When a new client sits down with me, one of the first questions is almost always the same: what does a Plan B cost? And they ask it the way you would ask about a watch or a car. One number. Pay it, own it, done.
That is the wrong frame, and it is the reason so many Plan Bs fail. After two decades of advising clients through my firm (in the UK since 2006, in the US since 2008), I can tell you that the people whose structures survive are not the ones who spent the most up front. They are the ones who understood, from day one, that a Plan B is a subscription. It has a monthly bill. The bill arrives whether you are paying attention or not, and if you stop paying it, the service gets cancelled. Quietly, without a warning email.
So let me do something I have not seen done honestly very often: put an approximate monthly price tag on the whole thing, tier by tier. One caveat before we start. These are orders of magnitude drawn from my own client work, not quotes. Your numbers will differ by country, by family size, and by how much of the work you do yourself. Where I cite a hard figure, it is verified. Everything else is advisory experience, and I will label it as such.
Tier 1: The Paper Foundation
This is the entry level, and it is where I tell most people to start. It consists of three things: a second bank account outside your home country, a properly legalised set of your core documents, and the initial advice that tells you which direction to build in.
The second account abroad is the piece people underestimate most, because in the age of CRS and automatic exchange it is not about secrecy. It is about operational independence: a card that works and a balance that exists outside your home banking system if that system ever has a bad week. Many workable options cost little or nothing in monthly fees; the real cost was the effort of opening it.
The document set is pure admin, and it is cheap. Birth certificates, marriage certificate, degree, police clearance, all apostilled so that a foreign authority will accept them. In the UK, the official legalisation fee is currently £45 per document for the standard paper apostille, or £35 for an e-apostille. Call it a few hundred pounds for a family's full set, done once, refreshed occasionally because police certificates age quickly.
Then there is advice. A few focused hours with someone who does this professionally, so you stop planning from YouTube. Amortise the one-off items and the advisory hours over a couple of years and, in my experience, Tier 1 lands somewhere in the low double digits per month. Tens of euros. Less than most families spend on streaming services. There is no financial excuse for not having this tier, and I have written before about what a complete build actually looks like when you extend it.
What Tier 1 buys you is optionality, not protection. It is the foundation of a house, not the house.
Tier 2: Keeping a Real Residency Warm
This is the tier that separates a Plan B from a filing cabinet. Here you actually acquire and maintain a residence permit in another country, and this is where the subscription becomes unmistakable, because a residency you do not maintain is not a residency. It is a story you tell yourself.
The recurring costs come in three buckets: presence trips (flights, hotels, the days you must physically show up), housing substance (a lease or address that is real enough to survive scrutiny), and compliance (tax filings and registrations in two countries instead of one). In my experience the total runs from the mid three figures to comfortably four figures per month, and the spread depends almost entirely on which country you picked. Three examples from my own practice illustrate the range.
Paraguay is the budget end. Taxation is territorial: Paraguayan tax applies to Paraguayan-source income, so a resident whose income arises abroad typically has little or no local tax exposure, and correspondingly light local filing obligations. Presence expectations are modest, housing substance is inexpensive, and professional fees on the ground are low. The catch is the flight: getting to Asunción from Europe is neither quick nor cheap, and those trips are the largest single line item. Amortised over a year, my clients tend to land in the mid three figures per month. I have written an honest guide to Paraguay residency covering what the programme does and does not require these days, because it has tightened.
Malta is the mid to upper band. The tax framework is genuinely attractive: as a resident non-dom you are taxed on Maltese income and on foreign income only if remitted, while foreign capital gains stay outside Maltese tax even when remitted. But Malta expects substance. A year-round lease is the dominant cost, and Maltese rents have not been cheap for years. On top of that sits the minimum tax of EUR 5,000 per year that applies to resident non-doms with foreign income of at least EUR 35,000, plus proper Maltese filings and the advisory fees that go with them. Count the lease, the minimum tax and compliance together and you are realistically in four figures per month. For the right profile it is worth every cent, as I have argued in my Malta assessment and throughout my writing on the remittance basis regime.
