Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Retirement and Marriage Visas. I thought of making this video after reading a recent comment on our channel, quoting directly: "Am I better off with a Retirement Visa or Marriage Visa when I move to Thailand?" Well yeah, good question. It depends on your circumstances. 

As we have noted in other videos, the financial requirements associated with the Thai Marriage Visa are lower than the financial requirements associated with the Thai Retirement Visa. Thai Marriage Visas require 400,000 Baht in a bank account or 40,000 Baht per month coming into a Thai Bank Account in some sort of income. It could be a pension, it could be offshore income whatever. If you are working in Thailand then you need to have a Work Permit so the income associated with that is pretty easy to deal with. Meanwhile, the Retirement Visa requires 800,000 baht in a Thai Bank Account and/or I shouldn't say and, but or 65,000 per month coming in in a pension, in terms of income coming into a Bank Account. 

The question posed is which is better. Well I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but it depends on your circumstances. In my opinion the Marriage Visas can be a little bit more cumbersome because there is a great deal of extra scrutiny associated with them. As we have discussed in other videos, there were times in the past when a lot of scams were perpetrated attaining to those "married" to Thai nationals. Basically they were engaged in sort of sham marriages associated with setting up Marriage Visa status for folks here in the Kingdom and as a result of that that is a ton of extra scrutiny associated with Thai Marriage Visas that quite honestly don't exist with respect to the Thai Retirement Visas or I should say comparatively, there is way more scrutiny for Marriage Visas than Retirement Visas. At the same time, it is a lower financial criteria so again, folks are going to have to do their own balancing act with respect to which one is a better fit for them and again this might be a situation where you may want to contact a legal professional, gain some insight and guidance into how best to proceed.