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Jan has been my transport on all my recent trips. Long have been our conversations and generally fun the trips. Sorry I didn't see this thread sooner. Congrats to you both, Paul.

Pensions are disappearing fast. Government pensions will soon come under attack when it becomes clear that only the government has them. SS will be the last to go, and it won't "go". It will shrink. The other pensions will "go".

Gary is probably very much correct. It's not a hard thing to do in life to simply NOT BUY LAND IN THAILAND. If someone asks you to, say no. If they ask you to "go in as partners", just say no. If they are upset, then compute how much money it was that they were arranging to have you pay, with them sharing ownership, and if that's what you want to do then write them a check for half that and just give it to them and flush the money out of your net worth forever. People get so enshrouded in the details of land and houses and lose sight of the fact that they are just numbers. They are do

I am a little late to the party, but I'll offer my information: Let's quote the scenario. Okay. This sounds first of all like you're about 51. 1) That means you have 8.5 years to fund your life to avoid the penalties of early withdrawl from your Trad and Roth IRA. 2) When you quit, it is highly likely that one of the first things you will want to do is roll your 401K into your Trad IRA. You do this to get the money under your own control (minor consideration) and to avoid 401K fees (major consideration, they are buried in the loads on the investment

When it is hot in the middle of the day, use will be heavy. One wonders what the cybercafes do? What do they pay for a T1 line equivalent?

torrenova is one of the best BMs I have seen on here at spotting issues and I got nothing to add to that. One thing I will add, in a broad sense for BMs on the thread, is the issue of time frame. In various previous discussions that talked about the 4-5% rules for withdrawls from a nestegg that is asset allocated between bank income (bonds, fixed income, CDs, savings accounts, whatever) and equities (stock shares), the focus was a 30 year time frame. The OP on this thread was talking 20 years. Guys, make no mistake about this . . . the shorter the time, the more you can withd

FYI as I type this the Dow Jones is in the midst of a 2% mini crash on the day. Expect Europe and Asia to follow suit tonight.

Two things: 1) Suggest you do a search on various money terms like "retirement", "expenses", "inflation" and "4%" and you will find many threads in the archives that should help you a great deal with your thinking. 2) Eneuckman needs an answer, as do you and we all.

I think we have to understand that there is a UK mindset that one must own property or one is stupid. This derives from the huge property price runup in the UK. It is an understandable mindset because of this. It would be wise of our UK BMs to be aware of their own bias in this regard. I own property in the US, but not in an area that has boomed so I am not caught up in the presumption of ownership as a path to riches. Renting would surely seem to avoid a lot of risk until you really, really understand the area.

Wait a minute, guys. No, one must not put all of one's money in 5% bank accounts. I have never said so. If one does that, inflation will eat you up over the long term. What is wisest is to establish an asset allocation profile that is optimized for your particular tax situation. A niche of that asset allocation will be equities. A sub-niche of equities will be international equities. The AA breakdown you use will derive from your age and risk tolerance. Not that anyone should care what my opinion on the matter is -- but if you do a search on various threads devoted to retiri

I'd like to clarify the mathematical realities above to be sure folks understand what the numbers mean. 500K/yr compounding at 20% annually (a return on investment number smaller than some years quoted, but 20% suffices as an average) for 20 years will yield a lot of money. Note the end point for this would be age 45 for any 25 year olds who want to embark on it (and are fool enough to think it is real). The generic formula is ( 1.0 + return rate) ^ year total. That is for compound interest. It is NOT for an inverse annuity, which is what an ongoing addition of 500K/yr would be.

$500K a year . . . will buy a lot of beer. Sailfast, $20 million in 20 yrs? No. This guy is big time. It's about 125 million depending on compounding frequency (weekly, monthly, yearly etc).

Guys, Common sense. The top business schools in the world, from Harvard, to Wharton to Stanford to London School of Econ to Singapore Management University . . . put out graduates who run General Electric or Procter and Gamble or JP Morgan or Citibank or Barclays or whatever. If those guys could take their shareholders' money and get them 25% per year, do you not think they would do it? Can you imagine the bonus that would be paid the CEO who was guaranteeing his shareholders 25% per year? Why would Procter and Gamble make toothpaste if their management team knew that 25% per year a

Weren't you the guy pushing some kind of mortgages in Las Vegas here a few months ago as the path to billionaire-hood?

