The Bougie Expats
Welcome to The Bougie Expat Podcast, a show for Black women over 40 who are ready to imagine a different kind of life abroad.
Hosted by Sable, your bougie girlfriend, this podcast speaks to the woman who has spent years showing up for everyone else — family, friends, work, and responsibilities — and is now asking, “What do I want my next season to look like?”
Through honest conversations and lived experience, Sable shares what it really takes to relocate abroad with clarity, confidence, and intention. Having lived and worked in more than seven countries across four continents, she brings real insight into the emotional, financial, and practical side of building a life overseas.
Each episode will cover topics like relocating abroad, planning your money, managing fear, leaving behind familiar routines, building a clear vision, and creating a life where you are thriving instead of simply getting by.
If you have been quietly thinking about moving abroad, starting fresh, or choosing yourself in this next chapter, this podcast is for you.
Subscribe to The Bougie Expat Podcast and join Sable for conversations about freedom, relocation, reinvention, and living abroad with purpose.
The Bougie Expats
Ep 7: Why Your Passport Could Be Denied Before You Move Abroad
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You're ready to move abroad. Your bags are packed, your passport is in hand, and you're dreaming about your new life overseas. But what if your relocation plans come to a sudden stop because of debt you thought you could deal with later?
In this episode of The Bougie Expat Podcast, Sable discusses one of the most overlooked financial realities of international relocation: the debts that can prevent you from leaving the United States or even cause your passport to be denied or revoked.
While many relocation conversations focus on the cost of living, housing, visas, and savings, few people talk about outstanding financial obligations that can quietly derail your plans. Sable explains how unresolved IRS debt, unpaid child support, and unpaid government repatriation loans can affect your ability to travel internationally.
She also shares practical steps to help you identify potential issues before they become last minute surprises, why financial and legal wellness are essential parts of relocation planning, and how addressing these obligations early can help you move abroad with greater confidence and peace of mind.
This episode is for Black women over 40 who are planning an international move, preparing for retirement overseas, or creating a relocation strategy that includes financial freedom, legal readiness, and long term peace of mind.
In This Episode
- Why debt deserves a place in every relocation plan
- The difference between financial readiness and financial freedom
- How certain debts can affect your passport status
- Understanding IRS tax debt and passport certification
- Why unpaid child support can delay or prevent international travel
- How unpaid government repatriation loans can impact future travel
- The difference between passport denial, revocation, and renewal restrictions
- Why checking your IRS account should be part of your relocation checklist
- How to resolve financial obligations before relocating abroad
- Why legal and financial wellness are just as important as visas and passports
- How unresolved debt can affect travel even after you've already moved abroad
- Practical steps to protect your relocation plans from unexpected financial setbacks
Thank you for listening to The Bougie Expat Podcast.
If this episode spoke to you, subscribe to the podcast and share it with another Black woman over 40 who has been thinking about relocating abroad, retiring overseas, or designing a new chapter with more freedom, peace, and intention.
