Requirements to retire for Millionaire?

[Thailand J]

Investment account statements and foreign bank statements are not acceptable at the immigration offices, so it has to be 800,000B deposit or an income affidavit from the embassy.

How do you invest your $500.000? Last year Dow Jones Industries Index went up 25%, your investment went up 7.5% only?  Have you done your best or are you playing it safe?

$500,000 retirement money is bare minimum, invest carefully. You cannot afford too much stocks exposure, on the other hand low risk investments dominated portfolios don’t yield much.

You will also need a realistic budget. The Elite visa may not be right for you considering the high cost.

[TGIR]

Sorry fellas, I got so involved trying not to forget everything I neglected to explain how we went from $900,000 to $75,000 in such a short time.

 

1)  We pay cash for everything since retirement.....including houses and cars.  I would suggest the same for anyone when you are living on a fixed income.  (Note below that didn't include the house I bought just before we retired.)

 

2)  I moved here when I was 63....and couldn't collect Social Security until I was 66.....so three years of living expense was on our own dime and came out of the original nest egg.

 

3)  Here's the biggie:  I knew the housing market was going to go to hell in 2005......so I sold our house and put a $300,000 profit in the bank......but then stupidly bought a less expensive house and put $200,000 of that money in it as a down payment.   I put that house up for sale in February 2006 prior to retiring in August 2006.......IT NEVER SOLD.  So, long story short I lost the $200,000 down and seven years of payments and maintenance at about $3,000 a month before finally giving up and letting it go back to the bank in 2012.....also it sat empty that whole time as we couldn't rent it either.....we lived in a very rural community and there was just no way to rent it or sell it all those years.  I should have let it go to the bank a lot sooner but we had a house in the last market downturn in 1995-2000 for sale and it took five years to sell that one so I figured I should hold out......yeah, a really, really stupid decision.

 

4)  For all you geniuses that manage to make so much money in the market maybe I am just an idiot, but the $500,000 I started with in August 2006 dwindled down to about $270,000 after the crash in 2006.......and I don't manage that money.  At the time it was managed by Wells Fargo Bank, and primarily invested in the American Funds Group, a well known institutional funds manager.   Here's some more clues for those of you who think you are smart enough to manage your own money;  We just had a 1,000+ point drop in a single day on the American Stock market, followed by a couple of weeks of up and downs......I started that week with $265,000.....and ended it with $252,000.  It will probably take me a whole year to make that up because in my experience what take years to grow can drop like a rock in a couple of days and it can take another whole year to get back to where you started.......

 

I really hope that I just have bad luck, and occasionally make some dumb mistakes.......but think twice when you read about those who claim it's easy to make money.......it isn't!

 

I hope this clears us some confusion in my original post.....I'll leave it at this and hope it was helpful to somebody.

 

[TGIR]

13 hours ago, garyk said:

Holy mole TGIR, I cannot fathom chewing threw 900,000 dollars in that short of a time in Thailand? 

You must of been living the life of a rock star... :)

Enjoy

We don't live any differently than you do probably.  Look at my post and you will see exactly what we live on....remember I spent $390K on houses, $35K on a car and lived on the original stake money for three years.....plus, as you see from my explanatory second post the house we lost to the 2006-08 crash cost me another $346K cash money.   

 

Money comes and money goes!!  Don't know where I heard that but certainly true in my case.

[steven100]

3 hours ago, norrska said:

Would not recommend Latin America.  As the OP likes to advertise his millionaire status with others, lots of countries like Mexico, Brazil etc could be downright dangerous (kidnap, express kidnap, robbery, etc)

Venezuela & Brazil were on TV last night .....  shit holes full of immigrants sleeping in tents everywhere.

[TGIR]

16 hours ago, xylophone said:

 

There was provision for inflation if you read my post and anyone that says they cannot live here on 920,000 baht a year is certainly way off course – – thousands of expats do it, and do it very  well I may add.
 

Your math is a little off there.......the number he would likely live off of would be his earnings on $920,000, not the whole nest egg.   So quick math 920,000 times a reasonable annual draw of 4% equals income of $36,800 prior to taxes.  Unfortunately you have spent all of that already with his $40,000 health insurance premium.  Not to belabor the point, but a family of two will probably get by pretty well on about $2,200 a month but they won't be taking a lot of trips to Macau.

