The toughy - how much money I need to have before R2I? (as of 2012)

This is a tough question to answer but let me give this a try. The usual response would be - that depends on a person's lifestyle but let me try with the current cost of living in a city like Bangalore.

Main cost (like in Western countries) is the housing. Next comes the transportation, kids education, food etc. Let me break those up further with some specific numbers...

Housing: Assuming a decent locality and closer to IT hubs,
- If you are going to rent, it can vary from 15,000 to 30,000/pm. 
- If you are going to buy a site and construct, estimate would be atleast from 60lakhs to 1 Crore (assuming a 1500 sq ft apartment or 30x40 site)
- If you are going to buy an apartment, estimate would be from 70lakhs to 90 lakhs

Transportation:
Using public transportation like usual buses wouldn't be an option. These days lots of techies use the A/C Volvo buses in Bangalore that BMTC has provided and that works nicely if you are staying closer to the bus connection.
- If you are going to buy a car, it would cost you from 7 lakhs to 12 lakhs.
- If you are going to take an auto, daily cost would be anywhere from Rs 100 to Rs 200

Kids education:
- If the kids have grown up in US, don't consider regular schools at least for first few years. Any good international school costs at least 1 lakh/kid (this is normally including the transportation). It can go up as high as 3 lakhs/year.

Food etc:
- Here it depends on lifestyle, i.e, how many times you eat out, what type of resturant is considered decent etc - note any average buffet in a decent resturant starts around Rs. 200 these days and can go upto Rs. 800! (and I am NOT talking about Leela palace here!). With two kids, your normal grocery bill would be in the range of Rs. 2000 to Rs. 3000/week.

Household expenses:
- This would be for house maid, driver etc. You can budget Rs. 1000-2000(based on the home size) for the maid and Rs. 7000-8000 for the driver, if you keep one. Add an extra Rs. 3000 or so, if you are going to have a cook(part time).

So, all in all, assuming you are renting, your monthly expenditure would be something like this:
Rent: 20,000
Car:   5,000 (petrol only)
Kid(1):   10,000
Kid(2): 10,000
Food etc: 10,000
Household:10,000
Misc:  5,000
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Total:    70,000
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Head spinning already looking at the numbers? No kidding, that's right, Bangalore is an expensive place to live! Assuming your after-tax take home is @ Rs. 1 lakh, you would have a bit of savings for those yearly travel plans! (I am conservatively assuming 1 lakh but based on your experience and whether single person or two people are working, it could be much higher). However, the numbers here are assuming 2 kids - you can subtract around Rs. 20,000 if you have one kid.

Now, back to the topic of how much R2I savings you need before you head back. As you can see, the earnings you do here can comfortably take care of expenses with some left as savings. So, the funds you need to consider is the amount needed to buy/construct a home once you are back here + the savings you need to keep back there (say, for kids higher education, assuming they will be back for studies or some funds for you re-start if you return back). After returning as R2I, it makese sense to own your home rather than rent or have a home loan. As I said earlier, the own home would need anywhere from 60 lakhs to 1 crore at the minimum. Assuming current rate of Rs. 55 for a Dollar, that would be $150,000. You will need some funds for initial expenditure like buying a car, home appliance etc, which could total upto Rs. 15 lakhs or so. So, add another $25,000 for that. So, your total R2I needs are $175,000.

If you are keeping back another $125,000, that would total up to a savings of $300,000. Of course, you can do R2I with much less, if you are going to take a home loan here (which will reduce your savings here) or don't plan to keep savings back where ever you are. Also, the investments you do in India(like real estate, life insurance etc) can be done based on your earning potential here and normally there isn't a need to account for that.

In summary, you can start R2I with a savings of $300,000 or so. This is just a guidance figure, your mileages may vary significantly :-)

Internet connectivity options

Back after few days of break or has it been more than a month! 

Thanks to all the readers for provided feedback aksed questions or gave comments - very much appreciated. If you have questions/doubts, pls don't hesitate to ask - I have been in the same boat a year ago and have made it so far here :-)

One topic that I had questions/doubts and didn't get clear answer was about Internet connectivity once I reach here and afterwards. For techies like us, Internet is like water, can't live without. Also, gives the option of working from home, which is valuable when whole family is trying to settle down. Have tried couple of options so far and listing down some feedback that could be useful...

