The PassportFolio

Executive summary

PassportFolio applies the goals-based planning process advisors already use to where a family can legally live, work, study and retire. The family's goals, constraints and risk profile produce a Target Residency Allocation: a planned set of international residency and citizenship options around the U.S. home base, prepared before they are needed.

1. 01
   42%1.3% to 1.6%
   Every financial goal has an address. Tuition, retirement spending, career income and family resilience all depend on where the family can lawfully be. 42% of U.S. adults considered moving abroad in the next two years (Harris Poll, February 2025), yet only about 1.3% to 1.6% of Americans live abroad. The gap is a preparation problem.
2. 02The process is the one advisors know. The CFP Board's seven steps map one to one onto the PassportFolio process. Step 4 is the heart of both: in one, goals, constraints and risk profile produce an asset allocation; in the other, a Target Residency Allocation.
3. 03
   $14 to $89
   The building blocks are rights, sorted like asset classes. Mobility assets fall into seven layers, from birth citizenship to short-term residency, and are scored 0–100 on the MAX Index. Families buy mobility asset options: 12 months of planning and preparation for one program, at prices currently between about $14 and $89 per option.
4. 04Diversify by dependency, not by flag. Four visas in four countries that all qualify on the same job, pension or budget are one bet. Every PassportFolio designed through PassportFolio Advisory is tested for different countries, different ways of qualifying, near-term and long-term rights, family coverage and budget. Members building their own can apply the same tests.
5. 05
   $600,000age 91
   The economics live in the goals, not the options. A self-built PassportFolio costs a few hundred dollars a year to prepare. The value shows up in tuition, retirement withdrawals and career options. In case study D, the same $600,000 nest egg runs out at about 91 in Florida and outlasts the couple in Porto or Costa Rica's Central Valley.
6. 06It belongs in the advisory relationship. Advisors lead the conversation, clients answer and own the plan, CitizensOS provides the options and the preparation, and pays no referral fees.

The four families in this paper

A note from the founder

“Investors build and manage portfolios to preserve and grow their wealth — and the future choices that wealth makes possible.

Similarly, we help them build and manage a portfolio of international residency options that preserve and expand their geographic freedom to pursue those possibilities.

We call it PassportFolio.”

— Rogelio Caceres, Founder, CitizensOS

I have worked in citizenship and residency since 2014. The families who did best were rarely the ones who moved fastest. They were the ones who knew their options early, gathered their documents before they needed them, and could act when the moment came.

The families who did worst were the ones who waited. When Italy narrowed citizenship by descent in March 2025, applications already filed were judged under the old rules. Many families who had planned to get to it someday no longer qualified. An option nobody prepares is an option that can expire.

Financial planners solved this problem for money decades ago. You don't wait for retirement to start saving, and you don't wait for a crash to diversify. This paper shows how the same discipline applies to where a family can live. It is written for the advisors who already run that discipline, and for the clients who trust them with it.

1. Every financial goal has an address

Every goal in a financial plan assumes a place. The college fund assumes where the children will study, the retirement projection assumes where the couple will live, and the career plan assumes where the client can work. Most plans never ask whether that place could be somewhere else, or whether the family could legally get there.

Concentration that nobody measures

A household can diversify its investments, income, currencies and skills, and still keep its legal ability to live and operate concentrated in one country. CitizensOS calls this birthplace concentration risk. It is not a judgment about the United States. It is the same observation an advisor makes about a client holding one stock: nothing is wrong with the company, but everything depends on it.

The demand is already in the room

These measures ask different questions, so they are not a funnel. Together they show a wide gap between imagining a life abroad and being able to establish one. Wanting to leave is not the same as knowing where you can lawfully live, which routes are credible, what they permit, what evidence they need, or how fast you could act. That gap is a preparation problem, and preparation is what planners do.

Clients need a planner, not a brochure

Client expectations often run ahead of the rules. In the same Harris survey, 42% said they would be open to moving abroad to pay less tax. But U.S. citizens are taxed on their worldwide income wherever they live. The foreign earned income exclusion ($132,900 for 2026) shelters some wages for people who pass the bona fide residence test or the 330-day physical presence test, but not pensions or investment income. A move can be the right decision. It is rarely a tax strategy on its own, and it needs the same planning as any other major financial decision.

