Owen`

Sorry to hear of the theft, Gary. You probably have other ideas that you can market differently next time. Autocad. That's probably a skill people would pay for if you felt like it. You might not, retired. Or you could teach some local kids how to use it and send them off into the world to make a life better for themselves than they ever would have had otherwise.

Heads up, guys. The following link is an earthquake of sorts in the world of money for retirees who are not funding their retirement purely with pensions. It's a new study out by a guy(s) with solid credentials. Both have written on the subject before and their work has been peer reviewed. Guyton is not a crackpot. It is hard reading and will require a lot of time from you, so don't start on it until you have that time to sit, read, and think very hard about what is here. It's a new approach to determining your SWR, safe withdrawl rate, from your assets and be assured they will not run out before you die. http://www.fpanet.org/journal/articles/200...enderforprint=1 It requires some mental translation for the UK guys, but the approach is mostly stochastic so it should be applicable for you Brits. I am loathe to summarize, but here are some of the conclusions that hopefully will entice you to get into the study and understand why it seems to work. Past estimates of safe withdraw rate from a portfolio were (absent any pension or Soc Sec input) about 4% for perfect safety for 30 years and a 50/50 equity/bond portfolio mix. Using the rather easy management rules Guyton presents, you can jack that number up to 5.8% for a 50/50 mix. People, a delta of 1.8% on say a 500K portfolio is $9,000 extra per year that you can safely extract and spend. The rules are: The portfolio management rule (PMR) determines the source(s) of each year's withdrawal. * Following years where an asset class has a positive return that produced a weighting exceeding its target allocation, the excess allocation is sold and the proceeds invested in cash to meet future withdrawal requirements. * Portfolio withdrawals are funded in the following order: (1) overweighting in equity asset classes from the prior year-end, (2) overweighting in fixed income from the prior year-end, (3) cash, (4) withdrawals from remaining fixed-income assets, (5) withdrawals from remaining equity assets in order of the prior year's performance. * No withdrawals are taken from any equity following a year with a negative return if cash or fixed-income assets are sufficient to fund the required withdrawal. The inflation rule (IR) determines the size of the yearly withdrawal increase. * Yearly withdrawals increase by the annual rate of inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) except when the withdrawal rule freezes the withdrawals. * The maximum annual inflationary increase is 6 percent. * There is no "make-up" for a "capped" inflation adjustment. The withdrawal rule (WR) determines the conditions when portfolio withdrawals are frozen from one year to the next. * Withdrawals increase from year to year in accordance with the inflation rule, except that there is no increase following a year where the portfolio's total return is negative. * There is no "make-up" for a missed increase. Not that anyone cares (or should care) but this is so new that I have no opinion on it yet. It is exciting in the context that it's such a major shift in thinking in this field and it is supported by rational analysis. It would be a huge increase in lifestyle for guys worldwide. You just have to know what you're doing and you can yank out an extra 1.8%/yr pretty safely. But note carefully that to implement these rules you must not find yourself with spending on necessities at 5.8%. A substantial chunk of your spending needs to be discretionary so that you can implement the rules that call for a freeze in certain market environments. I am a little worried about Heisenberg-like issues. If this approach sweeps the world of retirees, their actions may change the behavior of the markets themselves . . . somehow. No idea how, but something this powerful could affect something. Dunno. Enjoy.

Gary once weighed in on this. I think he spoke of woodworking as a particular skill he'd acquired over the years as part of a hobby. That kind of thing can turn into a part time business, making furniture and selling it online. The one thing I can't see, and maybe it's bad for you too, sinkorswim, is going back to the 17 hr days for 7 days a week. I really don't think I need to go back to my old career or my old schedule to scratch the itch and maybe you don't either. One thing I have heard and intend to pursue is . . . the reality that one can't see what the answer is because one doesn't have a part time skill. You have to pick a skill and acquire it -- and then find work using it.

