Silverfern

If you look at some of the expats walking around pattaya , not so sure they are embracing the healthy part of the city ????

Man Im glad I joined up into this forum , learnt a fair bit in a short time , 

and its motivated me to get my shit sorted . 

49 minutes ago, 4MyEgo said:

I have a family of 6 and I budget on 60,000 baht a month, that's about 2k AUS, however I would say it's more like 100,000 baht, by the time you add holidays and other bits and pieces into it, I mean that's a comfortable life, no skimming on food, however house paid off, no debts, run a car and bike.

 

If you live 6 months here and 6 in Oz, you should be able to enjoy both worlds, but then again see what a professional advises you on, it might be that you need to shift a property over to one of your kids and of course take out a caveat to the value of the property, i.e. you being 1st mortgagee on the property, like a bank, so kid cannot and I am not saying will, stick it too you or if married and the wife, husband splits and wants to claim on that property, might be an option to reduce your assets ?

Thanks mate you have been really helpful , 

I have a few options open to me , one , which is probably the most sensible , is to stick it out here for a bit longer ,keep working and  develop the properties , to maximize their potential financially , 

Borrow to build another home on each property one at a time , live in each one for 2 years before selling to avoid capital gains , invest wisely after selling , maybe apartments in my kids names like you say , leaving one in our name 

After reading  the link from a few posts back , it looks like im out of luck then on assets test , and if i roll it over into super , it still counts as assets ?  

It looks like Im in that middle ground where I dont have a great deal of money to retire on , and dont qualify for pension anyway 

50 minutes ago, 4MyEgo said:

Per fortnight	Single	Couple combined
Maximum basic rate	$834.40	$1,258.00
Maximum Pension Supplement	$67.80	$102.20
Energy Supplement	$14.10	$21.20
Total	$916.30	$1,381.40

 

Full pension

From 1 July 2018, pensions reduce when your assets are more than the amounts below.

If you're	Homeowner	Non-homeowner
Single	$258,500	$465,500
A couple, combined	$387,500	$594,500
A couple, separated due to illness, combined	$387,500	$594,500
A couple, 1 partner eligible, combined	$387,500	$594,500

Based on what you have stated above, I would say you will be getting zero with two properties, and as far as I know, once you earn $50,000 in income, the pension gets whipped out, but you have passed the assets threshold so it's a big NO from Centrelink.

I think with a million $ you can retire gracefully in Thailand, however you should start doing your homework, because once you decide to live here, the ball game can change as far as your residency status and taxes go, however I am not going to go into that as it's very lengthy.

 

Best do your own due diligence and seek the advice of a certified accountant, because residency status is not cut and dry as some will have you believe regardless if you keep your properties you can keep your residency status, but if you believe the words that come out of people's mouth without getting qualified advice and your residency status changes, the tax on non residence who hold property in Australia is 32.5c in every $ with no $18,200 threshold, then you have the land tax for non residence which is different to Australia residence, the list goes on, and capital gains tax will shortly have no 50% discount for non residence, it will be 32.5c from the 1st $ you make on capital gains up to $80,000 then 37c for every $ thereafterver $80,000 and once that 50% capital gains tax discount is removed, it is going to hurt a lot of Xpats, and I believe it comes into play on 1 July 2019 if it has passed through legislation, and it also hits your principal place of residence, so if your going to hold onto your assets, you might want to do 6 months in Thailand and 6 months in Australia to be 100% sure, remember, to hold your residency you must spend 6 months of the financial year in Australia, but then again, nothing is concrete, you have to look up the ATO website and also do a lot of research, Australia will not let you go so easily without wanting to tax you to the hilt, you can ask the ATO to assess your residency status, i.e. make a decision based on your information, keep it as straight as possible and see what the big boss says, that's one way to find out for sure, and you would have it in writing, but watch the fine print.

 

Good luck

Thanks mate , to be honest , if it was possible , to live a bit in both countries would suit me down to the ground anyway , I have kids , and grand kids are on the way , so that would be the ultimate for me , but wasnt sure if I could afford that 

Its a matter of working out a way to maximise my retirement income so i can afford thye best possible lifestyle  , both my houses are good development blocks , both corner blocks that can be subdivided , which is another option over the next few years . build - sell , build sell , 

My thoughts without professional advice would be to have one property to come back and forward to , maybe even an apartment , and roll the rest into a super fund , with maybe the pension supplementing that 

I remember being told, you can declare real estate outside of the house you live in to be part of your super fund , not sure if that is true or not and whether that would make it exempt from assets , which would be another option if that was the case . 

need to sit down with an expert and run my thoughts by him to see if im on the right track . 

Cheers 

Excuse me being late to the conversation , 

How much is the pension these days ? ( for australian couple ) and what are the qualifications as far as the assets test goes ? 

Im 57 , some time to go I know if wanting to claim pension , could have planned for retirement a bit better , but you cant change the past now , 

Have very little super , maybe 150,000 between the two of us , have 2 modest houses , maybe 1.2 mill between them .  mortgage 200,000 grand , 

long time traveler to thailand , retirement there is something we are seriously considering