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An idea that works in the US when things like this arise. If you have some stock that has done well but that you don't want to endure the tax hit on, and you think it might be impervious to market declines, then simply wait for one. Sell some other mutual funds or stocks that DO decline -- and establish a capital loss. Then also pick that year as the year that you sell the item in question. Its gain should be cancelled by the loss on the other vehicles and the gain on it thus sheltered from taxes? Dunno if it works in the UK, but this is a standard technique in the US. Time the sale to have some other losses and offset the gain so you have net investment income of zero.

A number of posts recently on DSL not performing well or being "spotty" or dropping out altogether. Anyone know what happens to their internet long distance phone when this is going on? Any experiences worth passing along?

One way or another, this looks rather a lot like the party is over. If someone is found to be owning property through a corporation deemed invalid, is this going to translate to government confiscation? The owner may want to sell, but all buyers know he has to sell within some time limit and . . . the buyers just cross their arms until that limit (confiscation date?) approaches while he cuts his price. Personally, I don't see anything good to come from this unless the lawyers making a living off of setting up such corps. complain loudly.

Yeah, thanks for that report. Real, solid, legit data of what someone actually did and why is valuable. Keep an eye on Medicare back home. After 6 great years in Thailand, maybe the US will let Medicare money come to you outside the boundaries. But whatever happens, you executed a rational plan and that puts you ahead of maybe 75% of people who just let things happen. Keep us apprised of your experiences settling in.

It's all a gamble, guys. You just try to play the favorable odds. There is a pretty significant study out there on portfolio analysis that makes a startling claim. It appears to hold water, specifically, that 30 year planning is very suspect because wars and natural catastrophes and even personal catastrophes are essentially guaranteed over that period of time. In other words, yeah, one counts oneself smart and one prepares for a future that hopefully starts in one's 50's rather than 60's, but if you turn out to be successful you were every bit as much lucky as smart. If you do everything right, you can still get screwed. OTOH, if you don't prepare at all, you will not benefit from a lucky outcome. The right thing for the big Buddha to say to young BMs who make the trek up that hill for wisdom would be . . . know what you're doing, don't be in such a hurry and no, she is not faithful.

In general, Pattaya is all about money in a LOT of different ways. There is a mindset in a certain type of person that instinctively objects to ANYTHING being all about money, but in this particular matter one's mindset is irrelevant. Mathematics has total power. If you don't have money in your pocket or a 100% certain COLAed pension, it's not going to happen. I do think on this board that a lot of retirement talk takes place and it is deceptive to the younger BMs. It is not obviously clear from the retirement talk that the guys talking Have Already Paid Their Dues. They endured life in the US and UK and socked cash away and now they are getting the reward that their wisdom and hard work and unyielding discipline earned for them. If there was a shortcut, we all would have taken it. Work hard, seek rapid promotion in your work, save a big chunk of the pay raises, invest it, learn about money and inflation (the single quietest, most important sledgehammer that exists in anyone's future plans) and keep your eyes on the prize. Don't expect to win the prize before a minimum of your late 40's, unless you inherit a ton or win the lottery or stumble into stock options of Google 3 years ago. The degree to which an exception to this would be rare is so extreme that I guess I encourage all younger BMs to put it out of their minds and not torture themselves with it.

Pretty good point by the Shilo guy. But maybe it should be even stronger. I know a lot of BMs are heavy drinkers and smokers. That's their call and they enjoy their lives as they wish. They may not face this issue of living a very long time. But if you do face that issue, then something is not at all clear to me. Will BUPA or the Expat's Club healthcare plan continue to cover you past age 65? Most private insurers will not. At age 65 (for the US) Medicare activates, but it will NOT send money out of the US for medical care. You may have to go home to protect your nest egg from a medical / financial disaster. I think we need more details from the over 65 BMs as to what they are doing.

1) Gary, is trash pickup normally part of a condo owners' association/maintenance fee? Was that a special deal or a normal part of your 600b/month ante. 2) Bill Gates has said he doesn't plan to leave much money to his kids. He does not think it would be good for them. He may be right.

