Filing USA Tax Returns as Non-Resident aliens
K and S have been filing tax returns for over 16 years in the USA. Over these 16 years, the complexity of our tax returns varied widely as we graduated from being students to worker bees to home owners to raising a family and finally moving to the UK. As students we didn’t have too…
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Monthly Update: December 2024
December was a fun month – while work was still super busy, we decided to take a last minute mini break for 4 days around Christmas and went to the Eastern most tip of Cornwall coast to a tiny town called Malborough, near Salcombe. While doom-scrolling through Airbnb, S came across a quaint cottage with…
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Monthly update: November 2024
We returned from our vacation to India in mid-November 2024 and jumped straight into horrid cold and windy British weather. Around this time of the year, it feels like almost all the generalizations about the Brits being cranky and wearing wellies all the time are definitely true! But I suppose anyone would be when it…
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Hair today, gone tomorrow?
In late November, S and K noticed hair thinning and bald patches, leading them to explore treatments. They invested in a red-light helmet and a hair-loss oil from Hims. Despite their engineers’ preference for sequential trials, they opted for both solutions simultaneously. They hope to see results soon and will provide updates.
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Cheeky Banks & Sneaky Mortgage T&C
In June 2022, after moving to the UK, a couple faced mortgage challenges due to limited credit history. They secured a mortgage with Lloyds at 3.55% fixed for five years. Despite overpayments, annual evaluations resulted in lower monthly payments but higher long-term interest costs. The couple learned banks prioritize their interests over borrowers.
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Monthly Update: October 2024
In every way that is not financial, October was a fun month. We took a trip to India after two years, and spent Diwali there after nearly 12years. Nearly everything about the trip was fantastic – the food and the family! What was not fantastic – the few days of oppressive unseasonal 42C heat and…
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Monthly Update: September 2024
Towards the end of September, K’s parents left back to India, and it is always a bitter sweet departure. Suddenly the house gets very quiet, the aroma of spice that permanently hung in the air for a few months slowly diminishes, there is nobody to make tea or coffee when we feel tired. And a…
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Lessons in Frugality from Indian Middle Class Families
Initially when we started this website, we were assuming it would be exclusively financial, taxes or immigration based. But slowly we have transitioned to an “anything goes” website, as long as we tie back to our core concept of finance. We believe values during childhood, society’s influence and family set-up strongly influence one’s relationship with…
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Monthly Update: August 2024
After July’s tax payment and savings hit, it feels good to get back to a normal month and 47% stashed. As we mentioned in the previous monthly update, K’s parents are visiting us this summer. And we wanted to show them around, so almost every weekend with a day trip to a local town -…
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Good Debt vs Bad Debt: A Practical Approach
We have a love-hate relationship with debt, and assume most people do as well. Sometimes, we justify debt as good, especially when it serves the purpose long-term. And other times, we run like hell away from it. Here is how we break it down for ourselves. Good Debt is purposeful borrowing, like that responsible friend…
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Monthly Update: July 2024
Where has the summer gone? We have no idea how the last two months have blown past us – it is evident from the lack of blog posts and monthly updates. While it has been a fabulous summer weather, with little rain and glorious summer sunshine, between two bouts of toddler Noro virus, we feel…
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Money Habits That Might be Keeping You Poor
Developing good money habits is a life skill. Get it right, and never look back. Some habits we turn to time and again, are like those cozy, well-worn slippers—comfortable and familiar. Others, though, are more like those socks that perpetually vanish in the laundry—annoying and elusive. Let’s dive into some of these financial quirks and…
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Monthly update: June 2024
June 2024 was a big month for us. K turned 40! And to celebrate we took a little trip to London! It was our first trip to London since moving to UK, and it was the perfect way to mark the milestone year. Last year, we struggled with little weekend breaks since our son was…
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Strategic Relocation: Timing, School Spot, and Property Options
This will be a multiple part series, to be concluded in 2025, once we figure out our physical location. Once the series is done, we will likely update a summary blog with all links. Some background – we have been considering relocation from Birmingham to Edinburgh to be closer to family. Both of us can…
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The Power of Frugality: Why Keeping Your Electronics Until They Fall Apart Matters
Wish we could say that’s it, that’s the article, but we will justify for you why this frugality strategy is so critical in many ways. Save the world and your money. Between the both of us, since 2011, here is the grand total of our electronic device purchases. Looking at the above list, it is…
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Monthly Update: May 2024
Another good month, after April 2024. It is rare that we get two months back-to-back with no additional expenses, and only have the regular work and child-care costs. It will not take Nostradamus to predict that we cannot continue this positive trend for much longer and the tide will turn in June. A couple of…
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Financial Literacy: Yes, it matters
We have heard this comment, or some variation of it, from so many people “I don’t know how to invest my money”, or “it is too complicated and I don’t have enough time to learn about it”, and it truly frustrates us. You should care because by not learning about money, one is simply wasting…
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The Truth About Buying a House as an Investment
In January 2015, the landlord we had been renting from for a few years, sold the property (two blocks of four apartments each) to another individual, and the new landlord ripped apart both blocks, in his attempt to renovate it. At the onset, we were enthused since he didn’t raise the rent and seemed to…
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Smart Food Shopping: Money-Saving Strategies for Families
