GinBoy2

Well I question that. I've been married to two very smart women and both of them had and do have some very questionable choices in TV program preferences ....that may be genetic!

Well it's not genetic for sure. Mrs G is all Thai, but brought up in the US, moved to Singapore where we met. She's as feisty and mature as they get. She's actually better educated than me, and trust me holds her own in fight In fact our adult son remarked recently that his wife said to him, "i'd never mess with your Mom, she'd whip my ass" Never a truer statement, and dammit I love that feisty badass lol

I speak Thai and Lao plus a couple more, can't imagine why I would hide it

That is true. I didn't know you you could suspend payments after you have elected to take SS. I think it's also little discussed that if you lose payouts after you take SS but work over the $24K limit you get those $ back after you get to FRA. I think the Government hopes we'll all be dead or too infirm to figure it out

I 'think' delaying or suspending does the same thing. You just move suspended payments into the future. Which again, brings in that 'when will I die' question. It's a conundrum which I don't think any of us has an answer Unfortunately my friend as we all enter the final chapter of our lives, there is no definitive answer, and we're back to that roulette wheel of life Delay, suspend, pick your poison

This is one of those tricky ones. None of us know when we're going depart this mortal coil, and you're spinning the roulette wheel to see how much in total you're going to get back from the system. I'm just aging into Medicare, but I going to delay picking up social security for another year. I don't want to retire yet, tried it once already and I was bored outta my mind. Problem with working and pulling SS before FRA (66 and 10 months in my case) is you lose 1$ of SS for every $2 you earn over $24K. So I figure I'll do another year until I'm 66, then 10 months of them ripping me off I'll live with. My Medicare Part B, I'll pay them directly, and I've signed up for Part C with Wellmark (Blue Cross), which surprisingly also covers me for my time in Thailand for up to $50K for a bargain $64/Month. Ultimately the bottom line is as I said before, none of us know when you are gonna die. You might be dead by tomorrow lunch time, or battle on into your 90's Also, if you pick up SS early at 62 it's a huge drop from FRA. FRA to 70 huge increase, but not sure I'm prepared to wait out my longevity to make that equation worth while. This is my retirement profile, can't go backwards, but at 62 it dropped like a stone

To quote Trump "I love the uneducated" Baffles me, now I know why!

The one thing that always bothers me, when you get into this are the kids. We are now both Grandma and Grandpa, which fills us with a lot of joy. We've seen our kids grown up, graduate university, get their hearts broken, made their careers, then found someone and on to Grandkids. For the guys in the 'pay for play' marriages, and we've all seen the 60+ guys slopping around the mall with 20 something women and a couple of rugrats in tow, thats sad. Those kids will never get to see Dad at their baseball games (insert sport of choice), graduate, get married and have kids of their own. So back to my earlier post, I think real love is a biological attraction of opposites, but money love, is a cruel adventure

I joined back in 2009.It was never 'my life' I had/have a real life. Back then before bots and AI, it was a lot more informative and fun banter, although I may be remembering that through rose colored online spectacles! In that time I've seen a lot come and go. Some leave just because they get fed up of it, or unfortunately due to the demographics of the forum a lot are dead. We moved back to the US as our primary, and Thailand is the vacation home, so I've seen my interest decline. I dont participate in Thai news any more, doesn't concern or interest me anymore, far cry from the coup days. But the Pub & Lounge they'll spark my interest from time to time. The other reason I started losing interest was, and we can all tell, the clickbate posts have gone through the roof, and I just have lost the interest to wade through the detritus just to get to something interesting. I've had some wonderful online ding dongs with folks, but never vicious and we always kissed and made up (with some exceptions), not so sure thats true now. Not sure what the future of this forum holds, but clearly for some of us it has changed beyond what we remember

Setting aside, the dirt poor woman young enough to be his daughter/granddaughter thing, I think we've done that scenario to death, there is a certain attraction of opposites. I always look at San Francisco where I used to live. Walk down the street and probably 50% of the couples you see will be white male with some version of asian female. Now obviously thats not a financial thing for most of them, but just some weird attraction thing. Same thing why are so many white women attracted to black guys? So if you set aside the money, young woman old guy thing, and Yes, there are some of us married to Thai women our own age, I think it is just some evolutionary trick nature plays on us

Oi, don't go knocking cats, as I sit typing this with my three finicky felines sat on the couch with me. Of course, i couldn't dare criticize them or one would probably rip my throat out while I slept. ....a bit like some women actually! lol

I also say 'When you go Mac, you never go back' I was a diehard Windows guy until I bought a Macbook Air years ago. Never had to search for a driver again, they boot in seconds, and they last! I always found my Windows laptops after a couple of years slowed to a crawl, and basically became worthless. It jut doesn't seem to happen with Macs. Much more expensive, but I bet my cost per minute of Mac screentime beats the Window machine hands over it's lifetime. Not trying 'convert' you but do some comparisons before you jump