The assumptions are all very fuzzy, but you know that and they may need to be. What they say is that even if the assumptions are wrong, you have a lot of cushion in your conclusion -- meaning they will have to be wrong a LOT to reverse the conclusion. (It is pretty shaky tho to do your calculation for 30 yrs and presume no rental inflation. Thirty years is one helluva long time for nothing to happen inflation-wise.) How about this factor. If you make a mistake renting, you can fix it by moving. If you make a mistake buying, it will require a lot more effort and time to "fix it" by selling. I would suggest you have to spend a couple of years onsite before you really need to make a call on this, and during that time you will rent. If you're not at year 2 yet, this evaluation is probably premature. But pat yourself on the back. You do understand all the factors and you are smart enough to realize just how many parameters are not known.

My 2 cents worth . . . if all you can raise to save your life on a moment's notice is 20K baht, there is something wrong with how you are living. If you're an expat on long term visa (over 50) don't you have to have a lot more than this in the bank? If you're making visa runs, make another one and don't come back. Don't know any of your specifics, but just in general I think you belong in your home country working and building a life that doesn't end to violence if you're $500 US short at any time.

Thumbs up to flyertalk.com. That is the fount of all knowledge about flying. Suggestion as to miles. I'm a Gold Medallion of some many years on Delta. I and my 930,000 FF miles sweated Delta's liquidation a few weeks ago and survived. This doesn't mean all that much because rules change a few times a year and what one learns over the years isn't too valuable -- but one item that seems to survive changes is upgrades. I know guys want to spend their miles on a free ticket, but consider life during those 25 hours enroute from the US in business class with seats that recline to almost horizontal. Sleep becomes possible. The food is 10X better than in coach. The bang for the mileage buck may be bigger too. A r/t NW ticket to LOS is about $1K. A Bizness class ticket could be $3K. Now don't consider this guaranteed. Overseas upgrades are VERY hard to get. But at least it gives you one more option. Intl Biz is good. Even if you wander into the gaggle of FAs on their scheduled break, in Bizness Class they will snap to and do what you want. FYI, FA breaks, the Singapore Air FAs actually change out of their uniforms and go downstairs to a little crew lounge in the baggage area of the trans Pacific aircraft for their scheduled breaks. It's amusing to see them suddenly in jeans and with their hair down as they go downstairs. Then after their break, they get back in uniform and become once more the best airline service in the sky.

American BMs would be wise to search "customs" in the archives. The US customs, on return from LOS, are very strict and search men travelling alone -- including a look at your digital camera memory and your laptop pictures archives. ERASE ANYTHING QUESTIONABLE, and remember Asians tend to look younger than their age.

I stand corrected. Samsonite is correct, given the extra hours enroute to Pattaya. I was calibrating time to BKK (or SIN, where I sometimes stop first). 26 hrs is just brutal. If you're not in business class, sleep is almost impossible. Do what you can to lessen the jetlag. One of the reasons I stop in SIN is they have a transit hotel on the gate side of security. $35 will get you a shower and 6 hrs of sleep. Then a quick low cost carrier hop to BKK follows and I arrive in BKK with a few hours sleep and in broad daylight for the ride to Pattaya. Also, I've found flights from US to SIN are cheaper than to BKK. The LCC price tossed in doesn't make up the differential, even with the $35 for hotel. It probably varies by season, but the SIN approach, I've found, is both cheaper and easier on the body.

This topic comes up now and then. A synopsis: 1) Our UK cousins have a shorter trip. Most of these jetlag threads talking about how difficult it is are from Americans. The UK guys can't figure out why the complaints. The answer is a typical trip from the US west coast (California, meaning Los Angeles) is 20+ hours counting the stop in Tokyo or Taiwan. For guys arriving from points in the US east of California, add hours for them to get to the west coast jump off point. The east coast of the US is 12 hrs time zone difference. 25 hour trips are not unheard of door to door. Toss a few flight delays in and it can become agony. There are a handful of non stops from the US east coast. They are expensive. 2) The body's clock is controlled by sunlight exposure. The most critical part of the recovery process is what hours of the day your eyes see bright light. What time you arrive matters, and staying awake or going to sleep in such a way to get exposed to light at the proper time is the best thing you can do to accelerate adjustment. This Is The Most Critical Thing. All studies show it is usually more difficult for a given person to shift time zones in one direction vs the other. So if it seems to be harder for you to either go or return from somewhere than vice versa, that's normal. Note that it is important what time you arrive where in the context of when you see bright light, but studies show that the since the decisive item is when you see bright light, the most important factor on how fast you adjust is simply what the weather is at your destination. If it's cloudy, you can be miserable for weeks unless you purposely find brightly lit rooms to sit in during the local day -- and not do the same at night. 3) Staying hydrated, eating properly, exercise . . . all the usual stuff is not worthless. It helps. But the key is light.

