The eternal battle: how much does it cost to live in Thailand.

[NorthernRyland]

There are hundreds if not thousands of videos on YouTube alone covering the topic of what it costs to live in Thailand. Often heated debates happen in the comments and there's a general hostility towards how people are living their lives. Neither side to be willing to accept people live different kinds of lives. It really is incredible. I'm sure we've all seen it on this forum too and maybe received some yourself (I know I have).

 

I've tried to make sense of it myself and here are some reasons I can think of:

 

1) Some expats only live in expat bubbles so they are incredulous over what happens in the rest of the country and often assume the worst, "oh you only spend X baht you must be living a miserable existence".

 

2) Some expats live in the major cities where costs vary widely from the rest of the country and look down on lesser known areas, think "nakon-nowhere". Same thing happens in their home countries too so this is nothing new.

 

3) Expats are adjusted to Thailand to various degrees. A new expat who has only lived in cities or tourist areas will not be well adjusted and live a sort of ghettoized life which doesn't reflect the rest of the country (a country with a GPD per capita of 7000 USD btw) per year so it skews their perspective on what the rest of the country is actually like. Overtime their spending goes down but they may not know this initially.

 

4) People who pay for entertainment don't understand people with hobbies and how they live. If you cut out of entertainment (including dining) costs will vary widely.

 

5) General class conflict between the rich and poor which expats bring over with them. People who spend little will say the high spenders are not doing Thailand "right" and high spenders will tell the lower spenders they're living like dogs.

 

6) Age and different stages of life. Expats span kids in their 20s to people in their 70s and beyond who will have an arch of spending over their lives. You probably don't know the age of the random person you arguing with on the internet and the tendency is to assume they're like you and so you wrongly compare them to yourself.

 

7) Families. Obviously people with a family have different needs than a single person but this often gets lost in the debate.

 

For me personally I never went to bars and I rarely got to nice restaurants because they're hard to get to and it takes time. Don't really care enough basically. I don't want to live in a condo in a city or some housing project (barf). My hobbies are programming (my job too) and in the evenings I'm always cycling or I'll walk my dog somewhere. When it's dark I'm back home and that's the end of it. I'm not a picky eater so I eat what's easiest and that happens to be what local food is in the area and choices are very limited.

 

Compare that to a person in Bangkok who likes bars and the wide variety of restaurants. If you like exercise like me you don't just go outside and ride out in the mountains, now you have a gym membership. In most cities you'll probably be using a car most of the time and using amounts of fuel in days my 110cc motorbike wouldn't use in months and paying for car parking at the condo. Public transport costs and taxis will be  a part of your budget too now.

 

None of this matters obviously because we're all living separate lives but it's kind of fascinating how much hostility it causes. 

 

 

 

[Yellowtail]

I live in Bangkok, I have a wife, and a kid in uni, and I spend between 20,000 to 100,000 a month. 

[NorthernRyland]

Here's another question what is the average monthly wage in Thailand? I hear this 29,000 baht number quoted often but I don't think it's correct. GPD per capital is 7000 USD year which is 583 USD/month and currently 19,500 baht per month which sounds right to me. I did a little research and GPD per capita is pretty closely tied to average wage as I understand it.

 

I think that's tight but I know many Thai people live in generational homes and may not have rents or built homes on family land which is a one item purchase.

[NorthernRyland]

18 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

I live in Bangkok, I have a wife, and a kid in uni, and I spend between 20,000 to 100,000 a month. 

what accounts for the wild swing? Rent is probably close to 20k alone but maybe you own a property.

[still kicking]

11 minutes ago, NorthernRyland said:

what accounts for the wild swing? Rent is probably close to 20k alone but maybe you own a property.

Don't waste your time I posted many times how much I pay on rent for my 2 bedroom unit in the west and it has been always lower than in LOS

[treetops]

2 hours ago, still kicking said:

Don't waste your time I posted many times how much I pay on rent for my 2 bedroom unit in the west and it has been always lower than in LOS

 

Subsidised housing?

[HappyExpat57]

33 minutes ago, treetops said:

 

Subsidised housing?

 

More like what comes out of the south end of a north bound bull.

[Confuscious]

Example 1:
A friend of mine, 75+ years and living in Korat, is posting every day pictures about how cheap it is to live in Thailand.
He lives on a NON-O visa, Thai wife.
He purchased a house (on name of his Thai wife) and feeds the Thai family.

