ChrisP24

Single enough, I'd wager......

I suspect that for most people their worst day will have involved the death of somone close to them. Gamma, I hope that whatever yours was, that your healing process is relatively brief and that you recover soon.

Skrill's parent company is based in Ireland so I assume they accept U.K. customers. Chime is based in San Francisco, not sure about them.

Poppysdad, you might check out virtual wallets like Revolut, Skrill or Chime that also offer a credit card number (it's really a debit card linked to your wallet but payments are processed as credit card charges that don't require a PIN.

Responding to just the OP and not any of the endless stuff that a thread about vaccination inevitably spirals into, personally I'm holding off for a while on another booster, and may end up just getting one annually as some others have also indicated. I've had three Pfizer shots (third one was a booster in December 2021), but then got covid in March 2022. Odds seem very high to me that it was omicron as that was the predominant strain at that time where I live, and my syptoms matched (severe runny nose for several days, some aches and one night of fever and chills). It was very mild and overall now I think my immune system is well-prepared at this point. And key: right now I can travel anywhere I want to go with the card showing 2 vacc shots + booster. If that changes then I'd go get another Pfizer booster if required for travel. Or if I had an underlying health condition that I thought warranted another booster, sticking with the same brand I've had before. An elderly family member has had two boosters. That's just me. As for others, I support everyone deciding on their own what is right for them, just as OP is doing.

Maybe it was bad karma from failing to honk his horn as he passed the temple at the top of the hill. I only made that mistake once, out of ignorance, after that I learned to honk like a local every single time. And actually it did make me feel perceptibly safer. Also no hint of fire, not even once.

Well, among a certain subcategory of locals, it is of course it is common knowledge here that you can live quite easily on 10k pesos per month, that is if you "supplement" that with a much larger income from a foreign sponsor. Even better is to have two or three sponsors who don't know about each other. ???????????? Among another subcategory of locals (and this is more common) another option is to cohabitate with many family members who share expenses. For yet another subcategory of locals, the long game is to educate your children so that they are qualified to work abroad and send money and balikbayan boxes back home to supplement your income. But of course, since in all fairness you don't fall into any of these subcategories, none of these are options for you, as you lack the experiential and family/cultural background to make any of these work for you. So, assuming that your unit also includes electricity and water, your 10k budget for food can work if you eat a lot of rice and are creative about where you source your protein. Think about things that you can catch if you are hungry and not at all picky. Watch the local cats to see what they catch and eat for inspiration. And when protein still runs short, maybe think of the cats again. Hmmm. Cats...... But if you can afford a maid then certainly the 10k must be just your food budget. I suppose that with a rice base, cheap veggies and the cheapest proteins that you can find or forage, it might be possible. More so maybe if you live on the coast where you can do some subsistence fishing.

oMega69, in the interest of closure, what is/was your intended use for the bullion and what will/did you end up doing?

Ummm, maybe just enjoy the flower. Maybe a few times. Then, depending on the sweetness of the flower and its pollen, and your individual appetite for both, either set down roots, or de-root and uproot yourself and move to a different garden. Botanically speaking of course.

They're helping you spend it on a cause they think is a worthy one, thus they've programmed their ATMs to view YOU as the ATM. Kind of an existential paradox if you think about it (too) much. ????

The real ATM scam is offering you the option of withdrawing baht but in your local currency, for a 5% fee. You're almost always much better off withdrawing in baht at and having the withdrawal pst to you account at your bank's exchange rate and foregn transaction fee (if any).

It is a Buddhist lesson. The orange is not orange, it is white. Just as the white is not white, it is orange. Orange, white. Not for us to say. Both may become the other, thus they are the same.

Well, maybe skipping a year here and there...... ????????????

Yep. But if they spend that down to below 800k they won't be able to renew that particular visa, as I understand it. So I see that more as dead money or cash-of-last-resort rather than part of a cash reserve. Kind of like selling the farm - - it gets you cash but then you have no place to live.

