Retirement - what to do?

[Nereus]

You have absolutely no idea of my situation and the people I have seen so less of the guesswork

So how about you apply that comment to your good self!

[GLCQuantum]

The above was intentional Nereus. You missed it.

Dtaii Maii said...

And what can you possibly know of retirement? These people have worked hard for 40 years or more to get themselves in a position to enjoy their retirement. Why should everyone else love it here just because you do? And don't forget the financial crisis, the falling pound/Euro/dollar and rising prices in Thailand all take their toll.

I know absolutely nothing of retirement nor will I ever unless I change my situation and improve on the pittance I'm currently earning. I wasn't lucky enough to have a normal upbringing where I could enjoy a decent(ish) life back in the UK, get a nice job, save some money, nice house bla bla bla. No. I drew the shortest of straws on that one but fortunately my lot doesn't seem quite so bad now.
I envy the guys that have grown up with some normality, worked hard and can now 'enjoy' the rewards of retirement. I'm amazed at the guys who think a bit of sun and willing girls are enough to enjoy that retirement. Surely after working so hard for 40 years you would put a little more research in to ensure that you enjoy the next 40?

[sateeb]

GLCQ...You are very lucky to be in your 20's and to be able to live and work in Thailand, with the added bonus of having your family here too and the financial help that comes with it....MAYBE.

I,however, worked hard for 30 years to have the good fortune to leave the green and unpleasant land and relocate here with a works pension and a future State Pension enabling me to be self sufficient.


What does the future hold for you assuming you have never paid any National Insurance contributions? I was probably as arrogant and cocksure as you in my 20's but let me assure you that the years do creep up on you faster than you think and there will come a day when reality sets in and you have to think about a long term future. That's what kept me in a job that I didn't particularly like,knowing that the benefits at the end were worth it.

Good luck with the teaching, I did it for 4 years until my pension kicked in at aged 50. I enjoyed the first couple of years and after that it kinda ground me down.

[richard]

But never mind, some of the younger ones that have made self centered comments MAY grow up one day!

BUT many won't. Too cocky and pig headed and those who brag about their ability to speak the language and therefore understand Thais better are talking bollocks.

I know many Thais who take the piss out of young upstart know-it-all teachers and the like who think they know the culture. They don't know the culture till they have lived here a while and lived with Thais (of all levels) day in and day out.

I'm in no way condemning every teachers but having worked with many including Cambridge professors and dons, many seem to lack practicality, common sense and are full of their own self importance.

Eh up, which thread am I on?. Sorry, thought I was on the 'sarge/plum' bashing thread about education and brainwashing

[GLCQuantum]

GLCQ...You are very lucky to be in your 20's and to be able to live and work in Thailand, with the added bonus of having your family here too and the financial help that comes with it....MAYBE.

I,however, worked hard for 30 years to have the good fortune to leave the green and unpleasant land and relocate here with a works pension and a future State Pension enabling me to be self sufficient.


What does the future hold for you assuming you have never paid any National Insurance contributions? I was probably as arrogant and cocksure as you in my 20's but let me assure you that the years do creep up on you faster than you think and there will come a day when reality sets in and you have to think about a long term future. That's what kept me in a job that I didn't particularly like,knowing that the benefits at the end were worth it.

Good luck with the teaching, I did it for 4 years until my pension kicked in at aged 50. I enjoyed the first couple of years and after that it kinda ground me down.

Exactly, what I was pointing out in my above post. As, I said... unless something changes dramatically retirement is something I can only dream about. Working until I drop dead is more on the money.

[GLCQuantum]

BUT many won't. Too cocky and pig headed and those who brag about their ability to speak the language and therefore understand Thais better are talking bollocks.

Cocky or pig headed are not two things that go hand in hand with myself Richard. I don't 'brag' as you put it. I actually mentioned before how I consider myself lucky to have been coming here since I was 11 as it gave me the language skills to communicate in Thai. If you can't understand what the people are saying how can you understand them at all... body language?

Anyway my rubbish has hijacked this thread somewhat so....