The world of online daytrading arrived in the late 90's with lots of guys who persuaded themselves that what they were doing was pay for labor. It's not. It's seeking a return on an investment -- every time you trade. If you have a $100K account and you think you're going to earn $50,000 per year "trading", that is a 50% return on your investment -- and if someone came up to you and offered you guaranteed 50% return on some scheme, you would (or should) turn around and walk away. The reason, in general, that it doesn't work is that the world of investing is percentage, not dollars

Okay, I have no agenda here, guy. I don't know you -- and I can be wrong -- but I'll offer thoughts to help you. 1) Want to know the most used expression by a lawyer talking to a client who lost his case? "It could have been much worse." See, it's all about the lawyer and making himself look good. It was all about him from the very start. 2) Here's another great lawyer expression, used to all clients. "We are NOT going to let them get away with that!!" See, he has to be sure he keeps you pumped up and angry. Anger is the lifeblood of lawyers. Repeat. Anger is the lifeblood of

The one thing the 4.5% (with Soc Sec) rule of thumb did was simply, for about 8 years now, get cognizant people thinking in terms of 4.5%. It became instinct for those who understood the inevitability of bad years. To have a strategy now introduced that allows you to nudge that up 0.5-1.0% is a big increase in lifestyle. Note how the currency hit that has happened this past 12 mos would have needed that cushion, at least for a while. When it moderates, there will be years of extra money. All in all, it's a great study. If people understand it well and apply it to their own circumst

Best of luck with these problems, but I have found that in general when the title of this thread is encountered in life, you're about to get screwed one way or the other -- so I advise you to lower your expectations all the way to ground level. That's the only way to avoid disappointment. It's my observations through the years that when a lawyer appears to be needed, you will come out ahead not getting one and simply giving the other party absolutely everything they want. Lawyers are parasites to that extent.

Where did she learn sign language. Gallaudet is the US university for the deaf, but there are many schools -- the point being that I think the language is country specific? How does this work? Does the Thai government pay?

A lot of this depends on duration, time of day and class. I have spent a career on airplanes. Overseas stuff is all long so duration is a common denominator. The two other items are crushing. If you are coming from the US and live anywhere other than a debarkation city, you have a couple of hours just to get to that city, and layover there. This is means . . . call it an hour to your home airport, 30 mins waiting to board, depart and get to the debarkation city. Total so far since you woke up, maybe 4 hrs. The domestic flights don't have flat first class seats so you won't sleep.

Since the President's speech last night, details are emerging in greater number. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20070122-7.html Of course, what is being proposed for numbers will not be what passes Congress, but the numbers being put out there look like someone did some solid calculations and probably say what was intended. They'll be tweaked, but they are not stupid. The numbers are $7500 and $15000 as upper limits for health care premium expenditures (single and family) and deductions will be allowed off your taxable income to that amount. It is still not yet clea

Bangalore is the focus of most outsourced call centers from the US. Friedman's The World Is Flat talks extensively about how they train to speak English in the accent correct for the area of the US from which they will handle calls. It's a big deal there.

No idea what comes out of Congress and we can't discuss that at all until we have details. What I do . . . suspect . . . is the President's initiative will establish a position on this issue for the GOP in 2008. That allows an issue, that has largely been a Democrat issue to date, to now get time in committees that will actually try to craft language that can get enough votes in both parties to get through Congress and to the President's desk. If it looks close enough to what gets proposed, then it gets signed and Pattaya expats may very well find their healthcare premiums subsidized

. . . in the State of the Union address, the President will propose a tax deduction for health care premiums. The way this has been worded (and the details are, of course, very sketchy) this may help early retiree types who are overseas. The way it sounds, at least so far, is payments made for health care insurance premiums will be in some manner under an umbrella of a general tax deduction off your income. The way I've read the details so far is it will not restrict to only those living in the US. Nor to premiums paid only to US health insurance providers -- though there will cl

Just giving a thread a bump. Paul and Jan's service is good. Competition is a good thing. It makes everyone be better.