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As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question, "How much do you need to retire in Thailand?" I thought of making this video after reading a recent comment on one of our prior videos. Quoting directly: "Please do a video discussing how much is reasonable as a nest egg to retire in Thailand. Many are trying to live on $2,000 a month." 

Okay, I am not going to get into 'this amount works, that amount doesn't', that is not going to do anybody any good and quite honestly, it is not good analysis. Let's go ahead and look at what the requirements are for just a standard O or O-A Retirement Visa. You are looking at, you either need 800,000 Baht in a Bank Account or you need to show 65,000 Baht per month going into a Thai Bank Account in order to justify both application and extension of either an O or an O-A Retirement Visa. There is your baseline: 65,000 per month, it is about 2 grand. Yeah it is possible to live in Thailand on 65,000 Baht a month, no doubt about it, especially a single retiree. Probably not a big deal; renting, paying and in certain areas probably not even 10,000 a month but here in Bangkok I mean it is not going to be the biggest most spacious, nicest apartment but you will probably be able to find something for 10-15,000 Baht a month to just rent. Again it is not going to be the highest end thing. Then after that you have got your living expenses. 

My major sort of thing that I would tell people to watch out for, my major tip if you will and maybe this isn't a tip but just my thinking after watching this over the years is there is no real set amount and the other thing is the folks that I have watched over the years that really have just ratcheted it down to like an exact amount of money and then they in their own resources really have no more than that exact amount, whatever that exact amount is, often times don't fare very well here. And, I have seen a lot of folks that are in that position, it is sad, it's really sad to watch and it's not fair either. I am not saying I agree with this or I like this but they oftentimes will find themselves in a situation where they can no longer maintain their standard of living. I saw this happen to a lot of British folks when the Pound to Baht exchange rate started going in a different direction to what they were used to; this is going back like 10, about 10, 11 years ago. I saw it really in sort of writ large, a lot of British folks, the Baht against the Pound started moving and those folks had budgeted based on Pounds and they had budgeted based on the cost in Thailand as they were that moment. There is also inflation in Thailand on top of everything else. 

The thing to take away from this video, 2,000 bucks a month is not unrealistic but at the same time I really don't think it is wise for anybody to come into Thailand to retire or to do business and to just say 'I can only spend exactly this every month' because that is just not how life works. There are going to be unexpected things that come up. A lot of single guys also come here presuming they are going to stay single and that often doesn't always happen and when you take on a partner, you take on a significant other, take on a spouse, that's going to immediately change your arithmetic as far as what you have to make it in Thailand. 

So what I would urge people to understand and what I would urge people to think about and take away from this video is, yeah in theory I think two grand a month will probably get you through; 60 to 65,000 Baht a month yeah, you can do that, I think it is definitely doable on that but you need to think out ahead 10 years from now, and do you think in 10 years that same amount of money is still going to do what it does today? That's hard to say. Again what I would urge people to think about is not so much an exact amount of money more as sort of one's lifestyle based on one's budget and to kind of do that in such a way that is less focused on a specific number and sort of more focused on the big picture.