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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 dollars or pounds. They are not anything else than that.

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 options). Your Trad IRA options will likely be cheaper than the 401K options. But check on that just in case your company is shockingly generous. 3) In general, you want your taxable portion of a portfolio to be in equities and your non taxable portion in fixed income. This is because "equities" should mean an index fund that generally only pay about 1.5% dividend yield (qualified). You will sell the fund as you need it for living expenses and that taxable event is a long term capital gain. In other words, taxes will likely be lower if you're parked in equities vs fixed income. In fact, for the next few years qualified dividends and LT Cap Gains at the low end of income are taxed at just about zero. This is the reverse of what you planned. However . . . . 4) If your taxable portfolio is going to throw off $3,000 in income, and you had planned for it to be in fixed income like CDs, then this sounds a lot like 60K (at 5%). That ain't gonna last you 8 years. But your question about doing $5K of Traditional to Roth conversions to get up to the standard deduction is legit and the answer is yes, you can do that. In fact, you may want to do more than $5K and eat the 5% or 10% tax that will exist for the next few years. Remember, the current tax rates are in great danger. They expire. We don't know what the mood of Congress will be when they expire so there may be merit in shielding as much as you can before those rates rise. So. You are configured a bit awkwardly. Your net worth is grossly skewed to tax sheltered vehicles. Probably more so than most simply because of home ownership and the selling of that house. Because of this you have to think carefully about what happens at age 55 when you have to tap your IRAs and face penalties. Now, the Roth can be tapped penalty free if you had it for 5 years . . . something like that, do the research . . . but I anticipate issues if you try to tap it penalty free and simultaneously try to do Trad -> Roth recharacterizations. That will look like you're tapping the Trad, not the Roth and penalties for being < 59.5 would trigger. Okay, that's my first draft input.

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 withdraw from your nestegg safely. There is a significant school of thought on this in the US that is concluding that 4-5% is safe for 30 years, and 3% is safe for 40 years. There are MANY guys who are scared to project 30 years. Even at current age 50 they are planning to reach 90 or 100. They are planning accordingly. They either don't retire yet and keep saving, or they just plan to spend less. But the OP was talking 20 years. There are some good quality calculators online (and some bad ones) and if you do your computations on 20 years, you may be pleasantly surprised at how your spending can go up.

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 retiring in Pattaya, I have posted some of the more recent studies devoted to Safe Withdraw Rates and how they should be designed to safeguard against the risk of eroding your nestegg to zero before death. Those studies all involve equity exposure -- because inflation compels it. As for the benevolence of Procter and Gamble's Board of Directors mandating that they make toothpaste because society needs it, I am confident that should an investment proposal be presented to them showing that they could make 27% per year guaranteed by devoting toothpaste resources to some alternative -- P&G would be out of the toothpaste business. And yet, they are still in the toothpaste business so apparently in their view no such guarantee of 27% per year exists. If that seems cyclical to folks, then consider it from the perspective of the P&G shareholder. Why would he keep his money tied up in stodgy P&G when he can get 27% guaranteed elsewhere. He'd sell. All the shareholders would sell. And put their money into the guaranteed 27% alternative. And yet, P&G stock has not collapsed. So I guess that selling didn't happen.

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. Yr Added Total 1 500K 550K 2 500K 1.26 million 3 500K 2.12 mill 4 500K 3.146 mil 5 500K 4.37 mill 6 500K 5.85 mill 7 500K 7.62 mill 8 500K 9.74 mill 9 500K 12.29 mill 10 500K 15.35 mill 11 500K 19.02 mill 12 500K 23.42 mill 13 500K 28.7 mill 14 500K 35.05 mill 15 500K 42.6 mill 16 500K 51.8 mill 17 500K 62.7 mill 18 500K 75.9 mill 19 500K 91.69 mill 20 500K 110 million With that kind of dough, you could probably own a Pattaya bar.

$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 as far as the eye can see was available through brokerage accounts? Why would Ford or Toytota build cars? In fact, it's more extreme than even this. With 25% per year guaranteed sitting back and investing the shareholders' money elsewhere, a CEO that does anything else, hiring employees that might sue, buying toothpaste factories that might break, or signing union contracts with employees that result in enormous health care costs -- he'd be sued himself for failing his fiduciary responsibility to his shareholders. It would not be just a choice for him to make. He'd be REQUIRED to make it to avoid personal bankruptcy. And yet . . . have you noticed that P&G do, in fact, make toothpaste? Ford and Toyota are in the car business? GE makes light bulbs? Citibank lends money to people who want to buy houses? Barclays does the same? Why might that be? Maybe it's because this is all crap.

