Owen`

I would suggest that inflation can generally be presumed to remain positive and never negative. There are no guarantees so maybe someday we will all look at amazement at prices dropping for . . . whatever. But if it is always positive you can pick an average number for it. Currency exchange . . . to do the same thing is to presume that pound/baht ratios or dollar/baht ratios will erode continuously forever. This is not supported by history. But if you want to model things that way, add it to the inflation number you choose. The study that all of this is based on uses historical stock market moves since 1880. The "portfolio management" stuff is just "asset allocation" -- and for the guys new to this world that just means the categories into which you divide your nest egg. You allocate some of it to bank savings accounts and some of it to stocks. There is nothing in the study to address what happens if some of that allocation is a house or raw land. I doubt there are solid records for a constant index of real property from 1880. I know . . . I KNOW . . . the UK has created a whole generation of 50ish year olds whose entire life experience tells them that owning "property" (meaning houses) is the path to nirvana and to not own property is foolish. I do not try to change their minds. All I can say is that the study did not include that. That doesn't mean it doesn't work. It means there is no evidence that it will, over 30 yrs.

I didn't invent it. I'd rather my name not be on it. Call it . . . The 4% SWR (Safe Withdrawl Rate) Model. Yes. There are some additional studies that get into that question, and others. The basic 4% SWR approach rebalances your portfolio every year. This would need to take place if the equity portion rose sharply or sank sharply in order to stay at 50/50. In general, it is presumed the dividends are reinvested -- but there can be tax questions about that. It is generally not a matter that will confuse you. It will be clear what is best to do. You can't compound if you don't reinvest and the whole model depends on reinvestment. There are studies that suggest it may be wiser to extract the 4% at the start of each year in a manner that depends on what happened the previous year. One of the core issues of the entire theory is that if you sell stocks to raise cash for living expenses in January right after a year when stocks declined in price, you are "selling at the bottom" and that is the primary mechanism for running out of money. You sell at the bottom and a subsequent rise in stocks doesn't apply to the cash you extracted. Multiply that over maybe 5 or 6 bear markets in the 30 year period and yup, you can run out of money. So the Guyton variation is simply to never sell stocks for living expenses after a down year. Sell bonds for living expenses, and hope there are not 5 down years in a row that run you out of bonds. Historically, that has not happened. According to Guyton, if you do this kind of thing you start to gain fractional percentage on the 4% number, and when you add some of his other maneuvers he claims to get up to 5% -- or 5.5% with Social Security. Shrug. The community really really really doesn't like this, but his math is pure. It is inate conservatism (fear) that keeps people from embracing it. Note that on 1 million the difference between 4% and 5.5% is $15K of life spending a year. Quite a few bar fines.

Really useful to have a feel for the UK norms on these matters. Maybe vice versa if you ever associate with Americans. The item about your state pensions "freezing" the day you leave the UK is an ugly one. I know of no equivalent feature in Social Security. For Social Security there is a requirement that contributions take place for "40 quarters" in order to qualify for a minimum payout. That is largely calendar, but not entirely. If you make large contributions in some quarters they can count as more than one quarter. Regardless, if you stop contributing, you stop increasing your benefit (which does have a maximum), but you do not freeze inflation adjustments. Meaning, if you quit work at age 54 with contributions of a magnitude that will give you $10,000 USD/yr in pension, that will be $10,000 2008 dollars in whatever year you collect them. The amount WILL adjust upward with inflationary adjustments each year. Also, with Soc. Sec, people have the ability to start collecting at age 62 (in fact most do) at a 33% decrease, forever, from the amount they would collect at "full retirement age" (65, 66, or 67 depending on the year you turn that age). The equation for deciding on early collection depends, of course, entirely on your death year. The longer you live, the wiser it becomes to wait for the extra 33%, but since no one knows when that will be, most grab the money as fast as they can at age 62. Note that these numbers above are rather low. I believe a top end earner (it is capped at about 100K income) will get about $25,000 USD/yr. A big issue with Soc. Sec. is its taxability. If people have other sources of income, their SS gets taxed at different levels. There is a fairly loud philosophical fight about this in that SS is technically not income -- it is a return of insurance premiums paid over a lifetime. Anyway, a generic Early Retiree will not hit those max numbers. Leaving the workforce early cuts your benefit. This is a reasonable thing and something guys should research to know their numbers.