Something odd is going on worldwide about the markets. It's like people have lost track of numbers. The last few days the US markets are down about 4%. That's about what they were up for the year to date. I have no idea how people concluded 4% was some ridiculously overbought speculative bubble, nor does it make sense how they are declaring a 4% down move to be a crash. For the entire year the market was up only 5% in 2005. So we're talking about less than 10% of rise over 17 months and people who lived through the 90's actually persuaded themselves this was a big up move. I got no idea (EVER) if things are going up or down. I do have some idea of what norms are over the past 10 yrs for up or down moves, and 4% is nothing in comparison.

I hope this evolves to be a good thread because the issue has interested me as well. Gary seems to have evolved an interest of working with tools building things. I've seen mention of this before. There was an article in some magazine or another about a guy who built artistic wooden furniture (bookshelves, chairs, not desks or couches) of a strictly non mass produced sort, took some digital pictures of it, sent them to some interior decorator website email addresses and next thing he knew he had orders coming in from all over the world that he didn't really want to do. So he only did the ones he liked and priced them high, and orders still came in from all over the world. I'm not retired so I may know jack about any of this. Things I've thought I would do is write fiction, write articles/reviews of goings-on in my current industry field of expertise (ulterior motive in this, it could keep me current in case the bottom drops out of the world and I need to get a job again), executive consulting, maybe some travel writing and photography, do some Asian sales rep-ing for US companies -- just anything I could think of that would not too loudly and clearly violate the Do-Not-Work part of a retirement visa and also not have me working 8 - 5 or more like pre retirement. I guess I kind of view that as a different category from other things I'd like to do. Sail, play tennis, sightsee, do a bit of volunteer work, teach . . . . Anyway, here's hoping for lots of ideas in this thread.

Apologies if I comment on your personal specifics. No intrusion of privacy intended. Comments offered are only on matters that others might be thinking about. The 62K thing to generate 50K . . . you might be too pessimistic. If your netegg is split between tax-free/deferred retirement vehicles like 401K or IRAs, then you ain't touching that first. You won't touch that money for a long time. You burn your taxable money first. As the taxable accounts deplete, what you extract from it stops being "income" and starts being "principal". Principal isn't tax liability. When the taxable accounts get depleted down (remember, your tax free accounts are growing untouched) to a few hundred K, they may already have been largely taxed because yearly dividends had to be declared for taxes and the taxes already paid. This means that taking 50K from an account of a few hundred K -- that 5% of interest rate generates only 15K of income. That 15K number determines the tax rate and it's low. Real low. Std deduction and personal exemption will erase about . . . 8K? Yes, you need 50K, but only 15K was income. The other 35K was principal. That 35K is not taxed. It's "principal" that is a dividend that you already paid taxes on, or it's money you simply saved and was after-tax money that you put in. So . . . towards the end of your taxable accounts, you don't have to yank 62K to get your 50K to live on. You may only need to yank 53K. As for being an expatriate, I think the tax break is only on earned income. However, note this: On Thursday, the Senate passed a proposal to repeal a foreign earned income exclusion, the so-called “Section 911 exclusionâ€. Americans working overseas will lose income tax exclusions for $80,000 of earned income and certain housing costs if this becomes law. Well done on the real estate sale. One comment here about being young and wanting to be 99% sure. A lot of early retirees who are young overspend. This is exactly the right time to do that. The error becomes apparent quickly if a market crash follows. The person sees what is happening and declares . . . I was too bold and screwed up. Well, good. This was the right time to discover it because they are young enough to get a job. I know a lot of guys in high income situations are sure that if they dropped out for 3-4 yrs and made such a discovery of having screwed up, they'd be so far out of date they could not return to their same pay level on re-hiring back into the workforce. But others can. Docs, dentists, probably lawyers too, could get back into the flow and take a paycut, but not an ego crushing one. Don't know your situation, but keep that in mind. Also a lot of ER guys who punch out of the workforce and change their minds don't try to return to a job paying as much. They may only need a modest cash influx which, when added to their ongoing withdrawls from portfolio, suffices entirely. Point being, you potentially have it backwards. When young, you don't need 99% certainty because you have time to fix a problem that arises. Someone 58 might not. Again, good going on that real estate timing.

