Retirement - what to do?

[oakdale160]

If you have doubts try to make as few possible irreversible decisions, come for 6 months, rent dot buy, put furniture into storage. Can your wife take 6 months leave of absence with the possibility of returning.
Not all returning Thais are content here, the loudest critic of thaias and thailand I ever heard was a thai lady who had returned after 20+ years in Canada.

[void]

Volunteer work can be unsatisfying for someone used to goals, targets, deadlines. The thought that you don't have to go in today if you don't feel like it can give rise to a feeling that it is meaningless.

I also tend to think this is likely based on the individual.

When helping someone online with computers, it can sometimes be an intensive iterative effort, that is both frustration (when one fails to succeed) and rewarding (when one succeeds to help). The desire to help (possibly looking for that rewarding feeling ? ) can be addicting at times, spending countless hours online, until sometimes one can 'burn oneself out'. Hence I find for volunteer work, sometimes one needs to walk away, recharge one's batteries, and only then come back to it.

Having typed the above, that's just me, and its possible my wife won't find the same sense of reward I get when successful as a volunteer.

[void]

It may be nice to do things together when retired? Not all the time, but most of the time?

Thats a good idea. Currently we share a love for travel, and the preparation can make a good vacation even better. So often we will do the preparation together, in addition to the travel together.

We are both engineers with a liking for high tech toys (my wife possibly more than I !! ) so that is also something we enjoy paying together with .... albeit there are limits to playing with hi-tech toys.

[void]

Retirement, what to do?

1. Golf.
2. Golf.
3. Golf.
4. Girls

There is also the option of hanging out in bars and getting plastered every night, as some people do. But why go to Thailand for that? You can do that at home or anywhere in the world.

Lol !

I lived in Thailand for two years prior to being married. While I did not play golf , I did see a reasonable amount of Thailand and I have had my share of single man exeriences.

Now that I'm married its fair to say my butterfly wings are pretty much clipped.

Currently Thailand has to offer 'relatively inexpensive lifestyle', 'relatively good weather', 'culture that my wife likes', 'good family', relatively good location for visiting other Asia locations, relatively good food.

We have not settled completely on the idea of retiring in Thailand (as we have many possibilities due to our citizenships) but I think it fair to say Thailand is the leading possibility.