Before leaving the US last year, about the best advice we got was to open brokerage and checking accounts with Schwab. Mainly we've been using the Schwab checking account to access cash via ATMs. The fact that Schwab both charges no fees for withdrawing money at overseas ATMs and also reimburses clients for any fees charged by foreign banks and ATM owners, has made accessing cash totally stress free for us. Our Schwab Visa debit cards worked perfectly in Japan, Hong Kong, Mainland China and now in Vietnam.
Before we left the US, I linked our Schwab account to our Capital One 360 savings and checking accounts. Mostly, we just transfer over a thousand or a couple of thousand dollars at a time into our Schwab checking account as we need to access cash. Then we pull $20 or $50 or $100 in local cash out of an ATM whenever we need it.
Twice so far, we've used Schwab to wire money overseas. The first time was just before we left the U.S.. We had to send $260 to a company in China to hire an interpreter. Luckily, we were still at home because Schwab said they had some weird issue with wiring money to China. IIRC, they said it had to do with US government regulations. Anyway, they asked me to come in to the local branch office to sign some sort of paper before they would agree to wire money to China. OP, seems like that might be something you may want to look into further and explicitly discuss with Schwab before you leave home if you haven't already.
The second time we wired money was just a few days ago. It was a little less than $3K that we sent to a school in Vietnam. That wire transfer I was able to do completely online without any issues. Actually, the school hasn't yet confirmed that they've received the money, but Schwab wrote back a couple of days ago to say they'd sent it. I'm assuming everything will go as planned, and the school should contact me next week to confirm receipt of the funds.
As far as investments through Schwab, I don't yet have any experiences to share. Our retirement accounts have all been at Vanguard for years, and since with the help of a relative we've maintained a U.S. address, we haven't had any issues with keeping them. Due to a new account sign up bonus TD Ameritrade offers, I opened a taxable brokerage account with them last year and am locked in to keeping our investments there for another month or so. TDA offers commission free trades on a bunch of ETFs, including VTI, which is the only one that really matters to me. After next month, I wouldn't mind moving the money over to Schwab. Seems like it might make things simpler for us.
OP, it would be nice if you or maybe somebody else who has already done it could post more details about Schwab's equivalent to VTI/VTSAX. Is it SCHB? If so, it looks like the ER is only .03%, which is pretty amazing. If it's equivalent to VTI, I'm definitely interested. Thanks for reminding me. I'm going to go check it out some more and maybe move some money into our Schwab brokerage account in May...