Some of this thread is about guys really being uncomfortable with not having "a home". Housing is a huge part of any budget and if you try to keep a place you're not living in, you're paying for housing twice. Yeah, I know that guys . . . the UK guys especially . . . wave their hands and say "I'll keep a place at home and rent it out to pay for it." The real estate price run up in the UK has defined a lot of attitudes there towards houses and they just cannot bring themselves to accept not having a house. Well, okay, if you want to spend your days in LOS trying to orchestrate new renters when the old ones move out, and orchestrate cleaning and damage repair and whatever . . . okay. Have at it. The LOS thing is just a place to be for a while. Permanent? Don't know what permanent means. If you don't want to be there, leave. Leave permanently? Don't know what permanent means. Oh, one more thought. Another thing that I've found affects guys' mindsets is their experience in life with moving. When they have moved residence previously, they did a lot of the work themselves and endured lots of bruises and sore muscles from it. Well, that's not happening again. You're going to be over 50. You pay to have such things done now.

Bingo. HUGE issue. What the hell do you do? Well guess what, folks, we aren't the first to face this. Think of all the . . . in the US we call them "trust fund babies" that you hear about. Maybe you UK guys see more of it than we do in the US because your history of nobility is so long. When the son or daughter of some hugely rich guy hits age 18 his or her trust fund kicks in to provide living expenses and that person truly need never work their entire life. So what do they do? Well, often . . . drugs, or alcohol, or something stupid that gets them in trouble with the police, or winds up targetted by a gold digger of either sex, or damn near anything embarrassing you can think of. The one thing they way too often do not do is have a career. The ones that do something with themselves turn out just fine. Members of the Ford family generally work in the family company -- which though it is on hard times now -- has furnished a great career for many members of that family for over 100 years now. Anyway, the same thing is going to face all of us contemplating early retirement to Thailand (or anywhere else). We need to fill 30 years with something other than laying around. I am thinking in terms of the net, and writing, and consulting, and travel, and writing about travel. Don't know if any of that is going to work out, but I do know I won't sit around. I am in sinkorswim's corner on this.

Okay, here's my read on this. I don't get it. At all. What exactly is the problem? I think what you're describing is a mindset issue, not a matter of "reality". What does "moving to Pattaya" mean that is so worrisome? I don't think guys have this configured in their brains. Why do you think this has to be permanent? What does permanent mean? How long have you lived in your current residence? Five years? Is that permanent? You will have a maildrop of some kind back in your home country for various things that you want to show a local address. You will have no residence back home (to suck money from you), and so what? If you want to go home, just go. Rent a hotel room for a month while you find a place. So what's the big deal? If you "move to Pattaya", you'll do the same -- rent a hotel room there for a month or two. Find a place to park more long term -- to either rent or buy (if you feel you must). I think what's going on here is you're envisioning shipping all your lifetime's possessions to Pattaya and it's intimidating. So . . . don't ship them. Put them in storage back home. It will probably cost you $100/mo. Then you can ship stuff incrementally (yes, you will go back to the States maybe once a year) in your checked bags or you can give it away. That sofa of yours in the living room . . . it really has no value. Put it on Craigslist and get some money for it. Or give it away. Seriously, think about it . . . what value does 15 year old furniture have? Or a 15 year old TV? You're making too big a deal of this. There are people in the world, not all that rich, who have 3 different residences scattered in 3 different countries. When they go from one to another are they "moving?" You will be in Pattaya, maybe renting, maybe buying. You will be there 3 months and you'll decide it's time for a "vacation". You will take a hop to Manila. You will take a hop to KL. Or Singapore. Three or four days there and back. Then another few months and time for a visit back to the US to see family. Then back to Pattaya. Then a trip up country. Then back. You're not really living any of those places. You live in the world. There are millions of beds you could sleep in on any given night. Next time you make the trip stay at Residence Gardens. It's all suites. Every "room" has a living room fully furnished and a kitchen with cooking utensils and a full size fridge. You'll feel right at home within a day or two. See? You don't need that couch. They provide one. Any furnished place does.

3-5 million baht at 5% in the bank will earn 250,000 baht interest per year. That's about 21,000 baht per month. Should be able to rent a nice condo for that, with maid service, and not dip into savings at all. If off the beaten path, might be able to find an even lower rent? If so, then the 5 million baht will grow while you're living there -- just like owning. Shrug.