The industry already calls this wealth planning

The investment-migration industry has framed residence and citizenship as a wealth-planning tool for years. Henley & Partners describes complementary residences as “no longer a luxury add-on but a central pillar of long-term wealth and legacy planning.” CitizensOS did not invent geographic diversification.

What has been missing is a way for ordinary planning households and their advisors to do it. That means standardized comparison across hundreds of programs, every way of qualifying rather than investment alone (ancestry, income, work, family), transparent prices, and preparation shared across options. It also means a home inside the advisory relationship, where about 300,000 U.S. personal financial advisors, including 107,529 CFP professionals, already manage the rest of the plan.

2. Same discipline, new dimension

A PassportFolio is built with the process advisors already use. Understand the family's goals, constraints and risk profile; recommend an allocation; implement it; review it. What changes is the dimension being planned: rights to live, rather than dollars.

[embedded content: Financial planning process and PassportFolio process · 7 matched steps]

Step 4 is the heart of both processes. In one, goals, constraints and risk profile produce a strategic asset allocation; in the other, they produce a Target Residency Allocation.

The vocabulary maps almost one to one

What is genuinely new

Three things have no direct equivalent in a financial plan. First, the asset is a right granted by a government, so no one can buy it outright; families can only qualify for it. Second, most of the value comes from preparation done before it is needed, because applications take months and rules change. Third, the outcome is measured in choices, not returns: a family either can live, work, study or retire somewhere, or it can't.

3. The building blocks: mobility assets and mobility asset options

A financial portfolio is built from assets. A PassportFolio is built from mobility assets: lawful rights to live in a country other than the one a person depends on today.

What a mobility asset is

A mobility asset is a residence-conferring right. The passport or permit card is only the evidence; the right behind it is the asset. A bank account, a house abroad or an Estonian e-Residency company can make a life abroad easier, but none of them gives anyone the right to live there.

The value of a mobility asset is the bundle of rights it carries. Depending on the program, that bundle can include the right to:

• enter and live in the country, and renew that right
• work, study or run a business there
• bring a spouse and children
• use public services such as healthcare and schooling
• progress to permanent residence and then citizenship
• pass citizenship to children

Two people living in the same country can hold very different bundles. A citizen, a permanent resident and a digital nomad in Lisbon share an address, not a set of rights. That is why CitizensOS compares programs, not countries.

The seven layers

Financial planners sort holdings into asset classes so a portfolio's character is visible at a glance. CitizensOS sorts mobility assets into seven layers for the same reason.

A layer is a category, not a ranking. Layer 4 can be the most valuable asset a family will ever hold: in the second edition of the CitizensOS MAX Index, Irish citizenship by descent scored highest of 385 mobility assets, at 96.8 out of 100.

The MAX Index: how good is the asset?

The MAX Index scores each mobility asset from 0 to 100 on the rights it gives, the reach of those rights and the conditions attached. The October 2026 edition scores 385 mobility assets, with an average of 46.3.

MAX describes the asset, not the household. A planner keeps three questions apart:

A top-rated asset can be out of reach for a particular family. A lower-rated one can be exactly right for their next five years. Good portfolio construction keeps those judgments separate.

Mobility asset options: what a household actually buys

Governments grant mobility assets; CitizensOS does not. What a household buys from CitizensOS is a mobility asset option: 12 months of planning and preparation for one specific program, such as a Portuguese Residency Option or an Irish Citizenship Option.

Each option includes its own Country Plan (eligibility, costs, documents, tax, health and next steps), PassVault document preparation and program-change updates. Exercising an option means starting the application for the underlying right. Approval gives the family the mobility asset itself.

Why “option” is the right word

A financial option buys the right, but not the obligation, to act within a set period at a known cost. A mobility asset option works the same way. It is a call option on living abroad and a put option on U.S. residency risk: one small, known purchase that keeps a door open while the family decides whether to walk through it.

Its payoff is not cash. The value is the decision it makes possible: a family that has priced, prepared and documented a route can act in weeks rather than starting from zero when circumstances change.

Holdings, options and candidates

A PassportFolio shows three different states side by side, and never blurs them:

No click, payment or recommendation turns a candidate into a right. Only a government's approval does.

