Here's an interesting article on Id.me:

How Did ID.me Get Between You and Your Identity?

Mr. Grecian,

You are asking a question that you yourself should be answering.  Of course, you can learn Thai at age 53.  The limiting factor is motivation, not age, and not even intelligence.  Forget the apps for which there are so many enthusiastic recommendations.  No one ever learns Thai just from an app.  If you want to learn Thai you should find the best teacher available, which you can determine by seeing how many of her former students became fluent.  Then you should plan to allocate hours a day to the study: reading, writing, speaking, and listening comprehension of which the last is always the most difficult by far in any language.  

You should also ignore 99% of the posters here on the subject, because they have failed and will just try to justify their failures.

I have been studying Thai for some years.  My flashcard program for Thai has 15,000 entries of vocabulary and expressions which I practice daily.  I can probably recognize 60% to 70% of those words.  Nevertheless, I still encounter unfamiliar words on nearly every page of the book I am currently reading, "The Miracle of the Namiya General Store" by Keigo Higashino translated into Thai.

I read Thai at the college textbook level, but slowly and can even touch type Thai.  When I recently had a consultation with a Thai doctor we conducted the conversation entirely in Thai at my insistence even though I am sure he speaks perfectly good English.  In other situations like with the Isaan guys in the condo who come to fix things in our apartment I can hardly understand a word they say.      

I started teaching myself Thai at age 60 the year before I arrived in Thailand.  I have been studying it continuously since arriving, most recently privately with an excellent teacher.  

Language study is an eminently fair endeavor.  The more you put into it, the more you will get out of it.

I hope someday to be fluent in Thai to which I will only add:

I. will. never. quit. studying. Thai.

Up to you, as they say.

10 hours ago, burner2014 said:

With all that criticism we gave the government not providing early enough vaccines, Thailand did a great job once the vaccine was available. 

Yes, although it could have been better.  The country with the highest vaccination rate in the world is Cuba.  They were able to achieve this impressive result, because they did not wait until the rich countries released some of their vaccine hoard to the poorer ones.  Historically, because of the trade embargo by the US Cuba could not buy ordinary vaccines at all.  So, twenty-five years ago Fidel decided to spend one billion dollars to develop their own vaccines of all kinds.  When Covid arrived the Cubans quickly developed five Covid vaccine candidates.  I think they achieved the 90% vaccination rate using two of them.  Cuba has a population of 11 million and a GDP pf $100 billion.  So about one sixth of Thailand on both counts.

Thailand can and should launch its own national program to develop and test vaccines to avoid have to wait for the crumbs of the rich nations in the next pandemic. 

1 minute ago, Jingthing said:

Well, its my impression that filing any other way than with the actual letter you're supposed to receive is non standard. The physical letters have bar codes. I recall people posting about what Manila told them when they didn't get the first letter. Wait until the second letter. So while yes there are non standard ways to file, filing with an original letter is preferable  and again there is no official online method like there is for FBAR.

I didn't know that.  By the time my benefits started the letters were suspended.

How to remove bloatware and ads from Xiaomi phones without rooting:

31 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

Yes you are.

The letter often doesn't actually arrive in your mailbox. 

But you don't have to wait for it to arrive in your mailbox.  You can just download it and mail it in.  

Thai police are not paid a living wage.  So, of course that fact is going to stimulate corruption.  

3 hours ago, shortstop2 said:

I claim Thailand as my primary residence so that I don't have to pay State tax.

If you check the tax domicile laws of your former state of residence, you will not find that declaring a foreign country as your primary residence has any bearing on your tax liability to the state.  Many states take into account various factors such as whether you own property, vote, maintain a driver's license, use professionals, etc. to determine whether taken together those factors indicate "an intention to return" to the state at some point in the future.  If so, you are on the hook for taxes, interest, and penalties.

On 1/5/2022 at 1:33 PM, Pib said:

The mailed SS COLA statements for the wife and I arrived our Bangkok mailbox today/5 Jan 2022.  We had also already downloaded the statements on 14 Dec 2021 from our SS online accts. 

