wealthschema/archetypes/f-06-international-worker-h-1b
F-06FormationFormationmoderate tax complexity

International Worker (H-1B)

Foreign national on H-1B visa, high tech salary, FBAR obligations, remittances home, visa-dependent financial decisions.

F-06 is the visa-constrained formation household: H-1B-sponsored tech employment in a Tier-1 metro, FBAR and Form 8938 disclosure obligations on overseas accounts, remittances home, and every financial decision shadowed by the green-card timeline.

Age Range
25–35
Net Worth
$100k–$1M
Cohort
Formation

About this archetype

F-06 captures the H-1B-status formation household whose entire financial planning surface is mediated by visa status. The defining technical surface is regulatory: Foreign Bank Account Report (FBAR / FinCEN 114) filing obligation on any aggregate $10k+ in foreign accounts, Form 8938 Statement of Specified Foreign Financial Assets attached to the 1040 above the $50k/$100k thresholds, and the resident-alien-for-tax-purposes determination under the substantial-presence test that pulls worldwide income onto the US return. State-tax treatment of pre-arrival foreign income, treaty-based residency tie-breaker elections, and the §911 foreign-earned-income exclusion (which generally does not apply once the household passes substantial presence) are live questions. Compensation is typically high-W-2 — median gross of $125,969, the highest in the entire Formation cohort — driven by tech-employer sponsorship at large-cap tech or large-enterprise scale. Retirement-plan participation is normal (401(k) with match), but the household routinely under-contributes because of green-card uncertainty: a 401(k) balance is not a liability if the household returns home, but the early-withdrawal penalty and US-tax inefficiency on distribution complicate the calculus.

Cash-flow shape is unusual at the formation-cohort scale: 12 of 20 households are homeowners (60% — second only to F-05 among Formation archetypes), with 12 carrying mortgages and 12 carrying student loans (often US-graduate-program debt, frequently denominated and paid in US dollars even though family income origin is overseas). Liquid net worth median of $122,311 is materially higher than F-01, F-02, or F-04 at the same life stage — the H-1B income premium and the strong saving rate driven by green-card uncertainty produce a balance-sheet profile that looks affluent for the household's age but constrained on the legal-status axis.

F-06 is distinct from neighbouring archetypes because visa status is the load-bearing variable. F-04 (First-Generation Wealth Builder) shares the immigrant-family context but does not have visa-status as the active financial constraint. F-01 (New Graduate Tech Worker) has similar W-2 tech income but no FBAR exposure and no visa-tied employment. The household's green-card timeline (PERM filing, I-140 approval, priority-date wait for EB-2 or EB-3) is the single most important variable in any multi-year planning scenario, and the corpus is calibrated to reflect that constraint without modelling any specific outcome.

Defining characteristics

  • H-1B visa
    Employment is tied to a specific H-1B-sponsoring employer; job-loss triggers a 60-day grace period. Mortgage underwriting that ignores visa status mis-prices job-loss risk for this profile.
  • FBAR
    FinCEN 114 reporting obligation on aggregate $10k+ in foreign accounts at any point during the year, plus Form 8938 above the $50k/$100k AGI-and-threshold tiers. Tax-software that lacks an FBAR companion flow systematically misses this.
  • Foreign income
    Resident-alien-for-tax-purposes (under substantial presence test) status pulls worldwide income onto the 1040. Pre-arrival foreign source income, rental income on a home-country property, and foreign-account interest all appear.
  • Remittances
    Outbound remittances to home-country family appear as a recurring cash-flow line. Frequently routed through cross-border-remittance platforms or home-country-bank corridors; PFM categorisation needs to recognise these as non-discretionary.
  • No Social Security credit (pre-sufficient)
    Most F-06 households have not accumulated the 40 quarters required for Social Security retirement benefits, and many of their home countries do not have totalisation agreements. The retirement-planning surface needs to handle the no-SS scenario.
  • Green card planning
    PERM → I-140 → I-485 timeline (frequently 5–15+ years for EB-2/EB-3 from oversubscribed countries) drives almost every multi-year financial decision. The corpus carries 'planning under legal-status uncertainty' as a structural feature.

