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I'm in the Foreign Service.

I considered opening a local bank account when I moved here, but ultimately decided against it after reading that it's sort of a hassle here.

But, my situation is probably different than most since I'm actually paid by direct deposit to my US account.

Just thought I'd post a follow up & say that I was not assigned to Greece. To illustrate the point that I didn't have much say in the matter anyway, I ended up getting my 16th choice (out of 34) which was Suva, Fiji. It definitely could have been a lot worse, so I'm not too upset about it. :beer 7

Awesome! I lived in Chengdu for 4 years but haven't been back since '07. Hope you've enjoyed the hotpot and the teahouses! By the way, is Peter's Tex-Mex still around? I miss that guy. SAM Peter's is still here and has really expanded. There are at least 5 here in Chengdu now & I think he's eve...

HongKonger wrote:Heck if you can live on the Mainland (AKA The Wild West - from a Honkie standpoint), I reckon you can live anywhere!!

I live in Chengdu, so I'm just about as far into the west that you can go & still be in China.

Greece is a beautiful country, but Athens is pretty smoggy and gritty. I'm currently in China, so on the one hand I don't think the air could be that much worse. But, on the other I'd kind of like a change to someplace cleaner. As far as the financial crisis, you'll have to decide if you would find...

I have a job where I move every few years & I just saw my options for my next move which will be next Summer/Fall. Right near the top (alphabetically) is Athens, Greece. It occurred to me that with their economic troubles the US$ that I get paid in might go further making it advantageous for me ...

I am. I could probably make more in the US, but the cost of the living and other benefits I currently have put me way ahead.

This will be my first full year of federal employment. I am contributing the max to my TSP & I was planning to switch to the Roth when it becomes available to us in a few weeks. Currently my wife isn't working & we are in the 15% bracket, but she is scheduled to start later this year & t...

I've sold gold to people via craigslist before. I just arranged to meet at my bank so it's a public place with a little extra security. Plus, that way I could immediately deposit the cash & didn't have to be as worried about getting mugged immediately afterward.

I'm considering doing something similar in the fairly distant future. My job requires me to move every 2 or 3 years, but provides me with free housing. This lets me save all the money I'd normally spend on housing. I've considered that in a few years I should have enough to make a sizable down payme...

Before you bail out of Fidelity, you might examine just what the problem was there. If it was customer service or something, you might want to leave. But if you are not happy with fund performance, it could be you either chose bad funds or simply are expecting some kind of performance that is not h...

I haven't been in the Peace Corps, but I know lots of people who have & they all enjoyed it. I didn't notice what kind of career you are looking at putting on hold to join the PC, but I'm in the Foreign Service & I think it's a pretty awesome career. It seems fairly difficult to get into it ...

Thanks. When I started I put in 10% as I wasn't sure exactly how much I could afford to save & was living in DC at the time where my expenses were pretty high. As soon as I got overseas & realized how low my expenses are I cranked it up to $654 so I can max it out. I plan to keep maxing out ...

I'm a new fed employee & have a traditional IRA with Fidelity that I had rolled over a previous 401k into. I'm not too happy with Fidelity & was planning to transfer to Vanguard. But, after reading some on these forums I realized that now that I have TSP I could transfer to it instead. Looki...