DogNo1

SWIFT code wires will continue to go through.  What will not go through is a domestic ACH.  After sending a paper application and talking with USAA on the phone three times, I am convinced that they will not send an ACH to Bangkok Bank after April 1 and they apparently have no plans to institute an international (IAT) ACH.  Fortunately, Fidelity Brokerage will send monthly a SWIFT wire to Bangkok Bank for free.  My financial advisor in New York submitted the standing order for me so now it will only take a monthly phone call.  I wish that I could set up a recurring monthly transfer but the Fidelity agent told me that it wasn't a possibility. 

I would like to see a waiver possibility for people who have resided in Thailand for many years and have an income of 250,000 to 300,000 per year.  I have friends in that situation who won't be able afford the 800,000 in the bank for five months and 400,000 for the remaining seven.  Fortunately some are EU citizens whose countries continue to issue income letters.

Er, 400,000.

Thanks for the information, Joe!  I had misunderstood an earlier post as applying to both methods.  What a relief!  Unfortunately, people using the 800,000 method will now have 400,400 locked up in a Thai Bank permanently.  The new rule will, at the least, complicate things for those who use agents.

I thought I was OK when I transferred 65,000 into Bangkok Bank in January and promptly spent 50,000 for my hotel bill. Now it looks as though I can't meet the income requirements since, although my extension expires on May 13, I plan to apply at the end of March.  My understanding of the new requirements is that 65,000 must be transferred to and remain in the bank for two months prior to the application (or is it the extension date) and three months afterwards.  I plan to return to Japan around April 18.  Perhaps if I apply in early April, I will satisfy the two-months prior requirement.  This shifting of the requirements makes me nervous.  I now wonder whether the date that the money is transferred will be important; so if I were to transfer money in on the 15th of February and March, but apply on April 10th, will the period of having money in the bank be considered to be less than two months?  Even if I were to transfer 800,000 in immediately I couldn't meet the three months prior requirement unless I were stay in Bangkok and apply after May 1st.  Any advice from Ubonjoe?

You will need to report your holdings in the account to the Treasury Dept. ( FBAR) and you should report any foreign earnings of any kind on your 1040 (FATCA) but the foreign earnings exemption is so high ($104,100 for 2018) that you won't need to pay any tax.  I always report my foreign earnings but haven't had to pay any tax since I retired six years ago.

Exercise will not cause you to lose any weight on a calorie to calorie basis.   Of course, if your exercise increases your over-all metabolic rate and the amount that your body burns on a constant basis you lose a little weight but you can't, so to speak, exercise off weight.  To lose weight, you must examine your diet and modify the type and amount of food that you eat.  Eat a lot of natural fat (not processed into lunch meat, ham, bacon, etc.)  Minimize your intake of carbohydrates and even whole grain.  Don't cut out everything completely but devise a diet of thngs that keep you eating happily.  Gradually, if you exercise moderately and eat a diet of meat, WHOLE milk, cheese and butter along with vegetables and a moderate amount of fruit, you will begin to see a slow but steady weight decrease.  Go easy on the sugar and very sweet fruits.  Also, keep in mind that there is probably a weight at which your body will remain in stasis as your ideal healthy weight.  You must discover what your ideal weight is on your own.  For me, it is 85 Kilos.  I feel fat above that weight and pretty weak if I get down to 82 Kilos.

There are glycemic index books they you can buy which will tell you the glycemic index of every food. Using their information, you can draw up any number of meals with a glycemic index and a taste that you like.

Use foods with natural fat - meat, cheese, whole milk, etc, so you will be able to be satiated  at meal times and not desire but the occasional sweet or processed food item.

I have scads of research to back my recommendations and will be happy to send a bibliography if you want it so you can do the reading from first-hand sources.   The most important finding over the past 4-5 years has been that saturated fat does not cause cardio-vascular disease; it's the carbohydrates and sugars that do and that our physical bodies are enourmously complex.

Good luck on your quest for good health and weight loss.

I have heard considerable variation in the way the foreign words are rendered in Thai.  For example I have heard the word motorcycle pronounced "mo- cy" quite a bit by the bellboys at my hotel and at the motorcycle taxibdrivers at the  stand nearby refer to the machine as " mo-to-SAI" with the emphasis on the last syllable.  A similar thing happens to the rendering of super highway.  It becomes "su-PAH." I recently encountered the situation of not being understood when I asked to have Equal put into my coffee.  When I showed the sweetener to the server, she said, "Oh! eQUAL!  The linguistic rule seems to that a foreign loan word will be rendered as simply as possible into Thai following the syllabic rules of the Thai language but, if necessary, the rendering will be altered for the purposes of disambiguation and the avoidance of having the rendering of the loan word coincide with an unpleasant Thai Word.  Similar things happen in English.

