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I have no solid data, but I did do a cursory look at BC/BS (I have it within my company) within the last year and determined that it would not provide coverage outside the US. Almost no insurance will. This is why travel policies like TravelGuard exist. I would be surprised if they do something special for retired civil service, but yes, it is possible. A recheck might be wise. Or perhaps email the hospitals themselves. It is a two way street. BC/BS saying they pay or reimuburse is only half the issue. The other half is the hospital has to accept them.

In the US, there is a gov't funded savings insurance program called Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. It insures any member bank account for . . . I think up to 200K now. If you need to park more than 200K you would go to two such banks. I suspect the UK has something similar. If so, pick a member bank and have peace of mind. The interest rates of one member bank being higher than another . . . if they are "members" of the insurance arrangement, then go for the highest interest. If one is not a member, avoid.

FloridiaGuy, sounds like you got in under the VA's radar. I do recall there being some mention of the income threshold being relaxed if you were already a VA medical services recipient. No way around this; you have to study and find out what works. As for Medicare, with you in your 50's you probably have paid enough into the system that if you suspend payment for a time, and then resume it in order to collect, all is well. There are websites to study for this, too. Nobody has a crystal ball on this stuff. My read is no society can endure medical expenses occupying 10 or 20 o

A few tidbits I've learned chasing data 1) Medicare is not the same as Medicaid. Do not confuse the two. Medicaid is the US govt health plan for welfare (the UK calls it The Dole, I think) recipients. Medicare is the govt health plan for retirees over age 65. 2) You continue to pay Medicare premiums past age 65. It is health insurance. 3) Florida Guy above was ticked Medicare won't pay him living outside the country. Wanna get really mad? I am not sure, but I think for you to EVER be eligible, perhaps back in the US, you have to keep paying the premiums while in LOS -- even

Sorry about the hurried and potentially rude questions. It's a 4 day holiday weekend in the states and I was in a hotel in Las Vegas on may way down to check out and fly home when I posted that this morning. Too much of a hurry. This particular item above is just an excellent matter for examination, and I frankly don't have any idea of the right attitude about it. Yep, no question that if you choose to travel, then that's not a Pattaya expense. The visa expenses do matter and probably do qualify as such an expense that should be in guys' estimates. The travel vacations are entirely

Vacations? 4 day weekends to Singapore? Trips "home"? Or taxi to Bangkok for shopping or whatever? Internet? Good job on renting your transportation. Otherwise I'd have to ask about depreciation expense. HEALTH INSURANCE??? Computer upgrades? Avged out over maybe once per 2 yrs? What else have I missed?

Full disclosure. I'm not living in Pattaya and and still in a working grind -- in the process of fully analyzing what's what and preparing to retire . . . hopefully at about age 52 (i.e. within 10 mos or so). You guys know Soi7 is the board's authority on Living Below Your Means in Pattaya And Having Fun While Doing So. Read his stuff. He has picked a lifestyle level that may work just fine for many. An important point seems to be that he Does Not Feel Constrained. He spends little and doesn't seem to feel like he's poverty stricken. He's having fun. This seems to me very impor

Ah, ozboy, that sounds better and I think I've seen them. I didn't know they were effective operating passive. I think I've seen things on roofs spinning but I guess I always thought that was some breeze blowing. If that's heat driving them then that is excellent. They might be cheaper. Cutting a hole in a roof and still keeping the water out might be dicey. A fan blowing sideways out a soffet won't require that, and the notebook sized solar panel would lay on the roof maybe 2 feet away. Now that you mention it, I don't know what a panel 30 cm X 30 cm would cost. Might be more.

A great deal like what I was suggesting. The difference is the solar powered fans I was suggesting would blow sideways and they are generally set up so little louvres flip up when the fan is on (when it's sunny for the solar cells). The problem with the above, maybe, is just how hard it rains there when it rains. I suspect a fan facing upwards is going to flood the attic.

In the western US temps get very high. Unlike LOS, there is very low humidity. Evaporative coolers (which can't work in humid areas) can reduce temps by 25 degs and there is no power consuming compressor to drive electric bills up. No matter. Irrelevant. But there's another thing done in the west US that may have some potential for you. The attic . . . the space between the dark-colored, shingled roof and the interior ceilings does indeed get very hot and spikes to 120+ degs F. One thing that some have done is to install either on the roof itself or near where the roof and walls i

I think the consensus is evolving to suggest to the OP that he just park the money where he can get some interest at 100% safety. Then he can kick back and figure out what's what without the pressure of feeling like he's got some urgent need to do something. Jacko's items above give rise to another thought. It's one I run into now and then. There is a desire not to deal with this boring stuff. Can one just find a great stock and a great bank account and a great this and a great that and just put money into it, forget about it, and come back some day to find that one is rich?

Data point. A typical window installed air conditioner is 6000 BTUs. There is some SEER efficieny parameter for such things and it somehow translates that BTU number into kilowatts consumed. If we pick a number of 10 for the SEER, I think that translates into 600 watts = 0.6 KW. Run it 24/7 for a month of 31 days and you get 424 KWHrs. You got two units, and you don't run them 24/7. Sounds like 727 is credible. Might want to look into higher SEER units?

