First Retirement Visa Application In Pattaya

[Guderian]

The requirement is that your country's consul must certify your foreign income. It is not required that this income be earned in the country of which you are a national. Therefore, the income you earn in the Channel Islands can certainly be included in your income statement. And if you earned income in any other part of the world it could also be included.

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Maestro

Maestro,

Thanks.

I wish I had done my homework earlier, and known about this back in June when I was last in the UK. I could then have brought back the necessary bank statements. I wouldn't have had to keep any cash in the savings account here then. Doh!

G

[sexy man]

barry kenyon isat immigration from 9-9.30 each morning. i think his letter costs 2.400baht

[Guderian]

barry kenyon isat immigration from 9-9.30 each morning. i think his letter costs 2.400baht

Thanks for the info - there had to be a downside I guess!

G

[wpcoe]

barry kenyon isat immigration from 9-9.30 each morning. i think his letter costs 2.400baht

Thanks for the info - there had to be a downside I guess!

Sorry to keep tossing grenades from the sidelines, but is it possible for you to get bank statements online and print them out? *Maybe* Mr. Kenyon would accept them? (Worth asking?)

Would it be possible for the financial institution to fax or even FedEx original statements to you in Thailand, probably for a fee?

(Please understand that I'm not trying to aggravate you in particular <g>, but know that others who may read this might consider some of these options as well.)

[Guderian]

barry kenyon isat immigration from 9-9.30 each morning. i think his letter costs 2.400baht

Thanks for the info - there had to be a downside I guess!

Sorry to keep tossing grenades from the sidelines, but is it possible for you to get bank statements online and print them out? *Maybe* Mr. Kenyon would accept them? (Worth asking?)

Would it be possible for the financial institution to fax or even FedEx original statements to you in Thailand, probably for a fee?

(Please understand that I'm not trying to aggravate you in particular <g>, but know that others who may read this might consider some of these options as well.)

wpcoe,

Please don't think that you are aggravating me in any way. I appreciate your spending the time and effort to read my questions and reply with useful information.

Before I get on to your questions though, may I first ask you one more question to clarify the situation both for myself and others? If I got the letter from Barry Kenyon, would it then have to go to Bangkok to be approved officially? I recall reading a number of posts that retirement letters from Embassies now have to be authorised in Bangkok, which caused some uproar, but I didn't think it applied to me and so didn't pay it too much attention I'm afraid. If so, how much does that cost – would I have to go there myself or can it be sent via an agent?

The reason I ask this is that the cost of going the external income route are rapidly mounting. I think I mentioned earlier that I am not short of cash as I am mainly living off the interest on my savings until I can get a deferred pension from my former employer at the grand old age of 60 (i.e. in 10 years time no less!). So having 800K Baht in an account here is not a major problem as such, but as my income is not index-linked, and indeed is likely to go down substantially over the next year due to the sub-prime crisis and consequent interest-rate reductions, I don't like to throw any income away, such as the interest foregone on the 800K Baht while it sits for 3 months in the savings account.

The last time I looked, my SCB Fund account paid about 3% more interest than the savings account. So keeping the 800K Baht tied-up in the savings account for 3 months would cost me 3/12*3%*800K = 6000 Baht. I'm assuming that as soon as I have the retirement extension I will be able to move the 800K back into the Fund account – which I understand to be the case from other posts? Please correct me if I am wrong there.

Now if the letter from Barry Kenyon costs 2400 Baht, my net loss of interest on the 800K Baht would only be 6000-2400 = 3600 Baht. OK, that's still worth having, but by the time I take into account other expenses, such as paying for a courier to send the original bank statements here from the UK, and possibly having to send or take Mr. Kenyon's letter to Bangkok for approval (see my first question above), then I am not sure that there will be very much of that 3600 Baht left.

So it starts to look to me as if I haven't got very much to lose by going the 800K cash-in-the-bank route now. Yes, I could get my brother to dig out the bank statements in the UK, though I'm not too keen on that to be honest. I could also request my Channel Islands banks to send copies, but I am not so keen on that information going through the Thai postal system. The online information on the accounts only goes back for a limited period – in fact I just tried it for my main account and just the last 6 weeks of data is available, which isn't much help. And as you say, it is not 100% certain that Barry Kenyon would accept copies or printouts.

So once again, thanks for raising the points. If you could answer my first question (about authorisation of the letter in Bangkok) it would help me and probably others reading this thread as well. And it would be most helpful if you would also just confirm that I can indeed move or spend the 800K Baht as soon as the retirement extension is granted, as having to keep the 800K Baht in the low-interest savings account for a full year rather than just 3 months would drastically alter the above calculations. Apologies that I have rambled on a bit once again, I hope that the above is reasonably intelligible. If not, please feel free to ask me to explain what I am going on about.

[lopburi3]

You are thinking of the report from Pattaya that Embassy letters would have to be certified by the MFA. There is no such requirement.

[wpcoe]

Guderian, it sounds like you have the facts straight, now that lopburi3 advised you won't need to make a trip to Bangkok.

Once you have your retirement extension approved and stamped in your passport, you can go that same day and transfer the funds out of your low-interest passbook savings account back into the higher-interest fund account.

BTW, I also have two SCB accounts at the Jomtien Soi 5 branch: a regular passbook savings account with ATM card (which I live off of), and a SFF Fund account.

[Guderian]

wpcoe and lopburi,

Once again, many thanks for your prompt and informative replies. I have no idea how you can find the time to be so helpful.

You are thinking of the report from Pattaya that Embassy letters would have to be certified by the MFA. There is no such requirement.

Does that mean that the whole thing about going to the MFA was a hoax? A bit unkind to many people if it was.

Guderian, it sounds like you have the facts straight, now that lopburi3 advised you won't need to make a trip to Bangkok.

Once you have your retirement extension approved and stamped in your passport, you can go that same day and transfer the funds out of your low-interest passbook savings account back into the higher-interest fund account.

BTW, I also have two SCB accounts at the Jomtien Soi 5 branch: a regular passbook savings account with ATM card (which I live off of), and a SFF Fund account.

It sounds like you have much the same accounts as myself, but I bank at the Beach Road branch – to be honest I didn't even know that SCB had a branch in Jomtien Soi 5, although I live in Jomtien Complex! I really must get out more.

Best regards,

G