silvergoat Posted June 23, 2004 Report Share Posted June 23, 2004 So I gather a lot of you on the board are fairly savy with bucks. Here's my dilema - I'm 32, I love travel (and sanuk) and I've got a good job in the states. I can save 30k here in a few months and go live another year in BKK, but then I have to pick up and leave next year - come home and save more money. This isn't sustainable really in the long run. Instead I'd like to find out how much cash I need to save and invest to get a small constant payment every month. I can save about 6k *us* a month cash (after taxes)(more if i can do pretax. so in a year I can save about 72k. I'm more than willing to stay in the US and save 200k - 400k if I have to - but my goal is to get a payout (in interest or dividends?) that will give me around 1-2k a month to live and travel on. I am not expecting to retire forever on that money - I would plan on coming back to the states in a few years and working again to save another 200k.. What I don't understand is what I should be doing now to invest (mutual funds, cds) and I'm not sure how I can expect a monthly payout. What I'd really like is to know how much cash I have to save in order to get my 1k - 2k monthly stipend. Any help or links for me?? Thanks!!!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bibblies Posted June 23, 2004 Report Share Posted June 23, 2004 You sound like you might need a bit of a grounding, so www.fool.com (not as silly as it sounds) is a good place to learn. Check out their 'schools' and message boards and expect to do quite a bit of research. Given the title, I clicked on this expecting to find some 21-year old seeking assistance to have the time of his life, in which case I would have warned you not to expect much genuine help, because the older ones'd be jealous. But you're not that young! Only a year younger than me, anyway! (And after 10 years of LOS I feel like the oldest bloke in the world ) Good time to do it though. I took eight months when I'd just turned 31. Much more fun than waiting until retirement age! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 23, 2004 Report Share Posted June 23, 2004 My situation... I have a trust fund that gives me 5K per month but will run out of money when I turn forty. I have been drawing on it from 18 and now I'm 28. I have invested some of this amount each year and should have about 200,000 to 250,000 in the end. Apart from University I've spent the majority of my life on vacation. As I grow older I realize 250,000 isn't that much but at 5% fixed CD each year I get 10,000 to 12,500 before taxes a far cry from the 60,000 I get now. A few years ago I made a nice investment in a Restaurant and that gives me nice kickbacks. I could go into management at forty and use my 10,000 to 12,500 for trips but even this needs thinking on. Your situation... 72,000 in savings a year 1000 to 2000 per month from investments (fixed income, dividends, stocks, mutual funds, and money funds) look for low risk. How long do you expect to live in Thailand? Will you work in LOS? Do you want the (principle) at the end of you time in LOS? You said,"I am not expecting to retire forever on that money - I would plan on coming back to the states in a few years and working again to save another 200k.."...And do it again? It will require you 1.3 to 1.5 (for taxes) years to save enough for your high goal of 96,000 in order to have 2,000 per month and stay in LOS for 4 years. If the above statement is true! SB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 23, 2004 Report Share Posted June 23, 2004 The flaws... A few years to you is 5 thus the statement 30,000 in a few months I can save! 30,000 for a year is 2500 per month why plan on only having 1000 to 2000 per month! 5 years at 2500 per month is 150,000 so all you really need is 2 years of straight savings and a small interest bearing money market account. SB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Hippie Posted June 23, 2004 Report Share Posted June 23, 2004 I am so fucking jealous of you guys and anyone like you...god I hate you both! :grinyes: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fidel Posted June 23, 2004 Report Share Posted June 23, 2004 I'm pretty damn jealous too... though I am pretty young, 27... and have been living here for the past 3 years straight. In about 2 months I go home.... But... if all goes according to plan... I should be back in SEA in less than a year .. after a year's hard labour and study. Then I should be in a reasonable position to build a career in SEA. Fingers crossed! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gobbledonk Posted June 23, 2004 Report Share Posted June 23, 2004 I'm with you, OH- I've had to work for each and every shekel. Out of home at 17, no help from parents when it came time to buy a house (or my first car, for that matter). If anything, my family was a drain on my finances, but we all have to take the hand that we are dealt with. To be fair, I did get an education, and thats a debt that I can never fully repay. It really only gets me down when I see poor little rich kids treating people like shit to mask their own inadequacies. We now return you to your normal programming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 25, 2004 Report Share Posted June 25, 2004 "Out of home at 17, no help from parents when it came time to buy a house (or my first car, for that matter)" Perhaps car and house weren't the best investment to jump up the financial ladder... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 27, 2004 Report Share Posted June 27, 2004 You should buy a copy of Quicken and run the retirement planner. It will let you enter assumptions about rates of return, inflation, life span, etc. and tell you if your retirement plan will probably work or not. However, when you retire abroad there are huge risks that you cannot mitigate, the largest being exchange rate. If the US dollar conintues to decline over the long term (due to excessive deficits, for instance, followed by loss of confidence of international investors and displacement by the euro as the currency of investment and oil) . You will need to have a rate of return, after inflation, that supports the lifestyle you want. So, with a very rough calculation to live for 44 years (to expected US male life span of 74 years) with a monthly return of USD 2000 before taxes (which you will have to continue to pay as a US citizen) you need USD 496470 and an annual rate of return of 7% (assuming 3% inflation rate for a real rate of return of 4%). It is very, very difficult to achieve such a rate of return over a long period without taking a lot of risk and winning. And that assumes that the USD/Baht exchange rate remains the same. It may get better (if Thailand's export-based economy declines under Chinese competition, say) or it may get worse under some of the scenarios mentioned earlier. An then you would be 74 years old and broke. If your male anceestors are long-lived then a difficult problem becomes that much harder. Being old and broke is a pretty awful outcome. Khun Pad Thai Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Searcher Posted June 30, 2004 Report Share Posted June 30, 2004 Awhile back some financial professionals ran a series of "what if" scenarios that tried to put some bounds on the amount of income a reasonably prudent investor could realize from his U.S. stock portfolio versus the risk of going broke by drawing too much income from the capital. I forget all the details but, what these guys did is run alot scenarios that simulated retirees drawing income from model stock portfolios, based on historical U.S. stock market results, starting each year from 1945 on. In a nutshell what they found out is that if you want to be reasonably secure that you have enough money to ride out the ups and downs of the market you do not want to consume more that 5% of your capital per year. E.g., if you start out with a nest egg of $1 million you should never withdraw more than $50,000 in any year. Even in those years when the market is going gainbusters and gaining way above 5%. The excess gain over 5% is what will allow you to ride out the bad years. e.g. 2001, 2002. I'm sure quite a few retirees have learned that lesson painfully since 2001. If you want an income of 2k per month/24k per year (before taxes) your initial capital should be at least $480,000 if you want to be reasonably certain of not running out of money. Of course as, in all things, past performance is no gurantee of future results :: Searcher Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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