Okay, babble time. 1) 14 years is too long for something to go wrong. Personally, I'd assess your odds to be > 50% that the pension you refer to is going to be reduced by the time you start collecting it. If you're talking about Soc. Sec. the odds are lower for that, and if you manage to purposely have little reportable income at that time, then you won't be one of "the rich" and your odds are even better. But if that's a company pension, it's going to get hit. 2) Asset allocation and bonds. Okay, important item. The purpose of AA diversification is NOT to raise return. This is a subtle reality that confuses a lot of people. Adding bonds to a portfolio is not going to increase its long term overall return. The purpose of bonds is to reduce volatility while simultaneously having an almost insignificant impact on long term return. If a 100% equity portfolio gets you 8%/yr on average long term, it will also get you -25% in some years. And +25% in some years. Long term, 8%/yr. If you add bonds to the portfolio, then the idea is to still get just about 8%/yr long term, but do so with no one year being 25% in either direction. This matters a great deal in retirement . . . when you decide some year that you want to buy a condo and need $150K and need it in a year when the market was down 25%. Very good. Expense ratios pay people to manage a mutual fund, and if they do not outperform an index, then why are you paying them? (Sometimes you are paying them to have a 20% bond allocation, and you'll have to think about that because that means you have money managers who actually know what they are doing -- even if they know they can't beat the index) FYI, look real close at the costs in funds within 401Ks. They hide their AERs. If you're very lucky your company pays them for you, but that's going away. If you change jobs, NEVER leave your 401K alone. ALWAYS move it to a traditional IRA, where there are no such fees. Rule of thumb in the US. If you're married and very rich, stay married. It's usually cheaper to keep her. If you're single and very rich, stay single. If you're not very rich, there is no rule of thumb. No one here will benefit from that. Heads up, guys. There are new security threats to online brokerage accts. I don't want to outline them for fear of informing a greater number of people how it is being done, but right about now -- if you have an online brokerage account and do trading -- Check It Every Day. Check to see that what is in it is how you left it -- and not just the total dollar amount. Check that the specific stocks or mutual funds you own are what you last specified. If not, scream immediately.

Gary, for "membership" at USAA you must be a current or former US military officer, and recently they changed that to senior enlisted. I don't recall what enlisted level qualifies. But that's for membership. I don't think any such restriction exists to have an account at their bank. The problem you are having may be that you're outside the US -- but I don't know. Their exceptional service starts once you're on the inside. They are just hyper concerned about their customer well being. They are a full service financial firm and are the 6th largest insurance company in the US. When I call them to talk about whatever, they ask security questions. The usual ones are obvious and all firms do it, like what is your date of birth and what is your current address. But these guys ask me what make and model car do I have insured with them and what was my rank in the military when I separated. They're very good. I hope you get favorable results from them.

Gary, email USAA. They have the finest customer service I've ever encountered and I've been with them 30+ years. They may not say things you will like, but they will respond. If you are ex military, that is their focus.

Gary, some data. http://www.flyertalk.com/wiki/index.php/Cr...oreign_Exchange

I think there may be an absence of understanding about this matter. This link below provides a chart of Halliburton's stock price. By setting the calendar date at the bottom right of the screen you can select and observe performance since January 20, 2001, the day Bush took office. http://www.smartmoney.com/eqsnaps/index.cf...&symbol=HAL The chart is back adjusted for a split in 2006. The dividend payout over the time period has been roughly 1%, which is also reflected in the chart and prices quoted. You will note that the price of Jan 20, 2001 was about $19/share. The closing price this past Friday was about $29/share. This is approximately a 50% gain in 6 years. That averages to 8.3%/yr. But, of course, in the world of compounding it is not average gain that matters. It is compounded gain. That can be determined by calculation to be roughly 7% (1.07 ^ 6 = 1.5). A 7% compounded rate of return . . . I am confident no one in the world of investing . . . would call "going through the roof". In fact, I am confident UK real estate, with real roofs, has hugely exceeded that rate of return in most major urban areas. There is thus no factual evidence of Halliburton achieving explosive stock price growth over the relevant 6 years.

Not quite sure I understand the outrage here. If you think oil companies are grossly outperforming all other companies to make their greedy shareholders rich, then why not buy shares in Exxon?

