gamb00ler

I use commercial VPN's very sparingly, however I do use VPN technology that I control 100% running on my own hardware.

Merriam Webster does not include the word "impossible" in their definition of "harder".

There are many aspects of safety and none of them can be addressed to 100%. A VPN makes your communications over the public internet safer. For example, that would make it harder for 3rd parties to capture your personal data for use in compromising your financial accounts.

"Nice" isn't the first adjective I would use to describe my impression of FBU Manila. I'm looking for a word that encompasses undertrained, understaffed, poor reading comprehension, unmotivated, unsupervised. Thankfully, my need for such a term only recently surfaced.

The fees that a bank charges are not strict rules that must apply to everyone. Customers that have large balances often get perks that others with lesser balances don't. Schwab does the same.... if you have a high enough balance, there is no SWIFT fee for outgoing wires within reason.

Who's Next! The first album I ever bought. I still love every track.

You can actually eliminate Wise's receiving fees if you deposit SSA into a US bank. You then use ACH transfer to "push" the funds into your Wise account from your US bank account. Most banks allow their customers to use ACH transfers for free. Remember that you must initiate the ACH transfer using your US bank. If you use Wise to request the transfer they will charge you for that service.

This is not true. I never need a VPN and I use my online SSA account often. I do have a delay in connecting occasionally but simply retry once or twice and it will eventually load the site. I had a friend who had difficulty connecting to SSA from Thailand. He changed his DNS server to 8.8.8.8 (Google DNS server) and no more problems. If you are having problems try using a different route to the internet. If your problem is on a desktop/laptop, then try using mobile internet on your phone. You can also use your mobile phone to create a hotspot that your desktop can use to connect to SSA. If you cannot connect using your phone try a desktop/laptop or try using free Wifi service after you turn off your mobile data connection. A free WiFi will be safe because your connection to SSA website is via HTTPS.

If you can, make a list of the entry/exit dates for all your trips to Thailand and photocopies of the relevant PP pages to assist Thai Immigration.

Using a router in bridge mode effectively turns the router into a "dumb" switch or as in the "old" days we would use coaxial splitters. The bridged router is no longer performing the NAT (Network Address Translation) routing. There isn't a serious problem with using two NAT routers in sequence to connect your home network to the internet as long as you connect all computers to the last router. This should include all devices using WiFi too. In fact you should disable the WiFi function in the modem provided by your ISP.

@tamy you should be aware that the US Direct Express debit card has HIGH fees if used outside the USA. ATM withdrawals are $3 plus 3% of amount withdrawn plus you will also pay the 220 ฿ fee that Thailand charges for using foreign cards at ATM's. Purchases at a merchant have a 3% fee as well. It appears you can't get a "cash advance" at the teller with that card outside of USA. You really need a trusted friend or relative to help you to deal with the SSA.

My wife calls the peanuts and sometimes other nuts beans 555.

Any US expat collecting a pension based on the US $ has a large exposure to the effects of a declining US$. To understand your risk you need to compute the "present value" of your pension. The present value is the lump sum equivalent of an SSA retirement pension that will be collected over your remaining lifetime. Since SSA pensions are inflation adjusted they are called a growing lifetime annuity. The present value computation is complicated and is intended to make it simpler to compare different financial choices. For example the present value of a $1,000 per month Social Security benefit for an age 70 male with a life expectancy of about 14 years is about $153,000. Most SSA pensions are substantially larger than the $1,000 I used in my example.

Somebody will be along shortly to point out that you dropped a zero from the total ฿ received.????????

I didn't believe in reincarnation until I read your post!

I'm lucky in that I'm pretty close to both CM Immigration locations and the drive through/walk up window 90-day service is very fast. I often take five extra minutes to stop by and request a couple COR's while I'm there. They only charge for the postage and I use the extra photos I get when doing an extension.

I opted for a single trip to Kasikorn to open an account and get their mobile app which is much faster and allows payments to more utility companies than Bangkok bank app. One minute a month with my PEA and PWA bills in hand is very bearable.

One thing I've noticed makes forum navigation confusing. If I wish to post in the "Jobs, Economy, Banking, Business, Investments" section I would assume I could get there by descending down the Forum categories much like going into subdirectories on a computer. But that particular sub-forum is not displayed when I click on "Business in Thailand, Jobs in Thailand, Insurance". To get to the sub-forum I want I can only get there by clicking on the title when it is displayed as in the attached image. Shouldn't every sub-forum be listed under it's immediate parent category?

Are your man's motives pure? Perhaps pure greed? Hmmmm .... what are the clues? makes money if BTC goes up garners viewers (AKA makes money) on YouTube by predicting calamity in video's title Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to SCAM me. ????

I only tried to open an account at two KBank branches while on my original Non "O" visa. Both said I needed to be on a one year extension before they would give me an account. KBank's customer service line told me the same thing. After I got my extension I went back to one of the branches to open an account. This time they told me I needed to deposit 10K ฿. I just gave a small laugh and said "I don't think that's correct". I got my account with a 500฿ deposit, my passport and a certificate of residency from Immigration.

This seems to be such a common assumption. My media diet doesn't resemble that of most AN posters. My Thai family are also not typical. They are well educated and interested in lifelong learning for both business and recreation. IPTV will provide a lot of content but of course not all. If my internet is down, it doesn't. It also seems that at our new house, our mobile signal is not that great. I've only tested our current provider so far. Is IPTV consistent at 1080P or 4K? I prefer to watch the excellent nature documentaries at 4K. I still want to store my digital books that I've collected and not yet read. I need to retain articles that I've saved as PDF. Many I have read quickly and would like to read again for better retention. On a drive, text can be scanned for keywords and accessed much faster than doing a Google search and having to check again which articles truly discuss what I'm looking for. It's quite clear to me that Android/IPTV provides everything for mamu posters but doesn't in our case. I will almost certainly have IPTV as well for current broadcast/cable content.

Thanks... that's a decent price. Newegg is the same price.

I hope you can find someplace where you fit in better! Bon voyage.

As I have indicated there is not a serious need for 24 X 7 access. An rsync run during off hours is fine for semi-hot backup. RAID is nice but overkill for our needs. I want to use a simple power sipping Intel box.

Those are a couple of options I'm evaluating for the router software. The router/file sharing box will have a separate boot drive that is not shared. The CPU in my Intel box will have plenty of oomph for both router and file sharing duties. The only time there would be a little higher load would be the short periods that I would be using a VPN running on the box as well.