suzannegoh

 

 

Well she’d have to be in the US to use it, yes?

 

In any event, if you have no money, healthcare is free in the US.

If you know the details of how it works I'd be interested to hear about it.

 

Yes, she'd have to be in the US to get it.  The scenario that I heard about is a 65yr American with 55 yr old Thai wife.  In that case, if they moved to the US he'd be Medicare eligible but he'd need to either buy her an insanely expensive insurance policy or have her go without insurance. And since they aren't poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, having no insurance would be a huge risk.

 

 

Just now, Nemises said:

Not necessarily! Many Australians (& retirees from elsewhere) move to Thailand not because they are struggling, but because they HAVE used their nous to organise their affairs to the extent that they have a property to live in each country. They come and go as they choose.

They are living the dream.

The biggest complaint that most Aussies that I know have is that they need to go back to Australia regularly in order to continue to be eligible to collect their disability benefits.  While that does sound unfortunate, the strange thing is that I've never met an Australian in Thailand who was incapacitated by anything other than alcohol.

13 minutes ago, mogandave said:

She will be when she’s 65

What's the rule about that?  I thought that it was necessary for a foreign spouse of a US citizen to be resident in the US for 5 years to become eligible for SS and Medicare benefits.

11 minutes ago, KhunFred said:

Just one more reason that Aussies have it better than we Yanks.The lack of any real universal healthcare in Thailand is a real concern for us. I'm beginning to wonder if Mexico might have been a better option.

Medicare is pretty good for people who are over 65 years of age.  Where the problem comes in is if you've married a Thai she wouldn't be eligible for Medicare if you brought her back to the US.

12 minutes ago, VincentRJ said:

Not in Australia. If you don't own your own home, you get a rental subsidy in addition to the old age pension. You also get totally free medical insurance. 

 

I'm a pensioner in Australia, and am very impressed that I never get charged anything when I visit a doctor in my local medical clinic for some minor ailment, although I do pay for any prescribed medication, but at a subsidized rate which is probably not much more than the cost of the same medication in Thailand.

 

If I were to get seriously ill with a life-threatening condition, I would immediately be rushed to hospital, all free. If I had a non-life-threatening condition, I would probably be on a waiting list without private health insurance, but that's not a significant concern if the problem is none-life-threatening.

 

The main reason why any retired Australian would move to Thailand because they are struggling with the cost of living in Australia, is because they don't have the nous to organize their affairs and adjust to their economic conditions.
For example, such people might be used to eating in restaurants where the average meal, without wine, cost $20 -$30. In Thailand, the cost might be $5-$10, or even less in the countryside. Wow!

 

If that's your concern, then the solution is simple. Cook your own bloody food at home. You can even save money by baking your own bread. If you can't afford a car, then ride a bicycle or travel by bus.
 

That sounds like an excellent reason for Aussies to stay in Australia when they retire. I do know one retirement age Aussie in Byron Bay who lives in his car and dumpster dives for food but I assume that he's an anomaly, having been a mostly unemployed musician during his prime years and never having  met a drug that he didn't like. But this forum is about Thailand, isn't it?

 

14 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

But it does make sense to many western Incels.

I'd rather have 10 years of plentiful sex and die, than live to 100 with none at all.

Which is effectively (and unfortunately) how a lot of western men are forced to live these days.

 

Castration would be a better plan than that.

Yea but come pension time they will be in serious do-do. I wanted to come live here before 50 but resisted it fanatically, for visa reasons, but mostly financial. Got to 50 and was here within 2 months. Could live on 45k easily but 100k is easier if you like wine, women and song as I do. But, to be fair, I rarely spend over that 45k figure a month and the rest goes on my many holidays throughout the year.

I didn't mean to say that I recommended working age people living here if they are only going to be in the able to scrape by, just that many do. Moving to Thailand younger than 50 might be a good thing for mid-career corporate expats or offshore oil workers who get a Western salary plus living expenses but if you're going to be working for local wages it doesn't make a lot of sense economically.

15 hours ago, NanLaew said:

If you like life in a bland, faceless police state, OK I guess.

 

You already have. Thanks.

 

Oh dear... Changi as the center of the bloody universe again? The thing is you need loads of liquidity to use Changi frequently because TBH, staying in Singapore for anything longer than a month and you DO need to go somewhere else for genuine fun and excitement. Not the bottled, pre-packaged, homogenized and over-priced sh!te that Singapore offers. Or you can pop over the causeway to Johor or ferry-hop to Batam.

 

Short-times are more expensive in Singapore too.

I'm very pro-Singapore too but I was surprised to see so many people recommending Singapore in this thread.  Usually farangs in Thailand slag off Singapore.  It makes sense in a way that people who thrive on the disfunctionality and relative poverty of Thailand would dislike the order and affluence of Singapore.

