Expat Investing Academy
Join my Expat Investing Academy and take control of your money. Learn how to plan, save and invest by yourself, so you can reach Financial Independence faster than you every thought possible. Beginners welcome. Over 12 hours of short videos that you can watch in your own time, as well as Q&A support when you need it.
“Every attendee that I’ve spoken to has loved Steve’s course.” – Andrew Hallam, author of Millionaire Expat
“This course literally saved my marriage.” – Nisha, expat “One of the highlights of my year.” – John, expat
“The best course on investing for expats. I sincerely recommend it to everyone.” – Elena, expat
“Incredibly helpful, this is exactly what I needed.” – Julia, expat
Serious saving made simple, practical and memorable...
...with all the useful details nobody else bothers with
500 expats learning about Financial Independence – now you can too!
Saving Made Simple
Learn how you can save and invest quickly, cheaply and flexibly, so you can get on with living a fantastic life.
Saving requires a bit of discipline, which is much easier when you know why you are saving and how much you will need. Investing sounds complicated and an entire industry wants you to think it is. But investing sensibly can be very simple, especially in the age of global index funds.
The hardest thing will be investing regularly while ignoring all the chatter from your mind and the media. Your brain wasn’t designed to deal with stock market swings, so get it out of the way and stick to the rules. We’ll show you how to do that too.
If you’re bored by personal finance books and numbed by numbers, this is the place for you.
Join Our Community
Get our articles first – practical and memorable advice on saving your money and avoiding financial pitfalls.
We won’t share your email with third parties and will never spam you.
Start Here
If you’re new to saving and investing, click the button to get started with 10 simple steps to Financial Independence.
Blog: Planning (mindset, current situation, future needs)

10 ways to stop your brain’s love of complexity from messing up your saving & investing
Our brain instinctively defaults to addition and complexity when problem-solving. Understanding how this knee-jerk reaction messes with your finances will help you increase your wealth and reduce your stress. Who doesn’t want that?

Make Your Life More Wonderful
I want to show you that you can have it both ways. You can have great riches amassed through the capitalist system (the stock market). And you can have a huge impact on your family, community and the world, by using your riches to become financially independent.

12 fantastic reads that will improve your life and money
It doesn’t take much to distract you away from categorising your credit card spend, so here are 12 good distractions to expand the mind. Usually better than scrolling.
Blog: Saving (income, expenses, debt, cash)

💔 Love & Money
Can you really have love and money? Will your other half chew through all your cash? Money is the number one cause of breakups, but really it is poor communication about money. This post is about finding a balance in you relationships with the significant other and your money.

Should you have a monogamous relationship with your bank?
It’s usually painfully obvious that banks are not really on your side. Here are some thoughts on how to make interaction that little bit easier.

Stop your bank ruining your day (or worse)
It’s usually painfully obvious that banks are not really on your side. Here are some thoughts on how to make interaction that little bit easier.
Blog: Investing (funds, ETFs, brokers, currencies & transfers)

New Vanguard stock fund worth a look for expats
On 25 March, Vanguard launched a new set of all-world exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that are highly relevant for any expats or people living in developing countries. One of them could become the only stock fund you need in your portfolio.

Update on brokerage protection limits
Interactive Brokers is by far the cheapest brokerage for people living in developing countries. I use them myself (and I don’t have any further affiliation with them). They are large, well-capitalised and secure. The extra capital protects them against shocks, unlike Robinhood which had to scramble to raise money in January. But what would happen to your money if IB failed?

Should GameStop & Bitcoin change our investing?
99.99% of the financial news should not change how you invest. Read it out of interest for what’s going on in the world, but don’t let it change your investment approach. Just don’t. It’s a slippery slope that leads to shiny object syndrome, FOMO and market timing, all of which will part you from your money. Let’s have a look at a couple of newsworthy events and see if they merit a reaction.
Blog: Troubleshooting & terrible savings plans

What to do if your nest egg is locked up in a savings plan
Reader question – what to do if you find yourself trapped in a long-term savings plan.
Having invested into equity and bond funds over the last two years I can no longer put money regularly into my savings plan. I have some US$100,000 invested. What should I do?

Expert opinion: is it safe yet to get a savings plan in the UAE?
This is a great article from Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence featuring us and many other voices of reason in the UAE market. It discusses some of the problems with the selling of personal savings plans here and why there is reason for cautious optimism about the future.

5 reasons why you should never invest in a long-term offshore savings plan
Financial advisors are often trying to get expats to invest in long-term savings plans. They sound good in theory but 99% of the time they are completely inappropriate. You will probably either make unimpressive gains or lose money. So just say no and tell your friends to say no too. Here’s why. Almost no financial advisor on commission is going to tell you this, which is why I have to.
Expat Investing Academy
Join my Expat Investing Academy and take control of your money. Learn how to plan, save and invest by yourself, so you can reach Financial Independence faster than you every thought possible. Beginners welcome. Over 12 hours of short videos that you can watch in your own time, as well as Q&A support when you need it.
“Every attendee that I’ve spoken to has loved Steve’s course.” – Andrew Hallam, author of Millionaire Expat
“This course literally saved my marriage.” – Nisha, expat “One of the highlights of my year.” – John, expat
“The best course on investing for expats. I sincerely recommend it to everyone.” – Elena, expat
“Incredibly helpful, this is exactly what I needed.” – Julia, expat