#1 Why a Solo Retired American Woman is Moving to Thailand for the Rest of Her Life
Part One: Freedom from the Burden of Government Benefits
Let me first say that I intend for Her Expat Retirement to be a fun, hopeful and inspiring place to listen, watch and read about my adventure of retiring for the rest of my life in Thailand. But, there's an elephant in the room that must be addressed, and that is the burning question as to why I feel the need to leave America. This is bound to be somewhat depressing information. However, I'll also cover why there is so much hope for a better life for retired women like me in Southeast Asia. So, please stay with me past the depressing stuff.
Reason #1 as to why I want to leave America and move to Southeast Asia is: Because in a country like Thailand or the Philippines, I can afford to live out of pocket without having to rely on any government benefits or deal with all of the restrictions, intrusions and the stigma that go along with them.
As a very low-income American woman living on a Social Security retirement benefit of only $880 per month, my main focus for many years now has been on finding and keeping stable affordable housing first and foremost. Next, trying to eat healthy food with very little money in my food budget. And finally, keeping myself insured for health insurance.
Now, the good news is that in America if you are really poor, the government does have benefits that will take care of all of the above to a fairly decent degree. The bad news is, that if you try to work or improve your situation, you can lose all of the above. Our government punishes those who try to help themselves to such a degree that you can't afford to even try. And, of course, you live in constant fear of the benefits being taken away.
You also give away your freedom and your constitutional rights, such as your right to privacy and the right to move freely around the country. For me to get the benefits I absolutely need in order to not become homeless in America, I must provide the government with far more personal information than any other American has to, even to the IRS in your tax returns.
I have to fork over all of my actual bank statements, I have to let them know who is staying with me even if they're just a visitor, if it's over a certain amount of time, and if they stay with me for too long, I can lose my housing or other benefits. The government even controls what kind of food I can buy with my SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) food money, and how long I can be away from my home. If I want to keep my benefits, I must agree to these restrictions that other Americans don't have to agree to.
I now have a HUD (Housing and Urban Development) Section 8 voucher. I won't go into the long story of how I accomplished it, but it took several years and required me to move far away from where I wanted to live in order to get it, but the Section 8 voucher now allows me to pay just 30% of my income for rent. This has made a huge difference in my ability to buy simple necessities I couldn't afford before I got it. Buying things like new shoes or even paper towels or dog food was extremely difficult when I was paying half of my income for rent, even in subsidized senior apartment buildings. And back then, I was only living on around $650 per month.
Now I pay 30% of my $880 per month SSA retirement benefit for rent in the subsidized senior apartment building I live in because of my Section 8 voucher, so I'm only paying $264 for my rent and the government pays the difference to my landlord.
Now, that's a great benefit, for sure. But, if I work at a job, I then have to pay 30% of my gross earnings towards my rent. If I make too much (which isn't much), I lose my SNAP food benefits, my healthcare benefit that pays my Medicare premium for me (which otherwise would cost me $165 per month out of pocket), and I can get kicked out of my subsidized housing.
And, if I am away from my apartment for over 90 days, I lose my housing. They consider that abandonment of my subsidized housing.
Also, if I have too much money in savings, I can lose my health care benefits. In most states, the most you can have in savings is $2,000. And, if you have more than that, you lose the ability to get Medicaid for nursing home coverage. You can have more than that now in California under a new law, but if I want a bigger savings account than $2,000, and I want Medicaid coverage so my nursing home will be covered, then I can't leave California.
Now, what kind of an emergency in America would $2,000 be enough to take care of? I had to replace a transmission in an old truck once that cost more than that.
We're allowed to have credit card debt, though. We make sure we don't save more than the maximum in savings and we rely on credit cards in case of an emergency and just hope there is never an emergency so great that we end up in bankruptcy and then lose our only way to handle any emergency expenses.
Let me give you an example of how the government keeps me from improving my situation in order to keep my benefits. A couple of years ago, during the pandemic, I opened a little Etsy shop that sold downloadable digital copies of vintage sewing machine manuals for about $5 each. I made a profit of around $650 that year. Everybody was at home dusting off grandma's old sewing machine so they could sew masks. Remember lockdown? Those were the days.
At any rate, as always, I was honest with my county worker and reported everything. I am always honest, because I have too much to lose - as in ending up homeless if I lose my benefits, let alone going to prison for fraud against the federal government.
When all was said and done, even though I only owed the IRS about $40 for self-employment taxes, I ended up losing a total of about $1,200 in lost benefits -- from a profit of $610 after taxes, to being in the hole $1,200.
The county worker made my life a living nightmare in requiring a mountain of paperwork. Then, she miscalculated my SNAP food benefit and it turns out if they make a mistake (which was a loss to me of about $700 in benefits), they are not allowed by law to pay you the back benefits, even if you did everything right and they made a mistake. It's called an "administrative error," and if they make one, and you don't catch it and it results in you losing benefits, you're just out of luck.