4. Goals: three reasons a family builds a PassportFolio

Every PassportFolio starts with one of three goals: Plan B, Retire Abroad or Work Abroad. They map closely to the buckets goals-based wealth managers already use.

Goals-based wealth management, set out in work such as Ashvin Chhabra's “Beyond Markowitz” (2005), sorts wealth by purpose. One bucket protects the family from a personal shock. One maintains its lifestyle. One pursues its aspirations. Each bucket gets its own time horizon and its own tolerance for risk. A PassportFolio applies the same logic to rights instead of dollars.

Plan B is the largest goal, and the least understood

Most Americans who think about living abroad are not planning to leave. They want to know they could. A Plan B is any mobility asset that gives a family the right to live somewhere else, used only if and when they need it.

The strongest Plan B assets demand the least until they are used. Citizenship by descent is the clearest case: citizenship for life, often with no investment and no required time in the country. Investment-based residence and citizenship qualify too. So do inexpensive residence permits that need no presence and simply lapse if unused. Days a year in the country never rule out, lower or rank a Plan B option: the family is buying the option to apply, not committing to move. Each option simply states how many days it asks once it is used.

For a Plan B client, staying in the United States with a better-prepared set of alternatives is a successful outcome. Moving is a decision the family keeps.

Retire Abroad is a spending-plan goal

For retirees, the right mobility asset is the one that lets their income go further while keeping healthcare, family and lifestyle intact. Retirement options are residence options: passive-income and retiree visas, investment residence, citizenship by descent and citizenship by investment. Work, nomad and startup routes belong in a retiree's PassportFolio only if someone in the household is still working.

Here, required time in the country is not a drawback. A retiree who plans to live in Portugal is happy to spend most of the year there.

Work Abroad is about how the person earns

Work Abroad options must match the way someone actually earns. CitizensOS plans around five working situations, because each needs a different permission:

1. Remote employee of a U.S. or foreign employer
2. Freelancer or contractor with clients in several countries
3. Entrepreneur or business owner building or moving a company
4. Local job seeker who wants to be hired in the destination
5. Student or recent graduate studying abroad and staying to work

A digital nomad visa suits the first two and fails the fourth. A startup visa suits the third. Matching the permission to the work comes before choosing the country.

Families hold more than one goal

Most real households combine goals. A family with young children may want a Plan B today, better university options in ten years and a retirement choice in twenty-five. A PassportFolio can hold options serving different goals at once, the way a financial plan funds education, emergencies and retirement side by side. Section 6 explains how many options each goal needs.

5. Constraints: the household's policy statement

An investment policy statement records a client's objectives and the constraints that bound them: time horizon, liquidity, taxes, legal limits and unique circumstances. Mobility Match records the same things about where the family can live.

A destination can be appealing and still be wrong for a family. Three clients who all say “Portugal” may need three different rights: one wants a backup while staying in Boston, one wants to retire there in two years, and one wants to run a business there while a spouse keeps a U.S. job. The constraints, not the country, decide which mobility asset fits.

The constraint map

Two constraints that change everything

Dream destinations. The single most important answer in Mobility Match is where the family would most like to live, including any country they add themselves. Matching weights options in those countries first, then options in regions they prefer. A region the family rules out is never shown, however strong its programs are.

Income type. A household with $8,000 a month in salary and a household with $8,000 a month in pension income are not interchangeable. A retiree visa that counts pension income may not count wages, and a digital nomad visa that counts wages may not count investment income. Mobility Match checks the kind of income against each program's rule before calling anything a match.

What Mobility Match does not ask

It never asks for net worth or whether the family can afford a particular investment. Each option shows what it requires, and the family decides. It also does not predict whether a government will approve an application. Governments decide that. What CitizensOS can say with confidence is whether the household's stated facts meet the program's published criteria, and what evidence they will need to prove it.

The assessment itself

Mobility Match is free and takes about 50 questions across a family's goals, household, finances, ties abroad and preferences. It is long enough to produce a real recommendation and short enough to finish in one sitting. After a household buys its first options, a short “sharpen your plan” step collects the program-specific details that only matter once a choice is made.

