OJAS

Might depend on whether you're pulling money from a home country bank account or a Wise account, though. Following a transfer from my UK bank account to my Wise account last Tuesday (which took longer than usual to finalise thanks to a public/bank holiday in the UK on Monday), I then initiated an onward Wise transfer based on the "funds for long term stay in Thailand" reason just after 9:30. I was initially informed that the GBP would be taken from my Wise account at 10:00. In the event the money was taken a few minutes earlier, and the converted THB landed up in my Bangkok Bank account just over 4 hours later at 14:00. So, in stark contrast to others on this particular thread, I have absolutely no complaints about Wise based on recent experience. Also worth mentioning that the amount I was transferring on this particular occasion was 4 times greater than the amount of my normal Wise transfers!

In these circumstances it strikes me that the only significant expense with which she might be faced would be with a trip to a theme park (if that is her sort of thing). Please see the following link for info (including pricing details, although you might need to add extra to cover refreshments, transport costs, etc) relating to theme parks in the London area: https://www.visitlondon.com/things-to-do/sightseeing/london-attraction/theme-park

That went out of the window in 2019 with the introduction of mandatory health insurance for OA visa holders past and present.

That's more or less what I said, I think.

But they might have a knock-on effect on extension of stay requirements, particularly when it comes to health insurance coverage.

Agreed - I think that we rule this possibility out at our peril.

The reduction in the mandatory minimum health insurance coverage from 3M to 440k will only apply to long-stay visa applicants between September and December, according to the thread at https://aseannow.com/topic/1328402-big-thailand-visa-changes-from-june-1/ What I personally find extremely worrying is that, if we are, indeed, talking about a merger of the non-O and non-OA visas in the case of retirement, the Immigration Bureau might use this as an excuse for extending the health insurance requirement (which will presumably increase back to 3M from 1/1/25) to annual extensions of stay for retirement based on original non-O (as well as non-OA) visas. Not good news for those who have ditched their original non-OA visas so as to avoid the insurance requirement by exiting Thailand, re-entering visa-exempt and then obtaining 90-day non-O conversions at their local offices. And definitely not good news for those who, for whatever reason (age or health issues), are unable to obtain minimum health insurance coverage of 3M.

Plus the risk in obtaining definitive info from the horse's mouth (i.e. your local immigration office) IMHO is that what you are told might depend on (1) the particular officer you speak to, and (2) more importantly, which side of the bed they got out of that morning!😔

So presumably you are not American, Australian or British? It would appear from what you have said that individuals of those 3 nationalities living within the catchment area of Nonthaburi Immigration can, in practice, kiss goodbye to any chance of being able to drive legitimately on the highways and byeways of LOS.

They are also a prerequisite to obtaining Tax Identification Numbers from our local revenue offices in the light of the taxation changes currently being discussed at length elsewhere on here! Maybe these are what has motivated the OP's request?

A bit surprising that there has been no specific mention in this thread thusfar of the musical "accompaniment" to ol' Rishi's rain-sodden announcement, as explained in the following Sky News item: https://news.sky.com/story/general-election-why-was-things-can-only-get-better-playing-during-rishi-sunaks-statement-13141643 and is this track:

And before you even get to the dicking around with PIN numbers, etc, stage, there is, of course, the "little" matter of getting the bloody app to fire up on your mobile in the first place - which tended to be a slow and time-consuming process for me during my brief dabble with this particular "whizzo" method of making payments before I eventually ditched Bangkok Bank's mobile app out of sheer frustration and reverted to the, for me, tried and tested method of making payments through their online banking service or good old-fashioned cash. I personally dread the day when the Kim Jong Un's at the top of the banking sector finally succeed in their autocratic aim of ramming scanned QR codes as the sole method of making payments down all our throats whether we like them or not - and live in hope that I will have passed on long before that particular day is upon us! 🤬

So are you actually talking about (1) a real-life experience with your local immigration office following a stay at the Nana Hotel, or (2) a purely hypothetical scenario? If (1) it would IMHO be extremely helpful if you could specifically identify the office in question so as to enable us then, if we wished, to add it to our "rogue office" lists (assuming, of course, that it is not already thereon).