By "COLA statements" do you mean the benefits verification letter that can be downloaded from ssa.gov?

10 minutes ago, srowndedbyh2o said:

I was unaware of the $6 wire transfer and the “qualify for "Emeritus Status” if maintaining direct deposit with SDFCU.

Back in Nov. 2020 I tried to open a joint account with SDFCU, and we were declined. Actually, they told me that my wife was declined, but that I could open an account alone. My wife has been a U.S. citizen since 2006 and never had any negative financial issues. When I asked SDFCU why my wife was being denied an account, they said “…we are not privy to the specifics regarding what information could not be verified or authenticated due to the proprietary nature of the software being used for that verification/authentication process”.

One of the main reasons we had applied with SDFCU was because they were ok with us having a physical address in Thailand, and they have an international wire service. I hadn't thought about a 'domestic' wire through BKK Bank NY.

Maybe we should reapply.

I think it would be a good idea.  I opened my account a few years ago while here in Thailand without much difficulty.  When my US citizen wife went to open her account last year they rejected one of her documents for, as it seemed to me, a technical reason.  Nevertheless, we corrected the document in question although it took several months.  She applied again and got the account the second time round.

After her account at SDFCU has been open for a year I will ask to add her as a joint tenant with rights of survivorship to my account.  Sometime later she will apply for the no foreign-exchange-fee SDFCU credit card.  

For the low additional price of the $6 my transfer always gets executed the next business day.  Also, there are limits on the amount of ACH transfers.  So, when I was doing a larger than usual transfer I would have to stagger a couple of separate transfers.  It's worth the $6 to me to be able to forget about such concerns.

Another small benefit is that the transfers are easy to execute.  The first transfer to BKK Bank that you do you fill out the detailed form online and put it through.  After that you send an email to [email protected] and ask them to create a template based on your last transfer.  They will reply with the name of the template Blow-Joe.  Thereafter whenever you want to do a transfer you just send an email to [email protected] asking them to do a transfer using the Blow-Joe template in the amount of $XXX.  You'll get an automated confirmation and it will be processed.

Once you have had your solo account there for a while they might look a little more favorably on your spouse, although you probably still need to identify the problem and fix it for her.  You might check her credit report for anomalies.

44 minutes ago, srowndedbyh2o said:

I believe BKK Bank NY and BKK Bank Thailand both charge fees for those transfers, however, @Pib posted a good comparison between ACH and IDD transfers ( here ) and ACH comes out slightly ahead, as far as net Baht. For my own situation, the unrestricted bank in Thailand with the IDD method still outweighs the small amount of extra Baht the ACH method offers.

YMMV.

Here is another alternative that you might consider.  If you open an account at State Dept Federal Credit Union and if you direct your SS benefits (or any other pension) to be deposited to your account there, then you qualify for "Emeritus Status" the best benefit of which is that you can do a domestic wire transfer in any amount for $6 a pop.  Since Bangkok Bank is a US bank with an ABA number a transfer to your account at Bangkok Bank is a domestic wire transfer that will cost $6 and always arrives the first thing in the morning the next day because of the time difference.  BBK Bank always codes them correctly as international transfers.  Of course, you still pay the same receiving charge to BBK Bank.

SDFCU is for several reasons my preferred bank these days.  They don't close accounts for expats, for example.

The SSA is very specific in wanting to know your physical address.  You can also provide a mailing address as I did, but they don't seem to use it much.  The address of record that appears in your profile on ssa.gov will be your physical address.

We are also obliged to notify them when we move.  I think it is a bad idea not to be forthcoming with the SSA, who is emphatically not our enemy.

There is a wrinkle in the transition from spousal/own earnings benefits to survivor's benefits that is probably unlikely to apply in the OP's case, but is worth understanding nevertheless.  When the high earner dies, usually the husband, the surviving wife's spousal benefits will automatically convert to the higher survivor's benefit assuming that she is not entitled to benefits on her own earnings record.  This can be detrimental, because if the husband dies before she reaches her own Full Retirement Age, then her survivor's benefit will be permanently reduced.

