Retire in India and live off interest payments?

mere999

Thank you very much to all for your replies
Truly appreciate it
kind regards

edwardseco

Just to correct a misapprehension here, the effect will be balanced through the exchange rate. In other words that is why its roughly 40 Rupes to the USD as compared to 12 when I first went India. Otherwise all capital in the world would flow into India, rational markets ..

Nick-H

I'm not sure about that!

My low-interest earnings, and capitol in UK, is also worth about 10% less than it was a year ago --- on FX difference.

(Mind you, that was a good FX period...)

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Aishah

I'v come up with a recent problem related to the topic of this thread, so am posting here istead of making a new Thread. Maybe an answer will be known by accountants in Australia or India..
I read some of the thread at the start - and am in a sort of budget and earnings position very similar to Nick's. My small investments are all in Australia and we live here on a combined income from our business and my interest from investments. Up to this year the Oz accountant has been classifying me as resident, but of course I am not and now this next tax return I am being classified as non-resident with almost one third of my small interest earnings going in tax.(Previously I got around 500$Aus refund because my earnings were below the poverty line). In other words half my Alto car recently bought with what I thought was a bonus!
I am not going back until next April and the accountant says it can all wait until I come back to sort out. Now I wonder, would I avoid this huge tax - equivalent to two return airfares Delhi -Sydney - by splitting my investments, half in Australia, half in New Zealand? I don't pay tax here because I don't earn Indian rupees. This investment back in Oz is a kind of security for unforeseen events in my old age, which I hope won't happen e.g. debilitating stroke, Parkinson's disease etc. There are no nursing facilities for this kind of thing here, and the excessive heat would be even more difficult to cope with I imagine in such circumstances for me.Or if something happened to Mr K...his family are wonderful, but the weather trying and on my own might just be too hard for me.
Maybe this thinking is nonsense, and I might as well move all assets to India..but at present I am very hesitant to do so.
At a remote distance from Australia where i need to make some enquiries re low income as a non-resident etc. (I have looked internet re rules and clearly I come under this category) but I am just not sure which govt. dept I could get good advice from - would it be Social Security (Centrelink), Income Tax etc.???
In other words - what is the way to avoid excessive tax on interest when non-resident??

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paintbusters

Yessir, that is the plan. wife and I are leaving the US carrying a soc sec payment of $620. per month, and we hope to live and travel around India on it-Shimla, Varanasi, maybe Kashmir.
Its been my plan for forty years, I was 20 when I began traveling India. Ten years ago, I took the wife to Shimla for 30 days. She loved so much of what was there, the openness of the people, the friendliness, the lack of automobile driving time everywhere, the attention from shop clerks and tailors...The romance of the place. Me, I was tired of the suburban mall of america before they were built. We arew bringing our two tiny dogs. with us, we know they want to go, whatever awaits them there, they will be with us. We want a house with a courtyard, and a resident cook. We live for leaving here. Any advice or comments are welcome. Thanks.

dzibead

paintbusters, I don't know how you're planning to do this. You are essentially talking about emigrating to India, but are you familiar with India's immigration and visa policies? It's not an "immigration friendly" country and it's certainly not looking for foreign retirees to take up permanent residence. Are you able to qualify for a PIO card or for OCI status? Is your wife an Indian citizen or a PIO? If you aren't able to qualify for a PIO card or OCI status, you'll only be able to get a tourist visa, so you won't be able to stay in India for more than 180 days at a time. Even if you are a U.S. citizen and get a 10-year multiple entry tourist visa, you'll still have to leave at least every six months. And on a tourist visa, you won't qualify for residency status so there are lots of services you won't be able to get - and you certainly won't be able to buy real property either - you'll only be able to rent. So what's your plan for how you are going to retire in India? I think you may have built up a romantic fantasy that will be hard (or impossible) to fulfill. Check out the huge two-part thread on foreigners buying (or attempting to buy) property in Goa to get an idea of the difficulties you will be facing.

capt_mahajan

paintbusters, 620usd is about 24000 rupees at todays rates.

