Owen`

The younger guys wanting to move to Pattaya have to embrace the idea that their experience base is pretty sparse. They may not have vacationed other places before. If not, rest assured that it's pretty common after a vacation anywhere to imagine living there, girls or no girls. Also, younger guys wanting to move to Pattaya need to rethink their phrasing. It ain't retirement. It's relocation. You will still work, unless you're a trust fund baby. Working in Thailand is at Thai wages 95% of the time and the remaining 5% of guys who have their western companies pay them to be there at

Doable and doable fairly easy, but I say this because that was the result of my own research on this question about 6 mos ago -- not because I've personally sold and successfully extracted the money. Here is the website some kind BM gave me at the time. http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=50053

Everything is almost always a money issue. There's a great cynical piece of advice I got 20 years ago from a one of those self made millionaires who lived in a modest house, drove a modest car and owned 5 hardware stores across the city. It was simple. "Do not ever invest anything with anyone who contacts you first. By following this rule, you will miss out on a chance to earn millions 1 time out of 15,000,000,000. You will also miss out on being scammed 3 out of 4 times." The guys on this board are sharp and cynical. Wait for stuff to be built before buying it.

Sounds fair. Paul/Jan (BM LostinSpace) has a thread about his wife's service and Mr. Toom did start this one. Threads are easy to start if someone has other services to recommend.

Ran into a phraseology issue a few months ago on a question like this. You can't buy a "house" in Thailand because farangs can't own property outside a corporation. You can buy a condo. There is a difference. Others will provide other answers, one of which is the Search button. A lot of guys ask this kind of thing.

Guys, this is touched on now and again on the board and I will hit it once more because it is so very important and only a couple of years of error would screw you for life. A poster above suggested the guy with the 2 million could get 8% on his money. That Doesn't Matter. This is about two things. Crashes and Inflation. The 4% number comes from a study of all 30 yr periods of time from 1890 onward. During those periods the stock markets declined in some years and rose in others. That guy with the 2 million, spending maybe 120K/yr (only 6%), is likely going to run out of money lo

FYI I did a search on the keyword Shipping and for posts older than 30 days. There are a few old threads about this. They look good for background information, but since the rules change reading old posts isn't enough. Looks like no shortcuts. Do the research.

Weird that there is not more talk of what goals guys commit themselves to during the day. Yes, the women are a big reason people retire or semi retire in Thailand, but there is surely more.

I have no special information on this, but I do have a personal observation. I was in Pattaya a few months ago and there was a new complex advertising itself with scale models and high pressure salespeople in the Royal Garden Mall or whatever it is called. The scale models were excellent, the brochures professional and the sales staff spoke English. And every single thing they were selling had not yet been built. In the US (or presumably the UK too) one can downplay a bit of that risk, one supposes, but in Thailand it seems very dicey to me to park $150,000 on deposit with some

Vaguely familiar with that guy's situation. I believe he likes to fly. Flying is pricey. The rule of thumb is 4% extraction from nest egg for it to last 30 yrs. That's $80K/yr in the first year on 2 million dollars with a 3% (inflation) increase each year thereafter. Take any more than that and your odds of running out of money grow. That assumes a 50/50 mix of equities and bonds for the 2 million, btw. The equities are needed to fight inflation, but they also subject him to crash risk. The real problem he faces is he needs to last more than 30 yrs. This will drop him under 4%.

A heads up that is a tad obvious, but can be forgotten. What you don't ship has to be dealt with. I think long term storage in the US is going to run < $100/month for me, but it is region dependent. I doubt it is viable to put a lot of stuff with a relative. Think back to when someone had you store something in your garage . . . . . forever. How nice was that? Anyway, ship or store. Hi Fi? Gotta be cheap ones available in Singapore of probably much better quality than what you have. Donate it and try for a tax deduction.

Thank you, sir. You are superior to any FAQ.

