Essential financial steps to take before and after retiring to France that will save you money and a whole lot of stress.
When thinking about moving to France, you likely have a list of must-dos: Find your dream property (if you haven’t already), set up a bank account, get the internet sorted, register for healthcare and a whole raft of other things. But there’s one thing that often gets overlooked – and yet it’s one of the most important aspects of your move – planning your finances. We asked Jake Barber, principal advisor at SJB Global (they’re an award-winning team: “Best Advisor Firm in Europe”), who specialise in helping expats in France with their financial planning to clarify some of the key points of finance planning for expats in France.
If you move to France from a non-EU country, like the US, UK or Australia – you’ll need a visa to enable you to stay long enough to apply for your residency card, and that requires an element of financial information, it’s one of the key prerequisites for a successful application. And getting your visa sorted is an essential, happy step in your new adventure.
But what many people don’t know is that moving to France (whether permanently or temporarily) brings a raft of new requirements – particularly when it comes to finance and investments. You will probably have to navigate two tax systems (especially for Americans), the rules are ever changing, and there are some aspects about investments that you just don’t know enough about – and the internet is full of useless, out of date and sometimes plain wrong information. It can be expensive if you get your tax and investment planning wrong – whether you’re transferring a pension, estate planning, retirement planning or investments.
SJB has a two-pronged approach. First, we look at your personal and financial goals, your attitude to risk and the time available. Everyone has different requirements, for some it’s essential to plan for retirement, others want to make sure there’s provision for loved ones left behind, others still just don’t know what’s best when it comes to maximising pensions or investments, it can all feel a bit overwhelming. We take everything you need/want into consideration to work out what’s best for you, for instance it might mean closing one investment and swapping it for another, some investments simply can’t be held in France, others create a huge tax liability.
Everyone’s situation is unique, so we consider every aspect and put together a proposal that works best for you. We’ll help you make the most of every centime for your new life in France – it’s what we’d want for ourselves and our families.
We’ll help you manage every aspect of your finances, review and update you regularly, and keep on top of regulatory changes to make sure your finances don’t fall foul of any regulatory updates outside of your control, so that you’re always in the best financial shape you can be.
We take away the stress and hard work of managing your finances to give you the peace of mind that your finances stay on track – so you enjoy the good life in France.
You can get in touch with Jake Barber and the SJB Global team, to schedule an obligation-free chat to see how they can help you: sjb-global.com
