jerry921

I've generally stopped reading this forum, but I saw a headline about Thailand I wanted to read more on. Then I saw this thread and stuck my nose in once again to comment.

For years before retirement I was planning on retiring to Thailand. I've been to thailand a number of times, months altogether, not weeks, and I felt I could be happy as an expat.

But when it finally came time to choose, 4 years ago I picked Mexico.

Issues that swayed me:

- distance, convenient travel, as I still have an aged parent to travel back to visit in the US a few times a year (it's a 4 hour non-stop flight).

- language, just being able to read signs and puzzle out what they mean is easier with a roman alphabet, plus spanish is easier than Thai to learn to speak

- residency rules. I had to go through a process with the Mexican consulate to get a visa, then another with Mexican immigration after I arrived to get temporary residency, then another after one year to extend it, then after 4 years to get permanent residency. Those four processes were difficult, time consuming and bureaucratic, but I'm done. I have residency for life. I don't have to report to the police every time I sleep in a different bed (I'm supposed to keep them informed of my main address if it changes, is all). I can own, 100%, my home (though I have to use a bank trust, I have 100% of the ownership rights).

- beach. I live in a condo on a beautiful nearly-white sand unpolluted beach with crystal blue Carribean water.

The biggest minus for Mexico vs Thailand for me would be the food.

On 6/20/2019 at 2:48 AM, dddave said:

Germane to this topic, when I renewed my US pp last year, I opted to pay an extra $25 for the additional passport card figuring it would simply be a reduced version of the original pp face page and sufficient to meet the requirement of having your pp on your person at all times.

Well, not exactly.

Though it is a reduction of the face page, the all important  passport number on the card is entirely different from my actual passport and nowhere on this card does my passport number appear. 

I can see this causing some real confusion and difficulty as this card though supposedly valid for id purposes,, does not agree with the Immigration pp data base.

Just to be clear, the card is not valid to use for international travel except between the US and Canada/Mexico. 

Clarification on your last sentence, if I am not mistaken: the card is not valid to use for travel except *by land* between the US and Canada/Mexico. If you fly between US and Canada/Mexico, you still need your regular passport (according to my understanding). 

I bought one too. I had the notion that when a country I am in requires me to always carry my passport, that carrying the card might suffice, and as it fits in a wallet is easier to not lose. Whether that will actually work I dunno, haven't tested that anywhere yet.

I'm reminded of US General Mattis, who told his officers to be polite and have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

With motorcycles, you have to be polite and plan how everyone is going to kill you.

The next 3 most important rules are

1. Have license & insurance

2. Have good medical insurance with emergency medical evacuation

3. Have a will.

I've been looking into Puerto Rico. Has some tax advantages for US citizens - read up about Act 22. But you have to buy a place to live, not rent, to get the tax advantages. It got trashed by hurricane Maria, so there's the opposite of a real estate bubble there right now because many people left.

If your income is mostly from social security, I don't think the tax advantages help, though.

I have some paper gains in stocks in taxable accounts and it looks to me like if I move to Puerto Rico and continue holding those stocks for 10 years then after 10 years I can sell them without ever paying any tax on any of the gains. If I sell sooner I pay reduced taxes to the US on the gains. Once Act 22 is qualified for, stocks I buy can be sold any time without paying any capital gains. Dividends and interest can be tax free if the account is a PR account.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the break extends to taxes on IRA/401k distributions.

Good things include it's part of the US for immigration purposes - US citizens can just fly in and work no probs. Obviously that's a big downside if you aren't a US citizen/resident. Uses US dollar so no exchange rate issues. Drives on the right.

If I were younger and trying to earn money doing work over the internet it would be fantastic (no income tax once act 22 is qualified for)

Noooo

You don't need the money seasoned to convert from tourist to non-O. You need to go do that conversion now. That gets you 90 days on the non-O. Close to the end of that 90 days you apply for a one-year extension. That is when the money needs to be seasoned. But by then it will be, because that's 90 days from now, at least, and you already have the money in the account seasoning away.

36 minutes ago, NancyL said:

Just the routing number, account number and name on the account.

Hopefully if the name on the account doesn't match the account number the payment won't go through. Otherwise if you use this method to transfer money  to yourself but make a mistake on the account number you could have a problem.

You should talk with your doctor before substituting a generic or changing what you take. I am not a doctor.

