mrken30

A month is generally the shortest period, that is if you do a month to month tenancy. Otherwise there would be a lease break fee, in Oregon the maximum in 95% of cases is 1.5 times monthly rent.

Scouse Express

Have you contacted Fidelity and asked them to transfer the account to one of their UK Offices?

Jim.

Pulaski

That depends entirely on the (private) landlord. Utilities just need "a lease."

formfill1

When I worked in the States, it seemed that it was always at least a 3 or 6 month minimum lease.
Is the minimum period different in different parts of the States?
A one month lease with the ability to get a utility bill would be a great outcome for me.
I wanted to keep the 401k/IRA in the states, so I could spend a few years transferring part of the funds to a Roth IRA.

I always stayed in an apartment complex. Is it possible to rent from a private landlord who just has a couple of properties, and would allow you to take on the utilities for a short let?

Jerseygirl

We have several Fidelity accounts...we use our Canadian address and we are able to withdraw funds. I suggest you write to them (rather than call) and ask them.

Pulaski

I can't see why not, though you'd have to find a landlord who had a property for which such a short-term deal was an attractive proposition for the landlord

mrken30

Or a landlord that is not so smart.

formfill1

How would I go about searching for apartments that did a month to month tenancy?

durham_lad

We always used apartments.com but always were prepared to stay for a minimum of 3 months. It might be worth registering though, pick a city and make some online inquiries. You could even rent a studio apartment for 3 months even if you don't plan to stay more than a month.

Threads like these are always a good reminder of the difficulties of moving overseas these days. In 2015 we moved my wife's IRA and Roth from Fidelity to Vanguard in readiness for our move back to England. I've been converting the IRAs to Roths for several years and will continue to do so in case Vanguard take a similar route and start closing accounts for non-residents.

Our son is moving back to England end of September and is in a similar position of having a 401k to roll over to another brokerage. He has an IRA set up at Vanguard to receive it and I've told him to be sure to give his company his sister's address in California as his forwarding address. I'm still nervous for him as he will be leaving for England 10 days after his last day at work which isn't much time to get it all sorted.

formfill1

The UPS address would be useful for receiving mail, however it looks like it couldn't be used to send a utility bill to Fidelity.

Thanks for the info about the apartments - I'll take a look at this.

Has your son opened both a Traditional and a Roth IRA to maintain flexibility?

Pulaski

How did you come to that conclusion?
You're willing to pay three months rent?

durham_lad

Yes.

He has had a Roth with Vanguard ever since he started work after college.

From my experience and inquiries with Vanguard prior to leaving the USA last year I know that Vanguard overseas customers can continue to trade and use their accounts but they cannot open new accounts. (You can buy shares in new investments within an existing account, which I have done since living in England but I cannot create a new account). So I told him to open an IRA this year, which he did in March, and he put $500 into it. I'm expecting that he should now be able to roll his 401k into that existing IRA account when he leaves his company on the 18th September.

Once the 401k is rolled over I have advised him that he should be able to convert that rollover a little at a time to his Roth over the next 20+ years paying little or no taxes. He had initially wanted to make a clean break and move everything over to England but I explained that as a dual US/UK citizen he was going to have to file US taxes anyway, and that investing in overseas funds was expensive and complicated. Also, he is named as a beneficiary along with his sister on both mine and my wife's US IRA and Roth accounts (in Vanguard) so having his own existing accounts will make things easier. If we can live another 6 or 7 years then our IRAs will have been moved to our Roths so that will not affect his US or UK taxes either when he comes to make withdrawals.

formfill1

If I had a utility bill forwarded to me in the UK from UPS, then if I sent it to Fidelity from the UK, it would be obvious that it was sent internationally.


I'm exploring all options. I didn't say anything about staying for three months.

I wish I had your foresight!!

Pulaski

I think your mail would be placed in a packet by UPS and mailed/courriered to you, ... but even if the "bare" envelope was forwarded, having a label with your address on the outside wouldn't impact the address on the bill, behind the window inside the envelope.
And I didn't say anything about "staying" either.

mrken30

Vanguard is one of the few brokers that makes it easy to invest in overseas equities. If he is planning to stay in the UK he could invest in a non hedged ETF, if he is undecided , maybe a hedged UK /Europe ETF. The alternative is Vanguard allows you to buy certain stock on the LSE through your US IRA. So not really that complicated as long as you have a Vanguard IRA account.

Here is a list of some UK ETFs. This list does not include the Vanguard ones unfortunately

http://www.etf.com/channels/united-kingdom-etfs