Hard to argue with Singapore. Malaysia is not uniformly bad from Muslims, but that situation is likely to worsen rather than improve -- and really, for the situation described -- the bottom line is where is the best access to elsewhere via airlines. Bangkok and Singapore have the discount airlines that go all over Asia based in BKK or SIN. Singapore is more expensive, but with a Euro salary he's still going to come out ahead and it's an English speaking city.

The UK guys on the board have a different perspective, kafka. We Americans know the US real estate boomed, but the boom was very regional. Areas of the US went insane. Other areas did not. The UK is much smaller geographically and the degree to which their real estate explosion was regional was far more constrained -- and so their perspective is that real estate by its very nature is going to explode and make the owners of such, very very rich. So they will not have a good instinctive read on your paragraph above. And for good reason. THEIR net would be very much superior to TIPS and IBONDS if they bought 10 years ago. Well, if it can happen in the UK, it can happen in the US too. Maybe real estate in your area over the next 10 years is going to net 10X what TIPS will. I don't know. Neither does anyone else. It's so hard to get my next concept credible and conveyed. Billions of dollars are spent on Wall Street to pay people for their expertise. How can that be so if my next concept makes any sense? It is . . . 20-30 hrs a week, or the 30 years I've spent, studying a largely random process has little or no value. You learn nothing whatsoever about the future results of a coin toss by studying it for 30 years. Now, you can learn something about how far it will bounce on different surfaces when it hits the floor (the friction of tax laws). You can learn something about how many bounces are likely before it comes to rest and yields its result (dividend payouts). You can note with amusement that a surprising number of heads or tails occur in a row before a change occurs, but you won't know when. And even sometimes you can note that the coin has a tiny dent on one edge that has changed the randomness a little bit, but the definition of "little bit" will always be so little that placing a big bet on the result is insane. If those are index funds, you are minimizing Annual Expense Ratio (another source of friction on the floor you're flipping the coin onto) and this is a good thing. Most advisors would think and say that you don't have any fixed income allocation (bonds) and frown at this portfolio structure as a result -- depending on your age. It doesn't matter what I think so I won't say anything.

Concerning advisory services and publications. They will be right, sometimes. Never confuse wisdom with a bull market. Guys, we just uncorked a double digit year in 2006. We are all feeling really smart right now, having seen our net worth numbers surge very nicely. We are all financial geniuses after such a year. eneukman/alan has always kept his head level on his shoulders per: None of us expect great returns next year. None of us expect horrible returns either. None Of Us Has A Clue What Is Going To Happen -- and that includes the advisory service publication writers who are rushing to get their material filed for deadline. If they knew what was going to happen, why would they be telling us? Another thing -- and this is important. The demographics of the western world are leading a lot of guys to reach early retirement age at the same time. As the more sophisticated of them read websites and get educated, fewer and fewer of them are entrusting their money to money managers. Make No Mistake About This -- The Financial World Hates This. All of us looking to early retire . . . we're not working to keep the state pension plans (Soc Sec) funded. We're not working to have withdrawls taken from our paychecks and sent to 401Ks (or whatever the UK vehicle is called for defined contribution retirement plans). We are not going to be in the workforce to fund a lot of things that used to rely on our funding. The governments will start to feel this soon and companies already are feeling it. Watch out for yourself and be aware of what is going on. Never ever forget that the structure of the financial aspects of society is greatly threatened by having the above average guys in smarts with above average net worth drop out and stop funding that structure. (/conspiracy)