Good data. The 800 day thing is interesting. I wonder if the other 2 occasions were in recent times. If so, maybe the nature of market behavior has inflected. I did see a very recent study which said implied volatility numbers in the options markets had collapsed in the past decade. Trends just don't get established as powerfully as they once did. Probably because of program trading. Don't rightly know what's coming next. Personally I focus on asset allocation and don't do timing. I'm at about 65% equities, 10% cash and 25% fixed income. Mild heads up to anyone who cares; when one thinks one has some position in equities because of holding a mutual fund (not an index fund), don't forget to include the internal asset allocation of that fund. A good performing equity income fund is likely to have 15% cash internally. That has to add to your own cash position evaluation. You might therefore add up all your "stock fund" positions and come out to be 75% when your target was 65%, but you've still hit your target. Other links of interest (full disclosure: I have no financial relationship with DFA or any of these links, I advocate nothing, I don't care if you read what I type, I hope everyone's investment results are super) : http://www.dfaus.com/ http://www.dpcmgmt.com/pages/f_dfa.htm

$1 million should safely fund 30 years of life for one person if you hold extractions to $45,000 in the first year and no more than 3% inflation increase on that 45K each year thereafter. Historically, this will last 30 yrs. I also presume in that conclusion that you'll get some social security at 67. If you have more than one person dependent on your nestegg, that $1 million and 45K/yr won't survive 30 years. Mostly because the 45K likely won't cover two. If there are 3 or 4 people to fund (perhaps special needs adult children), even $2 million is very shaky. Notice I said 30 yrs above. But you need to survive 40 years to get to age 82. $45K/yr plus inflation compounding that 45k upward each year makes the $1 million shaky even just for you. 40 years is an enormous amount of time to expect there to be no stock market crashes, no inflation spikes, no wars or revolutions somewhere that you own vacation property that gets blown up or nationalized (confiscated) and no health disasters. www.fireseeker.com Spend hours with this calculator. Understand the power of inflation. Only then conclude that you have enough money.

I don't live in Thailand. I intend to semi live there in the near to intermediate future. I am 51. The above posters probably have it right that most fail to compute their money needs a year or two into the future. A currency exhange hit and some inflation will erase a budget that said "yeah, I can make it if I am just careful -- and wow, hot women as far as the eye can see!!!" Well, if you have to be careful then you have no cushion for a negative event (like a 20% erosion in currency exchange). Such folks will go home quickly and get a job. Again. I'd bet a lot of folks who are "elderly" have to go home at age 65 because they can't get health insurance anymore. Americans get government sponsored Medicare health insurance starting at 65. Probably Brits face this too. About that time private plans would jack up their premiums. Hell, if you were running an insurance company with your own money, would you cover guys 65 yrs old for a few thousand dollars a year of premium who smoke and drink to excess? I damn sure wouldn't. I wouldn't be covering those guys at any price. Anyway, if you smoke and drink to excess, you're probably going to die early. Not for sure. Just probably. If you don't, you'll have to pay for health care somehow and that probably means going home at 65. So the OP said most go home in a few years. Well, if they retired at 59, that's just about right. If they were younger, they didn't understand money and inflation. As for visa run irritations, well, they last until age 50 when you can get a retirement visa.

Identify it online. Tons of insect picture sites. Find out what spider eats them. Park a few behind some furniture. Problem solved in a week or so. Then the spiders will starve and die. Rinse. Repeat.