Rather than continue to hijack nidnoyham's thread about his workmate, I am starting this new one with data sinbinjack just posted. I had not seen it before. This, I presume, is the UK "state pension". In the US we call it Social Security. This minimum number equates to 87/wk X 52 = 4524 pounds per year (a bit over 9K USD) The US average Social Security check is about $1000/month in 2007 or 12K/yr. The minimum number is somewhat lower and probably compares closely with the UK. Working from this average (which includes spousal survivor checks and the many people who begin collecting a decreased amount at age 62 rather than await full pension age) we get 32,000 baht per month. sinbinjack notes he hopes for 145ish pounds per week including his "works pension". In the US this is called company pension and they are going away. I think the number is down to only 20% of employers who have such a benefit still. Medicare starts for US folks at age 65 and as has been discussed this makes it very hard to stay in LOS past that age because most private health insurers will stop coverage then. The British NHS covers all ages, but Brits will find the same problem getting private health insurance in LOS past 65. Guys there now in their 60's probably have a way to get coverage and maybe will die before they lose that. The guys there now in their early 50's . . . it's an unknown. Maybe something will happen in 10 yrs to allow health coverage outside home country past age 65. As of this moment, the trends are towards insurers shutting off coverage at that age and forcing people home. But back to the state pensions. Make sure you know your expected number. And make sure you know how the annual inflation index works that provides you an annual pay raise. Ditto your works (company) pension. A slight US advantage exists for this. Any company paying a pension to a retiree, especially an "early" retiree, also is allowing that retiree to remain within their group health plan -- which has far lower premiums than an individual plan. Know the inflationary adjustment process and the date it occurs and watch the news for any suggestion that "improvements" are to be made to it. THIS is how benefits will be cut. An erosion of the inflation adjustment is a quiet, easy thing for government to do and if you are not loud in your complaints, they will get away with it.

This thread is diverging somewhat, but nidnoyham introduced pretty important stuff and other stuff has added. Thoughts: 1) I spent 2 weeks in Costa Rica last year. The price of everything there reflects its discovery as a retirement haven about 8 years ago. From what I saw on the Pacific coast, we are 8 years too late. It is no longer a great place for American retirees. Might have been once. No longer. 2) I suppose there are newcomers to the board and I am a bit of a broken record, but for people unfamiliar with the computation it is a very difficult one to understand. The magic number is 4%, or actually 4.5% if you have a future Social Security or State pension expected. That means you can take your lifetime's nest egg, extract about 4.5% from it in year 1, and add an inflationary increase of about 3% to your spending each year thereafter -- and your nest egg will survive 30 years at 95% confidence. This assumes you have that nest egg divided between government bonds and stock shares. If you take out more than 4.5 - 5%, the graph curves turn sharply downward and the confidence dives to 80%, 50%, 30% and 0 the more you take out in year 1. If you have a pension coming in, now, add it to the 4.5%. It will mean you can spend more per year. No, please don't step up and say you can get 6% from government bonds somewhere so that means you can take 6% and not lose money. The computation is historically based and inflation is powerfully present in it. The 95% confidence means 95% of all 30 year periods of economic behavior since 1880 did not run out of money. That includes those periods when bonds provided 6%. And when inflation was 15%. 3) The greatest threat you face to that 4.5% target is health care costs. If you can fit health care insurance premiums into that 4.5%, great. If you can't, guess what? You have to cut something else out, because THIS is the item that can bankrupt you. A very important part of this issue is what happens when you turn 65. Right now private insurers are mostly refusing further coverage past 65. Some are allowing it to continue if you had a policy with them prior to that age, but they will eventually fade away. It's a pure profit matter. As you get older, past 65, you become someone who is essentially guaranteed to cost them more money than you pay in premiums. It makes no financial sense for them to allow that. And so . . . once this trend becomes universal, odds are pretty high we all return to our home country's national health care for the elderly at age 65, whether we like it or not. The only way that can be avoided is if those national health plans eventually permit reimbursement for treatment out of the country. Hard to see how that can happen when it takes money out of the local medical industry's pocket.

