This is an edited version of several postings I've made recently on the RetireCheap.Asia forum, which has been a rich source of useful information for me about all things Thailand for the past year now. I've received numerous expressions of gratitude in reply to these posts there, so I thought I'd share some of this information here as well, in case anyone might be curious. ("JC" below refers to the creator/owner of the RetireCheap.Asia website and forum, whom we've met with several times here in Thailand).
I thought I’d share some budget
information, since there seems always to be interest in this topic,
and understandably so. I know Scott has shared his info, which is
highly detailed and of great value. I’d like to share something
less detailed but I think still of interest to at least some folks on
this forum.
We all know about JC’s “categories”
of budget for Thailand: 1 ) US$500-750; 2) US $750-1000; and 3) over
US$1000 per month. People on a Category Three budget can live pretty
much any way they wish, because money is not an issue. I’d go so
far as to say that people on a Category Two budget can pretty much do
the same.
What I’d like to share, and really to
re-iterate and to validate, has to do with the possibility of living
in Thailand, comfortably, on a Category One budget, which always
seems to arouse doubt. I believe this doubt is aroused because the
people who do the doubting probably wouldn’t be able to see
themselves living comfortably on a category one budget. Fair enough.
I’m here to testify to the truth that may be applicable to others,
such as Nancy and me.
We’ve been traveling around and
living in Thailand now for just shy of six months, and we’ve done
it consistently, month after month, on a Category One budget. When we
left the US last October, I had set a budget for us, in Thailand, of
$1500 a month/$50 a day for both of us (not for each of us). We’ve
come in consistently below this monthly figure, even in Pai, our most
expensive location for 5 weeks, because we allowed ourselves to enjoy
the natural and health foods available there, and were willing to pay
the higher farang ("foreigner") prices for these meals. Nothing else there has to
be meaningfully more expensive, so if you weren’t interested in
this diet, you’d have no trouble spending less than we did.
Our expenses have included all the
basics: food, with eating ALL meals out – we’ve cooked literally
one or two meals the entire time we’ve been here – accommodations; transportation – we rent a motorbike by the month;
train and bus fares, songthoau’s, a very occasional taxi, in country flights - splurge
groceries items, local market shopping; we typically wash our own
clothes, although we did use a laundry service once for about
250baht; electricity, wifi, drinking water, phone, even more or less
regular massages, travelers insurance; and even
“fun” activities like an all day snorkeling outing which cost
$70/2400baht for the two of us.
In other words, we haven’t been
scrimping every penny, but we haven’t been eating 1000 baht
meals either. We’ve lived in one room mostly, but not always. And
we’ve discovered that for about the same amount of money that we
pay by the month, or somewhat more, we could be renting a one bedroom
cottage with a living room and a bedroom and a kitchen and a
bathroom. We will likely do this on our next round. Our needs are
very modest in comparison to many people, and what we need in order
to feel comfortable is probably less than many. Of course we want a
clean and roomy place, which we’ve always had – we don’t like
to be cramped, especially in one room; we want nice managers, which
we’ve also always had; we want to be within walking distance of
where we like to spend time, like the beach for example, or
restaurants; and we want regular cleaning service. Other than that,
we can be pretty satisfied with little else.
Here are some daily/monthly summaries
of our expenses in the places we’ve spent time:
Chumphon/ThungWua Laen Beach: $39/day
or $1170/month
Cha-Am: $43/day or $1290/month
Chiang Mai: $38/day or $1140/month
Pai: $48/day or $1450/month
I've discovered that our monthly budget of $US1500 taken
over six month’s time even includes “extras” like:
*medications $200;
*US Consulate fees of $100 for our sworn affidavits for non-o visa
application;
*visa fees of $115 and our visa helper person fee of $170;
*an exploratory first trip to Pai for a couple of nights $110
*a little “vacation” to Cha Am for three nights $150;
*a couple of car rentals (from friends in Chiang Mai, so cheaper
than the commercial rates) $40;
*fees for our retirement extensions and our multiple
re-entry permits in Chumphon of $340;
total of about $1225 over six months, or an average of a little
over $200 a month. Because our average daily expenses were
consistently under budget, this $200, or about 6800 baht a month got
absorbed into the overall monthly $1500 or about 50,500 baht, keeping
us still within the maxed out limit of our monthly budget.
Of course personal preferences and needs will determine what choices anyone makes regarding spending money. It would be very easy to imagine spending even less than we have, without much effort. It's rarely any challenge to imagine spending more.