Yeah, there ain't nothing worse than paying someone to be wrong. You pay a surgeon for a very difficult procedure and it fails and you die. Your family will be enraged at him and a whole lawsuit industry in the US exists for these situations -- but the truth probably is, in 90+% of cases, the surgeon did his best and he failed and suffers quite a bit knowing he did. The lawyers come along later to make him suffer more (the lawyers don't suffer, pretty much ever). The advisor probably wanted to be right and wasn't wrong purposely, but any advisor that charges money in any way other th

When you don't know what to do with money, put it in the bank in CDs or something while you figure out what to do with it. The one common denominator I've seen among guys who get money in a large lump sum, it's that it starts burning a hole in their pocket and they feel like they have to Do Something rather than let it sit in their pocket. If it's in the bank earning interest, it's already Doing Something and guys slow down and evaluate alternatives with less of a sense of urgency.

Guys, It's got nothing to do with going to other destinations. If you mention Thailand, you're odds for thorough (digicam memory and laptop -- looking for illegal pictures) search go way up. There are lots of threads on this in the members' section. SFO is very strict. Not all ports of entry are as strict as SFO, but you can have Singapore or Hong Kong or anywhere else listed in the passport and if you spent time in Thailand along with those, your odds go up. Before there is an avalanche of posts from guys who say they were not searched, re-read. "Your odds go up". They are no

Good thread, guys. Lots of ideas on what was done and why. I'm gonna have to rethink a few things based on what y'all are doing, too. One thing I'd add. The move will have a sense of finality to it, but I suggest we not think of it quite so much that way. If healthcare insurance continues to evolve the way it is and Medicare continues to refuse to send money outside the US, there may be a need to spend more and more time back in the states whether we like it or not. Yeah, I know, that's not the idea. This is just a heads up to keep an eye on that aspect of things. At age 65, pr

A common problem. Way too many say . . . I'll just keep it in my (insert_relative_here)'s garage. Well, would you want your brother's junk in your garage for 10 years? No. So that ain't gonna fly. In general look up PODS. It's a container-based way to move household goods and you can also use it for storage. Depending on your house size, figure $110/month as a nominal price tag. You pay it as long as you want to keep stuff. On successive trips to see family, you could bring over more stuff and reduce what is stored incrementally. Also, remember that if you fly First

Don't think that 2.1 million price tag was for rent.

Guys, Everybody's got their own agenda. After a number of years in life, especially in management, and you learn that critical reality. You learn to turn off your own set of evaluation criteria and just look at what you see. So . . . I know ahead of time that what I'm about to say doesn't apply to many who will read it. But I suspect it DOES apply to most of the young guys on this thread and I hope they are self honest enough to know it. 1) Why are you doing this? Why must you work in Thailand? Yes, of course if you're married you are not in this category, but all those who ar

40%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The law in the US is short term gains are taxed at the same rate your salary is. Long term gains are taxed at now only 15%. Long term vs short term is defined by holding the stock > 1 yr. In the US your primary residence is sheltered from capital gains tax up to . . . I think 250K dollars if single and 500K dollars if married. That number has changed lately so I may have it wrong. (that's not the price of the house, that's the gain). Oh and there are sometimes maneuvers available for non primary residence houses . . . if you trade it for other real

Trying to lay low in this thread because it is so UK tax law centric, but tax specifics of elsewhere are always interesting because they sometimes reveal strategies not invented for the US because of some tax law quirk -- that could change. Re: ex-dividend. You no doubt know that the stock price is adjusted downward for first trade of the day by the amount of the dividend. This is largely camouflaged by subsequent trading, but it does happen. More to the point, in the US . . . until recently dividends were taxed at a different rate than LT Cap Gains. There were dividend capture strateg

I like returning to this thread every once in a while to see what new input there is for how to deal with housing. Everybody knows the pros and cons. jackcorbett provided a good look at some issues that are non monetary that are important for the decision. FYI Alan Greenspan (for the Brits, he's the recently replaced (after about 30 yrs) chairman of the Federal Reserve board -- sort of the Chancellor of the Exchequer??) is, to some extent, supportive of those kinds of issues. One of his recent bits of commentary said things . . . like housing doesn't have the kinds of bubbles that stock

It's a derivative vehicle and possibly way outside your comfort zone -- unless this description reminds you of the UK equivalent with a different name. CALL up and PUT down, like a telephone. A Call is purchasing the "right" to purchase shares at a pre-specified price for a period of time, at which point the right expires and becomes worthless. A Put is the opposite. It is purchasing the right to sell at a given price. Puts are a form of portfolio insurance. If you have a stock with a gain and you fear it will decline, but for tax reasons (like yours) you do not wish to sell, you c

While most probably seek more speed than this, whatever you learn of this option will be valuable and your report will be appreciated.

I know this is mostly a UK tax question so I won't dig into this too deep. If I understand this correctly you seem to have 17K pounds of gain in one stock and 6K pounds in another for a total potential gain of 23K. You have a loss in a 3rd stock of 8K. You apparently have in your tax law something called a Cap Gains "allowance" and given the above arithmetic it must be 7-8K pounds to get to your final estimated taxable gain number of 8-9K above. (FYI no such allowance in the US. Gains are short term and taxed at standard salary rate, or long term and taxed generally at 15%. Long