I'd never heard of Diovan, so I googled it. Diovan is the brand name. Valsartan is the generic name. That rang a bell, because I just saw it in the news:

http://time.com/5340730/fda-recalls-valsartan-medicine/

So it looks like there are generic versions, because 3 companies have versions (but I didn't dig deeper). But, according to the article, they are all using the same tainted Chinese-manufactured active ingredient.

That suggests that you might have some trouble finding the generics in the short term as the supply line will need to be purged and refilled, or that if you can find them you don't want to take them because they should have been thrown out but weren't.

What I'd do is go see a doctor and request something different. Not taking blood pressure medicine that you need is a bad idea because you could get a stroke and who wants to end up a vegetable just because you didn't take some medicine?

If what you take is a combo pill with two medicines in one pill, you can usually save money by buying the two medicines as separate pills.

1 hour ago, NancyL said:

I know that there have been reports of difficulty with new ACH transfers between U.S. banks and Bangkok Bank, so to test this on Friday evening, Thai time, I set up a new ACH transfer between my U.S. credit union checking account and the Bangkok Bank account of an organization in Thailand, an account not in my name.  No problem.  They sent me an SMS yesterday (Wednesday) that they had received my donation from the U.S.  I used the credit union's "bill pay" function.  No need for "trial deposits".

Great info. Good workaround to the trial deposits. Did you have to give the name on the account that you're paying or just an account number?
 

Oxx, which immigration office was it that you had your negative experience with?

28 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

Except, AFAIK,

 

1. TM's wifi calling feature is only available on certain phones, including those bought directly from TM.

 

2. And more to the point, the wifi calling feature is NOT available on the $3 a month prepaid plan.

 

I've checked out that topic before, because I was hoping I might be able to use my TM SIM in the manner you suggest. And found, not available on my particular mobile device, and not avail on my $3 a month TM plan.

 

I have an S-7 that I bought from T-M two years ago. I don't know how far back their smart phones go in supporting that feature, or how expensive the cheapest plan that includes the feature would be. I was a little hesitant to post what I did, because I'm in Mexico not Thailand, and I have a $50/month plan that includes free roaming in Mexico, but I use the wifi calling as much as I can to reduce the amount of roaming, just in case they decide I'm using too much of their "free roaming". (There are unconfirmed reports online of people getting booted off the plan for "extreme roaming", whatever that may be).

It may be that some of the other schemes like Magic Jack are better for Thailand, especially if you can receive text messages and whatsapp.

It was very handy for me to have been able to keep the same US phone number that was already associated with all my accounts. For example, when my retirement account/stock broker company wants to text me a confirmation code because I'm logging in from a "new address" (even though it's the same laptop), I comes to my phone no problem. For me it's a great feature.

Another risk to depending on this is if T-Mobile merges with Sprint - who knows what happens then, they could easily drop the feature.

Nowadays, once you leave the US it immediately becomes very difficult to open any kind of financial account. Maintaining a US "presence" is helpful, but not always sufficient. #1 piece of advice is to get all financial accounts you are going to want set up before you leave - this is just a repeat of what others have said, but +1 from me.

Here's one that got me: after years of investing with vanguard and e-trade, and never once putting any money in Us govt debt except via funds, I wanted to invest using treasurydirect. (www.treasurydirect.gov). It's an account where you can buy treasuries directly, for no fee, have the money pulled from a bank account and receive the interest directly to that bank account, and hold the paper until maturity, without having the principal change due to interest rate changes (like it would in a US govt bond fund).

I couldn't set it up from overseas, after doing the online application the account was locked until I took a form in to a bank in the US, one that I had an established customer relationship with, provided ID and got them to sign and put their bank medallion seal on the form (not a notary, a bank medallion).

So if you are ever going to want that sort of thing, set it up before you leave.

Also: cards get lost, stolen, hacked, and sometimes simply locked by the issuing institution for no reason. You need backup cards, and they should be for different accounts from different banking institutions. This is becoming more and more important as they tighten up more and more. Like the abovev, this advice is particularly for US citizens, not other nationalities.

Something I learned the hard way: don't rely exclusively on debit cards. Even if you aren't the charge-card kind of person, set up at least one US-based charge card while you still have a US address. You can't get one after you move overseas. You say you don't plan to travel back to the US, but are you certain you won't ever visit your relatives? If you do, and you want to rent a car in the US, you need a charge card. It is possible in some airports with some rental agencies to use a debit card, but it's not universally possible, and it is universally a huge hassle. It's much easier to get a cash-rewards credit card before you leave.

