🐧 Tips & hacks for popular expat personal finance tools

👋 Hey expats, this is Dexter. Welcome to a new edition of Money Abroad, my weekly newsletter where I bring you fresh tips on building wealth while living abroad.

Today in 10 minutes or less, you’ll learn:

• 🧰 Popular personal finance tools for expats

• 😯 Surprising use cases

• 🔥 Quick tips & hacks

Let’s go!

🧰 Expat Personal Finance Toolkit

🗺️ Top Expat Hubs

We are going to cover tools for the top subscriber regions:

• Singapore

• Hong Kong

• United States

• United Kingdom

🤩 Criteria

• Low or minimal fees

• Fast, easy-to-use UX

• Accessible for foreigners (and Americans)

• Responsive customer service

• Secure

🧮 Track and manage money

Lunch Money (paid: $10 USD / month)

Lunch Money is a simple personal finance tool with bank integrations across 17 countries, crypto wallet integrations, budgeting, and trend visualizations.

Who is it for: Expats that want an easy-to-use budgeting tool that works across currencies and importing crypto & supported bank accounts

Surprising use case: “It was super easy to label all the expenses related to our wedding to figure out at the end exactly how much it cost / the breakdown of different categories for it” - Canadian expat

Tip: Try the Rules Engine to auto or manually create rules to automatically categorize your transactions and trigger notifications.

Pocketsmith (paid: $9.95 USD / month and up)

Pocketsmith is a more comprehensive personal finance tool with auto bank integrations across 49 countries (rarity!), budgeting, and cashflow management features.

Who is it for: Expats that want max coverage with automatic bank imports and more sophisticated analysis features

Surprising use case: “I use it as a searchable archive since bank statements go into the ether after 90 days.” - German expat in US

Tip: Tap into the cashflow reporting tool to project out your future budgets.

Caveats:

• Janky bank connections. Multiple Singapore & HK banks are labeled ‘Experimental’. I personally tried linking my DBS Singapore account, hit an error, and couldn’t proceed further.

• Outdated design. ”UI and mobile are kinda old”

Expat Money Review (free)

Expat Money Review is a simple Google Sheet template for tracking net worth, income, and expenses across currencies as an expat couple or individual. (My fiance and I currently use this tracker.)

Who is it for: Expat couples or individuals that want a free solution to consolidating their assets and liabilities across multiple currencies

Surprising use case: I track unpaid taxes using the net worth tracker, so we keep enough cash buffer to avoid nasty surprises during tax season.

Tips & hacks: Calculate your “guilt-free spend” using the Income & Expenses tab. Then setup automated transfers so the remaining balance in your bank account is always yours to spend on whatever you want.

🌱 Save & invest