gearbox

Ain't gonna work unless the super withdrawal rules are changed and the lump sum withdrawals are banned. I know people who moved to $4 million to lower their assets and get a pension. The US has much better structured pension system, you have to work and save in order to have money in retirement.

Even the communists don't have a pension system where everyone gets the same amount, irrespectively how many years they have worked and how much contribution they have made. Sooner or later the OAP in its current form will be abolished, I hope sooner than later.

The gubement should do what is right and abolish the OAP...or make it proportional to the total taxes paid. Too many parasites.

I use only my yellow book in Samui, no pink card, that should be enough. Have a look at the Samui forum here, there is a pinned post with plenty of info.

Russia and Ukraine are some of the most corrupt countries in the world, corruption is how the business is getting done there. They landed in good places, Samui and Phuket, guess which colour of envelope is the most loved here. From time to time a local files a complaint, the most likely outcome is an increase of the envelope size. Soon it will start looking like pre-Chinese Sihanoukville here, until they step on a big enough toe.

Any amount between $100k and $3m depending how you want to live.

I have 8 credit cards but they are always paid in full and I live well below my means. Having credit and debit cards could be quite useful if people use them wisely.

The normal tourist needs to pay $25 for Vietnamese visa, only a few countries are visa exempt. Overall Thailand has better beaches than Vietnam, especially the islands in the Andaman sea.

Only countries which have proper economies and don't rely on housing bubbles to prop up the economy can afford to shut their doors - like Germany and Japan. This doesn't apply to Australia, UK or Canada - ever increasing number of immigrants are needed to keep the house prices rising.

With the phone apps it takes a few minutes to do a couple of transfers. I do this every month with HSBC to maintain my premier status. Ubank changed to tiered interest in July. One can feel the NAB's way of trying to screw the customers there

Probably the business has gone already. I see the never ending cycle here in Samui - plenty open and close within a year, another big group just makes enough money barely to survive, and the well established and known quality businesess make pretty good money.

All countries joined EU for self interest.

Seems rewards are enormous, maybe you should urge your home country to act faster and grab this deal before EU lands it.

I met representatives of two of the major banks to discuss what options they have. Most of the offers were about life insurance policies, intentionally convoluted and deceiving products with terrible return on equity. Loans on land purchases can be as high as 10%, interest, even if you provide 70% of the equity. We'll keep on looking.

Yep... people are generally not aware that the main entity and the wholly owned subsidiary share the guarantee, for example if you have 150k in both NAB and Ubank only 250k are covered by the guarantee, you are going to lose 50k if both fail. The interest rates as investment options are going to become less relevant in the not so distant future. The crappy Aussie economy is houses and holes, China now doesn't need so much our resources and the houses part doesn't work well with high interest rates. There is intense pressure on the Reserve Bank to start reducing the base interest rate. Not so good for the AUD/THB exchange rate, it is at nearly 2 years low. This article shows the "quality" of the recent employment figures: https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2024/09/government-jobs-are-fuelling-australias-productivity-decline/

Citibank didn't fail, they just probably didn't manage to scale sufficiently and sold the retail banking business to NAB. The big banks have been buying out smaller operators to increase the customer base. ANZ recently bought the banking operations of Suncorp. There is an illusion of banking competition, lift the cover and you'll see many of the smaller banks owned by the big four. It is same with the insurance market, it is highly consolidated, with various brands owned by a couple of companies. Ubank was innovative digital bank, NAB bought it to acquire the technology, but being a dinosaur with a different culture it almost stuffed it up.

They all have the 250k government deposit guarantee. I don't really see how the Newcastle Greater Mutual would be safer than a global bank like Rabobank, which has been around for ages. Ubank is a wholly owned subsidiary of NAB, Virgin Money of bank of Queensland.

Ubank - 5.5% up to 100k, need to deposit 500 every month , can withdraw as much as you want. The Ubank debit card is fee free overseas, only foreign ATM fees apply. AMP - 5.4% need to deposit $1k per month, can withdraw as much as you want Rabobank Premium Saver - 5.45% need to deposit $200 per month and increase balance. There is very detailed spreadsheet regularly updated: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/145iM6uuFS9m-Rul65--eFJQq_Au7Z_BA4_CwkYwu2DI/htmlview#

How cheap imports affect negatively the restaurant businesses? I thought it would be the other way around.

I'm thinking the same, there is a worldwide asset bubble, one worldwide recession and a lot of value will be wiped out. However that SCB option doesn't look that bad, just the prices need to go down.

in Australia it is opaque intentionally. If you look at the ATO data matching initiatives they are scarcely documented. The AUSTRAC tracking is also not very well documented. Many people don't know that AUSTRAC does NOT record and track foreign ATM withdrawals. The CRS data exchange formats are standardized but afaik there are no universal rules how the data is collected. I suspect that every country will try to send as little as possible CRS data, and receive as much as possible.

Thank you for your input, that's indeed not good news. She wants to retire early in 6-7 years, live off investments and travel. Not possible on 2% return. Looks like the investment would be much more involving.

By default it is assumed that you are an Australian tax resident. I tick this one, and I am a tax resident indeed. Although in theory you may not be a tax resident anywhere if you move around a lot.

In theory you are right, Thailand can request this info, and they do have a proof that you were a tax resident. In practice unlikely to happen as it is not an automated exchange, at the home country side all your banks need to be contacted to generate CRS reports manually. As I said before the only way to foolproof this is to stay less than 180 days in Thailand, fortunately easy for me without any extra effort required.

Your post was implying that you are cashing in retirement accounts overseas and transferring the proceeds to Thailand.