Yet, about 7 years ago, he start having a head ache.
He went to several hospitals, but everywhere they told him that it was nothing serious and send him off with a bunch of Anit-Biotics.
After 2 months of ordeal, he went to Belgium and was diagnosed with brain Cancer.
He got help from the FREE BELGIAN HEALTH CARE, and is now still alive thanks to the FREE BELGIAN HEALTHCARE.
He lives now 9 months in Belgium (medical care) and 3 months in Thailand.
Nevertheless, the 3 months that he is in Thailand, he keeps postiong pictures and claiming how cheap life in Thailand is.

Example 2:
A friend of mine, an 80+ old german guy, was diagnosed with AAA at the same time as me (2018).
He had no health insurance.
When asking for the cost of that surgery, he got an estimate around the 1 million baht.
He chosed to take the risk and skip the surgery.
I went to Belgium and had the surgery done in Belgium.
He died about 1 year later from a rupture of his aorta.
I am still alive and kicking.

Example 3:
A friend of mine, 75+ years and living in Korat, was posting every day pictures of the house he purchased for his Thai wife and the good life he was living in Issaan.
One day in 2023, he started to feel a bump in his neck.
He went to the local hospital (where his wife was working) and they said that it was nothing serious.
Gave him a bunch of Anti-Biotics and if he symptoms did not improve with 3 months, he would come back.
But 2 months later, the bump on his neck start to have the size of a golfball and was hurting badly (see picture).
Back to the hospital, the hospital took a sample of the bump to anaylize.
When he went 1 month later to the hospital to ask for the results, the sample was lost and never send for analysation.
By that time the bump was already very big and the only option was to remove it.
I spare the readers from the picture after the operation which costed him 400K baht.
He send me a message asking how I did it to have a big surgery in Belgium while I was living in Thailand and I answerred him that as long anyone is living on a Belgian pension that person is also registrered for the Belgian healthcare.
His answer was: "I did'nt know that. I was told that when I chose to leave Belgium I was not anymore registred in the health care".
Anyway, his Cancer was too much advanced to return to Belgium and he dies short after that.

I have a lot of examples after living 25 years in Thailand, but I will leave it here.

The cost of living in Thailand is not only the price of food and dring (and bar hopping) but also the health care and other costs which doesn't occur on a weekly or monthly base.
 

[IvorBiggun2]

Quote

The eternal battle: how much does it cost to live in Thailand.

 

How long is a piece of string?

[Yellowtail]

8 hours ago, NorthernRyland said:

what accounts for the wild swing? Rent is probably close to 20k alone but maybe you own a property.

Yeah, we don't pay rent, but some months we spend more than others. 

 

Per capita income in the US is about half per capita GDP in the US. 

 

How much does a watch cost? 

[NorthernRyland]

5 hours ago, Confuscious said:

The cost of living in Thailand is not only the price of food and dring (and bar hopping) but also the health care and other costs which doesn't occur on a weekly or monthly base.

This is another factor which causes endless debate. People can't decide if medical care is included in cost of living or not. 

 

Personally I don't include it because it's too confounding.  Some people get it free back home, some people are too young and blow it off, some people have millions THB in savings and will pay out of pocket, insurance varies widely by age anyways... etc... etc... 

 

[NorthernRyland]

24 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

Per capita income in the US is about half per capita GDP in the US. 

 

yeah so it's actually what they call the "medium family income" which is just GDP per capita x2.

 

Does anyone trust these numbers? I guess Bangkok could be skewing the whole average by having a high median? 89,000/month is extraordinary for Chiang Mai but that's the only city I'm familiar with.

 

 

 

 

I'm a  software engineer so I thought I would check. from https://th.jobsdb.com. So a software engineers earns less than the median monthly salary in the whole country? Did they include some billionaires in the numbers to juice them up?

 

 

From Glassdoor. Sadly low again. Does anyone know a persona who makes 90k/year, what do they do? I know a couple people who are near retirement in an old school company which gives mandatory raises but that's all.

 

 

 

 

 

[Yellowtail]

5 minutes ago, NorthernRyland said:

yeah so it's actually what they call the "medium family income" which is just GDP per capita x2.

