Mike Lister

I see in the Bangkok Post this morning that the GSB is starting to offer reverse home loans or real estate equity loans, for the first time. This is the problem with using land or houses in an attempt to provide security during older years, the banks will come along and profit from the scheme.

Stop it, for the love of god!

It's not uncommon to see delivery pickups racing against each other, it seems to be boredom combined with low IQ and no enforcement.

It's not widely known but there are several species of ducks that can't fly, including the Pekin and Moulard. 🤣

It's completely painless and not even uncomfortable, you;ll wake up and be fairly clear headed quickly and not know anything about what happened. The hardest part is emptying your bowels the evening before, find a good book and be prepared to be on the toilet for a while.

There have been a number of threads on this subject over the years and they all seem to conclude in the same way. The financial services system here doesn't provide products that most westerners are used to seeing plus the charges imposed by banks and brokers are restrictive. If you try to invest on your partners behalf, outside Thailand, there's then currency issues and taxation. Buying bonds on the secondary market could work, if interest rates were higher and if brokerage fees didn't reduce the return by so much. So you're kinds left with fixed assets such as land, property income (potentially) or cash/gold.

The article says, "The car was previously fined due to its condition, which poses a risk for accidents.”

Exactly, has anyone ever in the history of mankind, walked into a food court in Thailand and seen any dish with a price ending in any number apart from zero or five!

Yes, but the wait times may be a negative factor.

More anecdotal data is my own personal spending levels. For many years we've existed comfortable on the same level of spend every month and that has driven the amount much of my financial planning. For at least the past year, I have exceeded the previous level almost every month by up to 10%. We're not living any differently, we've not had any unusual out of budget expenses, it's simply costing more to live.

Costs at a PRIVATE hospital in the north run to around 36k and up for a combined endoscopy and colonoscopy. A government hospital would not administer the test unless the doctor that you saw said it was medically necessary, even then the exam is likely to be administered by a junior doctor rather than a gastroenterology specialist. It's not possible to simply walk into government hospitals and request elective tests, just because you want them done there, just because they are cheaper.

Nobody knows, wait and see.....hows that?

And which countries would those be?

I agree with wordchild, agricultural land. The financial markets here are not mature and are not well regulated, forget the idea of anything like a living pension or annuity.

The really nice beach is 15 minutes away at Railey but is only accessible by longtail, maybe something to consider. The road that runs through Ao Nang has three parts. The center section which is closest to the beach is mostly restaurants/shops, the section to the West is much much quieter whilst the section to the East is quite busy. It depends where you want to be. We stayed at Ao Nang Villa Resort a while back and it was good my our standards.

My wife is self employed, she runs a bakery business from home that is in its fifth year and turns over in excess of 1 mill. every year. Her business is reliant on about 15 suppliers, all of whom have raised their prices, on average, by 10% per year, for the past three years, this years looks like it will be more of the same thing. That means she has to raise her prices by 10% just to remain at the same profit level. My wife is registered for tax but not many of her suppliers are, many of whom are via shoppee or lazada or small local businesses that get paid cash!

Government. The Thai Revenue Dept admits that the tax net includes only 11% of the population, that's 11% of the workforce which is 39 million people, that calculation along with independent estimates, suggest that over 53% of the economy comprises under table earnings, that's the grey economy. "An informal economy (informal sector or shadow economy) is the part of any economy that is neither taxed nor monitored by any form of government. The size of Thailand's informal economy is estimated to be 46.2% which represents approximately $848 billion at GDP PPP levels". So, if you can't monitor those earnings you can't measure the rate at which inflation is prevalent. But if you then try to measure it using anecdotal evidence such as the things we see and know when we go shopping, we absolutely agree it is far higher than 1%. https://www.worldeconomics.com/National-Statistics/Informal-Economy/Thailand.aspx#:~:text=An informal economy (informal sector,billion at GDP PPP levels.

There are two problems, the first being that the data is incomplete, because of the grey economy and the second, the term inflation needs qualification before it can be expressed. A blanket statement that inflation here is 1% is really quite meaningless for either reason.

Certified in their profession by YouTube by all accounts!

I think that if you did that you would have to file UK Capital Gains within 30 days and that would give you the paperwork you need to import the funds into Thailand. Nobody said you had to bring in the total amount in one go so the paperwork could be used several times.

Capital Gains in Thailand are taxed at personal income tax rates, only the gain is taxable which should be easily seen from the CG tax return in the home country..

https://www.boi.go.th/index.php?page=statistics_oversea_report_st&language=en

I don't believe for one moment that TIN's will be required for Immigration/visa purposes, there is no natural link in the same way that TIN's are required for holders of Work Permits. In fact, there are several fairly recent reports of the RD not wanting to issue TIN's to resident expats, unless they had income they wanted to declare, there have been similar reports of RD wanting proof of year round residency, before issuing TIN's. Having a one year visa alone has not been sufficient grounds in the past to warrant issuance of TIN's to foreigners.

The link to Sriphat hospital provided to you earlier is easily your best route. Sriphat is the private hospital wing of the CMU Hospital called Maharaj which is a 1,500 bed hospital that houses the best of medical care in the North. The specialists at Sriphat are mostly CMU faculty staff and are Assoc/Assist Professors.

Given the history of the hill tribes I suspect they feel the same way about everyone else as you feel about them, the US, Laos, China, Vietnam etc etc. Nobody has seriously tried to get them to assimilate, instead they are tolerated as second class citizens, trying to change their culture is an uphill struggle at best. But for sure, a large part of the burning problem exists in that quarter.