The 3800 baht for multiple re-entry . . . is that an annual expense and is it unlimited re-entries? And is the 3800 in addition to the retirement visa's 1900? And is that 1900 also annual? I should spend more time on the FAQ, but text tends to get glib and general.

Eneukman, good data. BTW my recall is you're renting a better than average condo for 20K baht/month. I've forgotten your longer term plan. Continue to rent or use that as a base of operations for investigating a condo buy? How did that murder in VT sit with other occupants?

bvthunder: Way up higher in the thread I passed along similar sentiments, but felt uncomfortable in that we've all seen all the scams that might exist, including bogus testimonials. These comments ain't bogus. This is a good service and worth all of the extra few dollars it costs. If you are scraping by on a vacation, you take what risks you choose to with unknown, unrecommended service. If you actually have a few dollars or pounds to your name, this is a place they would be well spent.

English speaking?

You may have specific reasons for this, but I'll offer the thought that Thai medicine is pretty much first class. If you have an emergency it may be just as safe having it dealt with locally than enduring a 48ish hr evacuation process to get to a US hospital, that may or may not find you in better shape for treatment than two days prior.

My ongoing investigations say this is the way to go. Do not move to Thailand directly from a high state income tax state. Do it in two steps. If you move directly, then you have to contact the state revenue people who have zero interest in telling you that you don't owe money that helps pay their salary. You will get a run around, and even if you don't, you can't trust what you're told. It's a lot easier to come from a zero tax state. Your former high tax state will receive maybe a partial year income tax return from you with an address in Nevada or Floridat or Texas or whatever a

I'll venture into this UK thread with a few US relevant comments that may apply. Linkage: There is a risk of linking what we call ATM debit cards to other accounts you may have. Yes, you want some kind of overdraft protection, but you also don't want to have a hacker be able to steal more than just some limited quantity in the first account. A Form of Protection: A way US banks limit that danger from ATMs is to provide a limit to you, on your request, of X number of dollars per day that can be withdrawn. For me I've specified $350. (That's on my ATM (debit) card, not a credit c

Amazing that H&R Block stay in business. There must be enough people still floating about who simply can't use a computer or the net.

Interesting idea. I'm no expert on this business. I've been looking into such place in the US on the presumption that there will be some array of a lifetime of stuff that will fall in the gray area of 1) I don't need it in LOS 2) I don't want to toss it. What I see is advertised as "enough volume to store 2 full rooms of stuff" is about $50/month. The big deal with them is, however, and this addresses your idea -- that they have some climate control and they are behind a layer of security. A small cheap room probably is okay climate wise, but zero security, yes? Mayb

Thanks, Bill. It now occurs to me that there would be a market for this service, but it involves buying raw land so a Westerner probably can't do it without a corporation. OTOH, he needs it to be a corporation anyway so . . . .

Dead on topic, Alan. I suspect no one makes the move without numerous investigation trips first. Those investigation trips can save one a lot of shipping money by bringing an extra bag of luggage each trip. Given the duty points Alan makes above, it may be wise to pack that extra bag with thought given to this so that if you are stopped for a random tourist screening check, it's not filled with 100 CDs and you are stuck trying to explain that you plan to spend your whole vacation listening to music. BTW, there is no reason to ship CDs. They should be ripped to mp3 and it's triv

I travel a ton and have a tidbit to add to Sa-teef's comment. The internet has changed the hotel business in a profound way. The ability to trash a hotel online in a review terrifies management everywhere I've ever been. In the past, they wanted to make things right for guests because it's the right thing to do and because anyone working that job doesn't want to do it badly -- much like anyone working any job. But now the motivation has broadened. In the past, if you angered a guest he would not come back and a handful of his pals might be told of it and they would not show up ei

Thanks, redwood. I don't scope Thaivisa's site anywhere near often enough. But yeah, this is data that would be useful to know for many, so I hope a thread unfolds here for the Search button to find.