Writing a book is an option to keep yourself busy. That will keep you going for quite some time. There are also things like joining underprivileged schools for scout camps and the like. Another idea is there are a lot of free courses online so maybe find a subject of interest that you'd like to delve deeper into. Things that you never had the time to do before. Certainly get yourself a Man's Best Friend (or two) to occupy your time a bit. Growing stuff in/maintaining a garden is always time consuming.

[Big Boy]

This thread is being locked while GLCQuantum and nanyang's repeated mis-behaviour is investigated. It may re-emerge after investigation.

[Lev]

Thread re-opened. Personal insults and attacks removed, suspensions will be forthcoming if the childishness continues.

[migrant]

Thanks Mods

I started, and resurrected, this thread to be similar, but different to the "what is there to do in Hua Hin" type threads.

Retirees, which I hope to be among in a couple years, can easily grow very bored as we have seen in some posts. I see a lot of that among my retired clients who rejoin the workforce after a couple years due to boredom. Other retirees claim they do not know how they found time to go to work, they are so busy.

It's an individual thing, are you a avid golfer, traveler, etc? as we read some are, some aren't.

Anyway thanks for those that shared!!

[GLCQuantum]

Talked about the things you'd want to do (google has loads but it's nicer getting stuff from the Hua Hin horses mouth) Financially, here's a (copy and pasted) list of things to be a little bit careful about http://www.freep.com/article/C4/2013052 ... t-mistakes.

It’s complicated, this retirement thing.

We keep hearing we need to save more money than we’ve saved. We’re worrying about if we have enough to survive a health care crisis in retirement. And in the middle of all that, we’re trying to figure out if we can, indeed, wait a few years before we start taking those Social Security checks like all the financial advisers are telling us.

There’s a lot at stake, and most of us can’t afford to screw up. So, we talked to financial planners about some of the most frequent mistakes they’ve seen. Of course, they have seen a lot. Here are the top seven.

1. Are you really going to spend less when you retire?

High on the list of financial planner Joe Heider, regional managing principal for Rehmann Financial Group in Westlake, Ohio, is the assumption that you will spend less money in retirement than you do in your working years. The rule of thumb among some financial planners is that most people will spend 80% of what they spend while working — the assumption being that you won’t have to pay for that daily commute, that work wardrobe, lunches, etc. But, Heider says that assumption is wrong, especially in the early years.

“Most people, in my opinion, initially after they retire, actually spend more money than when they were working,” he says. “When you have a job, you are in your office and you are not spending money. But now you have 24/7 to shop, travel and do all the things people couldn’t do before.”

3. Are you taking inflation into account?

“There is a tendency for people in retirement to be way too conservative in their investments,” Heider says.

They no longer feel a need to hedge against inflation. Assume you’ll have 25 years of retirement with 3% inflation: “Unless you have growing income, you would have a significant decrease in purchasing power,” Heider says.

6. Are you underestimating health care costs?

“People are living longer, so they will have health care,” Wimbish says. “Many people think Medicare will cover all their medical expenses.” It doesn’t. Payment depends on the type of treatment. “And it also doesn’t cover dental, vision and hearing,” Wimbish says. “Older people need one or all of them. They underestimate what they will have to pay. It could be a substantial amount of money. It could be $250,000 in retirement. And that doesn’t cover skilled nursing.”

7. Are you prepared psychologically for retirement?

“The psychological mistakes are tougher in my opinion,” Heider says. “Many people identify what they do as who they are,” he says. “It is their identity. It can be difficult to let go of that. People need to look at what are their hobbies. People retire and they don’t have hobbies, things they enjoy doing.

“We’ve seen where people retire and are miserable,” he says. “It puts a strain on marriages. Couples have different views on what retirement will be. Children are raised, and now they are spending 24/7 with each other. It can put a strain on relationships.”

[void]

This IS an old thread - last post June-2013. Yet I think it an important question.

I am 60 and I am looking at compulsory retirement in 2.5 years (from my place of work in Europe). My wife is Thai and 13 years younger than I. We are both engineers, and she is not forced to retire in 2.5 years. We both have good jobs.

So for us the big decision is : does she want to retire at the same time as me ? If so, then we may move to Thailand for our retirement.

I'm not so much worried about what I will do, as what she will do. I have lots of hobbies - she has none.

