Exercise intensity

When I used to exercise longer and harder I had hopes of reaching the nicely round number of burning 25 of the cross-trainer's idea of calories per minute on average. Not finding myself getting much beyond 23, I slacked off to see what a gentler but daily regime would achieve and was eventually disappointed to find myself tending to not quite manage even 20. These days with my daily half-hour workouts an overall burn rate of 19½ of these calories per minute is typical. Perhaps it will stabilize there. By happy coincidence the BBC's longer Wednesday Workout playlists on Radio 2 appear to have been replaced by half-hour Workout Wednesday playlists on Radio 1.

By any reasonable standard I do enough aerobic exercise. For vigorous exercise people are generally encouraged to do at least 1¼ hours each week and I typically manage 3 hours. Though, with now having the cross-trainer on a slightly lower resistance, on average 60% of its maximum, I wonder if I am not getting much in the way of strength training included. I had another look at the Mayo Clinic's exercise intensity guidelines regarding heart rate. Since I settled into exercise and lost weight my heart rate is typically under 60bpm at rest. In my mid-40's my maximum rate's above 170bpm and after a fairly uniform workout mine's above 150bpm, near the high end of my target zone for vigorous exercise. That tells me that I should not increase the machine's resistance level.

In short, despite missing what were always fairly arbitrary goals, at present I think I exercise hard enough for long enough to not need to make any changes.

Investments for UK-resident US citizens

A few months ago I mentioned difficulty in long-term capital investment. Regular savings accounts earn hardly anything at current rates but equities are tricky partly because the US and UK have awkward rules about foreign investments and a high fraction of financial instruments look foreign to at least one of them. It is far easier just to hide bullion under one's mattress.

I had previously mentioned that I can think I can buy US-domiciled UK-reporting ETFs, such as from Vanguard, with manageable tax implications; some brokers will even provide me with Form 1099's which makes my reporting far easier. Indeed, I can sell a little even before returning to the US: the UK provides a significant capital gains tax allowance quite separately from the income one. Still, even if reinvested, there are dividends on which I would expect to have to pay the higher UK rate though I expect I could then claim foreign tax credit despite also filing for foreign earned income exclusion for my salary.

I wondered about using a self-select stocks and shares ISA from some UK provider thus allowing me to avoid dividend tax. However, even outside ISAs I am already looking at filing several forms each year. I find it hard to tell if such Vanguard ETFs in an ISA might be deemed a foreign trust by the IRS thus also getting me into Form 3250 territory and I am most inclined to just pay the tax rather than either risk the penalties for messing up those further forms or pay the high fees of anybody I could trust to complete them on my behalf.

Unlike ISAs, SIPPs are safely covered by the tax treaty and better supported by UK-based US-aware brokers but I do not want to tie up so much money for so very long: I wish to buy real estate after I move.

Over the years I have dealt with a few tricky legal issues by myself, sometimes only after extensive study: what I lack in experience I generally make up for in information processing and attention to detail. This instance is thus unusual: the tax treatment of foreign investments so alarms me that I choose to pay tax that probably could have been avoided rather than learn to self-navigate even deeper into the minefield. My time is better spent on other matters.