What to do with 5,000,000 Baht?

[Guest]

"Best 5-yr CD now is paying 5%"

 

 

 

Yeah, but then he'll have to wait 1 year to get the interest, the monthly interest options are paying 4% at best.

 

 

 

"Taxes? Unless you're comfortable moving your stash to the Cayman's or something, taxes are a fact of life."

 

 

 

The UK Offshore Banking Business is based in Jersey and Isle Of Man and enjoys a very good financial reputation for security of deposits and banking practices, unlike such places as Cayman and Vanuatu.

 

 

 

But I think as an American you're still liable for taxes on the interest (?) although they will pay it gross and leave it up to you to declare it.

[Guest]

Post deleted by DoxyBlue

[Guest]

OK, what if you took a portion of that to buy a condo (say $20K USD) depending on where choose to live I think this is doable. I'd then leave the $100K USD in a US bank in a CD that gets you the best interest rate you can find and every month have the interest put in a checking account that you can access via ATM machine in Thailand.

 

I don't know what your chances are of getting your money back from your condo (forget about appreciation). But at least you're not tossing money away every month with rent.

 

The devil is in the details. I've never bought real estate in LOS so I don't know if this is a good route. But a recent thread about "what expats would do with 1,000,000 baht" implied many would buy a condo.

 

If you could get 5% interest on $100,000 USD in a US bank that would roughly work out to 17,000 baht/month. Take 2,000 baht of that for condo fee and utilities leaves you with 15K baht divided by 30 is a shiney 500 baht note per day for food, transport, sanuk(if that's in your plans), BUPA medical insurance, shopping, internet use, visa runs, etc...

 

Unless you lived like a monk, you would need to teach or get more money some how.

 

A quick look on the web and I saw you can get 5.25 in a regular ten year CD or 6-7% or more on a "callable" CD FDIC insured. I don't know what a "callable" CD is or how safe it is....

 

http://cdrates.dbj.biz/cd_rates

 

 

 

Chok Dee

[Guest]

Post deleted by DoxyBlue

[Guest]

"Unless you lived like a monk, you would need to teach or get more money some how."

 

 

 

My thoughts as well

 

http://www.thailand-property.com/html/TN30.htm

 

 

[JJsushi]

Forget the 5yr CD idea, it makes no sense. First of all CD rates are quoted at an A.P.Y which is deceptively higher than the real rate you recieve. Once you pay state, local, Fed tax;take into account inflation and the price you have to pay to exchange money to baht you are negative on your 5% CD investment.

 

What we need to know is where your money is coming out of a retirement account or a taxable account?

 

 

 

Assuming you money is taxable I would build a portfolio of muni bonds high quality corporate bonds, quartely paying preferred stocks and growth plus income mutual fund.

 

Now if you decide to buy the ultimate peace of mind with Treasury's which are state and local tax free, then I would buy them direct from the treasury and cut out the broker.

 

Currently I am partial to quarterly dividend paying preferred stocks that are yielding 6.5% - 11% for investment grade quality paper. I would rather get cash payments quarterly than semi-anually(think TimeValueMoney).

 

 

 

Get a gig in LOS that will keep you busy and maybe give you some pocket money.

 

Check out www.quantumonline.com for more info on preferreds.

[Guest]

"CD rates are quoted at an A.P.Y which is deceptively higher than the real rate you recieve. Once you pay state, local, Fed tax"

 

 

 

Not a problem if he's a Brit and puts the money offshore UK. No taxes at all and what you see is what you get.

[Guest]

a condo as an investment in bangkok sucks. most are very badly built and you are stuck with it. there is an oversupply of condos, last number i have seen a few years ago was somewhere arond 300 000 units in excess (incl. the suburbian mu bans).

 

 

[Guest]

Thank you for the replies.

 

 

 

A friend of mine (Canuck-38years old) bought himself a town-house in the suburbs of Toronto for about US120,000 cash.

 

 

 

He's now renting it out for about US$700/month which is about 30,000 Baht/month

 

 

 

He's still doing some teaching, part-time. But it seems to be enough money for he and his girlfriend to relax on the beach a lot. Point is: he's relaxed and doesn't NEED work.

 

 

 

Anyone else done this?

[gummigut]

"First of all CD rates are quoted at an A.P.Y which is deceptively higher than the real rate you recieve. "

 

 

 

I'd argue that is the REAL rate you receive. That's the compounded rate of your investment over a one year timefram. This is my preferred measuring stick if I didn't have NPV when doing valuations. When comparing different pieces of paper, they will have different payment periods, but almost all paper falls into paying atleast once per year, thus the yardstick for comparison should be yearly.

 

 

 

On the other hand I find it very deceptive when those banks say you are getting a 19.8% rate per year on your credit card. What they do though is divide that by 12 to calculate your interest. If you compounded that rate yearly that's (1+19.8%/12)^12-1 you get a real annual rate of 21.7. So if you left $100 as your balance, at the end of the year, you don't owe 119.8, you owe 121.7.

 

 

 

JJSushi, you additional comment about payouts for cash and your comment of "think Time Value of Money" is very deceptive. It all depends on the person's need for cash, specifically investment income. If you look at returns on an annually basis over significant periods of time you have to take into account re-investment, thus payments per year becomes specious. Additionally, when you measure the worth of constant payments (concrete investment income via bond stubs or what not) you have to take into account it's value to the owner and that indeed may be worth significant basis points, even triple digits, with regards to long term return on investment.

 

 

 

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