 

 

[norrska]

8 minutes ago, steven100 said:

Venezuela & Brazil were on TV last night .....  shit holes full of immigrants sleeping in tents everywhere.

The favela folk, and barrio cartels are where the danger lies.    I wouldn't be so worried about the homeless as they are too busy surviving to pose much of a threat....  Besides the US has tents cities in places in Vegas and LA

Edited March 2, 2018 by norrska

[garyk]

3 hours ago, norrska said:

Would not recommend Latin America.  As the OP likes to advertise his millionaire status with others, lots of countries like Mexico, Brazil etc could be downright dangerous (kidnap, express kidnap, robbery, etc)

There is the understatement of the year!

As someone that travels in that part of the world some, you need to keep a VERY low profile.

If not you are asking for serious trouble.

[xylophone]

9 minutes ago, TGIR said:

Your math is a little off there.......the number he would likely live off of would be his earnings on $920,000, not the whole nest egg.   So quick math 920,000 times a reasonable annual draw of 4% equals income of $36,800 prior to taxes.  Unfortunately you have spent all of that already with his $40,000 health insurance premium.  Not to belabor the point, but a family of two will probably get by pretty well on about $2,200 a month but they won't be taking a lot of trips to Macau.

 

 

Respectfully, my math is spot-on: –

The calculation showed that if he dipped into his total savings, which was my intention, then he could spend $2192 per month X 12 months, which is $26,304 per annum and if you multiply that by the exchange rate of anywhere between 33 and 35 baht to the dollar you come in somewhere between 860,000 to 920,000 baht per annum.

He would have used all of that up by the time he was 85, that is considering he had no additions to that original amount, and as I said, it would be beneficial if he had a private pension or the like because his funds would probably last him until he departed this mortal coil. In addition if he decided to live on say 600,000 baht per annum, then no doubt he would die before he used it all up.

His medical insurance would be 40,000 baht per annum, not $40,000 and could easily be met out of his annual spend allowance.

You do use the words "stupid decision" and "dumb" in your post, and perhaps some of your downturn was because of that, however we have been through some pretty bad times and you just look like you have copped the worst of them.

For what it's worth (and not to boast, but to show that it can be done) I retired here in 2006/2007 with a lump sum (around the same amount as you had) in the bank and I still have that same lump sum amount, despite living well here to the tune of between 1 and 1.2 million baht per annum, and this includes buying two new motorbikes and a new car, and travelling to New Zealand and Australia five or six times.

 

Sure I think that good luck had something to do with it, this because I did buy two houses here and manage to sell them for a small profit, but money management was key.

Anyway good luck with your life here.

 

[TGIR]

Sorry Xylophone, I thought you were using dollars....my bad.  In any case, per your figures and mine I think one can extrapolate needing somewhere around a million baht a year in "operating" expenses, plus savings for cars, houses and medical expenditures.  

 

What I was hoping to do in my original post was to give people someone's real life experiences, good and bad.  I appreciate and salute your similar intentions.

 

Good luck to you with your life here as well.

[xylophone]

14 minutes ago, TGIR said:

Sorry Xylophone, I thought you were using dollars....my bad.  In any case, per your figures and mine I think one can extrapolate needing somewhere around a million baht a year in "operating" expenses, plus savings for cars, houses and medical expenditures.  

 

What I was hoping to do in my original post was to give people someone's real life experiences, good and bad.  I appreciate and salute your similar intentions.

 

Good luck to you with your life here as well.

Absolutely no problem TGIR and no need to apologise because as you say we were both trying to give someone insight, using our own experiences.

For what it's worth, I personally think that I could get by on 600,000 to 800,000 baht per annum and that includes everything, and in fact many expats here do just that.

I will reiterate that for a newcomer to Thailand, I don't believe it is wise to buy a house, or anything like that for the first few years because as we both know the property market here is "suspect" to say the least. I was lucky in that regard, but I know of so many people who have bought and cannot sell, or have had to sell at fire sale prices, thereby losing money.

