A Look At Our Thailand Budget

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.