If to inform the local immigration office there that you had recently returned from a trip abroad, you would almost certainly have found that you were wasting your time. They have never asked me (or, more to the point, my wife as housekeeper) for a new TM30 whenever I have needed to do business with them following a foreign trip.

So CW still insist on this ridiculous and (in the case of retirement extension applications) particularly pointless requirement, do they? By my book this puts them on a par with the likes of Jomtien and Chiang Mai as serious contenders for annual "Rogue Immigration Office Of The Year" awards!

What I have also started doing in this connection is to prepare breakdowns of my various remittances (in the form of Wise transfers) since 1/1/24 between assessable (i.e. the UK State Pension in my case) and non-assessable income - in case these are ever queried at some point in the future by my bank or the TRD. Following on from that, I have attempted to construct what a PND 91 return might look like in my case based on the 2023 version of this form (mindful, of course, that it could be all change once the TRD have condescended to let us know what the 2024 version looks like). This has, however, raised an interesting point in that, if the exemptions and allowances listed in para 89 of the Guide are applied in full to my UK State Pension (which I have provisionally calculated as equating to a total of 300k for the 2024 calendar year) this would result in an overall negative figure, which would presumably not be acceptable since it might give the TRD the misleading impression that I was, in fact, after a tax rebate! So what I am tentatively minded to do instead is to arrive at an overall zero figure through a suitable reduction in the amount of relief claimed through the over-65 190k allowance. Is my thinking likely to be along the right lines here, please?

Err on the side of caution would be my advice in determining 90-day reporting windows. I always include the due date as Day 1 in any count of days backwards ((up to 15) or forwards (up to. 7).

Might be helpful for some to be reminded of which documents were required!

Horses for courses, of course, but if I were in your shoes, I would be sorely tempted to return to Thailand with a 30-day visa exemption and convert this into a 90-day non-O visa for retirement at my local immigration office. And I speak from personal experience of having jumped through various hoops in order to obtain my original non-OA visa from the Royal Thai Embassy in London back in 2008 when things were simpler (in particular no health insurance requirement)! I also wonder whether your aversion to dealing with your local immigration office might stem from the grief and hassle they have given you (and your wife) over the years in connection with your marriage extension applications. It doesn't follow that you would necessarily encounter similar grief and hassle in connection with retirement extension applications - indeed quite the reverse would seem likely. If you could let us know which your immigration office is, maybe others who have applied for retirement extensions there could offer their experiences here.

Just be aware that your first extension of stay based on retirement will be dated 12 months from when you apply for it rather than your current permission to stay. Subsequent extensions will, however, be dated 12 months from your current permission to stay.

Indeed. There seems to be some specific issue relating to transfers into THB from most of our home country currencies, which is seemingly resulting in higher costs for Wise and consequential fee increases for most of us. Quite what this specific issue is, I suppose, anyone's guess - particularly given that Wise sre apparently choosing to play shtum on this particular point for some mysterious reason!

I wouldn't always rely on this being the case, though. Completely unbeknownst to me at the time, Rayong Immigration reset my reporting clock when I applied for my latest retirement extension there last July. This only came to light when I subsequently attempted to file a 90-day report online based on the previous due date, which needless to say was rejected (although the reason was, admittedly, clearly spelt out in the rejection notice). As a result I shall be including a completed TM47 with all the other required docs with my next retirement extension application, with the aim of teasing out of them conclusively whether or not my reporting clock will be reset on that occasion.

Correction: most of us Brits here in LOS are actually legal non-immigrants with zero rights.

@DrJack54 - another office to add to the rogue list as far as non-O visa conversions are concerned, I think!

It's the Bangkok Bank description of "International Transfer" which is the one that will count for IMM purposes. So from that viewpoint you should be fine. However, which immigration office is it that is insisting on a 2-week seasoning period for your non-O visa conversion application? Apart from Jomtien (which insists on a 2-month seasoning period in such circumstances) I am not aware of any other office which is insisting on any seasoning of the required 800k whatsoever.