Owen`

Worth nothing that there is a probability to the mix. It takes money to get here and time in one's job to have the multiple weeks of vacatin available. Guys in their 30's are still recovering financially from the divorce. Guys in their 40's have recovered and have the money and time and can make the trip. Note, however, that the chart is destined to slide upwards as the population of the West ages. The big bulge will soon be 45-55 rather than 40-50.

Bingo. You need to play this smart. You must establish residency in a zero income tax state FIRST, before you move. This involves changing your drivers license, renting a place or buying something (maybe a trailer), registering to vote . . . just do lots of things to have available as evidence. Hell, to play it safe you may even want to live there for 3 months before the move. Keep in mind this is not an unusual thing. Many many politicians and staffers in Washington DC who live in Maryland or Virginia retain residency in their home state by simply owning some $25K condo that they n

I'm in Singapore headed back to the states and have been giving this matter some thought. My read is this. Given the new airport, there is about only one way to lose money on a high rise, ocean view condo purchase in or near Pattaya. That one way is to pay too much to begin with -- that is, get scammed. I think the way to play this is to buy one that already exists. This up front money crap from these folks (I was told the 50/50 ratio of foreigners to locals legal limit was being approached so I had to move fast or I'd be screwed) was just that, crap. They are trying to finance t

Heads up, guys. It is state tax that slips by. You can increase your pension or interest/capital gains income by about 5-7% by simply establishing residence in one of the 0 income tax states (TX, FL, WY, AK, WA, NV, NH) before moving to LOS. I say 5-7% because that would be typical if you made your big move from, say, Missouri. You would not be paying that tax anymore if you establish residency elsewhere first, even if you still own property in the original state.

I let myself get the schpiel this morning in some store or other where they have models set up of the new condo highrise/tower. In general it looks like 1500 square feet (I think that's 145 sq meters) for about $250,000 all everything. Every unit has a balcony with a jacuzzi on it. Looks nice but there were worries, not the least of which were wanting money up front and the completion date is not til mid 2007. Anyone know more?

A moment for a bit of praise. I arrived in Pattaya today from the US. As all American BMs know, that trip is brutal. 25 hrs door to door minimum. A BM named lostinspace (Paul) and his wife Jan have started up a quality airport / Pattaya transfer service. I used it today. Jan met me with a sign with my first name on it, plus a particular shirt they identify to ensure no one co-opts your name for theft, she put me in a good car, weaved her way through a godawful parking lot and got me here. The traffic is horrible, as we all know, and she's deft at maneuvering through it without beco

A moment for a bit of praise. I arrived in Pattaya today from the US. As all American BMs know, that trip is brutal. 25 hrs door to door minimum. A BM named lostinspace (Paul) and his wife Jan have started up a quality airport / Pattaya transfer service. I used it today. Jan met me with a sign with my first name on it, plus a particular shirt they identify to ensure no one co-opts your name for theft, she put me in a good car, weaved her way through a godawful parking lot and got me here. The traffic is horrible, as we all know, and she's deft at maneuvering through it without

And this, gentlemen, is when you walk away. Losses are far more important than profit. That's not a psychological statement. That's a mathematical statement. If you have 10 dollars and you sustain a 50% loss, you have 5 dollars left. Now give yourself a 50% profit. Do you have your 10 dollars in your pocket again? No. You have 7 dollars and 50 cents. It takes a 100% gain to undo a 50% loss. Losses are more powerful than gains. Do not buy land that is too expensive to make a good percentage profit. It's a recipe for failure.

Well, hell, this is no different than anywhere else. This is the quiet little business strategy of many non-chain restaurants in the US. You buy land, you put a restaurant on it, you sell food at the restaurant, you make a little bit of money selling the food. That little bit of money doesn't get you rich. The increase in value of the dirt under the restaurant is what gets you rich. If you didn't own the dirt under the restaurant, you're not gonna get rich. Some shopping center may trot thru the door and "buy your restaurant" for big big profit, but when you have taken their money

Ha! I've seen this sort of thing before, too. "Migration Economist", eh. Dr. Lawrence, eh. I got 40 baht that says he never finished his PhD dissertation. I got another 40 that says American Express in Hong Kong won't pay him to consult anymore and he's trying to make ends meet. And no, I don't know who he is. I've just seen guys who lose contracts in SE Asia find themselves unable to go home, for whatever reason. He would have deserved pity if he hadn't spammed.

Gentlemen, I know nothing of running a bar. I know something of money. There is only one rule of investing money that is always true. High return means high risk. If you want your 40,000 pounds you provide you 4,000 pounds of profit/income per year, that is a 10% return and that's a medium-to-slightly-high level risk situation in the world as it exists today. It Does Not Matter What The Vehicle Is That Provides You That 4,000 Pounds. They are all just a way to earn 10%. You need to look at yourself and ask what you need per year to live. If you're going to take t

Thanks, guys. That airsafe.com website is great. I had not seen it before. The accident number for China Air still looks shaky to me. Equipment vs maintenance. I don't know. Still safer than driving a car, certainly. I have talked up SQ and their safety record looks good there (that website should display accidents per total flights or per total flight miles -- a small airline with just a few airplanes has an advantage with this presentation), but I will toss you guys one anecdote. SQ's trolley dollies have rigid requirements. They may not be married. They may not be old

Google China Air and safety. No point in having polite service on a plane just before it smashes into the ground. No question Singapore Air is superior to any American airline. SQ's coach is better than United's domestic FC.

