The Global Expatriate's Guide to Investing: From Millionaire Teacher to Millionaire Expat

"The Global Expatriate's Guide to Investing" provides an excellent road map anyone can follow in order to build his/her own portfolio leading to financial freedom. Although the book is directed to the expat, it provides a path for anyone who wants to learn more about efficient, effective and basic investing. Andrew's writing is very light, easy to understand and is filled with direction and encouragement, as to how to build wealth over the long term for anyone, expat or other. He writes in a clear and consice manner, and his content is backed up with plenty of facts and figures, that are easily verifiable, and adaptable to one's own situation. For example, most of the scenario's Andrew uses, is for a sample portfolio held for 25 years. Using a compound interest calculator found online, one can easily adapt his numbers to any time frame to suit your own situation. Andrew does an excellent job of contrasting the facts and figures with humour, fun and anecdotes, so as not to bore and weigh the reader down with data and tables. He makes very clear that there is no "get rich quick" solution, and strongly discourages following the latest financial fads, but instead, suggests choosing one of a variety of portfolios based on low cost index investing. As anyone who follows Andrew's blog will know, Andrew speaks out vehemently against the high priced and inflexible investment schemes that are regularly pushed on expats, earning the advisors, and the insurance companies, exorbitant commissions. Andrew continues with this theme in this book, showing with actual data how such high fees can virtually demolish retirement planning. Most likely, Andrew's outspokenness on this matter has cost the insurance companies a significant amount of busines; in fact, it wouldn't be surprising if those promoting these high cost products, write negative reviews, criticising Andrew's data in an attempt to undermine his credibility. Should that be the case, I would recommend that one buys his book, reads the data, and comes to one's own conclusions. For expats, this book fills a much needed void as expats face a multitude of issues that are unknown to those who do not live abroad. One of the many valuable pieces of information is how Andrew compares the online brokerages side by side, their pros, cons and their fees, thus making it easy to see what might work for you. Additionally, I appreciated Andrew's understanding that even though he provides all the tools to build a low cost, efficient and effective portfolio, many may still not feel comfortable doing this themselves. Andrew provides names and details of financial advisors whom he recommends, and why, as well as the characteristics of a financial advisor that will work in the interests of the client, and not his own. The final section of the book is particularly useful, as it is tailored to discuss how nationals of particular countries can invest specific to their home country. This is a well written book, and is a natural follow up to Andrew's first book, "Millionaire Teacher." It also takes much of what Andrew writes on his blog to the next level, and ties it all together in a very enjoyable and educational product. I look forwards to the next book!

This is a great book for someone with no investing experience or who has been misled by salesmen posing as financial advisors. It walks you through the investing process - calculating how much you need to save, how to open your account and places you can do so, choosing your investments and purchasing said investments. It highlights with real life stories of investors and their personal experience. It is written in plain language for ease of understanding. I would highly recommend this to the expat investor. The book could have included a chapter specifically dedicated to the global investor from smaller countries with no home markets. Besides this, it was a good read.

Working abroad as an expatriate opens up new horizons and opportunities but can also bring challenges too. High on the list of these can be how to manage ones finance,s and to invest wisely for the future. Many expatriates fall victim to predatory so-called "financial advisors" whose primary goal is to sell them complex, high-commission, financial products and, if possible, garner outrageous ongoing "advisory fees". Many such schemes also lock investors into products from which they cannot later withdraw without heavy financial penalty. All this is extremely sad because, as Andrew Hallam illustrates in his excellent book, there are simple, cost-effective alternatives - such as portfolios constructed of low-cost index ETFs. Whilst there are quite a few books available on indexing and ETF investing, what set's Hallam's book apart is the clear rationale, precise explanations and very readable writing style. A teacher by profession, the author has a knack of illustrating his approach in a simple manner. Sometimes it almost sounds too simple - but it becomes clear as one reads further that this is the beauty of the entire thing. Investing does not have to be complex and costly in order to be successful. Hallam's own personal story and "global nomad" investment philosophy show that you don't have to be a financial professional to achieve considerable success. The book contains sections for expatriates of different nationalities, living in various parts of the world, as well as providing advice on setting up brokerage accounts. He also shows how to find "fee only" financial advisors who will give unbiased advice at a reasonable cost if investors really don't feel able to do everything themselves. Finally, the author has a lively (free!) personal website where he genuinely enjoys interacting with and helping his readers. His book is a welcome addition to every expatriate's investment bookshelf!

This is an excellent book. I'm familiar with most of the material in the book, but it took me lots of time and effort to collect it and learn it. As such, the book is a great time saver. It starts from basics, covers different expat investing pitfalls, presents a number of horror stories (including private pensions from what you'd believe are reputable companies), follows passive investing philosophy and presents 3 solid passive investing portfolios, discusses various behavioral issues and why you might want to have a low cost advisor, suggests concrete brokers, and finally guides you through the implementation of the portfolios depending on where you are from (or planning to retire). One thing I did not like is a very short coverage of Interactive Brokers (IB) and the recommendation to talk to the international tax advisor over the issue that IB is a US-based broker which lets you invest in many international markets. Knowing the answer if it is or not OK to use IB and invest in non-US markets with respect to the US estate task would lead to significant savings in terms of costs over the other recommended brokers. Also, what about Fidelity international exchange offerings... What about Schwab? All of them let you buy at LSE, Canadian, Hong Kong, etc. exchanges. They all cost less than recommended brokers, and they are all covered by SIPC (which in my understanding covers even the shares held at non-US exchanges.) So overall an excellent book, with very good recommendations and advice. Broker recommendations are very good too, but if holding non-US shares through US-based brokers is OK when it comes to the estate tax, there should be an updated list of most cost efficient brokers for expats.