I will look into how the IT technicians in my hotel use the Thai rendering for a software application.  There may some reasoning for the particular rendering.  Of course, I assume that Westernerses know that before the advent of small devices, what we now call apps were known as programs

Fidelity does free Swift transfers and Mapguy says that USAA does also.  I haven't been able to confirm that with USAA yet.  They charged me $45, perhaps improperly.  What I know is free with USAA is domestic transfers but that option goes away on April 1st with Bangkok Bank's policy of only accepting IAT transfers after that.  Bangkok Bank says that after that date, ordinary ACH transfers will be returned.

Pib, you are correct.  It IS April 1st.  My mistake????

Ubonjoe mentioned an easy alternative to a bank statement - copies of the bank book countersigned by the bank.  To my mind, this plus a bank letter is the easiest proof.  My understanding is that the bank letter must be dated on the day that the application is made.  I assume (hope) that the bank book copies could be countersigned at an earlier date in the month of application provided that they showed  a transfer deposit for that month.

It turns out that several financial institutions in the US offer free SWIFT wire transfers.   Check with your institution.

People who have been using a domestic ACH transfer to Bangkok Bank will longer be able to do so after June 1st (someone here said April 1st but I think it is June.).   My bank didn't even know what an International ACH is, so I am sending SWIFT wires.  They show up in my bank book coded FTT (Foreign Telegraphic Transfer.)

 Sam6345:  Thank you very much for sending the instructions about how to send a wire transfer from Fidelity without the Medallion Signature Guarantee.  I have already wired the money using the USAA Bank this month for a charge of $45.00.  I'll try to transfer from Fidelity next month.

My checking account statement was examined for proof of income after they took the embassy affidavit.  The embassy affidavit was never proof of anything.  In recent years, they didn't ask to see the proof of income, they just accepted the embassy sworn statement.  Others have reported that their proof of income backing up their embassy statement was also examined each year.  If they understood the proof in previous years then they very well could have opted to continue understanding it since the embassy statement really didn't prove anything as they came to realize. 

An international ACH was not available from USAA so I sent a SWIFT international transfer of $2,200 to Bangkok Bank.  Cost me $45.00.  I will get a Medallion Guranteed Signature so I can do Fidelity wires as soon as I get back to Washington in July.  In the meantime, I am out 6 x 45 = $230. 

In my earlier post about possible BANKS which could do the Medallion Signature Guarantee, I was asking whether the US Embassy or US military here might have a BANK on embassy grounds that could do the signature guarantee.  The embassy and various military bases in Japan all have a US bank to serve the civilians and military members there.  I was NOT asking whether the embassy itself was able to issue Medallion Signature Guarantees.

Actually, it would have been simpler if immigration had just continued accepting the proof of income that they had been accepting all along.  In my case that was regular retirement income shown on my USAA checking statement.  

I suppose it's possible that immigration would be so nitpicky as to not allow an occasional foreign transfer that was mislabelled as domestic, especially if a transfer slip for that transfer from TW could be shown.  

Also, cash advances from my Navy Fed credit card are always accompanied by photo copies of the credit card and my passport.  If all of the cash-advance money were deposited into my Bangkok Bank within five minutes of the cash being produced, how would that not qualify as a transfer of funds from a foreign source?

This process has been made much more complicated by the requirement of the monthly transfer of 65,000 into a Thai bank when they could have just kept accepting the proof of income that was acceptable all along.  I think the answer is because this will now get a huge amount of money into the Thai banks.  Their "float" which they can use for various money-making purposes is going to increase dramatically.

Fidelity wire transfers are free for me but the Medallion Signature Guarantee is a problem   I wonder if the guarantee could be done at a branch of a US bank here.  I also wonder whether there is a US bank branch at the embassy or in the MAC compound.

Ubonjoe: I didn't get the embassy affidavit because I thought that the proof of income shown on my USAA Bank statement would continue to be accepted without the embassy affidavit.  I guessed wrong.  It is an expensive mistake.  Nobody has offered an opinion about whether immigration will be lenient about the seasoning period required for a deposit of 800,000 in a Thai bank.  I prefer not to go the monthly transfer route because of the cost and trouble involved with SWIFT wires to Bangkok Bank every month.

The reason I mentioned a 60 extension is because someone suggested that immigration would give one to a person who had not yet managed to qualify under the new proof of income rules.

And to JL Crab, I would never say that my affairs in another country are more important than my affairs in Thailand.  As a citizen of the US and a permanent resident of Japan, I have responsibilities in those countries that I hope that immigration would be sympathetic to and allow me an extension just this year when my 800,000 has been in the bank less than three months.  Somewhere back many pages ago someone said that immigration would work with people this year.  

I have talked to several people who hoped that they would not have to bring their money into Thailand, because, like me, they do not spend the full year here and have financial responsibilities outside of Thailand.  

I admit though that not getting the embassy affidavit was an expensive tactical error.  I am now thinking of trying Neyzhov's idea of writing up my own declaration of Income and getting it notarized at the US Embassy.  As a last resort, I will use an agent.