Volunteer. Now, during my spare time (when not at the office) I spend a lot of time on a GNU/Linux computer operating system forum, helping users with their computer problems, as I have a particular expertise in that aspect of computers. I enjoy doing that as a volunteer. It is location independent. I could easily spend > 8 hours a day doing this, IF I had the patience (which I don't).

Hobby. When not doing that, I enjoy processing the > terabyte of videos and pictures I have taken over the past dozen years, creating home videos, etc .... I am so far behind in doing that, that it will take me a long time to catch up to my current trips. I can spend hours doing this, until I run out of energy.

Long walks - I walk to work (20-minutes to work, 20 minutes back from work). I would hope to be able to continue exercising/walking after retirement, for > 1 hour per day/

Travel. I enjoy travel. My wife and I travel a lot when we have a vacation from work. I would hope for the first 5 to 10 years after retiring we could continue traveling a lot. Just planning a trip takes time, and after a trip is over I have those gigabytes of videos and pictures to review - tons and tons of memories.

So I am struggling to see how I could get bored ? I'm more worried about not having enough time

Yet my wife ? She has no hobbies, and I think she will need to find some volunteer organisation to contribute her time to - else she may find retirement not for her.

It is interesting to read the views of others on this forum thread, even if it is > 1 year old in part.

[oakdale160]

Volunteer work can be unsatisfying for someone used to goals, targets, deadlines. The thought that you don't have to go in today if you don't feel like it can give rise to a feeling that it is meaningless.

[Frank La Rue]

Volunteer work can be unsatisfying for someone used to goals, targets, deadlines. The thought that you don't have to go in today if you don't feel like it can give rise to a feeling that it is meaningless.

I think how this is experienced on the emotional plane can be very individual. I worked 4 months as an independent consultant to get my divorce done over a period of 22 months, including relocation. It costed me savings but was necesarry.
During this time I did 3 things, I took care of my son, and I did volountary work. I found both very gratifying. The work getting xwife established on her own was necessary to get her consent to divorce, but that is another story.

[Siani]

This IS an old thread - last post June-2013. Yet I think it an important question.

I am 60 and I am looking at compulsory retirement in 2.5 years (from my place of work in Europe). My wife is Thai and 13 years younger than I. We are both engineers, and she is not forced to retire in 2.5 years. We both have good jobs.

So for us the big decision is : does she want to retire at the same time as me ? If so, then we may move to Thailand for our retirement.

I'm not so much worried about what I will do, as what she will do. I have lots of hobbies - she has none.

Volunteer. Now, during my spare time (when not at the office) I spend a lot of time on a GNU/Linux computer operating system forum, helping users with their computer problems, as I have a particular expertise in that aspect of computers. I enjoy doing that as a volunteer. It is location independent. I could easily spend > 8 hours a day doing this, IF I had the patience (which I don't).

Hobby. When not doing that, I enjoy processing the > terabyte of videos and pictures I have taken over the past dozen years, creating home videos, etc .... I am so far behind in doing that, that it will take me a long time to catch up to my current trips. I can spend hours doing this, until I run out of energy.

Long walks - I walk to work (20-minutes to work, 20 minutes back from work). I would hope to be able to continue exercising/walking after retirement, for > 1 hour per day/

Travel. I enjoy travel. My wife and I travel a lot when we have a vacation from work. I would hope for the first 5 to 10 years after retiring we could continue traveling a lot. Just planning a trip takes time, and after a trip is over I have those gigabytes of videos and pictures to review - tons and tons of memories.

So I am struggling to see how I could get bored ? I'm more worried about not having enough time

Yet my wife ? She has no hobbies, and I think she will need to find some volunteer organisation to contribute her time to - else she may find retirement not for her.

It is interesting to read the views of others on this forum thread, even if it is > 1 year old in part.

It may be nice to do things together when retired? Not all the time, but most of the time? You can still have your hobbies, but have more time to spend with each other. Why not go with the flow, take things as they come. You may just slip into a nice routine...together

[Lung Per]

Retirement, what to do?

1. Golf.
2. Golf.
3. Golf.
4. Girls

There is also the option of hanging out in bars and getting plastered every night, as some people do. But why go to Thailand for that? You can do that at home or anywhere in the world.