@Jim *******

Jim I took a hypothetical 50k US income with standard deductions and paid a hypothetical 5K in Federal tax. Seems pretty cheap to me!

@Steve *********

do you wire money or ACH to Wise account?

@Mark *******

yes it was instant

this is a complicated topic. I've been traveling internationally for the last 5 years and settled in the Thailand this May. My experience with banks is they can get really picky. For example, I have a mail forwarding service and the banks will not send my replacement credit cards there. I have to have somebody with a real physical address receive the cards. keeping that in mind, I have stuck to service from American cellular phone companies with American numbers. My current two are mint and twigby. One is an annual service and the other is month to month. another issue is that some phones are blocked by American cellular phone companies. I bought an oppo phone here in Thailand, slipped my American SIM into it and after multiple rounds with customer service was unable to get the SIM to be recognized by Wi-Fi calling to the US. The best reason I heard for this problem was that the Chinese company that makes this phone is under sanction from America due to some type of spying issue. so these are the kind of oddball things you can run into when it comes to cell phones. another issue is that you must be an America to activate an American number with an American SIM card from an American company, so make sure you get the cell phone stuff done before you leave! Get an unlocked phone and port your old numbers to it. Good Luck!

Just moved 800,000 baht through Wise, US originated. they give you a choice between wiring the money and sending it via ACH US bank to Thai bank. The fees for ACH method were a little less than 1%. Wiring the money might be cheaper and faster. It took 6days total: US bank to Wise 4 days and then a day or so Wise to Thai bank.

Nord has worked consistently on 4 continents. They can be discovered is someone trys hard enough, so services like ESPN or YouTube TV will cut you off eventually.

Yesterday everyone with Microsoft components was not working, try again?

There can be up to 3 continuous feeds for UTube TV, one needs to be in the US and that becomes the home location for sports networks. IE if one of the 3 feeds is in LosAngeles all three feeds will only be able to watch LA pro and college sports.

I have a similar problem with Vietnam after I had the same problem with Thailand. The solution for Vietnam was to get a file size reducing application by searching "photo compressor" in the Android app store. The picture I took was against a white background and the photo compressor made an extra copy of the "passport picture" which I uploaded to the visa website.

@Tod ********

can I open a bank account now and fully fund it in the 90 days before I return to Thailand? Do you have any bank preference?