Thai Baht Exchange Rate So Low How Are You Dealing With It?

[Mitkof Island]

With the Thai baht the lowest exchange rate in over a year. I am curious how other expats are dealing with their monthly budgets. In my case had planned to buy a motorbike. Anything below 30 baht to the USD dollar everything outside survival comes to a stop. 33 to 34 baht to the dollar I can deal with that.

 

 

[jerrymahoney]

When one uses the 65k+ per month retirement extension of stay protocol, that's what one has to transfer in every month regardless of the favorable/not favorable exchange rate. Edited 8 hours ago by jerrymahoney

[Terrance8812]

34 minutes ago, Mitkof Island said:

With the Thai baht the lowest exchange rate in over a year. I am curious how other expats are dealing with their monthly budgets. In my case had planned to buy a motorbike. Anything below 30 baht to the USD dollar everything outside survival comes to a stop. 33 to 34 baht to the dollar I can deal with that.

 

 

Yes, it's not a pleasant situation. I exchanged dollars for Baht a few times-over the last year or so and built up a bit of Baht reserves. Most of the exchanges were done in the 35-37 range.
 

But I've stopped exchanging for now and probably won't do any more until perhaps the Baht loses some strength again and hopefully gets back to around 34.5 to the dollar. This might happen once the BOT starts cutting Thai interest rates.

For the moment the dollar could continue to weaken though. In just 4 months, since May 1, the Baht has gone from 37 to only 33 to the dollar. So the dollar has lost 10% against the Baht so far. But I do think it should now hold somewhere around 33.
 

My prediction during this past summer was that it would fall to 33 by the end of the year, once the Fed started cutting interest rates, but that drop happened even quicker than expected. The Baht may swing a bit lower still against the dollar, but eventually it should get back to around a base of 33 I hope.
 

The BOT should also start cutting interest rates soon too, maybe within the next 3 months, which will then weaken the Baht again and hopefully push the dollar back up a bit and back to around 34.5 to the dollar.

 

Fingers crossed we don't revisit those days of 29-31 Baht to dollar range. The 10% drop in dollar value has probably badly hurt local exports and tourism already, which are two of the biggest segments of the Thai economy. So I'm would think the government is not so pleased about the sharp rise of the Baht either.

 

Edited 8 hours ago by Terrance8812

[Terrance8812]

This touches on some of what I just mentioned:

 

 

[Mitkof Island]

After ATM fees even able to take out 30,000 baht at a time barely holding at 32 baht at the moment. But thanks for your information. You and are think about the same. What I do not understand with Thailand in so much debt for years now I would have thought the banks would have crashed already. Another bigger repeat of 1997 is on the way. Am I the only person in Thailand not in debt?

 

[IsaanExpat]

I just hope it never gets as low as 29 again. After bank had its "cut" i was taking home maybe high 27 baht per dollar. Thank goodness the Wife turned me onto Wise🤣

[BritManToo]

3 hours ago, Terrance8812 said:

Yes, it's not a pleasant situation. I exchanged dollars for Baht a few times-over the last year or so and built up a bit of Baht reserves. Most of the exchanges were done in the 35-37 range.

Me too, when it was 45-47 I built up a 6 month reserve.

[harryviking]

I am sitting on cash that should have been in Thailand already. But NO! Until the Baht depreciate at least 10 percent, it stays where it is. In a bank in Europe.

[CallumWK]

6 minutes ago, harryviking said:

I am sitting on cash that should have been in Thailand already. But NO! Until the Baht depreciate at least 10 percent, it stays where it is. In a bank in Europe.

 

Looks like you missed the boat a few months ago, when the exchange rate for most major currencies was about 10% better than today

[soalbundy]

7 hours ago, Mitkof Island said:

With the Thai baht the lowest exchange rate in over a year. I am curious how other expats are dealing with their monthly budgets. In my case had planned to buy a motorbike. Anything below 30 baht to the USD dollar everything outside survival comes to a stop. 33 to 34 baht to the dollar I can deal with that.

 

 

The Baht to Euro exchange has in the past been a lot lower than it is today and I managed OK then, also my pension from Germany has increased a lot from then so I don't have any problems with the exchange rate as it is now, it would have to go considerably lower before it affects me and I don't anticipate that.

[thaiowl]

I remember an exchange rate of Bt56 to the USD in Jan 1998!

[Pattaya57]

Doesn't impact me one bit as I transferred baht at 24.18 to A$ in July. What I always try to do is transfer at a 3 month high on XE, which will not be anytime soon.

 

Btw, good news is our 800k baht in bank for retirement visa is worth 8.3% more than 3 months ago 😀

 

Edited 3 minutes ago by Pattaya57