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So I want to talk to you about today of how not having your financial with a clean sleep or even just intact can stop you from going. You can have your passport in hand, your bags packed, and you may not be able to leave this country. Not because you're a criminal, not because you have a criminal record, but because you owe some money. Some money that you did not take care of. And for a lot of us, sometimes we owe this money and we know, but we've been ignoring it. We're like, oh, I'll get to it. Oh, I'm gonna get to it. And you never get to it. And now the day has come, whether you get to it or not, it is caught up with you. And so I'm gonna talk about three things. Three things that you need to make sure you do not have dangling over your head. Because if you do, your passport can be denied or revoked. And you don't want that to happen. She's done waiting. She's done shrinking, and she's done building empires in rooms that were never designed for her. This is the Bougie Expat, the podcast for black women over 40 who are ready to reinvent their lives, rebuild their income, and relocate with intention. If you're done settling in corporate, tired of environments that no longer feel aligned, or quietly planning your next move, you are in the right place. Hosted by Stable, live from Panama City, Panama. Seven countries, four continents, one move she made in five months flat. Income strategies, exit plans, a life designed to actually fit you without starting over broke. Let's get into it. You know, I want to talk today about money because this is something I hear a lot of conversations. It's probably one of the biggest questions I get all the time as people are coming in to the different uh sessions we have and clients. It's always the money is on our mind. But the questions are usually around how much can I need to make? What's the cost of living? What does housing look like? What is the food of cost? Blah, blah, blah. How much do I save? All those kinds of things. How much does it cost a shit? But what we don't really talk about is the debts that we have. Because there are still a lot of people who are moving who have debt. Credit card debt, mortgages, student loans, all the things, right? And yeah, you can still move and have debt. And hopefully, you're not running from your debt, you're just relocating yourself and understanding you still have a financial obligation. And for the most part, your credit card companies, they're not gonna hunt you down in another country, they're not gonna look for you. So I want to talk to you about today of how not having your financial with a clean sleep or even just intact can stop you from going. You can have your passport in hand, your bags packed, and you may not be able to leave this country. Not because you're a criminal, not because you have a criminal record, but because you owe some money, some money that you did not take care of. We're like, oh, I'll get to it. Oh, I'm gonna get to it, and you never get to it. And now the day has come, whether you get to it or not, it is caught up with you. And so I'm gonna talk about three things. Three things that you need to make sure you do not have dangling over your head, because if you do, your passport can be denied or revoked. And you don't want that to happen. Come on now, we're leaving because we're looking for freedom. You don't want your freedom to be snatched away. So let's get into it. I'm saving your bougie girlfriend, and I'm gonna give it to you just the way I learned it. Passport denials. This happens when perhaps you have a passport and all of a sudden you can't get it renewed, or you can't get a new passport because you have been denied access to having a passport, or you can get your passport revoked, which simply means that, yeah, I have a passport in my hand, it is absolutely valid for another three years or whatever, but it's been canceled or limited on where I can go in it or even taking away from me. And this is happening on a daily basis. This is not happening. I'm not talking about criminals. If you're a criminal, you got a warrant out for your arrest, hey, you know you can't go anywhere. That's not who I'm talking about. I'm talking about law-abiding citizens who actually have debt that they have not cleared. And the first one I want to talk to you about is your IRS debt. Owing money in taxes, back taxes, penalties, and interest. You, if you are owing money to the IRS of the tune of $64,000 or more, you have already gotten a letter that your debt has been certified to the State Department. Now, you probably didn't pay attention to it, you didn't even understand what it meant, but it really does mean something serious. If you are owing $64,000 or more and you have no kind of payment plan, you have not been paying, you're not calling them, you're not answering them, they have sent you a letter, they have tried to put a lien on your account, they have tried to get their money and they can't get it from you. They have certified your debt and told the State Department to not allow your passport to be valid. You can't renew it. And yeah, they may even probably have already revoked it from you. And so if this is you, I want you to call the IRS. I mean, this is not something that's gonna like stop you forever and ever, but you got to take care of it before you leave. You're not gonna be able to leave. So it's not even a choice of, oh, I'll get to no, you can't leave without taking care of it. So call the IRS and get a payment plan or pay the thing off. I mean, some of you sold your houses, so pay the thing off, whatever it is. But you can't think that you're not gonna attend to this and not go anywhere. You're not gonna be able to go anywhere. So you're gonna have to get that paid. And so you're gonna have to be on a good payment plan and you're gonna have to show goodwill that you're gonna play this plan because they're gonna wonder, are you gonna make one payment and then re-lift it and you're gonna run out of the country? So the IRS debt is one. The second one, if you owe money on child support, and I hear all the stories about I'm tired of paying all that money, they're not even using for the child, they're using it