On a broader note, we have both had experience with the housing market and the sharemarket and my only advice to the OP would be as he gets older, to switch his portfolio to a more conservative one, this especially if he is not working and producing an income.

Good day and good luck to you again TGIR.......... nice "talking" to you.

[xylophone]

20 minutes ago, xylophone said:

For what it's worth, I personally think that I could get by on 600,000 to 800,000 baht per annum

Hey TGIR.............correction on that amount in thinking about it!!

 

More like 800k baht for me if I had to!!

[ExpatOilWorker]

My 2 cent on the lump sum living is probably a bit more conservative than most, but it is a good strategy only to spend 60% on the saving yield, the remain 40% goes back in as savings to compensate for inflation.

 

If you get a average 5% yield and need $30,000 in yearly cost of living, you need to arrive with $30K/0.05/0.6 = $1 million to live happy ever after.

 

NB: Liabilities, such as primary residence, car, boat, mia noi, etc. are extra on top of that.

Edited March 2, 2018 by ExpatOilWorker

[BritTim]

How much you need to spend per year, and thus the nest egg you consequently need, depends primarily on two factors:

• your required standard of living; and
• whether you need to support others apart from yourself.

It should be obvious that, when many Thai families successfully survive on about 250,000 baht per year, it would certainly be possible for a single person to live on the same if there were no alternative. That would imply the kind of lifestyle that would not be acceptable for most of us. However, there is a huge difference in living costs depending on where you live and what you eat that does not make much difference to quality of life. Also, in most large Thai towns, it is quite unnecessary to run a private car if not working and trying to restrict your expenditure. What you "need" to live on in Thailand can easily vary between 200,000 and 3,000,000 baht per year. It all depends.

[TGIR]

1 hour ago, BritTim said:

What you "need" to live on in Thailand can easily vary between 200,000 and 3,000,000 baht per year. It all depends.

Yes, it indeed depends on many different factors.  The importance of this conversation is to help draw out what those differing needs can be and how much they really cost or matter.......please keep contributing to this important discussion for those contemplating such an impactful undertaking. 

[garyk]

I personally could never put all of my eggs in one basket. These countries like Thailand scare me. 

I have been living here on and off ( mostly on for 10 years ). But, when I decided to retire early I bought a small 3 br. home in my home country in a  large town. Stocked it, and put a car in the garage.  

I would not buy anything here except a vehicle. I own a car here and that is it. Hotels are cheap. Rental units are cheap. Food is cheap. 

As far as money goes if you cannot afford the 65,000 baht a month that is required then don't come to Thailand and live. The 65000 baht minimum is a very very good figure. I get by just fine on that amount.

The horror stories I have read here, and have witnessed personally is nothing short of tragic here in the LOS's.

My strategy is KISS.   Keep it simple stupid... haha

Edited March 2, 2018 by garyk

[Thailand J]

15 hours ago, TGIR said:

 

 

 

4)  For all you geniuses that manage to make so much money in the market maybe I am just an idiot, but the $500,000 I started with in August 2006 dwindled down to about $270,000 after the crash in 2006.......and I don't manage that money.  At the time it was managed by Wells Fargo Bank, and primarily invested in the American Funds Group, a well known institutional funds manager.   Here's some more clues for those of you who think you are smart enough to manage your own money;  We just had a 1,000+ point drop in a single day on the American Stock market, followed by a couple of weeks of up and downs......I started that week with $265,000.....and ended it with $252,000.  It will probably take me a whole year to make that up because in my experience what take years to grow can drop like a rock in a couple of days and it can take another whole year to get back to where you started.......

 

I really hope that I just have bad luck, and occasionally make some dumb mistakes.......but think twice when you read about those who claim it's easy to make money.......it isn't!

 

I hope this clears us some confusion in my original post.....I'll leave it at this and hope it was helpful to somebody.

 

Making money in stock market does not take much brain.

It takes time.

Put you money in a low cost index fund such as Vanguard Total Stock Market for 10+ years, for example.

If you buy in at the height in 2007 you may have lost a great deal in 2008-9 . DJIA was as low as 6626 in 2009,  but you should have recovered by 2012… and probably doubled your money from 2013-2017.

