If Christopher Columbus had owned a copy of the new book, “La Hoja de Ruta Fiscal y Financiera para los españoles en EE.UU.”, he might have stayed in the New World instead of sailing back to Spain. That’s because this book provides relevant information any Spaniard can use in adapting to financial life in the United States. In fact, in English its title is: “The Fiscal and Financial Guidebook for Spaniards in the U.S.”
The book explains the intriguing ways that rules, financial institutions, and taxes in Spain and the United States differ. But the book doesn’t stop there: it reveals how finances in the U.S. really work. Whether a Spaniard has lived in the United States for many years or has recently arrived, this book can help them navigate the complex American financial landscape.
The author is Peter Dougherty, an American financial planner at BISSAN Wealth Management, the leading financial planning firm in Spain. Thanks to his twenty-year career working on Wall Street in New York, Mr. Dougherty has a flair for painting a visual picture with his words of how the financial world works. This ability can be particularly useful to Spaniards in the United States as they face a financial and tax paradigm different than the one to which they are accustomed. Dougherty also draws upon his experience at BISSAN assisting English-speakers in understanding Spain’s tax and finance rules. This one-of-akind combination of experiences helps to make La Hoja de Ruta a practical and useful guide for every Spaniard living in the U.S.
Yet while some specifics in the new book are aimed at assisting Spaniards in particular, much of it is useful to any Spanish-speaker who’s trying to make sense of finances in the United States. It’s written, after all, by an expert in how American and Spanish financial rules sometimes — but not often – fit together. If you speak Spanish, it’s a “must have” for your bookshelf.
