2 hours ago, BritManToo said:

Yawn, no fraud in not reporting your address, DWP admit not having a current address for 40% of pensioners.

Child benefit is an odd one, if you claim legitimately while you and your child are in the UK there doesn't appear to be any system in place for stopping claiming if you move to a different country.

Yawn................????

2 hours ago, crazykopite said:

Read the regulations on DWP You Gov

I've read the regulations on HMRC for where I am deemed to 'live' when it comes to paying Income Tax and apply the same conclusion to where I am deemed to 'live' for my pension.  

I might be wrong of course however it is very confusing at my age ????

My main pension is paid into Bangkok Bank London branch who send it on to my account with a branch in Chiang Mai. Seems to work well.

UK citizens should be worried about exchange rates. We have an irresponsible and incompetent government which has made a complete mess of dealing with covid and which is now threatening a no deal brexit. If they last that long they may be daft enough to carry out their threat. My guess is that the pound will sink against the baht, maybe quite considerably. For retirement visa I'm planning to switch from monthly income to 800,000 baht deposit.

2 minutes ago, flossie35 said:

My main pension is paid into Bangkok Bank London branch who send it on to my account with a branch in Chiang Mai. Seems to work well.

UK citizens should be worried about exchange rates. We have an irresponsible and incompetent government which has made a complete mess of dealing with covid and which is now threatening a no deal brexit. If they last that long they may be daft enough to carry out their threat. My guess is that the pound will sink against the baht, maybe quite considerably. For retirement visa I'm planning to switch from monthly income to 800,000 baht deposit.

You are waaaaaaaaaaayoff topic with your rant. Gawd 'elp us.................????

I get my pension paid into a my Barclays account in the UK. In the meantime i opened a foreign currency account with Kasikorn, Periodically i transfer pounds from Barclays to Kasikorn and it is held in Kasikorn in pounds so it's up to me when i will exchange for baht, if and when the exchange rate improves,

On 5/20/2020 at 9:51 AM, Kwasaki said:

 

My experience at this time while the £ is quite steady at the present rate of exchange is I always get a good rate with my UK pension paid directly to my Thai bank, better than any other method of getting money over from UK.

In what universe do you live? The exchange rate when sending THB to Thailand is always lower than sending £. Getting the pension to a account in the UK and then transfer it to a Thai bank account using TW is by far the best option because of the mid-market rate TW is using, lower total fee + no receiving fee. If you know how to use TW,then every transfer will show up as foreign/international, hence no problem with immigration. 

12 minutes ago, Max69xl said:

In what universe do you live? The exchange rate when sending THB to Thailand is always lower than sending £. Getting the pension to a account in the UK and then transfer it to a Thai bank account using TW is by far the best option because of the mid-market rate TW is using, lower total fee + no receiving fee. If you know how to use TW,then every transfer will show up as foreign/international, hence no problem with immigration. 

There are no fees with a direct UK pension payment to a LOS bank...

27 minutes ago, Geordieabroad said:

I get my pension paid into a my Barclays account in the UK. In the meantime i opened a foreign currency account with Kasikorn, Periodically i transfer pounds from Barclays to Kasikorn and it is held in Kasikorn in pounds so it's up to me when i will exchange for baht, if and when the exchange rate improves,

What does it cost to transfer money to Kasikorn, what does Kasikorn charge LOS end..?

You might be interested by a similar perhaps complimentary topic:

 

https://forum.thaivisa.com/topic/1164851-transferring-money-from-the-uk-or-elsewhere-into-thailand/

8 hours ago, Max69xl said:

In what universe do you live? The exchange rate when sending THB to Thailand is always lower than sending £. Getting the pension to a account in the UK and then transfer it to a Thai bank account using TW is by far the best option because of the mid-market rate TW is using, lower total fee + no receiving fee. If you know how to use TW,then every transfer will show up as foreign/international, hence no problem with immigration. 

You post absolute nonsense in my universe I used TW once and it cost more than the rate I got with my pension paid into my Thai bank at the time.

If you don't do it that way you wouldn't know would you. 

9 hours ago, Max69xl said:

In what universe do you live? The exchange rate when sending THB to Thailand is always lower than sending £. Getting the pension to a account in the UK and then transfer it to a Thai bank account using TW is by far the best option because of the mid-market rate TW is using, lower total fee + no receiving fee. If you know how to use TW,then every transfer will show up as foreign/international, hence no problem with immigration. 

You're talking rubbish. I had two UK pensions paid directly into my Thai bank account for many years and the exchange rate was always very reasonable. For a while I had one of them moved to TransferWise so I was able to compare the two methods and I found that there was little to choose between the two.

 

Having the pensions paid directly into a Thai bank is far more convenient and I would have stuck to it had the British embassy not withdrawn the income letters. Unfortunately, the amount of paper I had to produce to prove my income to immigration was a pain in the butt, hence my switch to TransferWise.