nidnoyham, I'm an American and the details of what the UK does for the totally penniless must necessarily be a complete mystery to me. I am a numbers person so I can weigh in with thoughts on things that are probably universal. 1) If his pension is just enough to "get by" in Thailand, then it is not enough to get by in the UK, and though it seems obvious that "he should go home and stay", maybe that's not the best thing. If his pension can't pay for life in the UK he has to go back to work. Do not underestimate how hard this is to do, for anyone. It is easy for young folks to sneer and say "I have to work so he bloody well can too", but there is a big difference between 55 and 35. What sort of work can be expected of a man who is recuperating from heart disease 6 months of a year? 2) So his kids were adopted, but nevertheless raised by him. Yes, this means there would be even less interest in the new daughter as a sister. But it also explains a bit more of his mindset -- this new biological child would become a major focus. 3) So let's just get through all the emotional stuff and look at the numbers. He needs an 800K baht bypass operation. He doesn't have 800K. I presume he is not married to the girl in Thailand so Thai insurance doesn't cover him (I am not sure it covers farang spouses, regardless). So what this all comes down to is this: a. Someone get on a computer and verify NHS knows who he is and will do the operation on an emergency basis. Verify also that his Inland Revenue back taxes problem does not shut off medical care. One would think it might. If it does, add that number to the numbers below. b. Forget the credit cards for the time being. c. Six months rent anywhere at all is going to cost what, 4,000 pounds? Add utilities for 6 months to 1200 pounds. Food another 1000 pounds? Transportation 6 months 300 pounds? If rent is free, he still needs 2500 pounds to live for 6 months (no idea what UK costs are, though). That is what, 185K baht. He can't do this 6 mos in the UK for less than 185K baht even with free rent. His pension can cover that? If so, does it mean he sends no money to Thailand for 6 months to his lady and daughter? This would lead her to consider him having run out on her. d. If he marries the Thai lady in Thailand, does he get Thai medical insurance and local coverage there?

nidnoyham, There is maybe another oblique maneuver available. You say he has adult children by an estranged Thai wife. This means the new little girl is their half sister. Odds low they will care, but weirder things have happened. They may want to meet her and help her out at some point. That reduces some pressure on him. As for the operation, when your arteries are clogged to the point where angioplasty can't be tried any longer and artery grafts have to be done, the situation is pretty urgent. I think he needs to be headed home immediately. He may be able to check online somehow to determine if NHS is going to know who he is and recognize he is entitled? One thing I think you have not read correctly . . . the thing about needing 6 mos recovery. For certain he'll need multiple months of follow-up, but given no living quarters (those same kids mentioned above are apparently deadbeats like him (re the credit cards)) it seems reasonable to head back to Thailand after a few weeks and do follow up in Thailand. Just have him bring all this medical records with him. Yes, he has to pay for Thai follow-up, but presumably that will cost a great deal less in money and stress than 6 months of rent, dodging Inland Revenue and the credit card companies. What is utterly bizarre to me is someone thinking they have enough money to retire and last the rest of their life and then run out in 4 years. Was that his definition of "the rest of his life?" Maybe it will turn out that way, but how can anyone do the math that badly? From 50's at least 25 years seems reasonable. How could he have done the math for 25 years and run out in 4? That is one HELLUVA lot of beer.

The guys above understand the issues in general. Here are a few specifics, and some hopeful words for the future: 1) Health Care Insurance: The guys from the UK have a lot more educating of themselves to do on this than Americans. National health plans don't cover people outside the borders. It is up to each person to find insurance. THIS IS HUGE. It is also a very subtle thing that no one wants to think about or research and so the intricacies of what this means do not get discovered. 2) Heath Care Self Insurance: This is the primary temptation for guys on a pension. "On a pension" means they have been working in a big corporation and that means they have been on an employer sponsored health care plan all their working lives. It is likely that this ends on day of employment end. So a guy receiving a pension, kicking back and seeing that life is paid for by that pension, feels that all is well. But if a huge lump sum expenditure arrives, like a triple heart bypass, he has no lump sum to pay it. Pensions Are Likely To Erode And They Have A Weakness. This is it. 3) Pre-Existing Conditions: Group plans cover these. Individual plans do not. The only way to make coverage for this profitable for an insurance company is via spreading of the risk across a broad population. Make no mistake about it -- there will not be insurance unless it can be done profitably. National plans are not going to extend to cover people outside borders unless enough voter clout exists, and "enough" is defined as . . . enough to counter the enormous lobbying power of domestic medical industries who will view themselves as "robbed" of revenue when people get medical care elsewhere. 4) Group plan creation: AARP (American Assoc. of Retired People) is trying to arrange this in the US. A group plan for people over 50. No question at all these plans will be much more expensive than group plans for employers (who have younger employees to balance out older employees), but a spreading of risk across the 50+ population WILL help some and probably permit insurance companies to profitably accept pre-ex conditions. The UK guys should pressure their own retirement lobby groups to create group insurance plans and maybe get them extended across borders.

Eneukman, I suspect many very much look forward to your chronicles of this purchase process. Thanks in advance for taking the time to mention the obstacles enroute.

