Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are posing the question, "Can you live in Thailand for $800 a month?" Well I thought of making this video after reading a recent comment on one of our prior videos, quoting directly: "I figured this out. I turn 50 this year and could be the guy you described but instead I drive a school bus 9 months per year and enjoy a 2- 3 month holiday in Southeast Asia. Too many YouTube videos say you can live in Asia for $800 per month. Not so fast, LOL." 

Yeah a couple of things going on here. First thing I would say is to quote Chris Rock from a stand-up special he did years ago, I am kind of showing my age here, I'm pretty sure it might have been even in the 90s, he once said "hey, you can drive a car with your feet; it doesn't make it a good idea." Yeah, you can do a lot of things in Thailand that I am sure are possible, it is probably possible to live in Thailand even as a foreigner on $100 a month. Now it is probably not going to be up to whatever standards you are used to in the West, but it might be possible. I can definitely see a scenario where somebody could live in Thailand on $800 per month. It's definitely a possibility. I think this is the wrong way to think about it though and I don't mean this in the sense of "oh you're just trying to bag on folks that don't have the budget or something!" Not my point at all. In fact we deal with clients across all spectrums of the sort of socioeconomic ladder, whatever you want to call it and definitely we try to find solutions that are as reasonably priced as we can find. This isn't so much a video talking about like legal work or something this is just sort of generally 'can you live on 800 a month in Thailand?' Yes, the short answer is you can but in my experience just from observation as a practical matter, this again is not the best way to think about it because when you sort of set an arbitrary number and say I am going to stay under that, one, you are kind of cutting yourself off from a lot of experiences. Another thing is boy life tends to throw curve-balls. For example the pandemic and more appropriately said, the response thereto, resulted in a lot of unforeseen problems for a lot of expats in Thailand and if you had been budgeting on just a precise amount, when that set of events rose up you could find yourself in a really bad position. 

The point I am trying to make with this video, yes it is possible to live in Thailand very, very reasonably as far as a budget goes but it is better to take a holistic look at what living in Thailand is like; look at the totality of everything; try to figure out how often you are going to want to eat Western food; how often are you going to want that quarter pounder which by the way costs 3 or 4 times more than just a standard plate of Thai food, just off the top of my head that sounds about right. My only point being that sort of setting an arbitrary number is not the best way to look at budgeting yourself and living long-term, especially long term. If you are looking at it from the standpoint of like a term or it is like 'I am going to go to Thailand, I am going to stay there for 6 months, I am going to live on 800 bucks a month'. I see backpackers that effectively do that all the time. They set a budget, it's very reasonable, I hesitate to say low but it is an economical budget and they stick to it. Well they stick to it because they are on a fixed period of time. If you are coming here to live, if you are coming here to live here long term, I just don't think that's the right way to look at it, that's the right way to think about it.