You may be able to live with that money in India , but it wouldnt cover a lot of travel, domestic and specially foreign.

paintbusters

Now is a good time to find out what is or isnt possible. This may sound strange, but I don't intend to live forever, in India or elsewhere. At the age of 62, a ten year visa sounds like a realistic view of life expectancy, whether in india or elsewhere. As to $620 a month paying for much travel,I was refering to trvel inside india, not jetting off to france, then amsterdam. Been there.Thinking of Himchal Pradesh this season, then, goa, then kerala, or rajastan, maybe Nepal. Why would it be a hardship to leave for Nepal or Shri Lanka every six months? I have read stories of just living quietly in a not so famous villiage, as long as one was happy there, and occasionally paying some officer or gov. person to extend stay. Perhaps Bush's homeland paranoia has ruined the world. What would happen if you overstayed your 180 days? Why worry? A prison sentence for me and Mrs.? A free ticket to NYC from the Indian Gov.? Forty lashes?

capt_mahajan

Paintbusters, you are in the wrong thread

This thread presupposes 'retire legally in India'...

dzibead

You wouldn't be getting a free ticket from anybody. You'd be deported at your own expense, probably fined, and particularly if the overstay was substantial you'd probably be barred from ever entering the country again. You are taking a very cavalier attitude toward overstaying your visa, but don't expect the Indian government to be so chipper about it. And as for the idea of living quietly in some obscure village and "occasionally paying [i.e., bribing] some officer or gov. person to extend stay", first, I think you are blissfully unaware of how brutal people in small villages can be to people who are outsiders - even Indians from other parts of the country -- , and second, the last thing you want to do is get yourself into a situation where you, as an illegal alien, are subject to extortionate demands by some petty bureaucrat. Anyway a local official has no authority to extend your stay, except for a very short period in the event of something like a medical emergency that that has prevented your departure before the 180 period has elapsed. At best you'd be paying someone not to turn you in for being in the country illegally. I think you need to get your head out of the clouds (or out of a certain bodily orifice) and look at this more realistically before you and your wife and your dogs jump off this particular cliff.

Nick-H

Surely not? You could well have another thirty years ahead of you. If you are living in pretty modest comfort you won't even get much domestic travel. Unless you want to travel unreserved on the trains. Could shorten the life expectancy, I suppose.
Not sure you're going to be able to afford this, even. I hear that it is quite expensive, flying to Sri Lanka. You should also be aware (and would be if you do some more browsing on this site) that the policy towards repeated tourist visas is hardening. I think that some healthy pessimism on this is ...err, healthy. Bear in mind that your visa does not guarantee you entry into a country: that is always, ultimately, decided by the officials at the immigration desk.
Many of us have heard such stories. Like the Capt. said: this thread is about doing it legally.
Errr... Engage brain?

If you can adjust your dream to spending as much time as possible in India, maybe with a rented place here. But Its hard to see how your budget could support that.

I've done it, by the way. I'm living comfortably in India, legally and (courtesy of my wife being an Indian citizen) with about as much immigration security as a foreigner can hope for.

My dream would be to have a home in my mother country as well and to divide the time. However, that is financially impossible: even the return flight would cripple our budget, which is a little more than yours.

Kanehanahou

No... The ticket isn't free. But one or the other governments WILL send you back, and they WON'T tell you you can't come back. It will be a period of time (let's say a year). And you'll have to pay back the ticket - which cost a LOT more than you'd have paid.

And before you say this isn't true - stop. It is.. And I've already paid mine back. And other than the surcharge, there is no fine.

If you want particulars, email me..

Kanehanahou..

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dzibead

Check out the following thread, particularly post #5 - and this was a guy who had simply stayed for a year straight on a one-year tourist visa, without doing the required periodic departures. A person caught overstaying significantly more than this (for example, overstaying for years and trying to live permanently in the country) certainly faces the risk of permanent denial of any future visas as well as all the other problems that post describes. Exactly what will happen in any particular situation probably can't be stated with complete certainty in advance because the authorities have considerable discretion and will consider lots of different factors on a case-by-case basis. But the bottom line is: illegally overstaying is not something to be treated as "cute" or "no problemo".

overstay question, 40 days and still on

Nick-H

India is not in the least bit retirement-friendly.

Try Panama --- I saw this BBC article just now.

capt_mahajan

Panama.

Regardless of what the Beeb says, Panama is more a retirement or other haven for the seriously rich, or the seriously criminal, or both- than for somebody planning to live on 600 dollars a month.