The UAE is the deceptive one. No personal income tax filings, which sounds like zero maintenance. But the standard residence visa comes with a hard presence clock: stay outside the UAE beyond the permitted period, generally six months, and the visa can lapse, with longer absences tolerated only for specific categories such as Golden Visa holders. So the subscription here is paid in flights and in Dubai prices: the trips you must make, the accommodation that costs real money every time, and an Emirates ID and visa cycle that needs renewing. Clients who keep Dubai warm without living there tend to spend four figures per month once everything is counted honestly. My honest guide to Dubai goes into what the brochure versions leave out.
Notice what drives the spread: not government fees, which are trivial in all three cases, but substance. The more credible your residency needs to be against your home country's tax authority, the more the subscription costs. That is not a bug. That is the product.
Tier 3: The Full Build-Out
Tier 3 is where the Plan B stops being a contingency and becomes a parallel life. A second home you actually own or hold on a long lease. A family that can genuinely move: schools scoped, healthcare arranged, the spouse on board (this last item is not a cost line, but it decides everything). Often a company structure in the new jurisdiction, with real substance, real accounting, and real directors, because a letterbox structure falls apart precisely when you need it. Sometimes a second citizenship on top, which is its own budget line entirely; the landscape of those programmes is a specialty of our Plan B Projekt site.
I will not pretend there is a standard number here, because at this tier no two clients look alike. What I can say from experience: the monthly run rate is four figures at minimum, and for families with property, school fees and a corporate structure it moves into five. Anyone who tells you a full build-out is cheap is selling you flag theory from a hammock.
The Hidden Line Items
Whatever tier you are on, four costs get forgotten in nearly every budget I review.
Double health insurance. Your home system rarely travels with you, and the new country usually demands proof of cover before it grants the permit. Most of my two-country clients carry an international private policy alongside whatever they keep at home. It is one of the larger recurring items and almost nobody budgets it.
Flights beyond the plan. Presence trips you can schedule. The funeral, the signature that must be given in person, the renewal appointment that cannot be moved: those you cannot. Every serious Plan B budget needs an unplanned-travel reserve.
Bookkeeping in stereo. Two countries means two sets of records, two filing calendars, and an adviser in each who ideally talk to each other. The fees are one thing; the coordination overhead is the real cost.
Your own time. The largest line item on the whole invoice, and the only one that never appears on an invoice. Renewals, appointments, day counting, document refreshes. If your hourly rate is meaningful, the honest monthly cost of your Plan B is higher than anything above. Budget the time or you will pay it as stress.
What Costs Nothing Except Discipline
Now the good news, because there is some. The two things that most often decide whether a structure survives an audit or a border question cost exactly zero.
The first is documentation. A folder, digital or paper, that holds your day counts, boarding passes, lease agreements, utility bills, and filing confirmations. When your home country asks where you really live (and if you have done this properly, one day it will, as anyone who has dealt with an exit tax review can confirm), the client with the folder has a conversation and the client without it has a problem. Building that folder costs nothing but the habit.
The second is deadlines. Visa renewal windows, tax filing dates, permit conditions. Missing them costs money, sometimes the whole structure. Meeting them costs a calendar and the discipline to look at it. I have watched a seven-figure structure and years of work devalue badly because someone treated a renewal window as a suggestion. The subscription does not just take your money. It takes your attention, monthly, and attention is the part that cannot be delegated entirely, however good your advisers are.
The Point
Add it up. Tens of euros a month for the paper foundation. Mid three figures to four figures for a residency kept genuinely warm. More for the full parallel life. Plus insurance, flights, accounting, and your own hours.
Is that a lot? Compared to a Netflix subscription, yes. Compared to what it insures (your financial independence, your mobility, your family's options in a decade that keeps demonstrating why options matter), it is one of the cheapest insurance policies available to anyone with something to lose.
But you have to see it for what it is. A Plan B is not a certificate you buy once and frame. It is a living arrangement between you and another country, and living arrangements need feeding. If the monthly bill I have described makes you flinch, then be honest with yourself: what you want is not a Plan B. It is the feeling of having one, and that feeling will evaporate at exactly the moment you reach for it.
A plan you fund monthly is a plan. A plan you funded once, in a burst of motivation two years ago, is a fantasy with a start date.
Work with Sebastian
If you want the real monthly number for your situation, not the brochure version, that is what a first conversation is for. We will look at your countries, your family, and your budget, and build a subscription you will actually keep paying. Book a consultation.
