It is too hard to spend money in Thailand, and this issue is getting worse and worse.
Firstly, I need to explain, and before that I need to apologize. Some will see this post as incredibly arrogant, others will see it as pathetic, others will see it as fake, or whatever. The purpose of this post is simply to highlight an important issue in Thailand that I simply cannot bring up anywhere else. There is no real public forum for expats in Thailand that Thais will listen to, which is probably by design. Nonetheless, the issue I want to highlight is one of the pointless frictions that keeps this country’s economy back. I know no one will listen or care, but I think this needs to get documented on the off chance one clever Thai journalist who actually cares about the country’s economy can bring any of the myriad growing issues in Thailand to the surface.
I believe I am one of those highly sought after “quality” tourists in the eyes of the Thai government, not because I’m a good person (I’m not) but because I am wealthy. I’m in the top 2% of wealth and 10% of income earners in the U.S., and living full time on a Thailand Elite visa in Thailand I spend about 3m thb per year on living excluding what i spend on that visa and excluding multiple trips outside of Thailand (I’m only here about 9 months out of the year in total).
I do not look at prices and do not care about them, at least in Thailand. I pay my maid triple the market rate, I happily buy heavily tariffed imported cars, alcohol, and so on—I consider all of this a small price to pay in the scheme of things, and it’s too insignificant an amount of money for me to pay attention to. As a result, I’m a perfect mark for scams—but since i avoid tourist areas and have been here a long time, I’m not prey to them. I do overtip, though—taxi drivers never get less than 100 thb, masseuses never less than a 80% tip, wait staff will always get 20% tips even if there’s a service charge, and so on.
People like me contribute significantly to the Thai economy, and the Thai government has many times said they want more people like me: high earners to spend a lot in the country. I am doing precisely that, but I’m starting to spend less and my spending is likely to continue to decline.
Why? It started with clothes. Clothes are very poor quality in Thailand unless one purchases designer brands—but since I can get those abroad anyway at a lower tax rate, why bother?
Then it started with 7/11. I know this sounds bizarre, but compulsive stops to the shop to buy a snack or drink is no longer a part of my lifestyle. Why? I, like many others, have switched to digital payments, but I still am not sure which mobile payment app works with 7/11 (is it true money?), but my bank doesn’t work there so I don’t go there anymore.
There are many things these days that I would buy but do not because the digital payment process is a firction point that I, in my old retired years, am too lazy to deal with. I’m fine, thanks.
Then there’s the online shopping mega-apps, which I probably can’t name on this forum. Both have been deleted from my phone after too many fake and defective items. Which motivated me to start buying products from the large and well respected department stores owned my multi-billionaire households in Thailand—except here, too, I end up overpaying by several thousand baht as I’m given the wrong item (in one case), or I end up waiting weeks for the delivery for no real reason.
Wait times for delivery are another issue that has made ecommerce more miserable. Again, why not just wait for the next time I fly to Europe and just buy everything there? Not only will it be cheaper, but the stress of fretting over quality isn’t there anymore.
Hiring a bilingual personal shopper obviates many of these issues, and I have indeed tried this. Briefly. I grew up poor and still am unaccustomed to having enough money to do things like this, so it felt odd—but more importantly, it was too much of a hassle. My former shopper was great, but suddenly my life was a frustrating game of telephone.
We’re talking about small potatoes now, so let’s get into financing.
I have a Mercedes CLS, not the most impressive car, but it is very comfortable and I like how it looks. A pricier car would be more comfortable and would have been my choice, and I am not even opposed to paying double or more of what it’d cost in America or elsewhere. However, I am opposed to paying all of it at once and not having access to the low financing that partly compensates for inflated sticker prices on cars. I acknowledge this is more of a temperament issue than anything, but surely I am not the only high net worth individual who feels this way and who would consider Thailand as a base.
For houses, this issue is exponentially compounded. There is a 135m thb house I nearly bought a couple of years ago. The issue of having such a large amount of assets in another person’s name is daunting, and that I would have been happy to counteract that risk by having a Thai institution’s skin in the game. If, for instance, a bank lent some of the money on this house, that bank would be as eager as me to insure that whatever legal structure used to purchase and occupy the house would indeed stand the test of time.
There are many legal ways to do this (leaseholds, Thai companies), and I even found a pathway that I was comfortable with and did mitigate the risks, as long as, from my perspective, a Thai bank had some collateral on my purchase of the house. A 20% LTV mortgage should, in theory, be absurdly easy to get, especially when the monthly payments reflect a small percentage of one’s income. These kinds of financing arrangements are very common with large property purchases (I used to work in this field so I know they are common). The only way I could arrange this is with a non-Thai institution, which doesn’t satisfy the risk management requirement I put in front of me.
So, not only is the 3 million baht I spend annually in Thailand dwindling because it’s harder for me to buy snacks, and not only are my relatively large purchases dwindling because buying cars, cell phones, and nice clothing is emotionally exhausting and overly time consuming. I am also withholding literally millions of dollars of foreign direct investment with zero expectations of a return (I’m hardly planning on renting my house out and wiring the puny income to America); if I’d bought the house and then died before selling it, that would have been millions of dollars injected into the Thai economy literally for free.
I wonder if, perhaps, this is the issue. Thailand’s injection of foreign cash for really very little return—we just want nice beaches and pina coladas for the most part—is part of what has kept Thailand’s economy inefficient and poor moving. Whatever the reason, this post is a little historical document about how Thailand has effectively cost itself millions of dollars in foreign investment. This is not a debatable fact—I am the one keeping those millions from Thailand! What is debatable is how many of me are there, and how many billions of dollars Thailand is losing out because of its immature and ineffective management, both in government and private industry.