I am in a fortunate position where as i can afford to live here all year without using my pension of that year, and only make one transfer a year sent in GBP, 3 months before (to be on the safe side) my extension is due, 20 pound fee from UK bank. 

50 minutes ago, brianthainess said:

I am in a fortunate position where as i can afford to live here all year without using my pension of that year, and only make one transfer a year sent in GBP, 3 months before (to be on the safe side) my extension is due, 20 pound fee from UK bank. 

You're a bit off topic but, you're a lucky fella..........????.....................????

On 5/19/2020 at 11:08 PM, scubascuba3 said:

Unlikely the govt will rip you off with a bad exchange rate but personally i would pay to my UK bank account then make transfers to Thailand from there, consolidating payments as required. Using Transferwise or other. Useful for the 65k a month transfers

The British state pension is 65,000 baht a month?

8 minutes ago, kingdong said:

The British state pension is 65,000 baht a month?

you understand what consolidating payments means?

On 5/20/2020 at 10:23 AM, petermik said:

No brainer...get your pension paid into your UK bank and transfer when needed..????

However, depending upon who you bank with in the UK, transferring it as sterling will probably work best. Not tried it with my Thai bank but certainly doing monthly transfers from NatWest to a Chinese bank was an expensive busines. Theres the £42.50 urgent transfer fee, then the cut they take (which I think was about 2%) then the fee for converting to Yuan which was 5% or £5, whichever was higher. Add to that the exchange rate they were giving was around 7.6 yuan to the pound compared to 8.8 yuan at the Chinese bank. I ended up getting the money transferred as sterling then going into the bank in China and doing the conversion there. It was a bit of a nuisance having to make 2 trips into the Chinese bank every transfer but the exchange rate I was getting was much higher and there were no fees for doing the conversion so I ended up sometimes £50 or £60 a month better off!

I am afraid I don't know what consolidating payments means or even what it is. Can you enlighten us please?

 

For the British state pension, it is £846 a month if you have contributed fully for 32 years (about 33,000 Bahts a month). That is what NI tells me.

 

FYI ... I get my UK pension (GBP400) paid directly to my Kasikorn account here in Pattaya.

I do not "calculate the exchange rate, I do record how much goes in - same every month - and how much is credited - this differs .... I hope this chart shows what I mean ... and hope it helps!

10 hours ago, Europeanguy said:

I am afraid I don't know what consolidating payments means or even what it is. Can you enlighten us please?

 

 

 

It means you receive money from several sources, pensions, rent, interest, cash, anything. Rather than send them individually to Thailand you put them together and send a bigger amount over. Saves on transaction fees, can make the 65k+ monthly requirement simpler, can take advantage of a better exchange rate as it's your choice when to do it subject to 65k rules

On 5/21/2020 at 12:19 PM, Max69xl said:

In what universe do you live? The exchange rate when sending THB to Thailand is always lower than sending £. Getting the pension to a account in the UK and then transfer it to a Thai bank account using TW is by far the best option because of the mid-market rate TW is using, lower total fee + no receiving fee. If you know how to use TW,then every transfer will show up as foreign/international, hence no problem with immigration. 

I am amazed by some people who feels the need to say things like "In what universe do you live?". The forum is about what we know, what we don't know and what we would like to know. It is about information, not what our personal opinion is about posters.

The result is that any following arguments are greatly cheapened, surely not something intended but greatly achieved.

You may be right, you may be wrong but your post lost my confidence in you, Just because you said "In what universe you live?"

Some background concrete information or screenshots would have been more useful but you were clearly more concerned by how much more clever than all of us you are.

You have disproved that by thinking that you are talking to idiots while making sure your post will not enlighten any of those idiots.

It is just not respectful, something people know by instinct, something some people will never get. 

 

 

 

Edited May 25, 20206 yr by Europeanguy
Forgot something

1 hour ago, Europeanguy said:

I am amazed by some people who feels the need to say things like "In what universe do you live?". The forum is about what we know, what we don't know and what we would like to know. It is about information, not what our personal opinion is about posters.

The result is that any following arguments are greatly cheapened, surely not something intended but greatly achieved.

You may be right, you may be wrong but your post lost my confidence in you, Just because you said "In what universe you live?"

Some background concrete information or screenshots would have been more useful but you were clearly more concerned by how much more clever than all of us you are.

You have disproved that by thinking that you are talking to idiots while making sure your post will not enlighten any of those idiots.

It is just not respectful, something people know by instinct, something some people will never get. 

 

 

 

Could not agree more with you, Respect.   Like to take the opportunity to thank scubascuba3 for his input very helpful 

On 5/20/2020 at 10:28 AM, scubascuba3 said:

But what rate is it? if you don't know you can't compare with Transferwise\other. They should be able to comfirm the rate i.e. Interbank rate, not number

It is impossible to give the forex rate simply because it changes several times a day.