6. Risk profile and the Target Residency Allocation

In a financial plan, the risk profile sets the strategic asset allocation. In a PassportFolio, it sets the Target Residency Allocation (TRA): how many primary options the family should prepare, which alternates back them up, and how much weight the U.S. home base keeps.

Three inputs, borrowed from financial planning

Together these set the TRA. A family worried about concentration in one country, with real capacity to prepare and a deadline, needs more independent options than a family that simply wants one credible door.

TRA profiles

The words mean something slightly different here than in investing. An aggressive investment profile takes more market risk. An aggressive TRA builds more alternatives, faster. It reflects a higher concern about depending on one country and the capacity to do more about it.

The home base stays central

A TRA never treats the United States as something to sell. U.S. citizenship is Layer 0: the first holding in every PassportFolio, shown at 100% in the member's Shortlist.

Home keeps 85%, 70% or 55% of the planning emphasis in a Conservative, Moderate or Aggressive plan; each primary carries 10% and each alternate 5%. The allocation below is an Aggressive plan: three primaries and three alternates. The percentages describe where the family's planning attention goes. They are not shares of citizenship, days abroad, invested capital or odds of approval.

The message to the client is simple: America remains the center of your life while you deliberately develop alternatives.

Primaries and alternates

A primary is an option the family is actively preparing because it serves the goal best. An alternate is the option it would turn to if a primary closed, changed or stopped fitting. Good alternates differ from their primary in what they depend on: another country, another way of qualifying, another time horizon. Section 7 shows how.

How options are ranked

Every matched option carries one headline number, Match. It blends how well the country fits the family (its priorities, the places it named and the climate it wants) with the option's Asset Value, which is its MAX score without the presence factor. The goal sets the blend. For a Plan B, Match = 0.30 × Country Match + 0.70 × Asset Value, because a backup is judged mostly on the right it delivers. For Retire Abroad and Work Abroad it is 0.70 × Country Match + 0.30 × Asset Value, because the family will live there. Nothing else adds to or multiplies the blend.

PassportFolio Advisory adds a deeper layer, Personal MAX, now being built. It answers six questions about each option, weighted by the household's own answers to the Advisory design brief:

Match is the number a family sorts by. Personal MAX is the profile an advisor discusses with them, the way a fund fact sheet sits behind a fund's rating. Qualification is not an axis: it is the gate, so an option the family does not qualify for never appears.

Recommended, confirmed, held

Three versions of the allocation exist, and the platform keeps them distinct:

1. Recommended allocation: what Mobility Match proposes, with its reasons.
2. Confirmed allocation: what the family chooses as its target, possibly after an advisor review.
3. Actual holdings: the rights the family can prove today.

The gap between the confirmed allocation and actual holdings is the work plan. Closing that gap is what the Execute stage does.

7. Portfolio construction: diversify by dependency, not by flag

In investing, ten stocks in one industry are not a diversified portfolio. Since Harry Markowitz's “Portfolio Selection” (1952), planners have known that diversification comes from holdings that do not move together. A PassportFolio follows the same rule: four flags that all depend on the same job are one bet, not four.

The hidden correlations

Mobility assets can fail together for reasons that have nothing to do with the country:

The fix is the one every advisor knows: add a holding whose risk is different. A second option qualified on savings, investment or ancestry adds more resilience than a third option qualified on the same job.

The six design tests

Every PassportFolio designed through PassportFolio Advisory passes six tests. Self-directed members can apply the same tests to their own Shortlist.

1. Every option in a different country. One government's decision never touches two of the family's options.
2. Doors in the parts of the world the family chooses. Europe, the Americas, Asia: as many regions as they ask for, and none they ruled out.
3. Something usable soon, something that lasts. A fast way out now and a citizenship for later, the way a bond ladder pairs short and long maturities.
4. More than one way of qualifying. Pension, work, savings, investment, family history: never all on one.
5. Everyone covered, no one ages out. Each program's age limit for children is checked against the children's birth years.
6. Within budget. Required investments stay within the amount the family names.

What the tests catch

These are the kinds of problems a list of good countries misses, drawn from CitizensOS sample designs:

Primaries follow preferences; alternates diversify

Primaries should follow what the family actually wants. If they love Europe, two European primaries are fine. Geographic diversification belongs mainly in the alternates, the way a core portfolio reflects the client's convictions and the satellites add what the core lacks.

