Financial advisory
Where you stand today, where you intend to be, and the plan that connects the two.
The discipline
Planning starts with a single page that holds everything you own, owe, and intend.
Your financial life was assembled piece by piece: an account here, a property there, a policy somebody once recommended. Planning begins by putting all of it in order, in every currency and jurisdiction it touches, so you can see what you actually hold and what it is actually doing.
From that page comes the plan: what stays, what moves, what gets built, and in what order.
The work
The whole position, first
Accounts, property, entities, policies, and obligations, gathered across every currency and jurisdiction they touch. The plan is worth exactly as much as the picture it starts from.
Goals with numbers attached
Education, retirement, a second home, a sale. Each goal gets a date and an amount, so progress is measured rather than felt.
The order of operations
What happens first, what waits, and why. The sequence decides how much of the plan survives contact with real life.
A plan that moves
Reviewed on a fixed rhythm and rewritten when life changes: a new country, a sale, a birth, an inheritance.
What the advice covers
The years you draw on capital are planned in the years you are still building it.
Retirement across borders is a question of three things at once: where you will be resident, which currency your costs arrive in, and which of your pots can be drawn without penalty. The plan sets the order and the dates, so the shift from earning to drawing happens on a date you chose.
The date and the number
What you will need each year, in the currency you will spend it, and the capital that has to be in place to produce it.
Where you will be resident
Residence at the point of drawing decides how the income is taxed and which pots are worth drawing first. It is settled early, because it changes the plan.
The order of drawing
Which account is drawn first, which is left to compound, and which is left untouched for the next generation.
School and university fees arrive on a schedule you already know.
Fees for children educated internationally are one of the few large costs whose timing is knowable years ahead: the year each child starts, the currency each institution bills in, and roughly what it will cost by then. Planning them early means funding them from capital set aside on purpose rather than from whatever is liquid that term.
The fee timeline
Each child, each stage, and the year the invoices start, priced in the currency the school or university bills in.
Funded on purpose
Capital set aside for fees and invested to a horizon that ends when the fees do, rather than drawn from the portfolio that is doing other work.
Currency, decided early
A degree billed in sterling or dollars against income earned in pesos is a currency position. It is held deliberately, or it is hedged.
Held outside your country of residence, reported where it has to be reported.
Offshore means the account sits in a jurisdiction other than the one you live in, usually because the currency, the custodian, or the range of instruments suits a life spread across borders. Structured properly, the timing of tax becomes deliberate. ValMonde advises on the structure, and a certified tax adviser in each jurisdiction involved confirms the treatment before anything moves.
The wrapper and the jurisdiction
Which structure holds the savings, where it is domiciled, and what that means for reporting and for the day you draw on it.
Deliberate timing
When gains are realised and when income is recognised are decisions inside your control. Deliberate timing is where most of the efficiency comes from.
Reported, not hidden
Mexico participates in the Common Reporting Standard, and accounts held abroad are reported automatically. The efficiency comes from structure, and never from concealment.
A pension built under one country’s rules, and a life that has since moved.
Most clients living across borders hold at least one pension in a country they no longer live in. The question is rarely whether the pension is good. It is whether the regime it sits inside still fits where you live, where you intend to retire, and who you intend to leave it to. That question is answered before anything is transferred, and a transfer is recommended only where moving the pension leaves you better placed than leaving it alone.
SIPP
A UK pension wrapper you control, holding investments until you draw an income. The advice covers what it holds, what it costs, and whether it stays where it is.
QROPS
An overseas scheme recognised by HMRC that can receive a transfer of UK pension benefits. Whether the transfer serves you turns on your residence, the country you intend to retire in, and the tax the transfer itself triggers.
QNUPS
An overseas pension for retirement provision held outside the UK, where no UK benefits are being moved. The estate consequences are examined rather than assumed.
The part of the plan that pays when the plan is interrupted.
Protection is the one piece of a financial plan whose value shows up only in the year nobody planned for. For a family living across borders, the cover has to travel: written so it pays where you are resident, in a currency your family actually spends, with no clause that voids it because you moved. The advice covers what cover you hold, what it excludes, and what it would actually pay.
Life cover
What arrives for your family, in which currency, and how quickly. Sized against the obligations that would outlive you rather than a round number.
Critical illness cover
A lump sum on diagnosis of a defined condition, for the year income stops and costs do not. The definitions are read closely, because they decide whether it pays.
Accidental death benefit
Cover that pays on death by accident, usually alongside a life policy. Useful, narrow, and worth knowing the difference.
A plan is a map of what you hold, drawn before you need it.
Who this serves
Approaching a liquidity event
The months before a sale are when the useful planning decisions still exist. Afterwards, the structure and the tax position are fixed.
A life in two countries
Income in one currency, family in another, obligations in both, and no single adviser reading the whole of it.
Capital without a plan
Real wealth, built well, still held in whatever shape it happened to arrive in.
How it begins
- 01
The introductory meeting
An hour on where you stand and where you intend to be. Nothing to prepare and nothing to bring.
- 02
The fact finding
The whole picture, gathered properly: what comes in, what goes out, what you own and what you owe.
- 03
The proposal
The plan arrives in writing, with the first moves scheduled and the reason for each one.
The two halves of a financial life
The building years
Contributions, concentration, and compounding. The work is choosing what to build and protecting the engine that builds it.
The drawing years
The same capital, asked to produce income without being consumed. The shift is planned years before it happens.
The handover
What passes to the next generation, in what form, and when they will be ready to hold it.
The reserve
The part of the plan nobody hopes to use: liquidity for the year that does not go to plan.
Questions
Do I have enough to need a plan?
If your life or your assets cross a border, yes. The value of planning follows complexity more than size, and a cross-border life is complex at any number.
What do I bring to the first conversation?
Nothing. The introductory meeting needs no documents and no figures. The fact finding comes later, in the meeting, at your pace.
How often is the plan revisited?
On a fixed rhythm, and again whenever your situation moves. The advice is ongoing, and the plan is the living record of it.
How is ValMonde paid for this?
The fee for the advisory work is set out in writing before you commit to anything, and every fee ValMonde earns on what follows is disclosed to you beforehand.
What happens in the first ninety days?
The fact finding, the whole position on one page, the plan in writing, and the first moves scheduled. By day ninety you know exactly what is moving and why.
Do you work with my existing advisers?
Yes. Accountants, lawyers, and bankers already in place stay in the picture; the plan coordinates them rather than replacing them.
Why this firm
Borderless by design
The firm exists for lives that cross jurisdictions. One relationship reaches the global financial markets, in every currency you live in.
Your name on everything
Assets held in your name with regulated custodians, accounts contracted on terms you can read, and fees disclosed in writing beforehand.
An advisor who stays
A named investment advisor who knows your whole position and remains through every move it makes.
12
Years
US$100m+
Under advice
4
Jurisdictions
An invitation
Discuss your portfolio with an investment advisor.