You might be right there. I live in a deep red State, and curiously I was talking to one of my employees who is gay, how hard it was for him to come out. His answer was complicated. Now he is from a mixed native American family. He openly admitted that certain members of his family haven't spoken to him since he came out, while others said 'about time' But then he described the online stuff. Snide comments never actually saying anything, but the reading between the lines stuff just designed to rattle and hurt him. This guy is one of the most gentle humans I have ever met, same age as my eldest daughter and I look at him as my surrogate son. Why people just can't let folks live their lives in whatever way they want baffles me. Not hurting anyone, not trying to 'recruit' me just like the rest of us getting through the day. The one thing he did admit was that in certain communities the acceptance of homosexuality can be very different. I think the higher up the food chain you get the more acceptance there is. In the Native American community I think it's 50:50. I have a very good African American friend who is a Bishop in an evangelical church, and I know thats not an issue I would even dare to discuss. So you're right it's still there, but not in the overtly physical hatred that it once was

So I'd describe myself as a fully paid up bleeding heart liberal. For all my life I never got why people of different sexual orientations could be so abused. I think for most of us here we are of an age when 'gay bashing' was a real thing. Thankfully, for the most part we have moved on from those rather dark days. Then you get to now. I think I recognized things were going a little weird when we got to 'pronouns' I started to notice work emails had the signature him/he, she/her, the list goes on This was a generational thing and I called my daughter to actually have to explain to me what the Hell was going on, because I genuinely had no idea Then we go down the rabbit hole of physical men who identify as a woman participating in women's sports, it's just insane. It's put this bleeding heart liberal in a position of horribly siding with the right. I work on the principle that everyone has the right to be who they are, and I don't care straight, gay, bi, live your life the best you can. But this uber 'woke' and I hate using that word, has to be a phase that will burn itself out

In all honestly, you are in a metal tube, for what at worst 15 hours of your life. The food is something equivalent to a low class cafe, you'll live. Get the lowest priced flight you can on Bucket Airlines, grin and bear it through those hours in the air, the extra $1000 you might have paid for an extra glass of champagne isn't worth it

Don't know, but I suspect, I'm pretty average. The 'equipment' when called to action performs just as it always has, no meds required. But my desire, thats a different question. back in the day, I was your usual horn dog, Mrs G was in her prime and we'd do it daily. But as time rolls on, she's in the middle of menopause, and for me I just don't need or want it like I did 10, 20 years ago. Still great when we do, but not a defining part of my life anymore And for context, I'm 65 she's 55

Mike, from previous exchanges I know we disagree on this. We're all different on what we want. But I couldn't live with someone who wasn't equal to me, it would drive me crazy. Now that comes with some downsides, yep it can fuel some unholy ding dongs, but we generally kiss and make up, and at least for me the upsides outweigh the downsides and I guess 20+ years together means we've made it work. My eldest daughter is much the same. Tough as nails. She always wants her own way, but a weak man who would let her get her own way all the time, she'd see as weak and pathetic. Human relationships are complex and frikken hard, and farang or Thai it's not much different

Women are women the world over. If you take out power/money/age imbalances, which does come in to play we all know with many a farang/Thai relationship, I think my Thai wife and my American ex are quite similar. Similar education, age, feisty as Hell, in fact they get on pretty well together, disturbingly when together love nothing better than to discuss my multiple faults. Must be my type I guess So unless we are talking about a woman half your age to be a sex/cooking maid wife, Thai women are much the same as Western women, good, bad, infuriating, sexy, loving all rolled into one, can't really see one as better than the other

In the US a lot of the issue with EV's is the environment and the sheer scale of the country. Firstly the distance Americans drive is huge compared to other countries, especially Europe. To drive to see my daughter & son in Denver it's close to 400 miles, through a lot of nothingness in Wyoming. Run out of charge in the middle of nowhere, not sure AAA can bring you the equivalent of a gallon of gas to get you back up and running Then coupled with the range issue, there's temperature. Past week we've seem 40°C temps. In a few months it can be down to -20°C. That -20° is going to make the range even shorter, making that drive through nothingness even more perilous, and when I say nothingness, I mean you can drive 100 miles and not see a single house, gas station, let alone a charging station! The majority of EV's in the US are sold in California, dense urban centers where an EV can make sense. I personally have always thought the real answer in clean cars is hydrogen fuel cells

yes

I never had any problems just giving my my Thai DL at the rental desk. Never asked to show a passport

I've never sold up in either he US or Thailand We're in the US right now, never sold my house. Still have our house in Thailand, which we'll never sell. You can have the best of both worlds, you just pick and choose which one you want at various times in your life

I kinda hate myself sometimes for replying, to what I instinctively know is some AI driven fake post, from some poster with 10 posts all designed as click bate. At least sometimes they spur a discussion from 'real' people. I hope the owners understand that we know the game!

I'm a little boring. Met my wife at work in Singapore where we lived for several years. When we moved to Thailand we created a Singapore/US bubble. Moved back to the US same thing. In all three countries we basically lived the same life. We can toggle between the US and Thailand and our lifestyle, within the house at least, doesn't change We were never going to do the 'go native' thing. A tin roof shack and a squat toilet might work for some, but not for me

When I met my wife we were working in Singapore. Not a tiny Island but we both got to the point where our monthly weekend escapes to KL or Langkawi kept us sane