 

Does anyone trust these numbers? I guess Bangkok could be skewing the whole average by having a high median? 89,000/month is extraordinary for Chiang Mai but that's the only city I'm familiar with.

 

 

No. Per capita income is an average and does not corollate (at least not directly) to median household income.

 

Per capita GDP in the US was about $86K, while median Houshold income is about $81K. 

 

Your AI numbers are suspect. 

 

 

 

 

[NorthernRyland]

1 minute ago, Yellowtail said:

Your AI numbers are suspect. 

 

I seriously doubt Thailand has reliable labor data . In other countries you can see the average income of the city you're in and that would make it easy to know what it costs to live there like the average person. In Thailand it's all over the place. People point to the minimum wage of 350 baht per day and others say "I know this guy earning 150k and there's more rich people in Thailand than you think" etc... and it goes round and round.

[NorthernRyland]

5 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

Your AI numbers are suspect. 

 

One more. Yeah What Google is spewing at the top of the page is total garbage. I'm quite confident the average salary in Chiang Mai is 20-25k/month.

 

[NorthernRyland]

1 hour ago, Yellowtail said:

Per capita income in the US is about half per capita GDP in the US. 

 

 

And by the way that would mean per capita income (which is the same meaning as average I think) in Thailand is closer to 300 USD/month, which I think is too low.

 

Annual GDP per capital is $7182 so 7182/12/2=299

[Yellowtail]

3 minutes ago, NorthernRyland said:

 

I seriously doubt Thailand has reliable labor data . In other countries you can see the average income of the city you're in and that would make it easy to know what it costs to live there like the average person. In Thailand it's all over the place. People point to the minimum wage of 350 baht per day and others say "I know this guy earning 150k and there's more rich people in Thailand than you think" etc... and it goes round and round.

One can live in Bangkok on $500 a month, and one can live in Manhattan on $500 a month. 

One can live in Bangkok on $10,000 a month, and one can live in Manhattan on $10,000 a month. 

One can live in Bangkok on $100,000 a month, and one can live in Manhattan on $100,000 a month. 

 

At $100,000 Manhattan might be more attractive.

[Harrisfan]

Rent and food/drink biggest factors. I can eat well on 200 baht or 1000 baht. Just different style of food.

 

Over 30 days 800 baht difference is 24,000. Over a year nearly 300,000.

 

 

[Yellowtail]

3 minutes ago, NorthernRyland said:

 

And by the way that would mean per capita income (which is the same meaning as average I think) in Thailand is closer to 300 USD/month, which I think is too low.

 

Annual GDP per capital is $7182 so 7182/12/2=299

Per capita income is an average but would generally include people not included in average salary data. 

 

Average salary data typically only includes people that have salaries. 

 

A six-member household with one person working and earning $60K has a per-capita income of $10K. 

[KhunLA]

Geez ... how many threads needed to discuss the 'longest piece of string' topic repeated here.

 

As many variables as someone's choice in relationship, dining, alcohol consumptions, available income, ability or desire to be thrifty.

 

Big contributing factors, which dictated 'monthly' expenses, are if all bought in (like myself), so few monthly expense.  If a cash buyer or financing buyer of all things, appreciating or depreciating.

 

Last but not least, your age & health.

 

Myself, since bought in, can easily have a comfy lifestyle on ฿20k a month.  In a relations, no dating or P4P, non drinker / smoker.  In home cooking & eating 95+% of the time.  But, out & about (O&A) quite a bit, although thrifty when possible, reference to hotels & dining.   Past week, while O&A, hotels were  high of ฿2500 (BKK) & low of ฿500 (non BKK).   I need pet friendly & secure parking.  Clean room, comfy bed & a view works for us.

 

Flip side of monthly expenses , if not bought in, single and being 'social', then I would need to spend at least that ฿65k required for retirement visa, if not heading toward ฿100k a month.  That's being healthy with no health issues, or healthcare insurance.

[Harrisfan]

3 minutes ago, KhunLA said:

Geez ... how many threads needed to discuss the 'longest piece of string' topic repeated here.

 

As many variables as someone's choice in relationship, dining, alcohol consumptions, available income, ability or desire to be thrifty.

 

Big contributing factors, which dictated 'monthly' expenses, are if all bought in (like myself), so few monthly expense.  If a cash buyer or financing buyer of all things, appreciating or depreciating.

 

Last but not least, your age & health.