The local services that make a right usable

A right to live somewhere is not yet a life there. Every PassportFolio designed through Advisory includes a second row of local services, picked from CitizensOS providers and free to add:

• Foreign banking, to pay and be paid outside the United States before it is needed
• Global health insurance that the destination accepts when the family applies
• An e-Residency company: an EU company run online, which does not itself give the right to live in Estonia

These are the supporting infrastructure, not mobility assets. They sit beside the options, the way cash management and insurance sit beside an investment portfolio.

8. Implementation and review

A financial plan is only as good as its implementation and its annual review. The same is true of a PassportFolio. The member journey has four stages, Explore, Assess, Build and Execute, and the last one is where options become usable.

Applying is a separate step the family takes when it is ready. Citizenship-by-descent claims can be handled through Heritage Passport, the CitizensOS citizenship-by-descent service. For other programs, the family applies directly or through its own immigration attorney.

The Country Plan: a plan for each option

Every purchased option comes with a Country Plan covering eligibility, costs, documents, tax, health and next steps. It is a live page, not a static PDF, so it can be shared with a spouse, an adult child or the family's advisor at any time.

PassVault: do the paperwork once

Most residence and citizenship applications ask for the same core evidence: passports, birth and marriage certificates, proof of income or funds, police certificates, health cover. PassVault stores that core file once, organized by category, and shows which options each document serves and what is still missing.

Reuse has limits. A country may want an apostille, a certified translation or a recently issued police certificate. PassVault makes those differences visible instead of pretending one upload works everywhere. Its practical value is a sentence every family wants to be able to say: “We know what we have, what each option still needs, and which tasks help more than one part of our plan.”

When to review the PassportFolio

Rebalancing a PassportFolio means checking it against two kinds of change: changes in the family and changes in the rules.

PassportFolio Advisory clients get a formal rebalance review every six months, which tells them what to keep, add or drop. Self-directed members can use the same checklist at their annual financial review.

What exercising looks like

Exercising is a decision, not an event the platform forces. A Plan B family may rebuy an option year after year without applying, because having the documents ready is the point. A retiring couple may exercise in month nine because their move date arrived. Either way, the family decides when, and the government decides the outcome.

9. How the option is priced

Every mobility asset option has its own public market price. A published formula sets it at launch, and real member demand moves it once a day after that. Prices are quoted to the cent and dated, and no two programs cost the same.

The structure will feel familiar to anyone who prices options. The option fee is the premium: small, known and final. Exercising is a separate decision, taken later and only if the family wants the right. In the product's own words: a call option on life abroad, a hedge against having all your options in the U.S.

Buy, exercise or expire, rebuy

Government fees, required investments and independent attorneys are always separate, and paid to them directly. CitizensOS accepts no compensation of any kind from immigration attorneys or law firms. The optional 30-day Planning Pass ($50 once) is a separate payment and isn't credited toward a PassportFolio. Buying a PassportFolio includes 12 months of Global Citizen membership.

The launch price: what the asset is worth

Every option starts at (Country Value + MAX) × $0.50 a point. Both scores run from 0 to 100, so no option starts above $100.

• MAX scores the program out of 100: Rights 40 (ten rights, four points each), Settlement reach 10 (how many countries its citizenship lets you live in) and Program 50 (no investment required 8, stability 10, days a year 8, length of the status granted 12, apply online 4, passport power 8).
• Country Value scores the destination out of 100: half its global rank as a destination for migrants, half the average of six indicators (peacefulness, internet freedom, low violent crime, cost of living, state stability and economic freedom).

A residence route in a country with a Country Value of 80 and a MAX of 70 launches at (80 + 70) × $0.50 = $75.00. On 23 October 2026 the catalog's 430 options ran from about $14 to $89, with a median of about $54. The MAX method and every input are published with the MAX Index; a change to the method resets every price to its new launch price.

