Open the destination bank account as early as your residence status allows. Many countries will not let you open one until you hold a residence card or a tax number, which creates a chicken-and-egg problem in the first months. Plan for three to six months of living costs accessible from a U.S. account.

Keep at least one U.S. bank account and one U.S. credit card open. You will need them for Social Security deposits, U.S. tax payments and any service that refuses foreign cards.

Compare the true cost of moving money. Wire transfers, specialist transfer services and ATM withdrawals each have a different mix of fee and exchange-rate margin, and the cheapest option changes with the amount you are moving.

Currency risk is real and asymmetric for retirees. If your income is entirely dollar-denominated and your costs are entirely local, a 15 percent move against you is a 15 percent pay cut with no way to earn it back. Countries that use the U.S. dollar directly, such as Ecuador, Panama and El Salvador, remove this risk entirely. Countries with a volatile currency add it.

The practical hedges are: hold a local cash buffer, avoid locking into long fixed local-currency obligations early, and stress-test your budget at a 20 percent adverse move before you commit. The runway model in this tool does exactly that.

FBAR reporting is triggered by an aggregate 10,000 dollars across foreign accounts at any moment in the year, not by a balance at year end. One large transfer that lands briefly can trigger it.