@lhamo I'm assuming you don't personally actually know about teaching in Hong Kong. In short, being a native English teacher at a local school pays between 6,000+USD to 12,000+USD per month plus a ~10% gratuity on a lesser part of that at the end of each two year contract. I'm not saying 0 international schools in China can match that, but I'd say it's a very small number. I'm teaching at a primary school (secondary pays up to 12,000+USD/month) and my monthly cap in 10 years will stop at 10,500+USD/per month. I also don't want to live in China. I love HK, and where I live in HK.
I've spent days of my life reading about US tax code and trying to follow the rules without a tax professional. When I tried to have a business here I had to get professional help, and I hated paying someone else to do what should be simple taxes. Actually I work abroad, and very few countries make their citizens living abroad file taxes when all the money they make is made abroad. The US especially sucks in taxes in this regard.
I hate FACTA, and yes I know about the dumb 200,000+ rule too, but I'm not close to that in liquid assets. With some smart savings I might get there, but I'd most likely just move most of my money to Schwab as I don't have to file that stupid form.
I'll consider using Interactive Brokers.
@MustacheAndaHalf No, my wife isn't a U.S. citizen and she doesn't have a green card. She doesn't live or work in the U.S. and she never has. She has a visitor visa. My son however had no choice in becoming an American, which pissed me off. The other fake choice I had was for him to never visit the U.S. and he could get away without getting a US passport, but all my family is still in US, so him never visiting wasn't a real option. There is something where when he turns 18, he might be able to fairly easily renounce his US citizenship, but the US could pass new laws between now and the next 15 years that change that. They sure make it harder and harder for current US citizens to renounce their citizenship, and they seem to slowly make it more annoying to be an American abroad.
As for the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, yes I don't make 100,000+USD per year yet, but I still hate filing and needing to tell the US everything about my foreign financial life. Also having to file all the junk about all the stocks, ETFs, and similar financial instruments you sell is just annoying. No need for any of that waste in HK for those that are simply HK citizens.
Since I have no taxable US earned income, what tax rate do I need to pay on automatically reinvested dividends? Do others recommend "Aim for funds/ETFs that don't pay dividends and a buy-and-hold strategy."
I hate the idea of paying someone to do my taxes, but I guess I might have to get professional help if I want to put more things in my wife's name.
So what's better Interactive Brokers or just moving my money to Schwab and investing in their Schwab mutual funds? Or their Schwab ETFs? I worked out a way (local HK bank to local Citi, which lets me transfer to Schwab US brokerage for free as Schwab has a Citi HK account) to transfer money from HK to Schwab without paying fees, which I hate by the way.