However, if she is entitled to benefits based on her own earnings record at the time the husband dies she has the option of suspending her survivor's benefits, ideally until her FRA if she can afford to do so.  

The text of the applicable regulation in the SSA's POMS handbook is here:

https://secure.ssa.gov/apps10/poms.nsf/lnx/0300207005

2 minutes ago, JustAnotherHun said:

It's you who does not understand. The death counting methods are different too. Even a fool should understand that. Bu I'm aware, Google "experts" don't

You have my sympathy.  Life with low reading comprehension must be very difficult.

13 hours ago, Meat Pie 47 said:

why every body compares to to USA and Great Britan I live in OZ not the east and we had 14 infections

Population size.  But Australia did an outstanding job on managing Covid.

13 minutes ago, JustAnotherHun said:

to compare different countries is comparing apples and oranges. Makes no sense at all.

Different counting methods, different test amounts. 

You either didn't read a word of what I wrote or didn't understand it.  When we are talking about estimating Covid deaths using the method of excess deaths, the tests and testing methods don't enter in to it at all.  Did you really not understand that point?

3 hours ago, KhunLA said:

Again, all number being reported are suspect.  NY wants the reporting of covid case at hospitals to be more 'specific'.  Quick survey, and 20-50% of the cases reported were not admitted for covid, but tested positive while just happened to be at the hospital for something else, and no symptoms.  But yet, are added to the covid 'hospitalization' numbers.  That's just silly.

That's the reason that I posted the link to The Economist's comparison of excess death rates.  The number for Covid infections and deaths are hardly accurate anywhere for a variety of reasons.  But virtually all governments track deaths carefully.  By comparing the month by month death rates since the beginning of the pandemic against the monthly averages, for instance, over the previous five years, epidemiologists can easily report the excess deaths most or all of which are attributable to Covid.  Also, the excess death count adjusts the estimated Covid deaths for people who could have been expected to die of some other cause during that period.  So, excess deaths are the only reliable way to estimate the true mortality numbers.  The US reports 827,000 confirmed Covid deaths, but the excess death number is more than 1.1 million already.

28 minutes ago, ArcticFox said:

Aren't you all incurring foreign transaction charges?  Personally, I only use my credit card for US based companies.

None of my US credit cards charge for foreign transactions, except Amex which I only use in the US. 

I recommend sdfcu.org, Capital One, and Pentagon Federal for credit cards with no foreign transaction fees.

Since Maxwell was convicted of three counts of conspiracy and since she therefore must have conspired with other people, it would appear to be incumbent on the DoJ to indict those other conspirators who are still alive.

On 12/23/2021 at 7:56 PM, Heng said:

The relative, friend, or tenant (presuming you still own property there) method is the best way to go.  The mail forwarding service/US address rental service is not a good idea as most banks/credit card issuers seem to have a database of these now and don't accept them as permanent addresses.

However, your brokerages and banks are going to be sending copies of their 1099s to the tax commission of the state where your relative, friend, or tenant lives.  Sometime thereafter you will get a letter from said tax commission wondering why you haven't been filing tax returns in that state.  All is not necessarily lost, but that's a letter I would rather avoid. 

9 hours ago, KhunLA said:

Have you ever tried it without the bank info, and just the SS info?  Sort of, in lieu of the ol' income affidavit from embassy.

That is not likely to work.  At CW they scrutinize the bank statement very carefully.

1 hour ago, Longwood50 said:

My point is that age of consent is merely an arbitrary number.  It is different throughout the world.  

Heck in Muslim countries girls as young as 10 are allowed to get married.
The Personal Status Law of Muslims, 1991, allows the marriage of a girl from puberty. Ten years-olds can be married with judicial authorization. 

No doubt Ghislaine Maxwell regrets that she didn't have the benefit of your legal insight when she was planning her crimes.  She could have chosen a more hospitable jurisdiction.

2 hours ago, Pravda said:

Interesting. Actually not at all, but I do have a question. Since they were all minors, how come their parents weren't prosecuted for pimping their children?

Irrelevant to the Maxwell case.