No Stupid Questions

Outside of the immediate reach requires you to open an offshore brokerage account; however thanks to FATCA reporting requirements, most banks don't want to deal with you unless you have significant assets under management.

Back when FATCA was first introduced I was working in private wealth management for a bank in Luxembourg, and we decided to terminate all but 3 accounts held by US citizens, all of whom had assets above 700k USD. I believe 500k was the internally communicated cutoff.

Banks in Switzerland now typically require 1M CHF to open new accounts for anyone who isn't onshore (Swiss citizen or resident), Hong Kong, Singapore and Panama also require minimum amounts between 500k to 1M USD. I think Bahamas, Bermudas, Virgin Islands, Caymans and all the other money islands ask for even higher deposits now.

One thing you could consider are the British channel islands (Jersey and Guernsey in particular), since Brexit they've had a bit of an offshore renaissance. HSBC Jersey for example only requires 100k GBP to open offshore accounts (though I didn't check about FATCA requirements since I'm not a US citizen myself).

If all you want is keep smaller amounts outside of the US, you could look into wise.com, revolut and other money transfer services, they allow you to hold different currencies in physical accounts domiciled in other jurisdictions. Read: If you deposit USD and convert it to GBP, AUD or EUR, those funds will be physically stored in UK, Australia and Belgium respectively. Since wise is a British company (revolut as well btw), the US government at least won't have immediate access.

If there are any online brokers that accept US customers with casual portfolio sizes, no idea.

Crypto of course is also an option, but I don't trust it enough as long term asset storage solution.

If your main concern is the US currency or just wanting your money to be out of US-based assets, I believe Interactive Brokers provides a lot of flexibility to move your money between assets and currencies. You're still going to pay taxes and be subject to all US laws.

If your concern is US involvement in your personal financial affairs...good luck. The US has tremendous influence over the global financial system and no legitimate foreign organization is going to work with you unless you have substantial assets. The few countries that do not respect US influence are not particularly trustworthy and trying to do business with them will put you at significant legal risk.

You could also try converting to physical gold, but the US has confiscated gold before, so that's not a sure bet.

What sort of things qualify as within the reach of the government to you? I would consider the stock market outside of their reach. Bonds are, of course, very much in their reach. You can buy ETF funds that consist of non-US companies. VXUS comes to mind.

No. Absolutely not.

US citizens are tax slaves. No matter where you live in the world, you owe federal tax to the US government every year. You're required to report all of your assets every year. All of your holdings every year.

In fact, US citizens who have foreign Bank accounts, are required to disclose those bank accounts, and the bank is also required to disclose it to the United states. You will find that there are many banks in the world that will not allow US citizens to open accounts because they simply don't want the paperwork

But wait! There's more! If you renounce your citizenship, for tax purposes, you still owe the next 10 years in taxes to the US Federal government. Even though you are no longer a citizen

Be a billionaire.

Risky, but cryptocurrency. Never a bad idea to diversify a bit but maybe don't put your whole savings there.

you can avoid paying earned income taxes altogether by living outside of the US for more than 330 days out of the fiscal year.

this is called foreign earned income exclusion.

investment income is different; investment income is not excluded by the FEIE, only earned income, so you wouldn't be able to avoid paying investment income tax to the US unless you immigrated to to another country.

The Russian oligarchs all seemed to think superyatchts with fabrige eggs on board was a good idea, but then they all got seized when Russia invaded Ukraine 😅

Real Estate in NZ seems to be popular with American oligarchs such as Peter Thiel, didn't seem to work as well for Kim Dotcom though 😅

Just in case: avoid 'forex trading' and CFDs, especially with MetaTrader and cTrader terminals.

I’ve also wondered this. Want to move and be vocal but scared of this threat.

well, first you would need to set up a brokerage account outside the US, and move your money over to it…

For now, though, you can invest in an Ex-US ETF, Vanguard has one that is essentially the total world stock index minus US companies. https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profile/veu