Who is actually retired living in Thailand?

Not a stupid question at all. I have been here for 12 years and I was a bit younger, single and had no kids. I lived the Thai way and loved it. Great food, great people, great weather.

Now I'm with kids I bought a house in a nice area so my kids can play in a safe place. They have a pool and what not. Education is high and some of my toys are high but over all life is pretty cheap.

We have a live in maid that gets paid $12 a day and that is a high rate for the area. She can live on that fine.

I was always happy with renting but my wife wanted the house. Rent is pretty cheap here as people protect wealth by buying property, not stocks/bank. Lots of empty houses for rent.

I also travel often and know my family will be in a safe place with guards and all that. The up keep on something like this in the USA is just crazy where the price of labour just makes everything way higher than it should be.

Now that I have the house it is going to be pretty easy to maintain. Yeah why spend so much money here? It does seem a bit silly but in the end it is just small fraction of our savings and we thought we might as well invest in some livable property. The high end cars are just a hobby and honestly I can afford it.

Also if it is structured correctly income taxes or taxes on investments are almost nothing. So even if things cost 40% more here I save that much in taxes. If my wife moved to the US she would have to pay an insane amount of taxes just to live there. Here, not so much.

/r/financialindependence Thread Parent