Okay, listen up. This is important. That website is indeed a great depository of information. It derives from a larger very sophisticated community at early-retirement.org. The calculator you're looking at there is at best a 1st order solution to the problem. It's a VERY GOOD 1st order solution, but it's only a first order solution. The more sophisticated calculators are . . . we can call them higher order solutions. The key difference is the unfortunate tendency of folks, young and old, to want to embrace the concept of average return on portfolio. Average returns are the wrong way to perform the analysis. If you have a series of maybe 6 years of returns like 8%, 25%, 15%, -30%, -15% and 20%, your average return is about 4%. You could plug that 4% in and project all you want, but it would be the wrong way to do the calculation. The problem is that if you are retired and living on the proceeds of these returns, you are going to be taking money out of the portfolio to pay your living expenses in years 4 and 5, and then that money is not still in the portfolio to grow 20% in year 6. An increase of 4% on zero dollars left in the portfolio is zero. An increase of 20% on zero dollars left in the portfolio is zero. I know this calculator you're looking at above is to help compute the accumulation rate for younger guys and as I said, it's a VERY GOOD 1st order tool for that purpose. But the above problem I described leaves you with an unknown target. That calculator will not tell you what YOUR NUMBER should be to accumulate before you pull the trigger and get on the plane to Pattaya more or less permanently. firecalc is a higher order tool, and it's from the same family of websites you are looking at. The UK guys have to translate some definitions on it, but it should be useful for everyone. firecalc.com and click advanced. Study it. Then go to early-retirement.org and read the firecalc Q&A forum. Don't ask questions there. You'll be wasting your time and theirs. You have to do the reading and study and use search. Demographics are leading a great many guys to this particular interest at this particular time and all your questions have already been asked. I'll end this post here and babble about other things in the next.

Congrats on that good performance. The US market finished the year up 13ish% and the UK market was up about 10ish%. Japan was flat. A rising tide lifts all boats. Here's the math for you. 44% compounded out to 2040 would be . . . yes, you can take your present investment in that vehicle and multiply it by 242283. So if you have $100,000 in it that will be 2.4 X 10^10, or I think 2.4 trillion. You will be a rich man.

Sometimes it's as important to have a focus on the BIG PICTURE as on the nitty gritty details of the bark on the individual trees of the forest. Have a look at this link: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5EN225&t=my Guys, that is the 2nd largest economy in the world. It has been 16 f*cking years and anyone who bought and held in 1990 is still down over 50%. Think carefully about that. They had a market crash, and in 16 years it has not recovered. No, anyone who bought in 1990 and held for 16 years is NOT stupid. This is true because no one EVER knows what is going to happen next. Suppose someone finally got fed up in 2003 and sold then, after 13 years. But if they had held on they would have doubled their money (that they still had left) from 2003 to 2006. That chart, gentlemen, would destroy the most bulletproof plan you could put together. Some poor schmuck took early retirement at age 50 and had 1/2 his money in Japan stocks and 1/2 in bonds (Japanese interest rates are about 0%, still) and I guarantee you that schmuck -- who did everything right -- saw his life's savings wiped out by living expenses, market drops and (modest in Japan) inflation and he went back to work and will work until the day he dies. That's not what we have in mind for BMs here. Is there an answer? Nope. No guarantees. All you can do is try to optimize the probabilities. The probabilities are that the US and UK markets are not preparing to start a 16 year decline. The probabilities are that inflation is not preparing to go to 0 or negative, thereby reducing interest rates on savings to 0%. Odds are that you can pick a mixture of places to put your money and have a positive real return. (terminology: "real return" means return after inflation. A 5% bank savings account in a year with 3% inflation has a 2% real return (before taxes grrrrrr)) Real estate? We know from all sorts of threads that the UK guys have a mindset about property that is different from the US mindset -- because their recent personal history with real estate defines their perspective. That's exactly what you would expect. So, can owning property do what that chart above did? Yes. If you're in the US and live near the west coast near the Pacific ocean, it's an earthquake zone. Far less than 50% of property owners have earthquake insurance. If one hits and destroys a house . . . then that's a crash. Or let's not even be that extreme. How about demographics? The UK population growth is being fueled entirely by immigration, yes? Suppose politicians shut that off. These things can happen and they are probably a lot more likely than an earthquake. Then what is going to drive the price of property higher? Or let's get even more likely . . . suppose the UK turns into France and riots start in various Muslim suburbs? If there are nightly fires being set, do you think property owned in that area is going to go up in price? About the only thing one can be assured of as making sense is that no matter how much you want to just put your money somewhere and forget it, you better not. Things change too fast. You have to stay focused and aware at all times. That property you bought 3 years ago that has generated rent income for you needs to be re-profiled often -- to see if a mosque was built 100 meters down the road that wasn't there when you bought.

