I’m not Apple fan boy so I was not crazy over the Apple iphone. It seems like a nice gadget, from what I can tell from playing with it a little. I’m not so sure about the touch screen – maybe it is something that grows on you after a while.

In the past I have been more with the group of users of Research In Motion’s PDAs. RIM’s products seemed more useful as tools while Apple’s seemed like the gadgets people own to try to impress others. You know, if you really are cool you don’t need a gadget to show it, and if you aren’t a gadget won’t help.

So now RIM has come out with the Blackberry Storm, a touch screen version of it’s PDA. Is this an answer to the iphone? I guess so. Is it more useful, or even as good? I can’t say because I have yet to use one. I have just been surfing sites that talk about them and there are two camps again, those who say it is severely lacking and those who love it. I wonder how many Apple fan boys are in the former camp.

I don’t understand the pricing of the Storm. There seem to be some deals on Blackberry Storms but the prices are all over the place, some very high. While the iphone is making an appearance in Thailand I have not seen the Storm here. Is it even here? I don’t know, but I will be looking for it.

I had pretty well written off being able to post here anymore. When I switched to satellite internet I found that WordPress.com never responded when I attempted to access the admin area. I could only guess it had something to do with the large latency of the satellite internet connection. So I skipped this little baby blog when I made my daily rounds of my vast blog and website empire as well as a few forums where I read and post.

But today it seems to be working. Not sure what changed. So I may start to drop by and post more often again on subjects that are rather off topic for any of the myriad other blogs of mine.

Don’t you just love how the media shameless hypes stories like Anna Nicole’s? If they aren’t directly pumping it up they pretend to be doing a story on the media’s pimping of such stories. Hmm, I guess that’s what I’m doing, LOL.

Anyway, there certainly is an audience for it. Sales of Anna Nicole items are brisk. I didn’t know it, but she had a show, and you can get the first season on the Ann Nicole Show DVD. First season…does that mean there was a second? Hard to believe, well, maybe not.

So it seems. Blogger is down again. When I try to create a new post I get a 500 server error. And I mentioned how terribly slow WordPress.com is. Ok, so they are free, so it is ok for them to suck, because they really do suck. Did I mention they suck? I would move all my blogs to my own servers, but when you have such a vast empire of blogs and websites it is nice to sprinkle a few around to different platforms. Then as your blogs get more juice you use links from them to boost the juice of your other blogs. And it’s better if those links aren’t all coming from the same IP address. Unlike some of my other super blogs this blog has no juice. It’s a throw away blog for now. Since it has no juice there is no point in linking from it. And since it is a throw away blog there is no point in linking to it. This blog is just a little island onto which I drop an occasional pearl of wisdom.

That’s one of the questions friends ask me since I have been retired. The answer is “Whatever I want, whenever I want, and wherever I want”.

The question sort of goes to the same root problem as a lot of others, and comments like “I would be bored if I retired so I just keep working”. You need to know for yourself the purpose of work, and have a broader understanding of work itself. If you are not self-directed and need to be bossed around…maybe you need to work on that first before considering quitting your job regardless of whether or not you have hit your number.

A friend recently updated me on her progress toward early retirement. She’s got just about everything in place for her and her husband to retire and move to a nice piece of land in New Mexico. One obstacle is looming – the cost of health insurance. She has a medical condition that requires expensive medications. She has investigated all the angles to reduce her out of pocket costs. She’s particularly angered at how much cheaper the medications are from Canada, yet insurance companies will cover none of it when purchased from those sources. Her present and forecasted health insurance costs are substantial. It’s the one thing holding her back from retiring now and enjoying life on her ranch.

Next to housing the cost of healthcare and insurance is probably the biggest obstacle to retiring early. As we get older we become more aware of the need for access to quality medical care and its costs. This is one of the factors that makes expat retirement particularly appealing. I retired to Thailand, one of the premier medical tourism destinations. Healthcare here is world class, a fraction of the cost in the U.S., and delivered with warmth and hospitality. It is no exaggeration to say that a trip to the hospital can almost be a pleasant experience here (almost, it is still a trip to the hospital). The fact is that the full cost of many procedures here is less than the deductible alone back in the U.S. That is why literally hundreds of thousands of foreigners per year travel here for heart surgery, cancer treatment, joint replacement, dental work, even face lifts.

This changes the formula a lot when considering retirement. The one item that is not substantially cheaper here is medicine available only from western phamaceutical companies. If a local copy of the drug is not available you pay western prices.

Because costs are so low it makes little sense to carry insurance, just pay out of pocket. However, for those needing the perceived security blanket of insurance it is available, both locally and also from western carriers. In fact, some U.S. insurance companies have begun to add Thai hospitals to their preferred provider lists.