Corpus signature

n = 20 households

Aggregated across the 20 F-06 households in the shipped v3 corpus corpus. Numbers describe the corpus, not population claims.

Median income
$126k
p25–p75 $112k–$136k
Median net worth
$284k
mean $292k
Liquid net worth
$122k
median
Investable assets
$190k
median
Income distribution
$100k–115k
8
$115k–130k
3
$130k–145k
5
$145k–160k
4
Net-worth distribution
$95k–185k
1
$185k–275k
9
$275k–365k
5
$365k–455k
5
Goals across the corpus
Retirement20 / 20
Debt payoff12 / 20
Emergency fund9 / 20
Home purchase8 / 20
Education funding7 / 20
Liability composition
Credit cards20 / 20
Student loans12 / 20
Mortgages12 / 20
Auto loans10 / 20
  • 12 of 20 (60%) are homeowners; the remainder rent.
  • MA, NY, CA account for 10 of 20 households — 50% of the corpus.
  • Median adult-member age is 31 (range 21–38 across primaries and spouses).
  • 7 of 20 (35%) carry one or more dependents.

Representative household

F-06-seed-5
Joshua R.Married filing jointly·Richmond, VA

Joshua and Samantha are a dual-tech-W-2 MFJ F-06 household with one dependent, both spouses coded Technology — the canonical H-1B-employer-sponsorship industry pattern the archetype is built around. Combined gross of $112.9k sits at the corpus p25 ($112k), but the household carries $175k of liquid assets and only $21.2k of total liabilities, producing the liquid-rich, debt-light balance sheet typical of green-card-uncertainty saving behavior. Richmond is a secondary tech-employer hub rather than the Bay Area / NYC / Boston Tier-1 the F-06 corpus over-weights, but the underlying signature — visa-status-tied employment, sub-median income with over-median liquid savings, no Social Security history to lean on — is exactly the F-06 testing surface. The diagnostic goal mix follows the prose: on track for the $2.35M retirement target ($1,016/mo actual against $987/mo required, the over-saving-for-departure-hedge pattern) while behind on the $90k home-purchase goal and a $520k education-funding target — exactly the configuration that breaks naive 'rebalance toward home purchase' planner advice.

Combined income
$112,870
Net worth
$335,542
Liquid NW
$175,008
Ages
32 / 35
Top goals on this household
Home purchase
$90,296
Education funding
$519,732
Retirement
$2,349,600

Schema fields covered

Every F-06 household ships with — at minimum — these JSON fields populated. The full schema is documented in the data set you purchase.

members[].age
income.combined_gross
net_worth.total
filing_status
accounts.taxable.lots[].acquisition_date
accounts.taxable.lots[].cost_basis
accounts.taxable.lots[].unrealized_pnl
taxes.wash_sale_flags

Who builds against this archetype

Three buyer profiles draw on F-06 most heavily. International-tax-prep platforms and the international tier of professional tax-prep software use it for FBAR companion-filing, Form 8938 inclusion, treaty-based-position disclosure (Form 8833), and resident-alien-for-tax-purposes mechanics. Mortgage-origination platforms with foreign-national programs (large-bank international-client programs and credit-union partners serving tech hubs) use F-06 to validate underwriting flows that handle visa expiry dates, foreign-credit-history substitution, and the 'tied employment' job-loss risk modelling. Cross-border-banking and remittance platforms (including home-country-bank US-NRI account products) use the corpus to test the typical H-1B remittance corridor pattern.

Testing scenarios this corpus is calibrated for

  • 01FBAR (FinCEN 114) companion-filing flows triggered by aggregate foreign-account balance crossing $10k.
  • 02Form 8938 inclusion at the §6038D AGI and balance thresholds, with treaty-position Form 8833 disclosure where applicable.
  • 03Foreign-national mortgage underwriting: visa-expiry date inputs, foreign-credit-history substitution (Nova Credit), and 'tied employment' DTI haircuts.
  • 04401(k) contribution-rate UX that surfaces the green-card-uncertainty tradeoff (early-withdrawal penalty if departing US vs match-capture if staying).
  • 05Cross-border remittance categorisation as non-discretionary recurring expense, recognising cross-border-remittance platforms and bank-corridor patterns.
  • 06Substantial-presence-test calculation with prior-year day-count weighting and the closer-connection-to-foreign-country exception.