This market just illustrates (again) the wisdom of having a cash reserve in retirement. When you have a year-plus in cash/cash equivalent there is no need to sell during a market downturn, you can live off of cash reserves and wait it out. Yet it is a balance, as money held in cash is money that is not working for you, and it has only been very recently that i-bonds (a cash equivalent IMO once once you've held them for a year and can then redeem them at any time) have yielded worthwhile interest. And there is a $10k annual purchase limit for those (yes you can do another $10k in your wife's name plus more if purchased with a tax refund, but I hadn't done either of those). Entering 2022 I had about six months of living expenses in cash/cash equivalents, but this month I increased that to over a year, plus more that I'll put back into the market to generate ongoing income once the market finds new footing. This has also got me thinking that I was overly weighted toward growth and that the money that I put back into the market should be more focused on dividend-paying stocks and other income-generating strategies. So that's what I'll be doing over the next several months. But the remaining growth investments (a mix of index funds and large cap growth mutual funds) I'll just leave alone, that allocation has a ten-year-plus horizon before I plan to touch it anyway. So I did sell some into the market drop that I would have just held onto had I started the year with a proper cash reserve. But from here forward I anticipate cautious buying rather than selling. It does hurt just a bit to log in and see balances, but I'm over it. So to answer OP, right now I'm around 60% in growth stocks (mostly mutual funds), 25% in income-oriented investments and 15% in cash/cash equivalents. The growth portion is approx. 80/20 in IRA/Roth IRA vs. taxable accounts. The income portion is reversed 80/20 with approx. 80% of that in non-retirement accounts. The cash portion was virtually all in non-retirement acounts, but the growth mutual funds that I sold to raise more cash were in my Roth, so now I have more cash there than outside of it. I won't pull that out unless I have to, but if I do at least it won't trigger any taxes.

Thanks. That was my take on it too. It was a decent and functional place, but the vibe was sterile, felt like hanging out in a university library. That was the only one I visited in person, but I've read good things from multiple sources about Punspace. I think they have (or had) two locations, one near Tha Phae gate and another in Nimman, but the web site for Nimman location is showing that one as permanently closed. Good luck, and if you do find one that works, maybe post back here as there will be others looking, and a lot of the info out there is outdated/pre-pandemic.

Even before the pandemic I caught a very mild case of the prepper bug, and started stocking canned goods, both meats and vegetables plus beans in both canned and dried form, together with some rice. Canned goods generally have a 2-5 year shelf life, and buying in bulk or wathcing for sales gives you good awareness of prices and the ability to spot a good deal where it makes sense to stock up. During the pandemic this approach reduced the frequency that we had to get out for groceries. It's become a habit now, to watch for sales and buy in buulk the thigns that we know we will use. But now the payoff (other than the convenience of having what we need already pre-stocked at home) will be having bought at preices that are pre-inflation and pre-global-food shortage. As part of that process I refurbished our pressure cooker and have found it to be excellent for dried beans. Cooks them much faster, and for older beans it's pretty much the only way to get them soft again. These days about half of our beans are canned vs. dried, the determining factor being how far ahead we plan our meals. I guess that's a long way of recommending a pressure cooker for beans.

Breaking up by text is poor form, but "just disapearing" seems even worse. At this juncture probably the best thing you can do is to give her some short communicatio that gives her closure so you can both move on. You'll know what form of communication is best, if you just don't want confrontaton or drama you could at least hand-write a letter and slide it under the door, but whatever you do you should do it ASAP, today if possible to spare her any more anguish. And if she knows where you work, it might be time now to make one of your 4x per year job jumps. Not sure if telling her why will do any good, other than simply you are not ready for kids and family anytime soon so it is best for you both to give her the freedom to find someone who is. BTW down the road if you ever do get to a place where you want a child and are ready for the responsibility, pushing a baby pram and contemplating all of the adventures that are ahead for you and your child to experience together is one of the true joys in life. But it is not for eveyone. I was happy single and childless for many years. But at 23 the idea freaked me out too, no way could I have been a good parent then and I'm super-glad I waited.

Its also poetic justice to think that if you do this and others see you the idea might just catch on and spread. Or go a step further and buy these in quantity and sell them for a profit beachside. But of course long term it's unwise to "win" in circumstances such as these. Better to win quietly simply by not playing.

That's how I understood it. Not sure why OP has not been back to respond or clarify, but maybe I missed something.

Sounds like two cool things to have. Makes your house more Thai and shows that you are honoring your wife's culture even if you don't share the traditions or beliefs.

Maybe ask at a family-owned/family operated gold shop, they will probably know some local contacts to refer you to. Might be best to tell them you are looking for a shop rather than some random person that you can't find later. Out of curiouslity what do you want to do with the silver after it's melted down? I'd imagine that in its present form it's easy to recognize what it is, and might even be stamped. But if melted down it'll be difficult for someone else to tell what it is, it would have to be assayed, and even then it would be difficult for that person to re-sell it. Seems to me that melting it down is only useful if you plan to use it to fabricate something else. If you plan to melt it into ingots with some sort of stamp, it might be better to just trade it in its current form for some ingots that are readily identifiable as being from a major, well recognized source.

My opinion might not be relevant to this thread as I live in the US with a Flipina wife. I would not want to live in the rural province, but if I had to spend a lot of time there, it would only be tolerable with her and extended family all there. In a city (even a small one), then no problem, with or without.

Are any of the brothers hot? Asking for a friend, whose conduct I do not approve of BTW.

That and bagpipe music, after imbibing of course. The accent is pretty cool, too especially if they are pi$$edoff. And on your side.