It’s also the fastest way to lose your money, if you :

1. Jump in and out trying to out smart Warren Buffet.

2. Chase after the hot stocks trying to outperform the index funds: Enron, AOL, Blockbusters.

3. Trust your money to a hedge fund or money manager who is only interested in the fees. On your behalf he was doing the 1 and 2 above. Haha.

What about the 1000+ drop in a day? Dow Jones was only 20,000 in January 2017, today it is 24,000+…and was only 15,000 5 years ago. You need to look at it long term.

If you didn’t make money from stock market in the last few years you should not be investing. Or do anything with money at all in my opinion.

It was the best time ever in stock market.

[garyk]

7 hours ago, Thailand J said:

Making money in stock market does not take much brain.

 

It takes time.

 

Put you money in a low cost index fund such as Vanguard Total Stock Market for 10+ years, for example.

 

If you buy in at the height in 2007 you may have lost a great deal in 2008-9 . DJIA was as low as 6626 in 2009,  but you should have recovered by 2012… and probably doubled your money from 2013-2017.

 

 

It’s also the fastest way to lose your money, if you :

 

1. Jump in and out trying to out smart Warren Buffet.

 

2. Chase after the hot stocks trying to outperform the index funds: Enron, AOL, Blockbusters.

 

3. Trust your money to a hedge fund or money manager who is only interested in the fees. On your behalf he was doing the 1 and 2 above. Haha.

 

 

What about the 1000+ drop in a day? Dow Jones was only 20,000 in January 2017, today it is 24,000+…and was only 15,000 5 years ago. You need to look at it long term.

 

 

If you didn’t make money from stock market in the last few years you should not be investing. Or do anything with money at all in my opinion.

 

It was the best time ever in stock market.

To be fair those were some very tough times in the market. Most people panicked. Seeing their savings dissapear. 

Maybe you and I didn't panic,  but the majority of folks did.

 

example:  I went into my broker to talk about things at the time and he was so busy selling peoples holdings it was insane. They were loosing literally hundreds of thousands of dollars.

After a loss like that most were hesitant about getting back into the market.

 

To make things worse a lot of brokers were only looking out for themselves not the customers. They didn't have a clue what was going on and didn't care.

 

I am a poor man that gambled. I am still poor,  but in much better shape than I was in when the downturn hit. 

 

Those were some messy times.

Edited March 3, 2018 by garyk

[gk10002000]

7 hours ago, Thailand J said:

Making money in stock market does not take much brain.

 

It takes time.

 

Put you money in a low cost index fund such as Vanguard Total Stock Market for 10+ years, for example.

 

If you buy in at the height in 2007 you may have lost a great deal in 2008-9 . DJIA was as low as 6626 in 2009,  but you should have recovered by 2012… and probably doubled your money from 2013-2017.

 

 

It’s also the fastest way to lose your money, if you :

 

1. Jump in and out trying to out smart Warren Buffet.

 

2. Chase after the hot stocks trying to outperform the index funds: Enron, AOL, Blockbusters.

 

3. Trust your money to a hedge fund or money manager who is only interested in the fees. On your behalf he was doing the 1 and 2 above. Haha.

 

 

What about the 1000+ drop in a day? Dow Jones was only 20,000 in January 2017, today it is 24,000+…and was only 15,000 5 years ago. You need to look at it long term.

 

 

If you didn’t make money from stock market in the last few years you should not be investing. Or do anything with money at all in my opinion.

 

It was the best time ever in stock market.

I don't even invest trying to buy low, sell high.  I have tax free muni bonds and funds, bond funds, some preferred stock funds, T, NLY (a reit).  I average well over 5% a year in dividends and interest.  I took the brute force approach several years ago when my portfolio earned about 10K a year.  Simple saving and now compounding has me earning 58,000 a year right now, and next year if I take the early, I get 1800/month in social security.  I don't trade, I don't buy, sell much at all. I just "apply".  And I have had steady work so I have never ever touched my 401ks or IRAs.  People that say they made 7% or 15% or whatever in the market are blowing smoke.  I don't care about ups and downs much, as I invest for income.  The brute force approach worked for me because I had decent income and could keep saving and piling it on.  I didn't need to try and make 100,000 become 1 million in a year.