8 hours ago, Naam said:

would all the eggsburts who recommend Singapore inform themselves by reading

https://www.guidemesingapore.com/business-guides/immigration/permanent-residence-pr/pr-scheme-for-investors

 

For someone who isn’t Jimmy Rogers, working longterm in Singapore and becoming a PR prior to retirement is pretty much a prerequisite for retiring in Singapore but even that might not be sufficient.  The Government doesn’t actually tell you what the criteria are to allow a working class PR to stay after retiring, they just say that they will take into consider your prior contributions to Singapore.

4 hours ago, Ks45672 said:

I don't think they are overly concerned about giving your wealth away, but any subgroup of people (farang/Saudis /Japanese etc  overpaying raises the price quotes for everyone else

 

There is an element of "it will spoil it for everyone" attitude in it but they also seem to have a moral objection to it and gossip about people's spending habits.  It's as if they think that the ultimate virtue is to at all times spend the minimum amount possible.

 

9 hours ago, KMartinHandyman said:

They must be assimilating well into Thai culture then. I neither speak nor understand conversational Thai, I know a lot of Thai names of things but usually only if my wife is the one enunciating them and yet I can pick out baht and rxy between Thais speaking and it seems to be the two most frequent words in their conversations.
Early on I used to ask what the conversation was about knowing it involved money (most likely mine) until I learned it’s alway the same stuff, how much you/they paid/owed/borrowed/want to borrow/need co-sign, do we want to buy some car, rai, factory, beach house, etc.
My wife explained how it’s rather normal and not considered too insulting along with things like blurting out someone looks a little fat. After a few trips to the US meeting most of my friends and family she now sees the cultural differences (and how I feel about money talk) as not once over the years has anyone discussed money or called anyone fat.

But do those Thais get pissed off if someone spends more than they would because it will "ruin it for everyone"?

27 minutes ago, mogandave said:

It is interesting how angry all the chiselers get because someone else chooses to give away some of their own money.

It’s a good bet they’d be the first to demand the government take more money from “the rich” (i.e. anyone that has more than they do) and give it to them.
 

It's always been that way.  One of the less appealing characteristics of the expat community in Thailand is that people are excessively concerned about how much other expats spend.

I'd pick Singapore but your client might not be eligible to live there unless he took a well paying job there or was able to invest a significant amount of money in the country.

16 minutes ago, bwpage3 said:

Agree, we know many right now in Florida working in restaurants that have overstayed over 10 years here.

That’s one of the reasons why Americans often have difficulty getting a US tourist visa for their Thai wife or GF.

3 minutes ago, marcusarelus said:

Most Americans who live in Thailand permanently have retired.  How many Thais have retired to the USA?

 

That would be comparing apples to apples.

I;d guess that there aren't very many but there are probably statistics about that somewhere.  I know two Thais who have retired in the US.  Both were engineers who worked 25+ yrs in the US and eventually gained citizenship.  I also know of a couple who went to the US on tourist visas, overstayed those visas, and have been working illegally there in restaurant jobs for years.

Are any of us posters here in our prime years?

I'm just eking out my last few days while waiting for death.

I don't know how old the participants in this thread are but some have said that there are working and in some parts of Thailand, such as Chiang Mai, there are a lot of young farangs supporting themselves by doing things like teaching English or digital nomading.

 

I knew loads of old folk in the UK living on the state pension of 450 quid a month.

It's how old people the world over normally live.

Boomer money/lifestyle is atypical, didn't happen in history, probably won't happen in our children's future.

That's for pensioners. But how much do people typically earn in Britain during their prime working years? He can speak for himself but I think that what he is getting at is that merely subsisting during your prime years is not a very good plan.

 

22 hours ago, Lacessit said:

You haven't been here very long, have you? If you can explain to me how one gets to be financially savvy on a rice field wage of 200 baht a day, I'm all ears. it's a question of opportunity.

You are contradicting yourself.  You were the one who thought that Thais buying gold meant something, now you're agreeing that they lack financial savvy and cite a reason for it.  So which is it, should we emulated their financial moves or should we be mindful that most of them never had the opportunity to learn how to handle money?

1 hour ago, Father Fintan Stack said:

My outgoings are directly related to my alcohol consumption.

So about 200,000 baht/month then?

Tell me - are not the illiterate girls from Issan, who mulct educated Westerners of their life savings, financial wizards?

Maybe more so than the guys that they are sponging off of. Millennials in the West who live in their parents' basement are financial wizards by that standard too. Take a look at the Thailand's per capita income; if financial savvy was a national trait the country would be as rich as Singapore.

 

2 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

We shall have to disagree.

I can live without beef, cider and wine, but can still, enjoy spaghetti bolognese (15bht/plate), pork steak and chips (35bht), toasted muesli bread and vegemite (almost nothing), roast chicken, gravy & potatoes (30bht), cheese sandwiches (15bht), tuna & mayo sandwiches (10bht), beer, wine coolers, gin & tonics, vodka gimlets, for ver small amounts of money and call it a 'western lifestyle'.

Is that they way that you lived in the West too?  It's much easier to live on $1000 per month if you've never lived on $5000.