U. S. Expats Are Revealing The "We're Being Scammed" Realizations They Had After Moving Abroad

[DFW]

131. Good question!

France, not much of an improvement, and they do have a wealth tax, though I don’t know if it is imposed on resident foreigners. Austria, no clue, but we have no ties to the place anyway. NL is crowded and expensive, and I don’t know the tax situation for resident foreigners.

Switzerland might be an option, but the language drives my wife nuts, and she has no friends there. The taxes there are FAR lower, but the cost of living is beyond the asteroid belt. They want you to be financially secure and proficient in at least one of their three major languages. I could do it, but my wife would have her issues. If the Dutch are not as greedy as the Germans, NL would be my next option. My wife doesn’t speak the language, but she understands a lot of it, since she is from the far northwest of Germany. Her dad’s first language was “Pladdütsch,” or “low German,” and that is already halfway to Dutch. We have lots of friends in Holland, so it’s familiar territory.

At this point, it would be an immense emotional strain on my wife to leave our part of Germany, especially with her mom and one of our daughters there. The financial strain on me will have to take a back seat to that, since if she’s not happy, I can never be happy, either.