I'm a very frequent flier. I do over 100,000 miles per year on various airlines. Singapore Air is the finest airline in the world and everyone knows it. They dominate all the survey lists. That's that. You want the best, you fly SQ. You usually pay a few extra hundred dollars for that privilege. Delta is not bad. They codeshare broadly and after years of being badly run, they had a management change about 3-4 years ago. The new CEO is 70+ years old, has no personal money axe to grind, gave himself a 25% paycut recently and has said his last goal for his life is to save that airl

Suggestion: Yes, dehydration is a factor. But the biggest factor is sunlight. If you return home and it is cloudy during the day it will take a very long time to re-adjust. The key to jetlag is sunshine. It resets your clock. If it is overcast during the day, then you need to stare at lit lightbulbs during the day. Sounds silly, but it's true.

No, I don't think folks ever really try to stop a young guy from trying something that is financially shaky. The reason is . . . frankly, young guys just starting out can lose "everything" but "everything" for them is not much. There is that romantic admiration of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak at Apple risking "everything" to make it big -- but if you look at what they risked, it was a VW van and a hand calculator. That was their initial money. That was their "everything". If they had failed, they would have gotten jobs for a year or two and replaced "everything". The point being, at 1

Guy, in about 30 years you're going to learn something we older folks have learned, which is that even though it's not wise to try to provide wisdom to young people, it's a hard temptation to resist. Suggestions: 1) Don't do anything that locks you into a situation. Period. You are too young to know what you want to do or to know what is likely. 2) You know your own business best, but you are too young to have seen a recession. A very good rule of thumb in any business is that success is 20% your own doing and 80% luck in that macroeconomic conditions are favorable. The world i

Concerning a new UK pension law: I have noticed in this thread that there are comments made by the Brits and Americans that would be useful to both if we understood each others' normal arrangements. FYI in the US the government "pension" plan is called Social Security. It starts paying out an inflation adjusted amount at age 65 for current retirees. That age is due to slide upward over the next few years, in terms of at what age it starts. There is also an old age medical insurance plan called Medicare that covers only beyond age 65 for a very small premium (which all Americans have

Excellent data. Thanks. The ReEntry visa . . . do you have experience with that? Do you have to requalify each departure from LOS, meaning do you have to have a recent bank statement with you to traverse the airport?

Wow. This is good stuff. I don't know how the other Americans are reading this, but for me the UK posts are interesting. I have to deduce from the context what the US equivalent is that is being discussed in terms of taxes and pensions and yields and returns. Posts like this one: . . . make a lot of sense. The terminology could be unfamiliar, but when someone says "my after tax yield is looking to be in the region of 4.6%" one can easily translate that into US equivalents and it gives a very good feel for what sort of vehicles have been chosen. What I think I'm reading abo

Whoa! I think I read somewhere there is a way to get a "retirement visa" that provides one with permanent residence with no need for visa runs every 30 days. What I read said something like . . . you have to have X amount of money on deposit at a Thai bank. That would get you the retirement visa. The only downside seemed to be that if you were discovered "working" it was a serious offense. It seemed to say that the money just had to be there to show you were not destitute. You kept the interest the bank paid, and you could leave and take your money when you felt like it (but don't exp

FYI the Fireseeker website is known and talked about on various retirement planning websites and well thought of, but don't rely on it too much because some of the calculation algorithms are not published. It's not really rocket science. If you get returns on your money that exceed your spending, you will see your portfolio grow. If you don't, you will see it shrink. Add to that simplicity the reality that no one knows what future inflation or returns will look like so everything beyond that simplicity is guesswork. The guesswork from the study is to use history and presume the future

I must have done something wrong. The BUPA website provides an online quote that does not force you to wait for anyone to call or anything like that. I picked their lowest level coverage. I'm 50. I specified living in Thailand. With $400 deductible, they quoted $1200 per year. That's not so bad, but it's not 3-500. I must have done something wrong. Maybe a higher deductible gets it down to $500.

Thanks for this data, guy. This is really important for the Americans. I imagine the UK guys have their government health care that covers them, but Americans pay this out of pocket. Did you say 300 to 500 dollars PER YEAR? That's not a typo and you meant 3000 to 5000 dollars? What is covered for 3-500 dollars per year. Your HMO (from the US) covers you in Thailand? Isn't this unusual? And do they cover only some certain percentage of something? I will google BUPA, but if you can get coverage in Thailand for 3-500 bux, why have an HMO? Isn't that a lot more expensive?

I'll wing a quick financial analysis of the above data. I will let the other guys tackle the medical insurance issue and the English teaching issue since I have no idea how that works. As a EE I would think you could find a company in the states to outsource some emailable work to you, perhaps reviewing competitive proposals the company might be preparing. Or even reviewing designs. Companies like to pay independent people to do such reviews. It costs them no SS, no benefits in general and you're not on the payroll. Okay, from your data above, the first question is where is the $130