Plus, I had a big fight with the county over how much they wanted to raise my rent. They wanted to base it on my gross business income with no business write-offs, even though the law says I get those deductions. Anyone in business knows that your gross income is usually nowhere near your actual profit, after expenses. I looked up their own county rules and showed them to my worker and her supervisor, and even then, they really fought me on it. Dealing with the county was way more work and hassle than running the Etsy shop ever was.
The bottom line was that it ended up being such a hassle and I lost so much money in lost benefits and higher rent, and after being treated like I was some kind of criminal, even though I was completely honest and was actually going to be saving the government money, I finally just threw up my hands and closed the darn Etsy shop. And, then they made my life a misery having to jump through a bunch of hoops to prove I closed it.
Now, some people think it seems only fair, having to report everything you do and dealing with sometimes inept or deliberately unkind county workers, and all of these restrictions and intrusions in exchange for "living off the government." I've actually had people rudely say to me "You're welcome for living off my taxes," as if I never paid into the system, myself.
But, my only crime is that I'm poor. And I'm only poor because, as a woman, I didn't earn much money in my lifetime. I graduated high school in 1974. If you think women don't earn as much as men now, it was much worse back then. And, your retirement benefit is based on the amount of money you actually earned. In 1974 the minimum wage in California where I lived was $2.00 an hour.
Also, the way our Social Security system is set up, your retirement benefit is based solely on your own income. There is no adjustment for a woman who stayed home to take care of the kids, regardless of how much money her husband was earning. The closest exception to that is that a woman is allowed to get up to half of the amount of her husband's SSA retirement benefit amount if she stayed married to him for at least 10 years. And, even if she did stay married to him for 10 years, and even if he then divorced her, she can never marry again or she forfeits those benefits.
On what planet does that seem even remotely fair?
I have Social Security retirement benefits because I worked. You can only get them in the US if you worked the equivalent of full time for at least 10 years. So, yes, I worked enough to get retirement benefits. And still, I'm completely reliant on government benefits now in order to stay housed, fed and have health insurance I can afford. Because, there is no way I, or most Americans, can afford to pay for medical care out of pocket in America.
It's such a shame that retired women end up in poverty in far greater numbers than men in America. As if we didn't work our butts off taking care of our families, often while also working full-time at some point, or ending up as single working mothers. According to a 2016 report done by the National Institute of Retirement Security entitled "Shortchanged in Retirement, The Continuing Challenges to Women’s Financial Future", women are 80% more likely than men to be impoverished at age 65 and older.
And so, here we are, having to live off of government benefits, always in fear of losing them, while being treated like we should be ashamed of ourselves, living in our subsidized apartments, basically counting the days until we end up in a Medicaid nursing home. (That happens to be #2 on my list of why I want to leave America -- American nursing homes. We'll get to that in the next episode, and why the nursing homes in Thailand are so different and wonderful in comparison.)
So, now you know what my future looks like as an impoverished 67-year-old woman in America. Pretty darn bleak. And that's before I end up in a Medicaid nursing home from hell.
And here is where you're waiting to hear me say, "but, it will be better for me in Southeast Asia." Here is where the hopeful stuff begins.
In the Philippines, I could get a visa that would give me permanent residency. I could come and go from the country whenever I wanted to. They would allow me to work. They would allow me to pay into their national health insurance for only around $300 per year. And, I could afford to pay for all of my needs, including rent, on my Social Security retirement benefit alone.
The visa options in Thailand are more restrictive, but it's still possible to legally work in Thailand, too. And, Thailand is even cheaper than the Philippines and has some other benefits that are more attractive than the Philippines.
We'll go over all of that stuff in an upcoming episode, after we get through my reasons for wanting to leave America. But, just another quick hint: the nursing homes in Thailand are amazing.
And, for you snowbirds out there, there's the additional bonus that you won't ever have to shovel snow in Southeast Asia.
But, just imagine what a great feeling it would be for someone like me to be able to feel like she could hold her head up high again, as someone who is able to pay her own way, without needing any government handouts. To not feel like a loser, a charity case. To never have to deal again with some rude person saying to her in line at the grocery store, "You're welcome for the food you’re eating with my tax dollars," or another unkind county worker who treats her like a lazy bum because she's poor, even if she worked hard all of her life.
I can't wait for that feeling of freedom. The freedom that will come with being able to pay my own way again. To grow a savings account. To feel of value. To not be in fear of becoming homeless or hungry, dependent on the whims of Congress. To use my creative juices again and get paid for it. To come and go as I please.
So, sure, I'm grateful for the government benefits I get now. But, I can't wait to be rid of them.
And, in Thailand or the Philippines, I'll be considered rich. Imagine that.
I'm Kelly Portola. In the next episode of Her Expat Retirement, I'll cover reason #2 for leaving America: American nursing homes, and how different and wonderful the nursing homes are in Thailand.
You can always find everything I do on HerExpatRetirement.com. The letters spell "her," H.E.R., Her Expat Retirement.
I hope to see you again real soon.
I can't wait to find a new life in Thailand. I took am extremely fearful of U.S nursing homes. I will be checking out several after I get settled in Hau Hin.