Edge cases and what's not in this corpus

F-06 is H-1B specifically. L-1 intra-company transferees, O-1 extraordinary-ability workers, and TN status under USMCA are not modelled here; though they share the FBAR/8938/substantial-presence surface, the legal-status mechanics differ. Spouses on H-4 (with or without H-4 EAD work authorisation) are present in the corpus as spouse records but the H-4-EAD-revocation risk is not a separate testing axis. Recently arrived workers in their first 18 months pre-substantial-presence are not the modal F-06 — they overlap U-03 (Recent Immigrant — Working). Already-naturalised or green-card-holding tech workers without active visa-status constraint belong in F-01, A-06, or F-04 depending on income and equity. Finally, the H-1B household with materially higher equity comp post-IPO is closer to A-06 with an F-06 overlay; the corpus does not stress the post-liquidity-event branch.

Calibration notes

Income distributions during v3 synthesis referenced public USCIS H-1B Labor Condition Application wage data and BLS Occupational Employment Statistics for software, data, and engineering roles in MA, NY, and CA tech hubs (the empirically dominant H-1B-employer states). Homeownership rates referenced HMDA data filtered to non-citizen borrowers in tech-MSA ZIP codes. The deliberate over-representation of CA, NY, and MA reflects employer-sponsorship concentration rather than a uniform-state assumption. Country-of-origin is not modelled as a categorical feature; FBAR exposure is parameterised by aggregate foreign-account balance rather than specific corridor. Per CLAUDE.md §9 the v3 corpus is frozen; these notes describe priors applied at synthesis rather than a reproducible regeneration path.

How this differs from related archetypes

Frequently asked questions

What does the F-06 archetype represent?+

F-06 — International Worker (H-1B) models the H-1B-sponsored formation household: high tech-W-2 income, FBAR and Form 8938 exposure on overseas accounts, remittances home, and multi-year green-card-priority-date planning. Visa status is the load-bearing variable in every financial decision.

Does F-06 include L-1, O-1, or TN workers?+

No — F-06 is H-1B specifically. Other non-immigrant work-visa categories share some of the same FBAR/substantial-presence surface but the legal-status mechanics (employer-tie strength, dual-intent doctrine, priority-date applicability) differ enough that they would need their own archetype.

Why is F-06 homeownership so high relative to other Formation archetypes?+

Median household income is the highest in the Formation cohort at $125,969, concentrated in employer-sponsorship states (CA, NY, MA) with mature foreign-national mortgage programs at large-bank international-client groups and credit-union partners. 12 of 20 corpus households are homeowners — driven by income, not by special program access.

How does F-06 handle FBAR and Form 8938 in the corpus?+

Households are parameterised by aggregate foreign-account balance ranges that exercise the $10k FBAR trigger and the §6038D Form 8938 tiers. Country-of-origin is not modelled as a categorical feature; the testing surface is the disclosure obligation itself rather than corridor-specific mechanics.

Does the corpus reflect green-card-priority-date uncertainty?+

Structurally, yes — through unusually high 401(k) and brokerage saving rates for the income level, reflecting the empirical pattern where H-1B households over-save against the possibility of departure. The actual priority-date is not modelled as a household field; the financial signature reflects the behavioural consequence.

Is the F-06 corpus regenerable?+

No. The shipped v3 F-06 corpus is frozen as of the corpus drift confirmation on 2026-05-09. Sampler improvements land in a future v4 release; the current 20 households are not reproducible from current code.

Get this archetype's data

Download households matching this archetype as part of a Wealth Data Set.

Browse Data Sets

Life Stage

Formation
Accumulation
Preservation
Distribution
Transfer