Ben moved from New Zealand to Belgium six years ago to work as a lawyer. He stayed. He married a Belgian, bought a house in Antwerp, built his career here.
But there's one thing being an expat in Europe quietly takes from you: a coherent pension.
As an expat, the likelihood that I have a solid pension plan in any country is basically zero.
So he's building one himself.
The plan: hang it up at 50
Ben's primary Curvo portfolio is, in his own words, his retirement.
I'm trying my best to prepare for that eventuality. The goal is, maybe by 50, to start to think about hanging up my hat in high-intensity work and move towards something more personally fulfilling but less financially rewarding.
That horizon shapes how he invests: long-term, balanced, automated. He doesn't want to think about it.
Thinking about strategy? Almost never.
Two portfolios, two goals
His retirement isn't the only money parked on Curvo. There's a second portfolio for a more recent milestone.
Off the back of our wedding, we got a bunch of gifts. We had nowhere to put them. We have no specific goal for them just yet. So we just dropped them into Curvo.
He chose a slightly more conservative profile for the wedding fund. "A holding place for a bit of money that didn't have anything else to do with."
The retirement money compounds for two decades. The wedding fund waits a year or two. Same platform, different settings. Another member does it across a whole family: Sam's three teenagers each have two accounts, one they run themselves and one he manages for their retirement.
Belgian tax, without becoming a tax lawyer
For a New Zealand-trained lawyer who doesn't specialise in tax, the Belgian system was a wall.
Belgian taxes can be confused. And I have my own company, which makes it much more difficult to invest. There's a lot of tax complexity on my end.
His accountant handles the filings. Curvo just makes sure the numbers are clean enough to hand over.
Being able to just throw the stuff over the fence and let the accountant deal with it is much better.
How the money actually flows
His income setup is typical for Belgian lawyers but tricky for regular investing:
- A monthly director's salary
- A single annual dividend
Curvo handles both rhythms. "There's enough left over from the salary that can be put into Curvo on a monthly basis, just to keep things ticking over. Then once a year there's also more substantial payments."
What he tells other expats
Ben recommends Curvo often, especially to friends in his situation: international, busy, sceptical of complicated investing. That preference has a history: the robo-investor search that brought him to Curvo began with a job that made every individual trade a two-day wait.
I'm a bit of an evangelical. I tend to describe it as a robo-investor platform. Like a bank account where you deposit money and it takes care of the investment piece.
For an expat with no national pension waiting at the end of the road, that's exactly the kind of system you need:
Set and forget. That's what I'm after.
You might be wondering
Can you build your own pension as an expat?
For Ben, that's the whole point. He has no national pension to count on in New Zealand or Belgium, so his main Curvo portfolio is his retirement plan. The goal is to step back from high-intensity work by 50. "As an expat, the likelihood that I have a solid pension plan in any country is basically zero."
How do you invest when your income is uneven?
Ben's income is a monthly director's salary plus one annual dividend. Curvo takes both: an automatic monthly plan runs in the background, and he adds a larger deposit once a year when the dividend lands. He invests at two rhythms without changing a thing.
Can you run more than one portfolio for different goals?
Yes. Ben has two. One is his long-term retirement money. The other is a more conservative portfolio for wedding gifts he hasn't earmarked yet. Same platform, different risk settings.