The market price: what members want

After launch, demand moves each price once a day, by at most 1% either way, toward a target set by the last 28 days of activity. Demand D counts 10 points for each paid purchase, 2 for each shared option opened by someone else and 1 for each watchlist add, with each member counted once per asset. B is the asset's current Country Value plus MAX, in dollars:

\text{Target} = \max\left(0,\; B \times \left[1 + 0.1 \times \ln\frac{1 + D}{11}\right]\right)

Ten demand points, about one purchase in four weeks, is neutral. Less demand drifts the price down; more drifts it up, gently.

A rise needs at least three different members; a fall does not. There is no ceiling and no floor other than zero, no scarcity pricing and no countdowns, and staff and test accounts never count. The price tells an advisor two honest things at a glance: what the program is worth on a public scale, and how much other families want it.

What the price buys, and what it does not

An option buys 12 months of preparation for one program: its Country Plan and ten-step plan, document preparation in PassVault, program-change alerts, a certificate and Program Change Protection. It does not buy immigration status, approval, a place in a government queue, or today's government fees and investment thresholds frozen for later. It never bills automatically. When it expires, the family's documents stay in PassVault.

Exercising: Activation and the success fee

Exercising an option means applying for the right. A family can apply on its own or through an independent attorney. CitizensOS adds a third way, Activation: 12 months of CitizensOS application support for an option the family owns. Its terms are set out in the CitizensOS Terms of Service.

• Optional and paid up front. Nothing obliges a family to activate.
• Priced on the day. The activation fee is the asset's live market price on the day the family activates. Owning the option never locks that price.
• Official denial. If the government formally denies an activated application, CitizensOS refunds the activation fee in full and forgoes its success fee. The option fee stays earned, because the planning and preparation were delivered.
• Success fee. Charged only if the government approves. Its amount is provisionally the government's application-processing fee at filing.

10. The economics: three amounts that must stay separate

The financial case for a PassportFolio rests on keeping three amounts apart. Blur them and the conversation turns into either “this costs half a million euros” or “this will save you a fortune.” Neither is true.

The preparation budget is small by design

A household building its own PassportFolio pays for each option it chooses to prepare, and the purchase includes 12 months of Global Citizen membership. At the catalog's median option price of about $54 (23 October 2026), a five-option PassportFolio comes to roughly $270 in its first year.

For context, a household paying a 1% advisory fee on a $1 million portfolio pays $10,000 a year. A full self-built PassportFolio costs about 5% of one year's fee. PassportFolio Advisory costs $2,500 for the design plus $500 for each six-month rebalance review, so $3,500 in the first year, with options bought separately. It starts with a free design brief of about 20 to 25 questions, before any payment.

Small, staged spending before large commitments

The preparation budget buys information before the family commits capital. That sequence is the core idea of real-options thinking in corporate finance, developed in work such as Dixit and Pindyck's Investment under Uncertainty (1994). When a decision is expensive and hard to reverse, keeping the option to wait, learn and then act has value of its own.

A sensible sequence looks like this:

1. Understand which mobility assets the family could qualify for.
2. Compare the ones that fit, side by side.
3. Buy options on the few worth preparing.
4. Gather documents and resolve the open questions.
5. Only then decide whether to spend on applications, attorneys, investments or a move.

Each step answers the questions the next one needs. A family can stop at step 4 for years and still be far better placed than one that never started.

Existing circumstances come first

Before any investment program is considered, a family should know what it may already have: a claim by descent, a spouse's citizenship, income that qualifies on its own. Mobility Match asks about ancestry but never scores descent against other options; a possible claim goes to Heritage Passport, the CitizensOS platform for citizenship by descent. An Irish-born grandparent, for example, can open Irish and therefore EU citizenship through the Foreign Births Register at a small fraction of the cost of an investment route. Discovering that changes what a family investigates first.

Goal economics: where the real money is

The preparation budget is small; the goal economics can be large. Two patterns recur.

Retirement spending. The amount a portfolio must fund each year is spending minus other income. If a different place lowers spending, the required withdrawal falls by the same dollar amount, and as a percentage it falls even more.

An $18,000 cut in spending lowers the required withdrawal by 43%. Taxes, healthcare, travel home, currency and any second home must be counted before the comparison means anything. Case study D does that for a real decision.