I saw in skimming through here a reference to using your son's address, but not anything about whether your son lives in Texas. If your son lives in Texas, then no worries, skip this paragraph. Otherwise, don't use his address as a forwarding address or in any other way. If he lives in another state, it could compromise your "domicile". Domicile is a legal term that is important. Legally, it is the state you "intend to return to", whether you actually ever intend to return or not. It is your last state of residence, the state you owe income tax to, the state which will assess inheritance tax if you die (if they know about your death) and the state your US will should be executed in. If your son lives in certain states, that state will learn from the PO about your forwarding address, and put you down as a resident of their state and then start assessing income taxes. Some states are much more "grabby" than others, Virginia and California are quite bad. Texas is a great state to have your domicile in - no income tax, no inheritance tax. Don't mess that up!

I recommend subscribing to a Commercial Mail Receiving Agency, one with a Texas address, as mentioned by earlier posters. The one I use is texashomebase.com. They are in Wichita, if that's driving distance away for you, it's ideal. It's $200/yr, plus you pay forwarding postage, but they open and scan all your incoming mail and you can simply view it online and then have it all shredded and only forward really important stuff a couple times a year. No trouble with junk mail. I recommend subscribing now and starting to switch accounts over to that address while you are still receiving mail at your old residential address. There's stuff that only comes once a year that you might forget, otherwise. After the accounts are switched over, put them all on e-statements.

After a couple years in Thailand, if you agree with the other posters here who say you don't need a US presence, you can drop it, but once you drop your presence, you can't really re-establish it without moving back.

There was a thread here about customers of some Thai bank that was insisting to know your foreign home address - even from customers who hadn't lived in their own country for 20 years. They didn't check it, so people just gave them their last address, but in my opinion, the direction of the wind is clear, and keeping a US address is becoming more and more valuable and necessary. I think maintaining a US presence is smart and good insurance for the price.

Are you planning on continuing to vote?

On 7/14/2018 at 2:34 PM, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

There's also a T-Mobile prepaid option to keep a valid T-Mobile number that costs only $3 per month, but it's really only suited for people who would want to use that T-Mobile number when they're back in the U.S. for travel. It really doesn't serve any good purpose for using in Thailand because, under T-Mobile's roaming rules, calls to your TM in Thailand would cost like $2.50 per minute and they also charge some small money for each incoming our outgoing SMS. As I said, that plan is really only a kind of placeholder for people who was to reactivate a TM number once they're back in the U.S. for whatever reasons.

One of the unique things about T-mobile is their smart-phones have a wifi calling feature. You can use this feature with a wifi connection in your home in Thailand.  In the wifi-calling settings set up, choose the "Never Use Cellular Network", and leave the phone at home in range of your wifi all the time. This allows you to keep a US phone number, anywhere in the world. Calling over wifi is unlimited and doesn't count against your cellular minute allowance or count as roaming.

If you are going to try to keep a US address, it's useful to keep a US phone number to go with it.

... And avoid spending some huge percentage of his monthly income on visas....

So I thought the reference to someone earning 4k B/month was a reference to that.

2 minutes ago, wgdanson said:

Would a Lao farmer be applying for a Retirement extension?

I think I got my threads confused. There was a thread discussing somebody who had a farm and hired a Lao worker two weeks a month and that worker was doing 30-day border runs and paying for each month's visa. Someone suggested the poster go through the hassle of getting him an actual work permit so he could avoid the border runs.

2 hours ago, wgdanson said:

You are supposed to have Bht 65000 per month, 780,00 per year,  income in oder to get the retirement extension. So Bht 1900 is only 0.24% of annual income.

Yes, it's not a big deal for foreign expats on retirement. But for the Lao farm worker it is a lot. That's the sort of person being referred to as living on 4000 THB/month.

7 minutes ago, Small Joke said:

You have a good point.  That's approaching  USD 90,000.00 depending  on how forex tracks and that could really hurt in terms of sheer transaction size, it is a lot of lost opportunity cost in funds that could be working for one elsewhere. 

Today you can get almost exactly 2 1/3% from a one year US treasury bill. Times US90k that's $2100 per year.

In some other threads there has been advice on getting a good rate on your required Thai bank deposits. I've forgotten the name of what type of account you are supposed to get. Anyway, what is currently the best rate that you can get from a Thai bank for a deposit that meets the requirements of the visa & extension?

Certainly you might prefer to be investing your money in something with greater risk and greater return than t-bills, but for comparison purposes and having your money tied up, I think the one-year is about equivalent risk.