Eneukman, I recall seeing you mention your intent to buy after having rented a few years now. What is your thinking on this? What led you to decide this is a better plan after spending time learning the "ropes"? Has something changed to make renting less wise?

Okay, let's take a step back here and think about, of all things, human nature. The OP posted on Christmas Eve. It is a time of year when there is a lot of score keeping that gets started. There are very few days left until the outright end of the year and what exists the 24th is probably going to exist the 31st. So people embark on their own agendas as regards money at the end of the year. Before I start in on some of the specifics in play here, let's re-examine how human nature works with regard to the markets. The phrasing for markets and investments is usually wrong. On a big down day there is talk of "sellers vastly outnumbered buyers today and drove equity prices down." Well, that is wrong. That did not happen. Sellers did not likely outnumber buyers. They were simply more urgent. As many shares were bought as sold that day. Buyers may not have been fewer, but they were certainly less urgent. Prices move with urgency, not totals. If you have 100% knowledge of the future and KNOW that some particular item is going to greatly increase in price, then you will be willing to pay a bit more than its current price this moment in order to get in before that future arrives. Your urgency is high. And You Drive That Price Up A Little With That Urgency. This is why there can never be a foolproof system for markets. If there is a system that always works, then everyone will use it, buy quickly and urgently and have their urgency drive up the price so that the next people arriving and using that system are going to discover the price so high that there is no gain to be had. It fails -- meaning that system Does Not Always Work. This is always true. There can be no perpetually winning system. It can't exist. The problem is not that it does not always work; it is that it cannot always work. Now then, let's examine some text from the OP: <--- and who is "our"? Imperial we? Ahh, more we talk. How very nice of "them" to list items they have not yet listed so that people can imagine themselves in before the crowd. As best I can tell this is a paste from some subscription-paid investment advisory service. It has been well understood for about . . . oh, 50 years . . . that subscribers to investment advisories seek the same thing they get from magazine subscriptions: Entertainment. I am going to just pick out a random item from the list and examine it. I may even agree with the information provided. It won't matter. It won't matter because of the inevitable reality from the text above; American Cap. (ACAS) 07/01/05 $36.20 $33.28 12.0% +15.8% Quarterly Outperform Never heard of them, particularly. But here is what I find. This is a closed end fund that invests in debt, i.e., bonds. The price for this fund is $33.16/share at the close of markets today, Dec 28. It has fallen in price from Jan 1, 2007 about 28% (from $45/share). Since dividend yields are price dependent, that means the 12% dividend advertised was 9% on 1 January. To pay 12% on $33 that means they pay out $3.96/share per year in dividends. Given that the price has fallen this year by $11, the market has not been impressed with that. This company pays that dividend from the proceeds of helping small businesses grow (or get bought). This means their dividend is entirely dependent on economic conditions perpetually making businesses grow and get sold. Nothing is perpetual. Another bothersome thing is this company is somewhat complex. It is the sort of company understood best by its management. If you look at recent insider buys . . . there are few. The current management of the company is not clamoring to get aboard this train. In fact the largest transaction recently was an outright sale by the Chief Operating Officer. Why might that be? Perhaps he sees more 28% losses coming. You can see this data here: http://www.smartmoney.com/eqsnaps/index.cf...amp;symbol=ACAS The point is . . . 80% of professional money managers under perform the market indices each year. They are paid by people whose money was entrusted to them. If those people had not entrusted that money to them and merely bought an index fund (a fund that is not managed; it is invested in the market index like the S&P or the FTSE), they would have achieved better performance -- and not paid anyone to achieve it. Given that this is so, the odds are against you when you think you have found one of the magical 20% who will outperform the market next year. Oh, and don't forget, it is generally a different 20% each year. So, I don't know the agenda of the OP. Always useful to remember the old investment advisory marketing story. A fledgling advisor needed to build his clientelle. So he took a list of possible customers and divided it in half. He sent the two halves two sets of advice, 180 degrees different from each other. Then after truth became clear, he divided the "correct" group in half and repeated the procedure. After 3-4 iterations of this, he sent the group to whom he had sent "correct" advice 4 consecutive times an offer to continue his advisories in return for a yearly subscription. His sales rate on that mailing was far better than a shotgun mailing from the original group. Welcome to the world of investment advice marketing.

Sigh. I will put a few moments into reading this and reply further. For now, without having read it, I will just . . . sigh.