 

Myself, since bought in, can easily have a comfy lifestyle on ฿20k a month.  In a relations, no dating or P4P, non drinker / smoker.  In home cooking & eating 95+% of the time.  But, out & about (O&A) quite a bit, although thrifty when possible, reference to hotels & dining.   Past week, hotels were  high of ฿2500 (BKK) & low of ฿500 (non BKK).   I need pet friendly & secure parking.  Clean room, comfy bed & a view works for us.

 

Flip side of monthly expenses , if not bought in, single and being 'social', then I would need to spend at least that ฿65k required for retirement visa, if not heading toward ฿100k a month.  That's being healthy with no health issues, or healthcare insurance.

Better than 5m Trump topics.

 

Drinks are big. Water 7 baht vs 85 baht shake. 78 x 365 is 28,470. That is 2 months wage for Thai.

[Yellowtail]

If single and rent, you figure B10-20K is about minimum for rent in Bangkok. Then B1K a day spending is doable, and B800K in the bank for visa. 

[msbkk]

4 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

If single and rent, you figure B10-20K is about minimum for rent in Bangkok. Then B1K a day spending is doable, and B800K in the bank for visa. 

No health insurance or medical expenses?

[KhunLA]

Comparisons to Thai's living expenses vs retirees is a bit silly.  Along with TH vs home country expenses.

 

Thai's living expenses & salaries are as diverse here in TH, as home countries.  Daughter as example ...

... before Uni, unskilled at Swenson's, ~฿350 a day or ~฿7,700 a month

... after Uni on 3rd job, first ฿30k to start, then ฿50k, knocked back to ฿30k

... 2nd job ฿65k a month, with long hours at 1st & 2nd

... new job ฿100k a month, now 9 to 5 w/weekends off 👍

[Yellowtail]

Just now, msbkk said:

No health insurance or medical expenses?

No, I don't have any medical expenses. 

[Yellowtail]

3 minutes ago, KhunLA said:

Comparisons to Thai's living expenses vs retirees is a bit silly.  Along with TH vs home country expenses.

 

Thai's living expenses & salaries are as diverse here in TH, as home countries.  Daughter as example ...

... before Uni, unskilled at Swenson's, ~฿350 a day or ~฿7,700 a month

... after Uni on 3rd job, first ฿30k to start, then ฿50k, knocked back to ฿30k

... 2nd job ฿65k a month, with long hours at 1st & 2nd

... new job ฿100k a month, now 9 to 5 w/weekends off 👍

350 a day full time is 10,500 a month. (30 days) 

[NorthernRyland]

26 minutes ago, Harrisfan said:

Rent and food/drink biggest factors. I can eat well on 200 baht or 1000 baht. Just different style of food.

 

Over 30 days 800 baht difference is 24,000. Over a year nearly 300,000.

 

 

These are the things that kill peoples budgets and put people in debt. If you're an American even that $9000/year could be make or break and was it really worth it? That's $23/day which is fast food meal these days in some cities.

[KhunLA]

6 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

350 a day full time is 10,500 a month. (30 days) 

I always base a month on 22 days, or 26 at the most.  She won't do the 30 day months either.

 

When I worked, last 10 ish years, it was 2 or 3 days a week, at last salaried job.  About the same when only self employed, but still earning a full yearly salary / income, ~$50k 

 

I take being a LPOS very seriously and require a lot of 'me' time 😎

[Harrisfan]

10 minutes ago, NorthernRyland said:

 

These are the things that kill peoples budgets and put people in debt. If you're an American even that $9000/year could be make or break and was it really worth it? That's $23/day which is fast food meal these days in some cities.

Coffee goes from 25 to 150. Sometimes its the little things over 5 years that make a difference.

[Yellowtail]

Just now, KhunLA said:

I always base a month on 22 days, or 26 at the most.  She won't do the 30 day months either.

 

When I worked, last 10 ish years, it was 2 or 3 days a week, at last salaried job.  About the same when only self employed, but still earning a full yearly salary / income, ~$50k 

The labor department mandates full time employees on a daily rate be paid for 30 days even if they work five days a week, and I do not doubt Swenson's complies with the law. 

 

I went to the Swenson's at the new "Bangkok One" on Rama IV yesterday. Life for an old man just does not get much better than eating ice cream in comfortable seating served by attractive, nice young girls in short skirts.