I'm currently earning about £150k/year as a marketing consultant operating through a UK Limited Company (no employees, minimal expenses). The majority of this comes through key clients who I have long-term relationships with. It's been fairly stable for the last three years, but as a consultant, there's always a sense of uncertainty, so I've been fairly diligent in living below my means.

I pay myself £50,270 a year through a mix of PAYE dividends (within the 20% basic rate tax band in the UK). The rest of my income sits in an interest-earning business account. I do not make any pension contributions, as I'm not comfortable with the idea of locking away funds until I'm 60.

My current investment portfolio is roughly as follows:

• £11k in easy access savings (4.90% with Tandem Bank)
• £139k in easy access business accounts (4.33% with Tide and 4.66% with Wise)
• £140k in Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap Index Fund (S&S ISA, benchmark 7.00%)

On average (with the above stats) I'm earning about 5.22% interest or £1.4k/m.

I'm currently living in Thailand with my girlfriend. I am the main breadwinner while she is a culinary student. Our living expenses are <100-150k baht/month (£2-3k/m), and we live fairly comfortably with this amount. We could actually reduce this with some budget planning.

My goal is to get to around £3k/m passive from investments. I'll continue to work at this point, but ideally on projects that I'm particularly interested/motivated about. If I have no work for some months, I'd enjoy the peace of mind that my investments are keeping us comfortable.

I'm seeking advice on:

​

• Tax advantages: I'm considering paying my girlfriend (who is Thai) 1m/baht per year (about £22k) for administrative support services. This will become our household income. We'll buy gold bars as a store of wealth. This will reduce my corp tax and allow me to extract more money from my business account which I am not able to take money from, unless I pay a higher rate.
• Dividends: Is it worth diversifying my investments to include dividends? I have followed the general advice from /r/UKPersonalFinance which is to invest in Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap Index Fund. This has performed well to date but I'm wondering if I'm missing a trick.
• Experiences & insights from those lean firing in Thailand