Ok, I understand, there’s a financial requirement for to apply for a 90 days Non O visa and do yearly extension of stay in Thailand.
If you don’t have any income or pension you’ll need to prove funds equal to 800K baht at home to apply and 800K baht in a Thai bank for the future.
If you want to do a longer stay with less financial requirements you could apply for a six months multiple entries tourist visa. This gives you up to nine months in Thailand in the first place.
You always have to prove income or funds for a Non O visa based on retirement.
For document indicating current location you can just upload your ID-page of your passport one more time, your driving license, utility bill or bank statement with name and address.
You don’t have to upload any ticket for a Non O and it’s excused for onward ticket requirements.
Difficult if you plane to live permanently, but if you stay for periods and want to maintain your permission to stay you could manage with your bank at home and credit cards in Thailand and transfer smaller amounts to a Thai bank.
You could drop 800K permanently in your Thai bank. Then you’ll don’t need to transfer any money to Thailand to maintain an extension of stay based on a Non O visa. Or else there’s no legal way around proving that you have funds in Thailand if you want to maintain a permission to stay.
I understand, the application do request a ticket or date, but it’s sufficient to just put a date and a flight you might use. For Non O visa you normally don’t need to upload any tickets and you have 90 days to enter from the day the visa it’s issued and you’ll get stamped in for 90 days. Just did this recently myself.
Anser to question one is no and you didn’t really have to book any ticket for the application.
It’s always recommended to stay and wait for your visa, but option two is used by several people as backup in situations like this. The main thing is that you fulfilled the requirements when you applied, applied from your current location and can prove that you also left from this location/country.