[Thailand J]

I am sure Warren Buffet is just blowing smoke.

[xylophone]

1 hour ago, garyk said:

To be fair those were some very tough times in the market. Most people panicked. Seeing their savings dissapear. 

Maybe you and I didn't panic,  but the majority of folks did.

Never a truer word spoken with regards to people panicking and in the managed funds division I ran, I would get telephone call after telephone call from people who had seen the value of their savings decrease and wanting to pull out and do all sorts of things with them! (This was in the 2001/2 + techstock crash and other minor blips).

The advice I gave them and my advisers was to ask the clients to revisit their original investment goals and time-frames and to see if they still held true. If they were in for the long haul (for instance saving for retirement with many years to go) then they were reminded of that and also of the fact that share markets have their ups and downs but the trend is always upwards. Furthermore, pulling their funds out at this particular juncture would only crystallise their losses, whereas at that moment in time they were only "paper losses".

The "Investment Guide" which I helped produce for clients explained all of this and backed it up with graphs, performance and the like and in most cases if they revisited that, plus their "risk profile" which they produced, then they could see that panicking was not the way to go.

Thankfully the vast majority of clients saw that period out and have continued to prosper, not that I have revisited those funds since I retired in 2005, however they were low-cost index trackers, including Vanguard and IMO are the only way to go for longer term investing.

[SpokaneAl]

Never a truer word spoken with regards to people panicking and in the managed funds division I ran, I would get telephone call after telephone call from people who had seen the value of their savings decrease and wanting to pull out and do all sorts of things with them! (This was in the 2001/2 + techstock crash and other minor blips).

The advice I gave them and my advisers was to ask the clients to revisit their original investment goals and time-frames and to see if they still held true. If they were in for the long haul (for instance saving for retirement with many years to go) then they were reminded of that and also of the fact that share markets have their ups and downs but the trend is always upwards. Furthermore, pulling their funds out at this particular juncture would only crystallise their losses, whereas at that moment in time they were only "paper losses".

The "Investment Guide" which I helped produce for clients explained all of this and backed it up with graphs, performance and the like and in most cases if they revisited that, plus their "risk profile" which they produced, then they could see that panicking was not the way to go.

Thankfully the vast majority of clients saw that period out and have continued to prosper, not that I have revisited those funds since I retired in 2005, however they were low-cost index trackers, including Vanguard and IMO are the only way to go for longer term investing.

I remember those times well. I was also in the business and took many calls from people who were convinced that, before this downturn, they could handle a large amount of risk.

While there are many tests that people can take to determine their risk level, the real test is how they handle the dramatic, inevitable market downturns.

The ones who stuck it out, kept the long view, avoided watching the day-to-day market gyrations and continued to invest regularly are the ones with current higher net worths.

And it really ain’t brain surgery - buy some low cost index funds, keep adding to those investments, if you have the ability and option, fund a 401(k)/IRA, Roth IRA and a non qualified account, keep a mix of stocks and bonds, maintain an investment timeline of decades, and you will probably do just fine.


Sent from my iPad using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

[berybert]

People need to realize that no matter how much money they have within 5 minutes of being in Thailand they will have a heart attack which will wipe out a lot of their money. And when they leave the hospital after recovery they will be hit by an ambulance on the way out. That will be the rest of the money gone. 

This has happened to every single person that has ever retired to Thailand. I have had it happen to me 3 times so far and I've been killed dead 4 times also. 

Make sure you work 'til you are 150 years old and have good medical cover when you get here. 

Then like me you can get killed often without having to worry to much.

[berybert]

On ‎01‎/‎03‎/‎2018 at 6:58 AM, galt67 said:

Good idea.

 

You can AVOID the 800k in a Thai bank and the income requirement with a Thai Elite Visa.

 

Simple, easy, and NO age, income, or Thai bank deposit needed.

Get an Elite Visa and give away 500,000k to save having 800,000k in the bank for 3 months.