This is just excellent input. Okay, here's the situation on this. "Early Retirement" in a broad sense involves projecting inflation adjustments onto your expected cost of living for all the years of the rest of your life. That's the standard procedure for all calculations. There is a significant school of thought on this matter, in a broad and non-Pattaya specific sense, that says exactly what emil says, but for a different reason. It says that it is not correct to take your current living expenses and project inflation on them for the future. There is a lot of debate on this. Here are the two sides. 1) Yes, data show that people spend less in later years -- but that is because they mismanaged their numbers and overspent in their first few years of retirement and in their later years they do indeed spend less, but NOT BY CHOICE. They spend less because they are out of money. 2) Yes, data shows they spend less because they become infirm and can't be active and travel or drive fast cars or anything else expensive. Now we have Emil pointing out that for a Pattaya specific discussion the costs of sex drops because the frequency of desire drops. Well, one can get immersed in a discussion of preference -- or one can just deal with numbers. The numbers perspective points to a simple matter in the whole issue: What percent of your expenditure budget is discretionary? If you don't have much of a budget for barfining to begin with, then getting old is not going to reduce it. If someone is keeping a live-in then he is getting free maid service, cooking ( more meals in vs out) and some generic contributions she makes negotiating prices with Thais who would otherwise rip you off and if you toss her out you do not save all of the money you were paying her because you're going to have to find a maid service and eat out more. If you are doing bar hopping and bar fines, then yes, you have discretionary expenditures that can reduce in your old age. So that's what it comes down to. Inflation IS going to apply to your non-discretionary expenditures and there is no escaping that. The issue of getting old will apply to a segment of your budget, and possibly a very big one -- but not all of it. Inflation is the only factor that hits all of it.

That changes things a little, manracer. Works pensions are likely more vulnerable to being reduced than state pensions. So you have more income in the long run than you expected -- this does not affect the reality that you need to fund 5 yrs between 55 and 60. Good job on doing solid analysis before taking the leap.

Glad the threads are helpful, but let's note that a "thread" is only a thread if there are a lot of posts and most of those came from others who are solidly helpful as well. I shudder to think of the guys who don't hang out on the boards and just decide to swashbuckle and wing it and quit their jobs and move without any idea if they have enough. Think about it. If you reach adulthood at age 18, and live to age 80ish, then age 50 is only about the 1/2way point of your adult life. Trying to retire at age 50 . . . it's a full half of your entire adult life at issue. Guys need to be analytical about this, even if that's not their nature. The word "retirement" has screwed up attitudes. People are thinking they are winding down and they are almost dead. This is absurd.