If you're a long term expat or just taking the plunge, it's very easy to get caught up in a lifestyle of exotic vacations and spending like you get paid with Monopoly money. I first found Andrew through his popular blog, which led me to his first book – ‘Millionaire Teacher.’ One of my favorite parts of that book was on budgeting – and how to rein in spending. In Andrew’s latest book, The Global Expat's Guide to Investing, one of the most valuable lessons he teaches is how to work through retirement projections. Being able to revisit retirement projections is an invaluable tool, as it tells you where you’re headed based on current assumptions. The earlier you can catch that you’re not headed where you want to go, the easier it is to make adjustments. And with less social security benefits than people that stay home, keeping track of retirement projections is more important. Another valuable part of the book introduces relatively easy to implement investment strategies, such as the couch potato portfolio – and how different nationalities of expats can set these up from scratch. The lessons leading up to this part of the book are just as important as the how-to – since a major market sell-off will test your faith, and if you do not understand what you are doing and why – you are far more likely to lose money when things get rough. Along these lines, William Bernstein’s Investor’s Manifesto is another great resource. Like Bernstein, Andrew is a true consumer advocate. For expats trying to figure out how to plan for their financial future – the Global Expat’s Guide to Investing is required reading that teaches you important lessons and can help you avoid making really expensive mistakes.

If you are an expat earning wages abroad, then this book is an absolute MUST read. Do not think about it, just buy it and read. As for the writing style, well...it has a LOT of numbers, so be prepared. Just remember, if it read like a passionate novel more people might buy it, but good investing is not based on emotions; it's based on charts and data. Hallam interjects humor, which makes it more fun. He really hits home the idea that fees and human lack of clairvoyance are what make actively managed portfolios so inferior to passively managed index funds. He gives so many examples of how this has played out that I began skipping over some of the examples. However, I get the point so loudly and clearly that I don't think I'll ever forget it! And next week I'll be making major adjustments to my portfolio based on the data Hallam presents in this lifesaving work!

Felt more convoluted than his first book and in some respects, repetitive.

This is a very helpful book on both pitfalls to avoid and things to invest in as a expatriate. Many of the tips here are expatriate specific, but they are extremely helpful at diversifying investments and dealing with policy and legal restrictions in your home country. It is also helpful on figuring out the kinds of savings you need to begin to invest. I huge help that this book provides is how to focus on Stock indexes and balance that out with bonds and gold holdings, and how to avoid many high cost International Teacher Retirement services which are often highly parasitic on your savings possibilities. Hallum helps you learn how to self-manage retirement investments and how to look for fiscal advice. Incredibly useful.

This Book is superb............my only wish is that it had been available and I read whilst in my 30's apposed to 50's, the amount of money I have wasted and been conned out of, yes I use "conned out of" by so called Financial Advisers wants to make me cry. I bought both of Andrew's books last Christmas, I needed to research the investment industry and finalise an investment strategy that would benefit me rather than the banks and FA's, I had already made investments in mutual funds with a small number of banks, intent was to get my money to work, but work for me and not the banks, typical charges for investing in funds being 3% upfront fee and a 2% yearly management fee, all these fees to manage my money to make a loss, really, in any other industry incompetence and poor peformance by a so called adviser or consultant would result in immediate firing or legal prosecution. Reading the books was a revelation for me, I was kind of putting off reading the books as I thought it would be hard to focus on financial matters, but I couldn't be more wrong, once I started I could not put either book down, I have also lent them to my work collegues who comment the same. I had the pleasure to meet Andrew recently in Dubai where he held a talk/workshop, he is great down to earth guy and completely genuine, this reflects in how he writes his books which are a joy to read. The books contain great advise for a complete novice and upwards, and also how to avoid the pitfalls of the ever aggressive conmen looking for fat commissionins....including the well known high street banks. Please read Andrew's books they are gamechangers !!!! I can only assume that negative comments have been written by the greedy financial advisers that these two great books advise to give a wide bearth to. Andrew...thank you very much.

This second edition was an easy and interesting read. It reinforced the things I learned in Mr. Hallam's first book and added specifics for me as an expatriate living overseas. There are great suggestions and practical ideas on how to go about building an index fund based portfolio. There are also specific examples for those of us from various areas of the globe (USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Europe, Asia, etc) who need to understand some of the specifics of our regions or countries before starting on the investment journey! Highly recommend this edition of Millionaire Teacher!

Regardless of what your question is, you need to read this book. For years I thought I had invested my money wisely. Boy, was I wrong!

Pour une fois j'ai des explications claires et très imagées sur le fonctionnement de l'investissement. Et en plus on me conseille d'être méthodique et fainéante ! Et puis surtout je suis rassurée sur le fait que malgré mes tous petits moyens je peux quand même me lancer. Un livre facile à lire, avec des informations claires expliquées avec beaucoup d'humour.

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