I have come to realize that this whole matter is largely a UK thing. A lifetime of observations of how house ownership was the path to riches have become deeply embedded in the British presumptions of what is normal and typical. Just be warned. It does not have to be normal and typical. The incentive to try to find a way around the Thailand rules is all about your lifetime of observations and the presumptions developed. They may not be correct in Thailand, and they may not be correct in the UK of the future. Or anywhere else. There is no physical law of the universe that says owning a house will make you rich. Quick peripheral question. Are the "houses" pseudo owned by farangs in Jomtien or Pattaya in locales with gated community sort of security? Condo complexes have security arrangements, but what of houses?

All prices have three directions. Which of the three occurs tends to be equally probable on a real basis, i.e., inflation adjusted. I don't understand the thinking, Eneukman. If you have been a renter for two years, what leads you to want to buy now? Or a year from now? What is inadequate about renting?

The exotic scenario of the rich person who has "a winter residence in Tuscany" and "a summer residence in Vancouver" is generally all crap. Insurance companies are very loathe to cover a property that is vacant for months at a time. The broken water pipe upstairs has months to destroy everything within when a place is vacant. Insurance companies won't endure that. So your alternative is a caretaker. They aren't free. You have to be playing in the 15+ million dollars league to be able to tolerate multiple residences around the world. Or you have to be willing to endure the risk of that pipe destroying everything and you paying all the repair costs yourself.

Opening the account will be easy. Just be sure you fully report it to the IRS on your 1040. That's also easy.

Okay, I am not going to be snide here. I will just ask you to extrapolate the situation to its most likely progression. It doesn't matter if you think it's an IRS rule or a law. Here is what happens. You file the 1040. Whatever past liability you have that is concerning you -- that party can subpoena your past tax forms. This is standard procedure in any civil litigation. The existence of the accounts will then become known to that plaintiff. The maneuver will thus be unsuccessful. If you lied on the 1040 form and committed perjury, and the plaintiff finds your account through any of hundreds of other ways (direct deposit to a foreign account from your employer whose records can be subpoenaed, or simply a subpoena of your own current bank records -- from which you presumably move money into the new account) then you face not only a plaintiff that has found your money, but also the IRS chasing you for perjury. You will have converted a possible monetary liability into both money confiscation and jail time. Do not think you can fund the new account without leaving a record trail. The only way to do that is withdraw cash, hand carry it to the new bank, and deposit it. If that amount is over $10,000, you must report carrying monetary instruments out of the country. If you get caught, that would be yet another federal crime you will be tried for. Beyond that, do you really want to walk around carrying $10,000 cash? Why bother? If the amount in question is less than $100,000 it's probably not worth all this bother and risk anyway. So I will change the question, do you really want to be walking around with $100,000 in cash on you? And let's add to all this the possibility that you move the money out of the US, and a judgment is declared by the court in favor of the people you are fleeing. The court says pay up. You say no, the money is overseas and you're not paying it. Well, you go to jail then. Contempt of court. If you try to do all this while having fled the country, then you can never come back. Ever. There is no statute of limitations on this. They will arrest you at the gate if you do. Feel okay with that? Now imagine that the amount of money, or the anger of the court or plaintiff, is enough to freeze your passport. Come renewal time, then what?

There is a line on your US 1040 tax return that you have probably never even thought about before, but it will become operative now. It asks "Do you own or have control of any foreign bank account or an account at any foreign financial institution?" The IRS will not "suspect"you have an account. They will know, and they will know what it is and what bank has it because you are required to tell them each year. If you lie on that question, it is perjury. It sounds like you have some past possible liabilities and you want to dodge them. This method you are considering is not going to work, if you want to obey the law.

Guys, I have some new information that may be of use. Before you get hopes up, this is not an immediate thing, but it is good news of things to come. In the US there is an organization with considerable political clout called AARP. American Assoc. of Retired Persons. The Wall St. Journal recently reported that Aetna insurance company is preparing a health coverage product in cooperation with AARP specifically designed for "early" retirees -- meaning those people who are not yet 65 (when the US gov't's Medicare insurance begins) but are over 50 and have left a job that offered a group rate -- or whose employer no longer offers one. The way this is supposed to unfold is like so. Currently, individual policies are generally not age specific in what is covered. The price varies with age, but the covered illnesses do not. So family insurance that you buy today has pregnancy/prenatal coverage in it, childhood immunizations, extensive sports injury coverage and a host of other risks that do not apply to older folks. Those will be extracted, as will gender specific coverage like hysterectomy reqmts or ovarian cysts and other female illnesses in a policy sold to a man. Traditionally, narrowing "groups" like this was thought to not be a favorable thing because a wide group would have young people included with older people and lower the costs. But by narrowing in this way it is thought that insurance companies can still make a profit on individual policies while lowering the cost to the end user. Also, the product's marketing is narrowed to only advertising venues where the target market's eyeballs reside. This lowers company marketing costs and further permits a lowering of price. So the point here is that change in the insurance area for people in their 50's and 60's is about to arrive and apparently it will be favorable change. I would expect it to sweep the world within a year of Aetna hitting the streets with its product. Competitors will react.