Can't say where I saw it, but there was a post somewhere that suggested RE agencies would hammer you on rent. Working directly with a landlord was recommended, and to know which to work with, consult BMs here or after you're there, the expats living there. Regardless, the idea is hotel for a while to give yourself a chance to get educated.

I knew there just had to be a UK equivalent to US state income tax stuff. Okay for the UK guys . . . . Let me see if I get this right. In the US, geographic subdivisions of the "United States" are called "states". Geographic subdivisions within a state are called "counties". I think in the UK a subdivision of England is a county, not a state. Like Hampshire is a county? Well, in the US, each state (like Nevada, or California, or Florida . . . ) gets to add on its own income tax with which to fund state services like state road repair, state universities or other state government services. A handful of US states have zero for their tax. They fund their services other ways. For Nevada, the major city is Las Vegas and the casinos there are taxed heavily. The state does this in return for allowing gambling to be legal there. The result is zero personal state income tax. Florida taxes hotel rooms and DisneyWorld heavily to get the same effect. Its residents have zero state income tax. There are a few other states like this. Texas gets its tax money from oil and cattle and does not tax residents. New Hampshire (a small state) gets its tax money from highway tolls. In contrast, New York or California have rather high state income tax. Note That This Is In Addition To Federal Taxes. Moving one state to another does not affect our Federal taxes. Federal taxes vary with income. An average federal tax rate for a middle class working American is 22% after all loopholes are taken advantage of. New York or California will add about 8% to that. That's what all this residency talk is about . . . erasing that extra 8%.

No, poor phrasing on my part. There is no statutory time duration that I know of for establishing residency. The 18 month number is just a casual estimate of how long it takes to get a house ready to sell, find storage for household goods I may not take with me, establish some money cushion in case every investment known to man collapses 2 weeks after I quit, get a 2 month visa, get further educated and whatever. No question most of that is getting the house ready to sell. Maybe I overestimate that. Shrug. It won't be a one month thing, but maybe not 18. There is another thread somewhere where residency techniques were discussed. Sa Teef spoke up about a personal experience he'd seen as an accountant and the conclusion was that apparently one of the most powerful things you can do is get a state resident's hunting or fishing license. If you get such a thing, then a state agency has declared you a resident and this is apparently powerful stuff as rebuttal to another state agency's challenge. I think SaTeef's story was of a guy who tried to claim to be a Florida resident but come hunting season in another state, he went there to go hunting and he got a resident's hunting license. That undid his Florida residence claim. But in general, I think the maneuver is rent an apartment or condo in Vegas for a few months and hang out there, change your drivers license and register your car in Nevada, get a library card, register to vote in that district/state, hell, you might even want to get a job (haha for a week). Behave like you mean it and don't talk about what you're doing. Just do it and be quiet. The KEY POINT is you don't have to keep that apartment and be paying rent on it while paying rent in Thailand. For mail, you can get a maildrop service for a few hundred dollars a year to have your mail forwarded. It even provides you with a Nevada address. You just need to establish that Nevada (or one of the other zero income tax states) was the LAST STATE YOU LIVED IN before leaving for overseas. Then start voting absentee in that state. The idea here is to have a solid paper trail if/when California or NY makes inquiries. In fact, the best thing would be to time it all so you send in a "part time resident" tax return to California or NY or wherever showing you moved mid year and are paying 1/2 year state taxes, and make sure the return address is your new address. In 99% of the cases, I suspect they file you as moved and never revisit the matter to question it. Just make sure you never file another document with that state implying you're still there. If you own land there, sell it. Do not retain any appearance of still being there. Don't leave the door open to doubt. This is just a disaster of back taxes plus interest waiting to happen. Caveat Emptor. I Have Yet To Do All This. What I am saying above is from research. There are people who have done it and I've read their stories. Like all internet stuff, you have to filter with your brain. If you see enough people saying such and such works, you then look into it and if you can't find anything to disprove, you use it as a working hypothesis.

Heads up, minor. There is an expats group in Guadelajara Mexico who have been quietly pressuring for years to get Medicare to cover medical expenses outside the US. If you're older than 65, recommend that you investigate what they are doing and write your Congressman to add some impetus. Remember, you do still probably pay some income tax to the US so you are entitled to be a squeaky wheel.