Education and careers. University fees in Europe often depend on a student's citizenship and where they have lived, not only on the university. A child with EU citizenship can, in many countries, pay the domestic rate and work anywhere in the EU after graduating. Case study B shows the conditions, which matter as much as the headline.

What a PassportFolio does not claim

It does not promise savings. Its economic value shows up as specific changes in the plan: a lower required withdrawal, a lower tuition bill, a career that can go to more places, or a family that can act quickly when it needs to. Each of those has to be modeled with the household's own numbers.

11. Bringing PassportFolio into an advisory practice

Advisors don't need to become immigration experts to add geography to the plan. They need a credible way to help clients see their options, make decisions and track progress. That is the role PassportFolio plays. Trust & Will helped bring estate planning into the advisor's toolkit; PassportFolio brings international residency planning into the same conversation. This is a comparison of planning conversations, not a partnership or endorsement.

The opening line

“We already plan for what your money should support. Let's also look at where those goals could be pursued, and whether preparing a few options makes the whole plan stronger.”

It works because it doesn't ask the client to want to move. It asks them to plan.

Five questions to add to the fact-find

1. Was either of you, or any of your parents or grandparents, born outside the United States?
2. Have you ever thought about living abroad, whether to retire, to work, or just to have a backup?
3. If you could live anywhere for a year, where would it be?
4. Do any of your children hope to study or work abroad?
5. How many days a year could you realistically spend outside the country?

Any “yes” or any named country is a reason to invite the client to take Mobility Match.

How the work divides

Client consent is built in. Advisors see only what clients choose to share, and clients can stop sharing at any time. CitizensOS pays no referral fees or advisor commissions, so the recommendation stays clean.

Where it fits in the planning cycle

Ways to offer it

Under every plan, clients pay for their own mobility asset options. A guided review is a separate $250 service unless it is included in Concierge. Families who want the whole design done for them can choose PassportFolio Advisory.

Who does what in the wider team

Three things to avoid

1. Promising outcomes. Governments decide applications. Talk about options, preparation and timing, never approval.
2. Mixing up the option and the investment. A golden visa's qualifying investment is a separate decision that belongs in the financial plan on its own merits.
3. Forgetting the home base. For most clients the goal is a stronger life in America with credible alternatives, not an exit.

12. Questions clients and advisors ask

Do we have to decide to move? No. Most families build a PassportFolio precisely so they don't have to decide now. Preparing an option and moving are separate decisions, years apart if the family wants.

Does buying an option give us residency or citizenship? No. A mobility asset option is 12 months of planning and preparation for one program. The right itself comes from the government, after the family applies and is approved.

Why 12 months? Rules, prices and family circumstances change. Twelve months is long enough to gather documents and decide, and short enough to keep the plan current. During the term the family can exercise the option. At the end it expires, and the family can buy a new one at that day's market price.

Why do option prices change? Each price starts from the published formula, then follows real demand by at most 1% a day. Section 9 sets out the method.

What if the program changes during the option's 12 months? Program Change Protection covers formally adopted government changes during the term: a closure, an eligibility change that means the family no longer qualifies on the facts it disclosed, higher government fees or a higher minimum investment. Routine annual indexation, such as a threshold tied to a minimum wage, is excluded. The family chooses a refund of the option fee or a credit toward another option.

Is this only for wealthy families? No. Many strong mobility assets need no investment at all: citizenship by descent, retiree visas that need income rather than capital, and work permits. Investment routes are one category among seven layers.

Is Match the chance we'll be approved? No. Match measures fit, not approval. CitizensOS checks the family's stated facts against each program's published criteria and shows what evidence they will need. Governments decide applications.

If we move abroad, do we stop paying U.S. taxes? No. The United States taxes its citizens on worldwide income wherever they live. Some earned income can be excluded and foreign taxes can often be credited, but filing continues. Each Country Plan covers the destination's tax rules, and a move should be planned with a cross-border tax professional.

Can our children be included? Often, but every program sets its own age limits and conditions for dependents. With PassportFolio Advisory, we check each program's limit against the children's birth years, so a child isn't left out the year before they would have needed it.

We may have an ancestor born abroad. Where do we start? Mobility Match asks. If a parent or grandparent was born in a country that grants citizenship by descent, Heritage Passport checks whether the family can claim it and prepares the application.