Two main options here: DSL based versus Data Cards(also called USB Dongle here).

DSL based: 
Airtel and BSNL are the two main players in Bangalore. Airtel may not be available in all of the areas and apartments unless they are wired but most of the places have BSNL connectivity. Once we were in the apartment, getting AirTel enabled was easy - called them and the service man came in a day or two, gave the DSL modem(I had to buy that from them), configured it (he even offered to configure the wireless router but didn't have a 110V supply for that one yet). Internet was enabled in few minutes.

It is a pain to work with BSNL though like any public sector - and BSNL is known to be one of the 'better working' public company! Haven't seen that 'better' part yet. BSNL has to deal with pretty low skilled labour (like linemen) and that is where the problem lies - most of the tech people are good and can resolve issues, configure your modem etc) but these linemen who has to enable the line to your home or put a new line are pretty 'old' fashioned. Only option is to physically load them to your vehicle and get them to your place. Otherwise, they simply won't show up. And after 2 months of usage, our DSL bill is not yet generated! So far, the connectivity has been ok - not much dropped connections, eventhough the DSL modem(which worked fine with AirTel DSL) sometimes gets hung when used along with the wireless router and VOIP phone. Hasn't been consistent enough to start debugging yet. AirTel was pretty solid when it came to connectivity and consistent speed. BSNL speed is ok as well and I can work pretty smoothly with remote servers.

Data cards: 
Many choices here with varying degree of speed and consistency. Have tried Tata Photon, MTS and AirTel and AirTel has been the best so far. Getting them is not too difficult but once you have some type of address proof. When we relocated last year, got the Tata Photon - government mandates photos and address proof documents and they do a address verification as well. If you have started renting, this is one of the reasons to have a rental agreement - it will come in handy in many places like driving license, electricity, gas connection etc. Some renters may not be too keen in providing this but you MUST and SHOULD get the rental agreement with address mentioned. If you don't have a rental agreement, passport works as well(you might be surprised but even a expired, cancelled passport copy can work as well in some cases!). The first card I got was Tata Photon - speed wasn't that great at all but gave me connectivity at e-mail level.

Since we moved after a year, wanted the data card again when we establish the Internet at new place - this time only BSNL was the option. Tried to get the old Tata Photon activated again. I was asked to visit their retail shop in Koramangala, visited them in the evening and what a horrendous experience it was. They made me wait 2 hours (all the while 5 support people where crowding around a desk and chatting) - just to tell that it will take few days for them to re-activate it. There were lots of people waiting and frustation level was pretty high - really surprised to see a Tata owned high tech setup working in such an inefficient way. Droped the idea of renewing that card. Gave them a piece of mind before heading out.

Next was AirTel - got the card from office since they had a corporate deal. It was suppossed to get enabled in a day but took 2 days - for some reason, the card was marked as 'inactive' and had to wait until that was resolved. Address verification happens later on. Once the connectivity was enabled, it was easy to connect and speed was very good. They promised 7 MBPS but was consistently getting 1.5 to 2MBPS, which was good enough for our usage. There is a data limit of 6GB or so per month and with full family using internet, you would reach that limit easily. After the limit, speed drops to 512KBPS, which is useless anyway. If you are on the pre-paid plan, you could possibly recharge as and when you need but the cost will add up to be more.

Parallelly tried MTS as well - once of the worst so far. They offer to come and check the speed in the area before you buy. Was in a hurry and bought it as-is. I don't think I ever saw more than 0.5MBPS on that one. Connectivity was consistent but speed was not something we could work with. Stopped it after using for 2 months.

Only issue with data card is - multiple people using it at the same time. I am sure there are wireless modems that can handle a USB card as well but you need to run an application before you can connect. My wireless modem has a USB slot but haven't yet figured out how to connect. If you have some experience, pls drop a comment. I am sure that will come in handy for many folks.

There are other options like Wi-MAX from AirTel (where an antenna is placed in the home itself) but haven't explored those yet.

Also, another word of advice - if you are moving, get the new data cards at least 2 weeks before the move - this is so that the companies have time to do address verification. If the verification doesn't happen because you have moved, card will get disconnected and you will be left dealing with customer support reps!