for everything else. I don't know what they're using their money for. I'm not getting into that conversation with you, but the conversation I want to have with you is please go ahead and pay that because if you didn't, you can't go anywhere. That is something that can hold you up. They can block your passport, they can revoke your passport until you have proper arrangements in place. And so I don't want you to stand at the airport, hand over your passport, and they tell you you're not going anywhere. You don't want that to be you. It could be something a rare that you totally forgot that you owed, but your state agency has already contacted the State Department and they have now basically blocked your passport. And the last one I want to talk to you about is this is for people, and this is probably the most rare, but this is when perhaps maybe you lived abroad, or maybe you were in another country having a great time, hanging out, whatever you were doing, and you got sick, there was a disaster, something happened that you had to be evacuated, like, and you didn't have the money on your own to get out of there. So maybe you had a medical emergency, maybe all of a sudden the place where you were, they had a hurricane or a really bad natural disaster, and you just had to get out of there and you didn't have the money. And so the government, the US government lent you the money to get home. Now, I remember this happened to one of our friends, and when they got out, they kind of the government held on to their passports and they held on their passports until they paid that loan back. Maybe that's you, maybe that wasn't you. But if you did not pay that loan back, then you're not going anywhere until you pay that loan back. They're not gonna allow you to go until you settle that debt because you owe the US government money. And basically, each one of these things, you are owing a government agency money. And as a result, they are not letting you go anywhere until you take care of it. And I know you were like, oh my gosh, I'm sick of this. You have all the reasons why you should not pay the government. You can keep your reasons, but you're not going anywhere. So, what are you gonna do? Everybody should do this, not just the people who got the letter and ignored it, but we should all do this. So none of us want to be surprised, right? You don't want to be surprised, you don't want to be at the airport thinking you're getting on the airplane. You can. So before you go anywhere, check your IRS account. Write online, irs.gov, and go ahead and check that account. Say if you have an open balance, maybe you owe money you didn't even know. Maybe you paid off your debt, but maybe the interest in a penalty was still accruing, and so you still owe a little bit more. So go ahead and check. Check and make sure if you were paying child support at any time, that that case is closed and you don't owe any money. You want to make sure you do that. And if you're a person, like maybe you've already moved, you think you were owing IRS, you weren't really sure, and you moved from this house to the next house, or you know, you have one address on your IRS on your um W-2s when you do your taxes, but you haven't lived there in the last 10 years, because maybe that's your family house. Go and check with them and see if you have any emails or any letters from the IRS. Because if you do, then you want to be able to clear that up. Now, if you're already outside the US, you're probably thinking, Well, I'm already gone. They can't do anything to me, I'm not paying that money. Or maybe you plan to pay the money, but you're feeling that I escaped. Maybe you did, and maybe you didn't. Because if you are outside, and I know a lot of people like, oh, I can't wait when I move to Portugal. I'm gonna travel all of Europe. Oh, when I move to Dubai, I'm gonna really go around and see all of the Middle East or whatever your dreams are, they will stop those dreams because your passport will be evoked or blocked or denied. And so you will not even be able to leave where you are to another place. So go ahead and take care of that. Take care of whatever that debt is so you can enjoy the freedom. Isn't that why you moved? You wanted to be free, you wanted to have peace and calmness, but you really can't have that with that debt hanging over your head. So you want to go ahead and take care of that. And now, if you got to come back to the US, oh, absolutely, they're gonna let you come back. So if you're in another country and you're like, oh my gosh, I have to come back. Maybe you have an emergency and your passport's been evoked or denied, they will let you come back, but you won't be able to get it back until you've done something with that debt. So I hope this helps you. Please, please, please take care of these things. Look at them. Let's not make assumptions. This is such a great time in our lives. We are moving forward, we're changing our address, but before we can do that, we need to make sure our paperwork is in order. You know, you need to have your financial and legal wellness also taken care of. It's not just about our health, everything needs to be taken care of. You can't enjoy freedom, you can't really enjoy yourself if you know that you have all this debt hanging over yourself. You so you want to really have a good time. And I want you to have a good time. So if this information was helpful for you, like it, subscribe it, share with another person because you know someone else is also trying to get up out of here. And as they are, you want to make sure they don't get stuck like you are. So the world is wide, the world is too big for you to play small. But if you don't have your pay documents in order, you may not be able to see that big by world. So until the next time, continue to live in elevated liar. That's a wrap. And if this episode resonated with you, go ahead and follow the podcast and share it with another woman who's ready for her next chapter. And if you're ready to move beyond thinking and start building your exit strategy, I invite you to join me inside my live experience with the Elevated Exit Masterclass. You'll find the link in the show notes. Until next time, make your next move a bougie one.