Can we own options in several countries? Yes. Owning several options gives the family alternatives; it doesn't require moving to several places. A family can exercise one, several or none.

What does my advisor see? Only what the client chooses to share, and the client can stop sharing at any time.

How is the advisor paid? CitizensOS pays no referral fees or commissions. Advisors who want to include PassportFolio in their service can provide access through the Practice or Concierge plans; clients always buy their own options.

Appendix

A. Mobility Match mapped to the investment profile

FINRA's suitability rule (Rule 2111) and the SEC's Regulation Best Interest ask firms to understand a customer's investment profile before recommending anything. Mobility Match gathers the equivalent profile for residency planning.

B. Glossary

Sources

All pages accessed 23 October 2026. Program rules change; each case study states the date its facts were checked.

CitizensOS

• How it works · PassportFolio · PassportFolio Advisory · For advisors · Terms of Service, sections 4.8–4.9
• Mobility Assets (paper, web edition 0.5) · The MAX Index, 2nd edition · Mobility assets catalog and live prices

Financial-planning standards and research

• CFP Board: the financial planning process
• FINRA Rule 2111 (suitability) · SEC Regulation Best Interest, 17 CFR 240.15l-1
• CFA Institute: Elements of an Investment Policy Statement for Individual Investors (2010)
• Chhabra, “Beyond Markowitz,” Journal of Wealth Management (2005), summarized by CFA Institute · Das, Markowitz, Scheid and Statman (2010) · Brunel, Goals-Based Wealth Management (2015)
• Markowitz, Nobel lecture (1990) · SEC: asset allocation, diversification and rebalancing · Vanguard: rebalancing frequency
• Pindyck, Irreversibility, Uncertainty, and Investment (NBER, 1990) · Dixit and Pindyck, Investment under Uncertainty (1994)

Demand and market

• Harris Poll, American Expats Survey (Feb 2025) · Gallup, Nov 2025
• FVAP Overseas Citizen Population Analysis (2022) · AARO estimate (2023)
• Henley & Partners, USA Wealth Report 2025 · Henley, residence and citizenship diversification as wealth planning (2026) · IMI Executive Survey 2025
• CFP Board, 2025 professional count · BLS, personal financial advisors · IAA Investment Adviser Industry Snapshot 2026

U.S. tax, Medicare and Social Security

• IRS: U.S. citizens abroad · IRS: 2026 inflation adjustments (FEIE $132,900) · IRS: physical presence test · IRS: FBAR · IRS: self-employment tax abroad
• U.S.–Portugal tax treaty · U.S.–Spain tax treaty · U.S.–Mexico tax treaty
• CMS: 2026 Medicare Part B premium · Medicare: late-enrollment penalties · SSA: payments outside the U.S.
• Illinois Department of Revenue: retirement income · Lincoln Institute, 50-State Property Tax Comparison (2026) · Florida DOR homestead exemption (PT-113) · Florida Realtors: 2026 property tax amendment · BEA regional price parities via FRED · Massachusetts tax rates

Programs in the case studies

• Ireland: Foreign Births Register · Irish associations guidance · Higher Education Authority: free fees
• Portugal: Organic Law 1/2026 (nationality) · Means of subsistence for national visas · IFICI regulation (Portaria 352/2024/1) · University of Lisbon fees 2026
• Spain: Non-lucrative visa (Washington consulate) · End of the golden visa
• Italy: Elective residence (Boston consulate) · Citizenship law, consolidated text
• Netherlands: IND fees · DUO statutory tuition fee · France: university fees 2026–27
• UAE: Dubai virtual work residence · UAE Golden Visa · Kazakhstan: investor visa
• Mexico: temporary residence, San Diego consulate · Panama: Pensionado requirements
• Greece golden visa (thresholds and children's ages): IBA, 2026 · Costa Rica Pensionado and Rentista: Migronis · Malta 2027 changes: CSB Group on Mondaq, July 2026 · Paraguay investor residence: Fragomen, May 2026 · Paraguay nationality and dual nationality: Constitution, arts. 148–149
• U.S. universities: Stanford cost of attendance 2026–27 · University of California cost of attendance
• Cost of living (crowd-sourced): Numbeo · Expatistan