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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 or 30% of GDP, which is what healthcare in the US is on track to do. My read is this will never occur because it simply cannot. Certain realities are going to kick in -- and one of them is that there are several EU countries that spend far far less in healthcare costs than the US and have roughly equivalent death rates. From the perspective of morbidity, the US is not getting any return on its healthcare investment. Yes, there is nowhere in the world with better high tech procedures and if you need them, that's the place to be -- but when a gastroenterologist sticks that fiber optic tube down your throat to look for an ulcer, he will take a swab or snippet of tissue from several places that look just fine because he gets paid $400 per swab/snippet to do so. The big price tags are from diagnositics, not treatment. Someone wanders in complaining of diarrhea and they may wind up with a colonoscopy, even if they say they ate raw oysters the night before. The docs get to bill for this and because the procedures are totally safe, there's no reason for them not to run up the bill. It will reach a point where people just don't go to the doctor. Simply that. They won't go. The data suggests that not going, on average, doesn't make you die any faster because those countries spending less have the same life expectancy. From that perspective, the high deductible catastrophic plans will probably evolve to be the norm. If you need an eye infection dealt with, you'll pay that out of pocket. If you have a heart attack, insurance will kick in. Your total average yearly cost? A few thousand dollars.

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 though you can't collect. 4) Note that all of this is for age 65 and up. 5) The VA will pay for your medical needs if you are 1) disabled from a military event/related condition 2) have income at a very low level. If you make too much money, VA will not cover you (unless you had a military disability) regardless of where you live. I confess I stopped investigating the VA options when I learned I would not be covered, so maybe there are loopholes others can fit through. I'm a former US Air Force officer and I could not qualify. 6) There is a community of US expats in Mexico who have built their own hospital and staffed it with US docs. They are lobbying hard for Medicare to cover out of country billings. This may or may not work. We'll see. 7) For the time period prior to abe 65, one needs insurance. It is during this time period that the issue of pre existing conditions kicks in. Insurance companies want to cherry pick the best risks to optimize profit. That means if you have hypertension in your background, they will insure you, but exclude all things associated with hypertension for X months (often 3 yrs, varies). For guys into their 50's this would include kidney problems, all heart problems and really just about anything else the insurance company want's to claim is related. This issue is quieter but MORE IMPORTANT than the deductible and monthly premium. Nothing worse than paying a few years of insurance, needing some heart drugs and have them say they will not cover it, never have been covering it and are never likely to, given you've now another pre-existing condition that developed before the time limit was up. Anyone who goes to the pain to look into this, please pass along what you learn can be done in Thailand.

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 discretionary. Yes, they do count for your 4% extraction from portfolio, or from your pension or whatever -- but they would count if you retired anywhere. They aren't specific to Pattaya. One thing that is subtle that might warrant inclusion -- airfare from Thailand to the US (and probalby the UK) return ticket (round trip) is less than the same return ticket originating in the US or UK. Supply and demand. So maybe best we not have any sort of hard and fast rule on this. But guys need to be aware of it. If they are going "home" to see family, that's part of their year's budget -- but it's not a Pattaya budget. They'd pay that from Costa Rica too. The computer whizzes are going to have to weigh in here. How often should we be updating our computers? If they cost $1500 and we do it every three years, obviously that is $500 onto our annual budget. This is a real important matter. The local Expats Club has apparently orchestrated something, but I have yet to hear all the particulars. There are three particulars that need to be answered: 1) Monthy premium for how much deductible 2) Does it cover drugs 3) I have no pre-existing conditions, but many many guys do and this last question may be the most important of the 3, does it exclude pre-existing conditions or include them with X months of delay? Let us know what your research discovers.

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 important. Sure, guys can show up and live on noodles every day and go for walks and never ever have money for girls or travel or whatever -- but that's not why people went to Pattaya. Soi7 has a solution that he never ever pushes onto people. He always warns that not everyone is going to manage what he has. Eneukman (Alan) also has many posts about living expenses. He has not taken Soi7's approach. Eneukman had a number in mind when he arrived and has molded his life spending below that number. It's a different number than Soi7's. So what we have here is two gentlemen who have generously donated the time to lay out their budgets in posts for fellow BMs. They are worth studying. I, personally, am intrigued that there are common denominators between the two. 1) Get out of vacation mode ASAP. 2) I've heard no spending of money for tilac's sick buffalo from either of them. 3) They have new friends to have time with in Pattaya, and seemed to have formed those friendships quickly. 4) I hear of live in gfs from both, but I think not all that permanently so. 5) They are both happy not to be working. This doesn't seem to be universal. There are many posts by retirees on other sites who "miss work". (gotta be nuts) Anyway, I've found both these gentleman to have things to say of great value for those with an ambition to spend a decade or more in Pattaya.

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. No matter. The choice for the guy probably matters less than the concept. Get some air circulating in that space below the roof and above the ceiling. It will clear air out and not let it heat up to such high temps.

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 intersect (soffets) a really small, solar powered fan that blows outward. It slowly, continuously sucks the hot air out of that roof/ceiling gap and blows it outdoors, while the outdoor air replaces it from elsewhere around the circumference. The solar cells can be no more surface area than a piece of notebook paper and the fan is similarly nothing, but it can reduce that temperature by 15 degs and your house will stop being hot at night.

