I wrote recently about how it’s virtually impossible for a United States citizen who lives in the U.S. to open an offshore bank account unless they are very rich (multi-millionaire). There are exceptions to this, sort of, but pretty much all of them involve either needing to have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spare to invest in the country you’re opening the account in and/or to pay for the costs associated with obtaining citizenship there; or relocating to said country and making it one’s residence.
However, I’ve discovered something that’s not exactly the same as opening an offshore bank account but has at least some of its benefits: you can open an account at wise.com, transfer U.S. dollars into that account, and hold them in that account in a different currency. Not only that, but if the foreign currency you hold them in is British pounds or euros, you can even earn some interest on them. It isn’t a great interest rate, but it’s better than nothing. And if the dollar crashes than you’ll come out way ahead on those funds regardless of the low interest rate!
This isn’t an actual offshore bank account, so there is still the potential for things to get bad enough for the U.S. government to decide you’re persona non grata and cut you off from access to your money held at Wise. So another thing you might want to do is make sure you have some friends you trust who live overseas and work out a plan with them to transfer some of your money out of Wise and into their bank account for safe-keeping if things start to look bad.
