Pattaya sees rise in independent Chinese tourists amid decline in group tours

[WhiteCadillac]

Beware of the banks trying to sell you very expensive financial products.

If you are not 100% sure what they are offering, don't do it. Here in Thailand the legal protection for a financial customer are a lot weaker than in the West, and the fine print doesn't have all the information required to make a sound decision.

Our experiences:

- opening a safety deposit box would have required us to sign up on a 6 figure savings on an investment scheme with unknown costs (in the West these are superexpensive, probably even more expensive here)

- Bangkok Bank required us to keep 5000 USD at their 0% interest foreign currency account as a minimum so that they would not close the account. We checked ourselves and the minimum account was 300 USD and got it reduced, but we still lost on interest and on the effort

- Mutual Funds - if you have a high balance they might approach you with their mutual funds which can be very expensive

- Beware of savings schemes offered by AUA and other insurance agents. The costs are enormous, and a poor fellow we know lost all his savings because he couldn't afford to keep paying 2500 baht a month. So the fellow lost almost 100 000 baht of savings. How fair is that? That couldn't happen in the West.

Edited December 16, 2010 by WhiteCadillac

[cardholder]

Not wishing to sound ungrateful, but do we really need a post telling us the blindingly obvious ?

Are Thai Visa members not capable of working this one out for themselves ?

[manarak]

Not wishing to sound ungrateful, but do we really need a post telling us the blindingly obvious ?

Are Thai Visa members not capable of working this one out for themselves ?

apparently not, which speaks volumes!

and I am now considering going into the financial counseling biz... looks easy enough with the right customers

[WhiteCadillac]

Thai people are fooled every day into very bad expectation financial deals.

Even a person I know (Westerner) accepted a financial program that only 0,9% interest. Turned out it was per month, not per annum.

There are so many gullible people in the world, and they need to be warned.

Fool and his money are soon to be parted. Especially here in Thailand.

[aussiebebe]

Mutual funds always have management fees and few actually outperform the index. That last point about not combining insurance with savings is good advice. You should never do that, but many Thai companies offer it!

[asiawatcher]

Buy gold, it continually rises and its liquid and convertible easily at any time. Home safes these days are very sophisticated, unable to be moved easily and are secure if you don't boast you have one! Gold has gone up 300% since 2000 in Thailand in Baht weight so that is 30% p.a. - far better than .5% at the bank! And far better than gambling on stocks manipulated by Wall Street and crooked banks.

[danbradster]

Buy gold, it continually rises and its liquid and convertible easily at any time. Home safes these days are very sophisticated, unable to be moved easily and are secure if you don't boast you have one! Gold has gone up 300% since 2000 in Thailand in Baht weight so that is 30% p.a. - far better than .5% at the bank! And far better than gambling on stocks manipulated by Wall Street and crooked banks.

Past performance does not indicate future performance, especially for gold.

[jfchandler]

I'd give kudos to the OP for his post, and a slap to the initial response who criticized it...

Too many people have no good knowledge of how to properly or even safely manage their finances... And words of caution and warning can never be said too often...whether the audience is Thai or farang... There's always going to be some people in the audience who will learn something good from it.

I've been listening online to a consumer oriented talk radio show from the U.S. lately, the Clark Howard show... nationally syndicated... And daily, there are people calling about how they're received this or that offer in the mail or online where they've won $100,000 or such, and they just need to send $1000 or such for processing or handling or some such charge...

You'd think people would know better. But there's a regular stream of callers who think they've suddenly gotten rich, and just want to check to pay sure it's an OK thing before they send off their money... Never ceases to amaze me... And those are average Americans..... not even average Thais, who presumably have even less financial sophistication.