If there was ever a plan not to follow that would be it.

[Oxx]

10 hours ago, Thailand J said:

If you buy in at the height in 2007 you may have lost a great deal in 2008-9 . DJIA was as low as 6626 in 2009,  but you should have recovered by 2012

 

That's a rather rosy view.  The DJIA in early 2008 was around 11,700.  In November 2017 it was the same value.  10 years with no capital appreciation and only a paltry dividend income.

[Thailand J]

47 minutes ago, Oxx said:

 

That's a rather rosy view.  The DJIA in early 2008 was around 11,700.  In November 2017 it was the same value.  10 years with no capital appreciation and only a paltry dividend income.

Your numbers are off.

The last time DJIA was around 11,700 it was in 2011.

In 2017 it was about 23,000 to 24,000.

 

This chart shows my cumulative return of my Vanguard account in the last 10 years. My  annualized return is merely 7.1% accordng to Vanguard, 2008-2009 crisis dragged down the average .

[Oxx]

13 minutes ago, Thailand J said:

1 hour ago, Oxx said:

 

That's a rather rosy view.  The DJIA in early 2008 was around 11,700.  In November 2017 it was the same value.  10 years with no capital appreciation and only a paltry dividend income.

Your numbers are off.

The last time DJIA was around 11,700 it was in 2011.

In 2017 it was about 23,000 to 24,000.

 

I must confess my dates were wrong, converting from BE to CE.

 

Anyway, it's not the last time what matters, it's the first time.  The DJIA on January 14th 2000 was 11,722.  In October 2011 it was 11,808.  That's well over 10 years with no capital appreciation.

 

[Thailand J]

2 hours ago, SpokaneAl said:

 

I remember those times well. I was also in the business and took many calls from people who were convinced that, before this downturn, they could handle a large amount of risk.

While there are many tests that people can take to determine their risk level, the real test is how they handle the dramatic, inevitable market downturns.

The ones who stuck it out, kept the long view, avoided watching the day-to-day market gyrations and continued to invest regularly are the ones with current higher net worths.

And it really ain’t brain surgery - buy some low cost index funds, keep adding to those investments, if you have the ability and option, fund a 401(k)/IRA, Roth IRA and a non qualified account, keep a mix of stocks and bonds, maintain an investment timeline of decades, and you will probably do just fine.


Sent from my iPad using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

 

yes..

the only thing you need is time.

Just now, Oxx said:

 

I must confess my dates were wrong, converting from BE to CE.

 

Anyway, it's not the last time what matters, it's the first time.  The DJIA on January 14th 2000 was 11,722.  In October 2011 it was 11,808.  That's well over 10 years with no capital appreciation.

 

no telling what will happen next, the BIG PICTURE looks great to me no matter how far you look back.

[Lacessit]

On 3/2/2018 at 10:49 AM, TGIR said:

We don't live any differently than you do probably.  Look at my post and you will see exactly what we live on....remember I spent $390K on houses, $35K on a car and lived on the original stake money for three years.....plus, as you see from my explanatory second post the house we lost to the 2006-08 crash cost me another $346K cash money.   

 

Money comes and money goes!!  Don't know where I heard that but certainly true in my case.

We all become victims of poor decision-making, and I don't exempt myself from that observation. However, there are lower costs in Thailand to assist retirees, e.g. 

I can rent a condo here for the same amount per month as it would cost me per week in Australia.

I built a guesthouse on my GF's land here. My son was renovating his ensuite in Australia at the same time. His renovation cost AUD $14,000. The entire guesthouse cost AUD $12,000.

I do think spending $35K on a car is nuts. For many years now, I have bought secondhand cars with less than 100K on the odometer, had them serviced regularly, and driven them into the ground. New cars are financial suicide, and I have no interest in impressing my friends or neighbors.

My aim is to live off earnings from my investments, and a government pension. I've been doing that here for 8 years now, and have consumed about 10% of my capital. At that rate, I'll have to live past 120 to start feeling threatened.

[poanoi]

if i had known then what i know today, -i would have retire in caribbean instead,

no visa hassle and same climate

[fobuff]

Same rules as everybody....  you only have more to bribe with...