OP = Original Poster Keep an eye on that pension and what bills are introduced to the state legislature. You're a good candidate for getting your inflation adjustment cut. At 2%/yr, it already has been. That is less than most inflation measures. Another hugely important item . . . what sort of retiree medical coverage benefits are offered by the state and do they extend outside the state? But enough of that. Listen to the guys tell you how to get your visa.

Curiosity question of considerable importance. The pension mentioned by the OP . . . is it to be inflation adjusted? I understand it is higher if you delay it, but once it starts . . . is it going to get a COLA bump each year? Be sure you know the answer to this question. It is hugely important.

Everyone perpetually tries to find a role model to follow. About 3 generations could do that in the 1900's. You can't do it anymore. You can't instinctively think of your parents' later years and how they lived and what they did and imagine yourself as that. You can't. They had pensions and you probably won't. That pension was more than just money. That was a "paycheck" that continued to define what they were. They weren't a "former" Vice President of this or that. They weren't a "former" professor of this or that. They weren't a former teacher. Or a former general contractor. They were a retired VP. Or a retired teacher. Or retired this or retired that -- and they belonged to the Retired Teachers Association. Or the Retired This or That Association. They retained an aspect of identity. They were still associated with whatever they had been because they were still getting a paycheck. Those days are past. No paycheck is coming to help you hold your identity. You have to create your own. So what you will be is an entrepreneur and you will be it online. The internet wasn't there for those three generations. It is now and it changes more or less everything.

Another 2 cents. First off, the 720K+ UK pounds guy is not thinking numerically. There is no risk of running out of money. The problem he has is when someone asks him "what do you do for a living", his reply is "I am a . . . " He is a . . . . That's what he is. Vice president of finance for whoever. VP of something for whoever. General counsel for whoever. Comptroller of whatever. He IS that. And when he quits he is . . . he thinks . . . nothing. This is not a Pattaya matter. This is an early retirement matter. A lot of guys have to deal with it. Maybe the ultimate such situation is Neil Armstrong. The day he got back from the moon he was not an astronaut anymore. In fact, I don't think any of the three on that crew flew again. They were retired and they were not even 50. It happens for athletes, too. They get "retired". Then what are they? I suppose they all can spend the rest of their lives as "the former" this or "the former" that. Some move on and become something else. Some hit the speakers' touring circuit and actually turn "the former" this or that into a career in and of itself. And so might we. We might find ourselves doing something else and "becoming" something else. So of all the reasons there might be not to pull the retirement trigger this is probably the weakest.

I didn't understand all of this situation, but it appears the policy purchased . . . as a stopgap . . . is indeed temporary and that's not unusual. Please clarify this, Bullfrog. This could be like the medical insurance one gets for travel. When you are out of your home country your coverage doesn't follow you so you have to buy travel insurance. It is only good for some period of time. If you developed a very long term illness when on vacation, that policy will not cover you for decades. It covers you only for the period of time specified. Is what you are describing different?

Rumbler, there are words in the US that address this issue: Semi-retirement Consultant Director (as in sit on the board) The point being, SELL YOUR HOUSE. Get that money in your pocket in case some collapse occurs. Then rent someplace posh while you work out a part time arrangement at your job, or consult via email from afar. If you have a board seat, plan to commute quarterly from Thailand for meetings (and have them pay the airfare and you collect the frequent flyer miles). In other words, maintain a connection to the job so it doesn't feel like you are chopped off, and then ease your way to comfort with the idea of chopping that umbilical. Don't plan on 6%. That's a tad high and inflation will eat it up eventually. Do what you need to do to participate in stock shares in the UK and divide up your 700+K pounds among stocks (provide inflation protection), bank accounts, whatever. At 700+K pounds, assuming you have no alimony (ex spouse support) and your kids don't have college tuition demands on you, you can plan on spending 31.5K pounds per year and not run out for 30 years. Assuming you have a state pension coming.