The US Follows Your Money: Arielle Tucker on The Expat Money Playbook

There are conversations you have once, and conversations you return to. Arielle Tucker first joined Mickelle back on Episode 50 and she’s here again, this time with the book she never set out to write: The Expat Money Playbook, published by Wiley.

Arielle is a certified financial planner and a self-described US tax nerd who has spent more than fifteen years helping Americans abroad make sense of their money. She’s a New Yorker turned Swiss resident, a mother of two, and - in her own words - not a social media influencer. Which is exactly why the book is what it is: practical, honest, and a little bit fun about a subject most of us would rather avoid.

This episode is less a lecture on tax than a conversation about intention. What actually changes about money when your life spans more than one country? And what does it take to build something lasting across borders?

In this episode

For Americans, it begins with one uncomfortable fact: the US follows you. Citizenship-based taxation means that wherever you move, you keep filing — a reality almost no one explains before the move, and one that grows quietly more complex as life does. Arielle and Mickelle walk through what that means in practice, and why the answer is rarely as frightening as it first sounds. A filing requirement, as Arielle is quick to point out, isn’t the same as a tax bill.

From there, the conversation opens onto the bigger questions underneath the spreadsheets — the why beneath the move, the costs no one budgets for, and the decisions that are never only financial.

Key moments

• Why “the US follows you.” Citizenship-based versus residence-based taxation, and the crucial difference between filing and actually owing.
• “Find your why.” The framework that opens the book, and why running toward a life beats running away from one.
• The costs no one budgets for. Currency swings, admin, and the flights home your neighbours never have to take.
• Why so many women are leaving. An honest look at safety, infrastructure, and the quiet reckoning behind the decision.
• Renouncing and repatriating. The exit tax, the permanence, and the human questions to ask before you act.
• AI and cross-border money. Where it helps you ask better questions — and where specialty knowledge still wins.

About the guest

Arielle Tucker, CFP®, EA, is the founder of Connected Financial Planning, a fee-only firm specializing in Americans abroad and globally mobile families. Originally from New York and now based in Switzerland, she has spent more than fifteen years at the intersection of financial planning, US tax, and life across borders. She’s also the host of the Passport to Wealth podcast and the author of The Expat Money Playbook (Wiley).

Next steps

If you’re building a life across borders or quietly wondering whether you could, this is a conversation worth your time. Press play, and let it be the thing that finally gets you unstuck: not with fear, but with the clarity of someone who’s read the map.

Wherever you are between one country and the next, you were never meant to piece it together alone.

To connect with Arielle and her team and to access the resources she’s created go to https://www.houseofperegrine.com/@passporttowealth

For the other episodes mentioned;

https://www.houseofperegrine.com/podcast/ep-050

https://www.passporttowealth.com/run-toward-something-mickelle-weber-on-building-a-life-abroad