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? This is a real hard question to get past for one really big reason. It very probably once worked for your parents. There once was a period of a couple of decades when interest rates didn't change hardly at all, and General Electric and IBM grew steadily and money was a no brain required thing. That is no longer so and it probably never will be again. We all read the newspapers. We read about the latest bastard who stole millions from some company he works for. We all watch banks put fees on accounts that didn't have any just a year or two prior. So the thought is this: No matter how much you hate this stuff and how boring it is, your life depends on you enduring the bother of keeping a sharp eye on your money. Jacko's comments make it clear that not all options are the same. There are no shortcuts. You have to put in a few hours a month just to keep the thieves away.

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 than compensation for his time is a scam artist. Everyone deserves to be paid for their time, but some of those guys try to get kickbacks from where they tell you to put your money. That's bad.

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 not 100%. It's all statistical. If a whole batch of guys are arriving at the same time and they all spent time in Thailand, then the search crew may be backlogged and you'll be waved through. Or they may just be in a good mood and you'll be waved thru. It's statistical, not certain. Go to Thailand and your odds of very thorough search increase. Get anything even remotely questionable off your camera and laptop. That's a life destroyer and it can be handled just by erasing (not deleting) and being cooperative so as not to trigger more intense search.

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, private insurers may just start saying no, at any price. Then the world gets real dicey.

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 Class (miles or whatever) you have extra baggage limits and can move more stuff free. Beyond all this, there are threads in the archives here about shipping pallets of stuff from point A(home) to point B(LOS). You don't need furniture because many places rent furnished, but other stuff . . . you could ship it.

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 are not and just want to swashbuckle in Thailand . . .why? Is it the inexpensive women? Guys, think real careful about this. Are you choosing to have ZERO career in your entire life for cheap women? It does appear that guys trying to work in Thailand are getting "jobs". Not a career. Is that what you intend? 2) Be real sure this is what you want for an entire life. If you someday find yourself competing for a Vice President position, you'll be competing against guys who were preparing a lot longer than you have and the winner of that competition will likely be decided by experience. 3) That reality doesn't have to wait for VP slots. Every slot upwards towards VP is going to be the same thing. Guys who learned the ropes and want to be 1st line supervisor, 2nd line supervisor, 3rd, 4th, 5th and upwards . . . they'll all have been preparing to compete while you were doing "jobs" in Thailand and chasing the inexpensive women. The allure is what it is, but you can satisfy that tingle several times a year and remain unjaded rather than commit yourself to low pay, probably no Social Security, no progression up a career ladder and a hamstrung list of options for your future.

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 estate rather than pocket the cash, I think this means the sale was not a taxable event. But you do have to roll all the profit into the next piece of real estate. I think. I might have out of date info on that. Okay, back to Eneukman's manevuers to deny Her Majesty a few quid.

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 strategies that were tried sometimes, but for taxable money they would run afoul of this reality. Such things unwisely traded higher tax income for lower tax income. Just a thought . . . . (BTW, I remain envious of this annual capital gains exclusion y'all have. We yanks pay tax on every penny.)

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 stocks have. No one has to live in their stocks. Stocks can be dumped in frantic selling much more readily than real estate that is lived in. So Greenspan makes a case for living in real estate having a subtle effect on the monetary issues. This, of course, goes right out the window when it is rental property, but if there are plenty of owners actually living in their Pattaya area condos, any collapse in price will be slowed. As for what reliable return you can get on some temporary cash . . . www.bankrate.com. (Or the UK equiv.) A tidbit of possible value: When evaluating an interest rate or overall rate of return, the computation is: Real Rate of Return = (Quoted Rate X (1.0 - Composite Marginal Tax Rate)) - Inflation Rate Composite means combination of federal and state (local for the UK) income tax rate. BMs are likely to be about 25% + 5% for a marginal tax rate of 30%. Call inflation 3%. So if the bank quotes themselves paying 5.1% on your money, your Real Rate of Return is RRoR = .051 X (1 - 0.3) - .03 or 0.0057 . . . which is, my friends, 0.57%. Sorry, but that's the way it is. Don't shoot the messenger.

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 can lock in that gain by buying put options for the same number of shares that you hold. If the stock declines in value, you lose money on it. But if the stock declines in value, the right to sell (which you own, i.e., the put) at a higher price than exists currently suddenly has additional value and that piece of paper called a put option increases in price. You can sell it for more than you paid for it and get a gain equal to the loss in the stock. Net tax effect, zero for that particular transaction. It does nothing to the tax position in the stock itself. Pretty common in the US, and because the options do expire (various time periods offered) the are a great way to lose money because you have to be right not just about direction of stock price, but also time frame. Feel free to ignore this. You seem to have a plan of attack evolving already for your tax problem.

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 term means held for > 1 yr) Okay, apparently also the 17K pounds stock might trigger as a taxable gain involuntarily, but the 6K pounds gain stock would be voluntary and you would sell it to respond to a recommendation. For a price of . . . I'd guess one hundred some pounds you could buy whatever the UK equivalent is of a PUT option on the stock with the 6K gain. This would serve to lock in your gain and you could continue to hold that stock with no risk of loss. You then have only 17K to deal with, but your tax loss and "allowance" would seem to cover most of that? The 6K stock could be postponed into the next year when presumably you have a new "allowance" to shelter its gain?