to leaving were information about where to go.
That is not the obstacle.
The obstacle is that most Americans who are seriously considering relocation do not know where they actually stand — legally, financially, structurally — right now. They haven’t done the inventory of their own situation. So when they try to make a plan, they’re building on a foundation they haven’t inspected.
Here’s the inventory. Before the country research, before the visa comparisons, before the neighborhood Googling — here is the actual work.
Step one: Your tax position.
The United States is one of two countries in the world that taxes its citizens on worldwide income, regardless of where they live. (The other is Eritrea.) This is unusual, and most Americans do not fully understand its implications until they’re sitting with a foreign tax advisor who explains that leaving the country does not end their US tax obligation.
You need to understand three things.
The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE) allows US citizens living and working abroad to exclude approximately $126,000 in foreign-earned income per person per year from US federal income tax. This is a substantial benefit — but it applies only to earned income, not investment income or passive income, and it requires meeting either the bona fide residence test (a full calendar year as a legal resident of a foreign country) or the physical presence test (330 days outside the US in any 12-month period). Start this clock as early as possible.
FBAR (FinCEN Form 114) requires reporting of foreign financial accounts with an aggregate balance over $10,000 at any point during the year. The penalties for non-filing are severe and disproportionate to the violation. If you will have foreign bank accounts — and you will — this is a compliance requirement, not optional.
FATCA makes US citizens unwelcome banking customers in many foreign countries, because foreign banks must report US account holders to the IRS. Some banks will not open accounts for Americans at all. You need to know which ones will be closed before you arrive, so you don't find yourself unable to bank.
Before you spend a single hour researching destinations, talk to a US international tax attorney or a CPA with expatriate specialization. An hour of their time will tell you more about your actual options than a month of reading relocation blogs.
Step two: Your passport situation.
The obvious: your US passport is current, valid for at least 18 months, and accessible. You’d be surprised how many people start planning a relocation and then discover their passport expired two years ago, and the State Department’s current processing time is four months.
The less obvious: do you have, or might you qualify for, a second passport?
The major pathways available to Americans: Italy, Ireland, Germany, Poland, Canada, and several other countries offer citizenship by descent. The Italian pathway (jus sanguinis) has been the most widely pursued by Americans, but Law 74/2025 has significantly changed the parameters. If you have Italian ancestry and haven’t pursued this yet, this is a decision point. The window is narrowing.
Irish citizenship by descent extends to the grandparent generation. If you have an Irish grandparent born in Ireland, you may qualify — and with it, an EU passport and the right to live and work anywhere in the 27-member union. This pathway is currently processing in 12–18 months.
Most countries that offer residency pathways also offer a route to citizenship after five to ten years of legal residence. Portugal is five years. Spain is ten (with a Latin American origin exception of two years). Italy is ten. Colombia is five. If your plan is long-term relocation, citizenship by naturalization is the endpoint worth planning for from day one.
Step three: Your financial architecture.
Four questions.
First: can your income move with you? If you are a remote employee, a freelancer, a consultant, or a business owner whose work is location-independent, the answer is probably yes, with caveats. If your income is tied to a physical presence requirement, a professional license that doesn’t travel, or an employer who will not accommodate remote-abroad work, this is the constraint that shapes everything else.
Second: where is your wealth held? A retirement account (IRA, 401(k)) is held in the US, in dollar-denominated assets. You can contribute to it while living abroad. You cannot easily access it before 59½ without penalties. If your retirement wealth is heavily concentrated in US retirement accounts and you plan to rely on it abroad, understand the mechanics and tax treatment before you move.
Third: what does your banking look like? Establish a relationship with a US bank that handles international clients well before you leave. Charles Schwab’s international checking account — no foreign transaction fees, reimburses ATM fees worldwide — is the standard recommendation for a reason. You will need a US account. Maintaining one becomes harder if you have no US address, so establish the account and the address infrastructure before departure.
Fourth: do you have any foreign financial accounts or assets already? If so, FBAR and FATCA compliance is already required, and you should be current on them before you complicate your situation further.
Step four: Your target country shortlist — and the honest timeline.
Now, after the above, you may pick countries.
The framework I recommend: narrow to two or three realistic options based on your specific profile — your income type, your family structure, your language situation, your ancestry, your timeline, your risk tolerance for bureaucratic friction. Then go visit. Not a vacation. A reconnaissance mission of at least two to four weeks, in the neighborhoods you’d actually live in, in the season you’d actually be there, doing the actual errands — grocery shopping, finding a doctor, figuring out how to pay a utility bill. That trip will tell you more than six months of reading.
On the timeline: most visa applications take three to twelve months to process, depending on the country and the visa type. The Portuguese D7 is currently processing in four to six months. The Italian Elective Residency Visa varies by consulate — some US consulates are running six to nine months for appointments alone. The Spanish Non-Lucrative Visa is similar.
This means: if you want to be living abroad this time next year, the application process should start in the next 60 to 90 days. Not at the end of the year. Not “sometime soon.” Now.
Step five: The test run.
Before the permanent move — before you sell the house, before you ship the furniture — live there for three months. Rent a furnished apartment. Put the kids in a local school or a temporary arrangement. Work from there. Let the reality of the place replace your idea of the place.
Some people arrive, and the idea and the reality are close. The city feels right, the life feels right, the friction is manageable. They go home and start the actual move.
Some people arrive, and the gap is significant. The language is harder than expected. The bureaucracy is more exhausting. The social isolation is real in a way that wasn’t visible from the outside. They go home having learned something essential before they make an irreversible commitment.
Either outcome is valuable. Either outcome is better than discovering the gap after the house is sold.
The first steps are not country research. They are self-knowledge — your tax position, your passport situation, your financial architecture, your honest timeline. Once you know where you stand, the destination decision is considerably simpler.
Most people reverse the order. They spend months researching Portugal and then discover they have a passive-income situation that complicates the D7, or that an Italian ancestor they never knew about qualified them for something better. Do the inventory first.
If you want a structured guide through this inventory — a professional who has done this with hundreds of families and can shortcut the six months of self-research — that’s what Borderless Concierge’s Brief engagement is designed to deliver.
These are ideal steps. The police captain in our suburb told me he did not have enough police officers to keep my daughter and me safe from my medically diagnosed psychopathic husband who had threatened to kill us then our four tiny dogs tried to attack him to save us. He said: 'Why don't you get the hell out of the country?' Which we did. In no time we sold the house we had just purchased and flew to another hemisphere.
If we can do it, others are also able to move elsewhere and adapt to cope with the future.
While the parliament has yet to finalize the legislation, Portugal looks set to change the pathway to citizenship from 5 years to 10. They may not even extend protection to residency applicants who applied under the existing 5 year requirement around 3/4 years ago and are now approaching the expected application window. Add to that a 3 year processing backlog for citizenship applications and the reality is closer to 13 years.