In reference to Pib's post #368, since I had been proving my retirement income with my USAA bank statement accompanied by an embassy affidavit, I was able to get my extension each year.  I guessed wrong and assumed that my USAA bank statement alone would continue to provide adequate proof of steady retirement income.  Now, I have been contemplating sending $2,250 per month to my Bangkok Bank account through an ACH transfer but with BB's new rule requiring an International ACH form starting in June, that seems to be out.  Using TW presents a problem with getting transfers to post in our accounts as foreign transactions.  I don't really want to pay the SWIFT transfer charge each month, so I have considered just transferring the equivalent of 800,000 to Bangkok Bank and presenting that as proof of income when I go the Chaeng Wattana at the end of March but, of course it won't have been seasoned for three months by that time.  I can't extend for 60 days until it is seasoned because I must return to Tokyo around the middle of April.   Since there will be flexibility shown to applicants who will have not been able to achieve the twelve months of income transfers by the time that they apply, I wonder if similar flexibility will be shown to applicants who have not had time to achieve the three months' seasoning for their 800,000 in the bank? 

I don't see any problem here.  We can't see page 9 of the top passport but it appears that the couple entered on their O-A visas on 23 Jan 2018 and were granted permission to stay until  22 Jan 2019.  They then re-entered on 27 / 28 Aug 2018 and we're granted permission to stay until 26 / 27 Aug 2019.  There is a one-day discrepancy but, in my opinion, it doesn't warrant fixing if the scratching out and changing of the date was done by the IO who admitted him/her.  If it was done by a local officer, then the change to the computer record should be done by him/her and "shouldn't" require a trip to Bangkok.  At any rate, only one passport seems to need attention.  The other one is OK.  BTW, I always check my stamps before leaving the IO's desk at the airport.

I have various brand tablets and prefer the Microsoft Surface line.  I have an old Surface 3 (not surface pro 3, the previous year's model) which works well and streams full-screen to my Samsung TV using a mini display port to HDMI adapter unlike any of my iPads.  Just be sure to get at least a 128 SSD in it.  Also, unlike an iPad, it has an arrow to let you backspace over text to fix your typing mistakes.  With an iPad, it's a nightmare placing the cursor where you need it to be.

I have a lot of sympathy for retirees who now can't meet the minimum income requirements.  Twenty years ago, Thailand was very appealing for its low cost of living.  I have enough retirement income to meet the requirements but that is because my Japanese health insurance paid for treatment of my throat cancer and my recovery from a serious motorcycle accident so I was able to save for retirement and to qualify for a Japanese pension.  There has been a lot of tragedy in my family. My mother, stepfather, eldest sister and her husband all died of cancer in near poverty.   My youngest sister has been psychiatrically disabled all of her life and recently had a stroke so she requires 24-hour care. Her two children and my middle sister must take turns staying with her because her nursing home is understaffed and doesn't provide adequate care.  Medicare in America has gaps in care.  My daughter's uncle-in-law recently died of cancer in a lot of pain because his elderly wife couldn't risk losing all of her savings for a co-payment on another course of chemotherapy.  So Medicare in America isn't adequate for those who can't afford the supplemental insurance.  The financial situation of many people depends on luck.

I have been hoping that Thai Immigration will realize that many people have been living on less than 65,000 per month and will grandfather them in somehow.  Lacking that, paying an agent would seem to be the solution for a while although fees will inevitably go up.

So far as other places for retirees to live, there are many retiree communities around the world including Mexico, Costa Rica, etc.  Moving would be a chore though.  It will require ingenuity for the retirees whose income is below the present Thai requirements to find a solution.  Good luck to all!

For those who  need a bank to deposit their 56,000 to cover a shortfall can use the monthly deposit into a Thai Bank I think that The rertirement income paid into any bank account will continue

I have second-hand news that a Canadian citizen received a letter certifying that he received more then 65,000 in retirement income per month in his Canadian bank account that the Canadian Embassy volunteered to write for him. When he went to Chaeng Wattana to do his 90-day report, an immigration officer told him the the evidence of receiving the money in his Canadian bank account would be acceptable proof of income to enable extending his stay beginning when his renewal date will be 45 days away.  This supports my supposition that the embassy letters will go away but the proof of income requirement will remain but not change and it will not require that the income be brought into Thailand.  Also, embassy letters may no longer be accepted after December 31, 2018. They are not really valid now.   I don't why people are assuming that embassy letters will be acceptable throughout 2019.  It doesn't seem that any change to the proof of income requirements will be forthcoming so the proof of income that many of have been using for 10 years should continue to be acceptable.

Psychiatric conditions are poorly perceived by the general public so people are judged when they act out as if they were in their normal state of mind hence the almost medieval roar of the lions' pit crowd here.  Let's wait and see whether he is given a psychiatric examination.  It is an established fact that many of the inhabitants of American prisons are actually people with intractable psychiatric conditions.  I could refer skeptics of this to several 60 Minutes episodes. Perhaps the man deserves some compassion and psychiatric treatment but I doubt this would satiate the "raw meat" crowd here.