@pkout "I understand the risk of a margin call" No it doesn't appear that you do.

@pkout "There must be some other catch" - The 'catch' is that gambling is risky.

Regarding the loans - penalty fees for early payment, where allowed by law, are one way that banks attempt to limit the risk associated with longer-term loans being paid early based on market interest rate changes that happen after the loan is first offered.

Great answer; budgeting, simple tax awareness, pragmatic investment suggestion, and avoidance of scam / gambling "investment" cons.

That last sentence is huge. This is a recipe for disaster. Lack of details from OP indicates to me that this is being done to avoid "something" though it's not clear what. An insufficiently documented transaction is very hard to dispute legally, down the line, if the relationship breaks down.

It seems pretty likely that this is being done to avoid some type of tax or transfer fee or whatever. Proceeds from a house are surely worthwhile enough to set up a direct bank account for. Yes it is quite likely to be flagged if reviewed in any context, that money went to someone it shouldn't have.

"You can figure out ways to reduce the cost" Yes that would be the answer; just like the price of wine is given as an average, so too the costs must be listed at an average.

Also - I would consider the difficulty of filing taxes less-than-trivial, compared with the actual difficulty of farming. Even if you are already a farmer, surely there is a greater difficulty in farming a completely new climate and country, vs filing taxes (something that even if you paid a professional to do it, is a trivial business expense when compared with farming, which is notoriously capital-intensive).

I understand the desire to keep things simple, but this is omitting the (financially much more significant) question of which tax rates are higher. Without knowing these countries in particular, I would say it's pretty difficult to have a more administratively cumbersome tax administration system than the US.

@JonathanLeslie It says "Up to" because it is a sliding scale of inclusion; earning $1 above the threshold doesn't make 85% of your benefits taxable; as your combined AGI goes up, the taxable amount goes up as well, up to the cap of 85%.

I don't understand what you mean by 'expenses'. I understand that there is cash coming in and out of multiple accounts, but that's different than "expenses" which are actual amounts paid during the month. Typically, you would track expenses against a budget of what you planned to spend. If you don't have specific decisions to make based on all this reporting, it might just be naval-gazing. For example - you mention stocks going up and down as impacting your expense tracking, in the last 2 sentences. These things are unrelated.

Why do you need to track your net worth so closely? If you let go of the need to have this information, it seems you would lose some administrative stress, as well.

@StackExchangeSupportsIsrael No. "Lowest it will ever be" = "the price only goes up". "Generally rises over time" = "there will be ups and downs, but if you hold long enough, the value of the stock market rises".

"There was no upsell in terms of financial products" - Are you sure about that? Seems to me like they are discouraging you from self-management, but being overly conservative about your expected returns.

Your question seems identical to the one asked, except the other person is a friend, instead of your mother. What am I missing?

A decade is a long time, politically. If the discount you are to receive is based on government intervention of some form [and not directly within the contract you signed for the loan itself], then between now and 10-20 years from now, is it possible that a new government might destroy the planned discount you would be relying on? If there is any risk of the discount disappearing, that would be a point in favor of not relying on it [and therefore, pay off just the higher interest loan first, even thought a potential discount exists].