 

Here is a useful link for you.

 

https://daytodaydata.net/default.aspx

 

just enter currency = GBP

to THB

and currency type = TT.

 

You can then compare with TransferWise.

 

https://transferwise.com/us/currency-converter/

 

A word of warning.

 

TW give you the exchange rate and all of their charges and guarantee that forex rate for that transaction only.

 

Any other bank will show you the current rate of forex (which can change several times a day) but they never give the transfer costs nor will they guarantee the forex rates. The transfer generally take around 3 days and the forex rate will be at the time that your hits the Thai bank.

 

I have been using TW for several years now and I am very happy with them.

48 minutes ago, billd766 said:

It is impossible to give the forex rate simply because it changes several times a day.

 

Here is a useful link for you.

 

https://daytodaydata.net/default.aspx

 

just enter currency = GBP

to THB

and currency type = TT.

 

You can then compare with TransferWise.

 

https://transferwise.com/us/currency-converter/

 

A word of warning.

 

TW give you the exchange rate and all of their charges and guarantee that forex rate for that transaction only.

 

Any other bank will show you the current rate of forex (which can change several times a day) but they never give the transfer costs nor will they guarantee the forex rates. The transfer generally take around 3 days and the forex rate will be at the time that your hits the Thai bank.

 

I have been using TW for several years now and I am very happy with them.

Like i said they should be able to confirm the rate they use i.e. interbank rate, I'm not talking about a number

On 5/22/2020 at 10:10 PM, tonyrawson said:

FYI ... I get my UK pension (GBP400) paid directly to my Kasikorn account here in Pattaya.

I do not "calculate the exchange rate, I do record how much goes in - same every month - and how much is credited - this differs .... I hope this chart shows what I mean ... and hope it helps!

Your chart is very helpful. Very goods rates indeed seeing as Thai Baht to Gbp only reached 42.18 once in March of last year. Your last figure of 47.29 is for May 2020....or am i reading something wrong.? It looks like you are getting on average 7baht above the actual exchange rate.

3 hours ago, scubascuba3 said:

Like i said they should be able to confirm the rate they use i.e. interbank rate, I'm not talking about a number

I understand now. I thought you were were asking specific numbers. My bad.

17 hours ago, keithsimmonds said:

Your chart is very helpful. Very goods rates indeed seeing as Thai Baht to Gbp only reached 42.18 once in March of last year. Your last figure of 47.29 is for May 2020....or am i reading something wrong.? It looks like you are getting on average 7baht above the actual exchange rate.

Those figures are crazy. Using TW over the past year i have got thai baht in the range 38.26 - 40.66. Now it's 38.7.

Edited May 26, 20206 yr by Henryford

3 hours ago, Henryford said:

Those figures are crazy. Using TW over the past year i have got thai baht in the range 38.26 - 40.66. Now it's 38.7.

I am struggling with the fact that those rates are in many cases 15% higher than any exchange on any given month. Where poster,s have said you get a little more/better with a transfer from Uk to there Thai bank in my world 15% is not a little more/better.....it,s a whole new ball game.

Is this the same for all Banks or just Kasikornbank?  Or am i missing something??

Not due to get my pension for another 3 years yet so would really like know.....Thanks.

40 minutes ago, keithsimmonds said:

I am struggling with the fact that those rates are in many cases 15% higher than any exchange on any given month. Where poster,s have said you get a little more/better with a transfer from Uk to there Thai bank in my world 15% is not a little more/better.....it,s a whole new ball game.

Is this the same for all Banks or just Kasikornbank?  Or am i missing something??

Not due to get my pension for another 3 years yet so would really like know.....Thanks.

I get my pension this Thursday, direct from the pension service via Citibank into my BKK bank. As I know exactly what my pension is I will do the maths and tell you how it worked out in baht to the pound in my bank on that day....????

1 hour ago, keithsimmonds said:

I am struggling with the fact that those rates are in many cases 15% higher than any exchange on any given month. Where poster,s have said you get a little more/better with a transfer from Uk to there Thai bank in my world 15% is not a little more/better.....it,s a whole new ball game.

Is this the same for all Banks or just Kasikornbank?  Or am i missing something??

Not due to get my pension for another 3 years yet so would really like know.....Thanks.

His exchange rates are wrong, some calculation error no doubt

18 minutes ago, transam said:

I get my pension this Thursday, direct from the pension service via Citibank into my BKK bank. As I know exactly what my pension is I will do the maths and tell you how it worked out in baht to the pound in my bank on that day....????

if you knew what day and time the exchange rate you get is based on then at least you can do an accurate comparison with Transferwise