My mother-in-law recently received 200,000 baht from a life insurance policy. For her, this is a huge amount of money. My wife asked me where her mother should put the money. My wife wanted me to invest it in the US stock market for her. Unless the account is actually owned by my mother-in-law and not by me (for tax reasons) I don't want to do that. I suggested she use the money to buy a few rai of farm land and that she have someone else work the land and share the profits with them.

What would you suggest knowing that my mother-in-law doesn't know how to read at all and lives in a rural southern village?

Put it in the highest intrest account you can find (in Thailand) and give her the savings book to look at occasionaly.

I'm sure just having that much money will be a great comfort to her.. bless her.

Buy lottery tickets....sorry, just kidding. Buying some land, would be the best ideea, even if that land won't be worked on, we all know that the land price is growing and it can not get vanished or anything like it...

Land. At the very least, it's permanent. With a little luck, who knows, they might cut a road through it and then she'll (or more likely her children or grandchildren) be laughin'.

Put some aside in a high interest account as 'rainy day' money amd buy land with the rest. It's always best to have a few baht easily available for unforeseen occasions.