Xmas break wrapping up and end of year assessments about to start for all of us. manracer above looks to me to be a real typical sort of the category that I'll call "Early Retiree BM Wannabe" so let's go thru his numbers in careful detail and maybe help clarify concepts for others. Congratulations on lasting 53.5 years and paying off a house mortgage/loan. If this was 1906 instead of 2006, 53.5 year olds were rare. 18 months is a long time. Don't count your chickens before they hatch out of an egg. You do not know this until the cash is in your hand and all bills/fees and taxes paid. Be sure you are not deluding yourself about anything at all. Know what the real estate agent will take, know if you're going to have to make repairs to the house to get it to sell -- and what they will cost, know that you will be paying nsurance and property tax (these costs continue even after a house is "paid off") pending sale. Know that You Do Not Have A Sale Price Until It Is Sold. What do we think is wrong with this quote? Not gonna hammer the guy. He's doing better planning than most. Do Not Presume You Will Get Investment Returns Greater Than Bank Interest. EVER. You might. You might not. I know East Europe real estate is "hot". I also know that when the general public is aware of something, it's too late. This sounds like your UK state pension. US equivalents do similar things. Your pension size depends on how much you paid in over the years. If you stop paying in due to early retirement, your pension won't be as big. I am surprised just 5 yrs out of a lifetime makes a 30% difference. The UK guys can step up and clarify. UK pension specifics are outside of my knowledge array. The US equivalent does reduce pension payout due to early retirement, but the big decrease like what you describe is when guys decide to take their SS pension payout at age 62 vs 65/66. The pension decreases forever because of that choice. The equation for that depends on life expectancy. If you won't live much past 75, then it is an advantage to start collecting as early as possible. If you are going to plug along into your 90's then waiting the 3-4 yrs and getting the bigger payout will result in more total dollars collected by waiting. It's a gamble, but one you can make in an informed way. If you reach age 62 and you are diabetic, have already had a heart attack, smoke And Are Single, then go for the money then because you aren't going to last much longer. (BTW, single men in the US live 7 fewer years on avg than married -- no one knows why and yes, everyone has heard all the jokes) THE PENSION PLANS ARE UNDER STRESS, AND THERE IS NO RELIEF IN SIGHT. DO NOT GLIBLY BELIEVE YOU WILL GET EVERYTHING THE CURRENT RULES SAY YOU WILL GET. BUILD SOME MARGIN FOR ERROR ON THIS IN ALL CALCULATIONS. BTW, the "informed gamble" mentioned above is part of the stress. The US 62 vs 66 thing was set up in the system on the presumption that people would RANDOMLY select 62 vs 66 to start getting money. Because decisions are being made non-randomly, the pension system is hit very hard. Okay, this is your 50% in Eastern Europe thing. I already commented on that, so let's just look at the rest of these monies. First, let's chop about 7000 pounds off for "friction". This is airfare to Pattaya for research, hotel on those trips, shipping of personal goods, flailing about trying to solve the healthcare questions, buying some toys you didn't need but were tempted into because you had that 75,000 pounds in your pocket. Just . . . friction. Friction ate 7000. You have 68,000 left. Now it says your pension kicks in at age 60. That means you have 5 yrs of life ( from 55 to 60) to fund out of the 68,000 pounds (plus whatever you manage to get out of Eastern Europe -- but bearing in mind you say zero, essentially, One Has To Wonder Why You Are Putting Money In East Europe Rather Than 5% At The Bank). But let's ignore that and just park the 68K in a bank at 5% and send the other 75K to some thief in Slovenia. You'll get 3.4K pounds per year interest on the 68K in the bank. About 238,000 baht/yr or 20,000 baht per month. That's a tight budget. Real tight. It means you are going to eat into savings for 5 yrs until your pension starts. Note that five years is plenty of time for the UK government to start to cut back on pensions. My opinion? Generate some more savings over the next 18 mos, and maybe wait to age 56.5 (another 18 mos) -- as long as you're saving more money. This will give you more and also cut the number of years you have to fund with no pension. Okay, I'm done.

Here's the deal: This comment above is pretty solid. The problem with it is not all people want to, or have the aptitude to, manage their own money. That's a big % of the population. Not over 50%, but a big % -- and no I have no idea what -- I'll guess 30%. Think about the woman born in 1920. She's 86 now. She is from an era when women got married and kept house, watched the kids and cooked for her family. Her husband died 3 years ago. She never managed the money, knows nothing about it, has no chance to figure any of it out at her age. But the one thing she does know is her son, who is clamoring to take on the money management task, is an outright crook. So what does she do? Hopefully she goes to the bank, puts all of her money in there earning a few % of interest and lives out her life -- passing along the remainder to her heirs. But she may be inclined to think she can do better and then she has to find someone to do the work. Choosing who will be a result of word of mouth referral. She'll park money with some advisor who hopefully will only charge her an hourly fee -- but more probably he'll charge her an hourly fee for money he advises her to keep in the bank and a standard 1.5% for money from which he tries to squeeze better performance. He'll manage to squeeze that better performance. Sometimes. The two additional things he will do for her that makes him worth his pay is he'll take care of her tax filings and making sure she has enough money in her checking account for paying the bills. If he does just those two things -- and never steals a penny -- then he's providing a decent service and is maybe worth what he charges.

There are many threads in search about state of residence for tax purposes. Just a heads up to all that this particular issue is much bigger than it seems. If you have a friend or relative willing to endure your mail (junk and otherwise) for years and years -- okay. But most probably don't and for them the paid maildrop services are called for. Remember, your address (mail drop or whatever) needs to NOT establish some high state income tax state (like Calif) as your state of residency.