California E&S Insurance

[~1 year update] 38/m/single. $2.3 million. Submitted my resignation letter today. Thank you guys for the encouragement all these years. Link to original thread. I FIREd and quit my job in the US last year, then moved to Thailand to volunteer at a non-profit teaching English to former prostitutes and low-level criminals for tourism industry jobs. I'm an American, ethnically Chinese. https://old.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/8pv2yd/38msingle_23_million_submitted_my_resignation/ I knew the cost of living in Bangkok would be substantially cheaper than what I am used to paying, but I was not prepared as to how much cheaper. My apartment and utilities were provided for free by the non-profit and I lived with my fellow expat volunteers. Some were older couples who wanted their privacy, so they booked their own apartments. Costs ranged from as low as $200 a month for a cheap, non-furnished studio apartment to $375 a month for a furnished studio in a newer building near a Skytrain station in the center of town with security. I was pleasantly surprised that because I was in the country on a sponsored work visa, I was eligible to buy health insurance there as a local. It came out to about $150 a month. Getting international expat health insurance here in America would have cost me up to $500 a month, so a huge savings. I also rarely ate at home and never cooked, since Bangkok is one of the great street food capitals of the world. All kinds of Thai, Chinese, Malay, Indian and Arab food served on the street for about 35 to 70 baht each entree (~1 to 2 bucks USD). I ended up not getting a local cell phone or local cell plan, my Sprint plan included international roaming and the 2G data was okay for Google Maps and web/email use when I was away from wifi, which was rare. So monthly fixed expenses came out to * $150 health insurance * $200 eating out * $100 7-Eleven (drinking tap water actively discouraged by authorities due to corroded pipes. Bottled water is substantially cheaper there than here, thankfully. My problem is that when I went into 7-Eleven every day to get the cheap water, I would get sidetracked by whatever tasty unfamiliar snack I would see at the hot food counter that I would then have to try, hence $100 a month blown. Seriously, 7-Eleven in Thailand is amazing, I highly recommend getting lost in one. All kinds of hot noodle soups and baos and sticky rice snacks and cakes.) * $150 Skytrain and subway tickets, Uber/Grab app rides on the back of a motorcycle. * $250 random spending money on cheap knock-off clothes or gifts to take home or a ladyboy cabaret show or a concert or pro kickboxing match, etc. * =$850/month total. Let's say I had to get my own furnished apartment and pay for my utilities, add another $500 a month. $1,350 a month total is pretty good considering I lived like a king and didn't budget myself at all. I could get that below $1,000 a month if I was more frugal. My non-fixed expenses were for airfare and lodging when I would leave town for the weekend to explore the rest of SE Asia. If I could book trips early enough, I could get round trip flights on Scoot or AirAsia to Chiang Rai or Singapore or Penang for as little as $40 round trip. Other than Singapore, Airbnbs and budget hotels were dirt cheap, so those weekend trips rarely cost more than $200 each. I wrapped up my volunteer work and came home to America this past week. Was gone about 10 months. Was a great experience, met a lot of new, nice people. Learned a new (incredibly difficult) language. Regret nothing, would do it all over again. I was able to get a small taste of Vietnam during my time there and am fascinated, will probably go live in Hanoi for a few months when I go back in the future. My immediate future is to spend the next two weeks hanging out with my family and doing lots of yard work and handyman work around the house. I'll then get on a plane for Scotland to spend two weeks seeing friends and being a tourist. Was a last minute trip, Delta had round trip tickets from select US cities to London Heathrow for $370, I couldn't resist. Absurdly cheap. Also - about three or four months after I moved to Thailand, my former boss called me to see how I was and offered me an online-only job, where I would spend about an hour to 90 minutes a day remotely reviewing other people's work, answering internal emails and listening to ideas he would bounce off of me. I wasn't interested, but he insisted it would not be my old job, that I would still be a digital nomad and never come into the office and I would be eligible for 401k matching and the company's health insurance when I came home. So I said yes and I've been doing the job for about half a year. It's been as advertised, I set aside an hour or so a night on my laptop in front of the TV and it hasn't grown into anything bigger yet. The salary is a small, small fraction of what I used to make but it's worth my time. We'll see how things stand after another year. [EDIT] Hey, thanks for the gold. First time ever getting it, awesome. [EDIT 2] Am getting lots of questions about how I reached $2.3 million, or $2.6 million as of this morning post-jobs report rally. I cover this in my earlier threads briefly - I left grad school at 24 and worked a job for ~14 years. Socked away about $70,000 per year the entire time, so there's half my money. The other half came from investment gains. I did the majority of buying in the years immediately after the 2009 subprime meltdown and financial crisis, large cap US banks and technology names for pennies on the dollar. Many of you are too young to remember, but I remember all of it. Having money in those conditions was terrifying. Bear Stearns and then Lehmann failing were earth shattering events. I lost entire $20,000 to $30,000 investments in companies in the blink of an eye. The ones that survived and thrived, those gains are still largely unrealized. meaning I have not sold them yet and I'll get slapped with an enormous long-term capital gains tax bill when I do, which is fine. Obvious question, how was I able to save so much for so long. One big reason is living in a southern state with low cost of living and no state income tax. I'm able to hold onto at least $15,000 to $25,000 more per year based on those two factors alone compared to someone in California, for example. The drawbacks to that are the government services in my state are pretty crap and minimal and all our new highways are toll roads, and so forth. [EDIT 3] What am I going to do when I get back from the UK in a month? The plan for now is to spend real quality time with my family, I've been gone for a year. I'll be home for three months, maybe longer. Reconnect with friends and so forth. I plan on then leaving at the beginning of fall for a months-long driving trip around the Western US and Canada, hitting up as many national and state parks as I can. For years, I have followed r/vandwellers and r/tinyhomes and wanted to buy a gutted Mercedes Sprinter cargo van with the extended ceiling to build a living space in. I've decided now not to do that for gas mileage and excess space reasons, it's more space than I need by myself. I'm probably going to buy a used Nissan Rogue and spend a week performing minimal modifications. Such as buying plywood to construct a bed platform in the back that allows me to store clothing below the bed. Can install a minimal solar kit on the roof so I have power for my laptop and phone at night. Can either camp at night, stay at Airbnbs or sleep in the car. Can shower at truck stops or Planet Fitness locations with my membership. I'll drive south to Arizona, New Mexico and Texas when the heavy snow and ice starts to fall and resume my trek north next spring. We'll see.

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