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. If you sustain a 50% loss on a trade, you have to come up with 100% on your next trade just to break even. A 50% loss on $10 leaves you with $5. A 50% rise on the next trade with the $5 leaves you with only $7.50. You did not get back to where you were. The mathematics of investing is always skewed in favor of losses. Read about taxes too. There is a way to get LT CG rates on anything made, but you have to jump through hoops, and I don't know if foreign currency allows those hoops. That will skew the math even further. In general -- bad idea. Put it to bed and let it sleep -- forever.

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 lawyers. Angry people do not settle. Angry people fight longer. That clock ticking is billable hours. 3) Guy, seriously, of all truths in the world, the following one is the most profound and the most universal. Please consider it: The best revenge is living well. It truly is.

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 circumstances, frankly, they can safely spend more money than they had planned to. How can that be a bad thing?

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. The next leg is California to Japan or Taiwan or Hong Kong. It's 11-13 hrs. Plus the hour on the ground at the debarkation city. Total since you woke up, perhaps 16 hrs. The key at this point is did you get first or business. If not, you sat upright. And you're getting tired. From there, an hour on the ground at Narita or HK or Taipei and then off you go for another 6-7 hour flight to BKK. Total up to 23ish hrs. Then 2 hrs to deplane, traverse customs and get driven to Pattaya and it's 25ish hours door to door. If you can get Business or First you have the flat seats and can sleep. If not, you can't. Simple as that. If you can't get Biz or First (and sometimes you can't because they are full), the whole thing is brutal. So mark me down like so. If you're gonna be in Coach, get the non stop (if you can). If Bizness, no reason not to stop and see something other than the inside of the cabin.

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 clear if this is salary only, but there is talk of retirees in the discussions so there remains a chance that it could be a deduction from your portfolio income or your pension income. I think that also, what will evolve in Congress, is some sort of tax credit for very low end incomes. I do NOT think that would apply to Pattaya expat retirees. Presumably all Pattaya guys have income higher than that. Credits give money to people at the low end who aren't paying any taxes. Deductions are of no value to them because . . . they aren't paying taxes. Deductions are for people who do have income (from wherever) and do pay taxes and the Pattaya retirees I suspect are all in that category (or they would not eat). The details remain incremental and uncertain. From a US Pattaya retiree perspective everything is not yet known, but it continues to look like it's possible that a Pattaya retiree may get a tax deduction off his pension (or even portfolio) income that will subsidize health care insurance premiums. If I understand what is proposed correctly, this $7500 number is like a Standard Deduction for health care. At a 20% (pulling this number out of the air, YMMV) marginal rate it's $1500 in your pocket. Frankly, the way stuff reads is this money is yours whether you pay for health insurance or not. If you do pay for it, it's a nice subsidy. At this point the variables are: Do the Democrats become enraged that everyone is talking about Bush's plan and refuse to do anything with it? The Democrat approach was to be a new Federal agency of national health care with a new staffed bureaucracy and government controlled. This Bush plan is a more conservative tax policy based approach. My opinion is there are decent Democrats in Congress who know the people want something done and they will attack this plan's numbers, and adjust details, but they will embrace the approach overall. I will say that the websites are filled with debate of the plan and its details tonight so I think there's a good chance something may happen. Will there be any attempt to forbid taking the deduction if health care insurance bought is not US insurance? I doubt this. The deduction looks like a Standard Deduction and they don't care how you spend it. Will the deduction only apply to earned income? Big question and an important one to Pattaya retirees. Okay, that's my read this evening. Lots of potential for putting some money in US Pattaya retiree pockets.

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 by a tax cut.

. . . 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 clearly be no voice against that in committee rooms writing the bill should a US health insurance company want such restriction put in. Have to cross your fingers on this that expats are so small a group that no one bothers to prevent them buying HC insurance from non US companies. We'll know more after the speech and the distribution of details. No question it will not be enacted as proposed. Politics will be all over this. But the good news is that the President will put at least SOMETHING on the table and it has a general conservative feel to it that will provide the GOP with a starting position for 2008. The Democrats will then maneuver as they wish to make it feel less conservative. I would anticipate they will take the position that tax cuts only help those with income and they will want tax credits instead (or in addition) for the poor -- who don't gain much from a deduction. My crystal balls says the President's proposal will induce both sides to negotiate some sort of tax related approach to HC insurance as the 2008 election approaches. This has at least a chance of helping US Pattaya retirees.

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