currency-risk

HCMC is the cheapest of the launch cities on the daily basket and the structurally hardest to age in. The slow VND tailwind does not save it. The visa stack, the frozen UK pension and the friction stack do the work.

Chiang Mai sells the lowest burn in the brochures, near $1,500 a month. The honest figure is the crossover age — a frozen pension and a flat baht pull it in.

There is no single 'FX decline' but a currency-by-country matrix, and one cell has no defence. The 18-year carry of a sterling and a dollar pension.

Two identical UK pensioners, two Southeast Asian countries, one pension frozen for life. The sourced decade of what the freeze has already cost.

The retire-abroad budget is a snapshot sold as a trajectory. A transparent 25-year drawdown model, every assumption shown, the year the margin hits zero.