Of course there's exchange rate risk, but when you're an expat you have that already.

I figure that most people aren't going to have all their financial resources invested in higher risk investments, most are going to have some money in an emergency fund or other cash holdings, so once you figure the difference between the US t-bill rate and the Thai bank rate for the money the opportunity cost may not be that large. Especially for people who want their emergency fund in Baht.

Here's some food for thought: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-02/obradors-win-mexico-opportunity-trump-end-drug-war

For this to be relevant, one has to assume that the US's war on drugs and the pressure that the US puts on other countries to cooperate with it, makes a difference to Thailand. That's certainly debatable, feel free to disagree with me, but I think if the US threw in the towel on the war on drugs entirely, or at least with respect to marijuana, it would make it at least a little bit easier for other countries to legalize recreational pot.

Ah, well that's all good then.

I was 90% sure that would be the answer. I almost went on to make my point, that AFAIK you can only apply for a non O-A in your home country, so she'd have to apply for that in Viet Nam - if Thailand even offers that visa to Vietnamese citizens (which I don't know).

Some advice, if I understand it, is assuming she'd be his dependent rather than getting her own visa, but not all the posts make it clear.

And the other things I was going to do was to ask if she was close to being eligible for US citizenship, as if they both had US passports that might simplify things somewhat. But I thought I'd take things a step at a time and verify her citizenship first.

If your wife has a US green card, is her passport/citizenship then Vietnamese?

11 hours ago, mlmcleod said:

The 10 year visa is for those who can keep 3 million baht in the bank pretty much for the length of stay.  Nothing new here.

The way I read it, you need 3 million already in a Thai bank to get the visa in the first place (I didn't see anything about starting out with the money in a home country bank like with an O-A). And you need 3 million still in the bank at the end of the first year. But during year 2 you can spend down to 1.5 million, and the way I understand it, you'd need to maintain 1.5 million thereafter.

It's unclear to me whether, when you leave at the end of your 5 year permission to stay and return just before the visa expires to get a second 5 years, whether at that point you once again need 3 million, or if 1.5 is good enough then. And another point of question is at the one year mark on your second 5 years (i.e. at year 6).

I'd have to rate your comment only partially correct. You definitely need to be able to keep 1.5 million in the bank for your length of stay, but it only needs to be 3 million for at most one of the first five years.

11 hours ago, mlmcleod said:

Nothing new here.

Agree. We got slightly off topic talking about the O-X, to refuted the claim that the longest permission to stay you could get for retirement was one year. Even though with the O-X you still need to go in annually to have your eligibility rechecked.

9 hours ago, elviajero said:

Not going to happen unless they want to dramatically reduce ‘retiree expats’.

Your point seems illogical to me. Why would adding another option reduce anything? The old options would remain available, so no one would be impacted, and no one would have any incentive to be reduced. Dramatically reduced? I don't think so.

9 hours ago, elviajero said:

The “3 year visa” is an unsubstantiated rumour.

I agree with this part at least.

edit: I'm commenting regarding the O-X, not the hypothetical 3-year...

US$400 for a visa that gets you 10 years permission to stay with a single border run after 5 years seems like a pretty good deal, even if you do still have to report to immigration annually. It sounds like the annual hassle will be similar to, but perhaps a bit less than, the one year extension of stay hassle, and there's no annual fee.

Although on the other hand if you figure the opportunity cost of keeping 3 million baht tied up in a Thai bank account vs something bearing better interest it may come out to be more expensive than the regular 800k one-year retirement extension paying 1900 baht.

1 minute ago, ubonjoe said:

Once applied for it allows getting two 5 year visas but only allows one year stays in the country without getting a extension.

See: http://thaiembdc.org/non-immigrant-visa-category-o-x-long-stay/

 

That link is what's confusing me. It appears to me to say you can stay for 5 years each time. I was thinking that meant 5 years each entry, and when it says "total of 10 years" I was assuming it was talking about the same thing you can do with an O-A to leave and come in right before the visa expires to renew/restart your permission to stay.

" Period of stay Travelers with this type of visa will be permitted to stay in Thailand for a period of 5 years each time (total 10 years) "

I don't see anything on that page referencing any one-year limitations. It looks to me like the visa is valid for 5 years and multiple entries, and you get 5 years permission to stay on each entry.

I'm sort of expecting to find out that the US embassy web page doesn't accurately describe what the IO's in Thailand actually do. But I don't understand how I'm misreading the meaning of the web page.