Recently, we came across this graph, published by Family Food FYE 2022, showing an individual’s average expenditure per week is £41.11 on all groceries, including eating at home and out. For a family of four, this is a weekly expense of £164.44 and monthly expense of £690 on just food. Just food. Unreal. This is…
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April 2024
Months like this one, with just are our normal expenses, make our bank balance happy. It leads to a fairly uneventful month report because we did nothing, except our usual jobs, and went nowhere, except to the usual child-related weekend stuff. A couple of comments on expenses –
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Navigating Financial Risk Based on Immigration Status
For awhile we debated if this website was about immigration or financial independence, and as we discussed it, we realized over the years a lot of financial decisions were highly dependent on our immigration situation at that time. For example, we viewed our risk tolerance as something similar to the graph below Once we realized…
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Escaping USA’s H-1B Purgatory: Our Decision to Settle in the UK
Firstly, this was not a decision we made lightly. It certainly is a one-way decision, and one that we had to be absolutely certain we got right. It is reversible, but would be quite painful, physically, emotionally and financially to reverse. Background on our stay in USA When both of us came to the USA…
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Optimizing Retirement Planning: Exploring SIPP and Workplace Pension in the UK
As highlighted in this post, 401k was the preferred choice of retirement investment while we were in the USA. The primary reason for this was we didn’t qualify for IRAs or Roth IRAs based on our income levels and maxing out 401k was the best we could do to minimize taxes while maximizing retirement income.…
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Roth Conversion Ladder Strategy: How to Access 401k Funds Early | Tax Benefits
So we are in a different situation than a lot of people with 401ks – we do not live in USA but have sizeable 401k and we do not want to be a millionaire when we are in our 60s and be forced to loose a lot of money with required minimum distributions. We would…
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401k: The Lazy Millionaire’s Retirement Secret
By far, one of our favourite tools for savings is 401k. Let alone the automatic company match and the tax reduction, this is literally the easiest laziest do-nothing approach to building long term wealth. Let’s imagine you have suddenly woken up and it is 1986 and you are starting your first full-time job and 22…
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March 2024
One of our fun vacations to Rome happened this month, which resulted in a substantial expense this month. However, early retirement or not, we have agreed many years ago to reserve 1 full paycheck per year for vacations. So, we have zero guilt about the expense. We believe everyone needs to have atleast one fun…
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February 2024
Winter continues in Birmingham and it was a miserable wet February. To add to that, our utilities (daylight robbery rates) were super high in February. With shorter and darker days, and a toddler who insists on playing train tracks and Lego on the cold ground floor, we have no choice but to crank up the…
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January 2024
Once we got over “splurging” our initial few full-time job paychecks, reality set in, and we started to keep a close eye on our incomings and outgoings. While living in the USA, we used a combination of Mint and Personal Capital to do build these graphs, since we had multiple credit cards and multiple bank…
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From Buying a New Car to Financial Freedom: My Toyota Corolla Story
By S I hate to admit it, especially on this blog, but yes I bought a new car – a shiny brand new red Toyota Corolla from Joseph Toyota of Cincinnati in June 2011. In 15yrs of earning a full-time wage, and 15yrs of driving, it is the only new car I have ever owned.…
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Our Financial Mistakes Tracker
We hope to keep the updates to this article to a minimum, but surely we will make more mistakes as we continue our financial journey. Here are some common financial mistakes that we have seen people often make:
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Part 2 – Massive houses and colossal mortgages
This US government census data source is very interesting, and they key snippet we will focus on – With the size of American families shrinking, and on average 4 people living in each house, that is roughly 595 sqft and a debt of $135,000 per person, after coming up with a deposit of 15%! At…
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The wastefulness of living large
From S – Growing up in India, in a family dripping with middle class savings mentality, I distinctly remember a distant relative visiting us from USA. He was describing his 3600sqft mansion house to the adoring middle-class Indian audience and telling us how his family of 4 could not even find each other in the…
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Part 1 – The brand new shiny car payment
In Feb 2017, I had a colleague who wanted to upgrade his Honda CRV SUV. I assumed he would buy a new Honda CRV, but instead bought a (very nice) Audi Q3 SUV. He found a “good” deal in a Audi dealership about 200mi away, and made the day trip to close the deal. When…
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USA: The case for investing in 401k while on a visa
Being an immigrant in the USA, or in any country, is not easy. Most countries have somewhat unfriendly immigration policies, especially if one loses their job while on a work visa. For example, in the USA, while working on a H-1B visa if you are fired or quit, you need to leave the country within…
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Financial Questions to Ask Before Accepting a Job Offer
Well congratulations! You got the job! Now, its time to learn the fine print and decide how to make it work best for you. There is more to a job offer than the base salary – 401k, pensions, health plans, stock options, etc. If the base salary is low, but the other aspects compensate adequately,…
Keep reading2014 – Our second step and the Vanguard Effect
To say Warren Buffet is a legend is an understatement. But this is the year we woke up and read and understood his letters to shareholders, and followed his advice of low expense index funds. And it is also the year we opened our Vanguard Brokerage Account. This year, we celebrated our 10yr association with…
Keep reading2014 – Our first steps into the world of passive income
A journey of a thousand miles, or dollars, begins with one step. And in May 2014 we opened our first joint brokerage account at T Rowe Price. Major photo worthy milestone, done from our $90 Walmart futon couch. While we chose very good index funds, little did we know the impact of TRP’s higher expense…
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Retire from 8 to 5 