There is a good selection of articles on specific medical centers and costs at Thailand medical centers here.

Some other expat retirement destinations also boast high quality medical facilities, although Thailand is by far the leader in the whole medical tourism business. So it is worth considering expat retirement for the healthcare advantage. You might hit your number a lot sooner.

Now and then I surf some of those blog traffic exchanges. It is mostly a waist of time, what with all the mommy blogs and political rant blogs out there. But now and then I find a new jewel. Not today.

I ended up on a page with a small ad promoting a blog that the author described as “An art journal reflecting the creative journey of an upper Michigan artist who works primarily with gourds, rocks and driftwood.”

I am not kidding! Perhaps this little blog of mine here would be considered pathetic by some people. But at least I don’t go into flowery prose about it. How about some down to earth description like “I like to make stuff with gourds, rocks and driftwood. I take pictures of it.” Much better. It almost sounds kind of campy. And I almost would visit (almost).

Is it only me? Or is WordPress.com extremely slow for everybody? All the time. When I click on the link to write a new post it takes no less than 2 to 3 minutes to finally get the Write Post screen. It has always been like that for me. It isn’t my connection, which is broadband. And it isn’t the WordPress software because I use WordPress installed on my own server for some of the blogs in my vast empire of blogs and I never see these kind of delays. It is only when trying to do something with this blog, my little doodle blog for some of the stuff that doesn’t belong in my super cutting edge and top secret blogs.

Where you decide to live has a big impact on your cost of living during retirement (obviously). Choosing to live somewhere that is inexpensive yet provides all the things you want in retirement enables you to hit the magic number sooner. Since you don’t have to work you aren’t tied to any specific location so you can live anywhere. For many, including myself, that choice is in another country.

I’m from the U.S. I traveled quite a bit when I was younger to a lot of places that were, as they say, a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there. By the time I discovered Thailand I had already reached the magic number and then some. It’s just that I didn’t know it yet. But when I got around to running the numbers I realized I was well over the magic number of 25. I could quit my job anytime.

There is a little thing called foreign exchange rates that can play a big part in your retirement plans if you are considering expat retirement. When I retired the U.S. dollar bought about 42 to 45 Thai baht. I kept most of my money in the U.S., transfering money as needed to Thailand. Then we saw the war on terror expand, U.S. debt balloon, and the dollar weaken. In the short span of a couple of months in early 2006 the dollar fell from over 41 to under 38. That’s about a 10% hit to my retirement nest egg in a matter of a couple of months. Fortunately I was well over the magic number of 25 so no worries. But many retired expats in European countries were hurt much worse by the weakening dollar. Some of them lamented on expat forums about 30% hits to their fixed incomes that were forcing them to make drastic changes in their retirement.

So, if you are considering expat retirement you need to remember that currency fluctuations can be sudden and have a big impact. Making plans to mitigate that is important.

While I’m waiting for Blogger and Blogspot to come back up I thought I would get started on writing up some notes on retiring early. I’ve been planning to do it for a while but have been so busy being retired I never go to it. So here is the first installment.

You’re ready to retire when you have:

Step 1: Saved $1 million in liquid assets.

Step 2: Become completely debt free.

Think I’m kidding? Think it’s impossible? Think that’s not enough?

Ok, $1 million might not be your magic number. If you do a little searching on the internet you might eventually find some articles on early retirement that mention 25 as the magic number. That is, 25 times your annual expenses in retirement. Once you have that banked you can retire pretty much worry free. The idea is that you can put that money into ultra-conservative low interest bonds and insured savings accounts which have historically over a long period of time paid around 4% interest. That’s lousy, but you don’t care, because your capital will never be lost and the interest income is 100% of your annual expenses in retirement. You can live indefinitely on it, never having to work again, and never running out of money.

So we can simplify steps 1 and 2 into a single step 1. You are ready to retire when you have:

Step 1: Saved 25 times your annual expenses in retirement.

Of course, the devil is in the details, like how to make enough money to bank 25X your forecasted expenses in retirement while meeting your current expenses. And then how to figure out what those forecasted expenses will be. Those are all mostly mundane details. I plan to discuss some of them. But most people will tune out because it is all about self-management, much like dieting.
There are some other issues, however, that are perhaps not so mundane and maybe unexpected that one should keep in mind. And some of them are step zero questions for yourself, like what is the purpose of work, and do you really want to retire. I’ll discuss those as well in future posts.

Ah, it looks like whatever trouble Blogger and Blogspot were experiencing has been resolved. So I’ll go back to finishing up a post on one of the blogs in my vast empire of blogs and websites.