Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing lump sum versus income in the context of Thai Retirement Visas. I got to thinking of this when reading some recent correspondence from somebody who sent me an email after discussing the 800,000 Baht requirement for Thai Retirement Visas. 800,000 Baht requirement; what I am talking about there is that it be kept in a lump sum amount in a Thai Bank Account. Quoting directly: "Very good. I think the 800k Baht is a good idea. Let's face it, you get people who are more likely to buy things in the community and spend money on tourism and can take care of themselves." So yeah, I mean me personally, I don't really have a preference. I can see where there are folks that prefer the income requirement; there are folks that prefer the lump sum requirement, and they just simply depending on their circumstances, they go with what works best for them. That is always a good idea by the way; go with what works best for you. 

The thing to take away from this video and kind of what we are going to get into just briefly here is which is better. It kind of depends. The one real downside I have seen over the years with income is when exchange rates wobble, they kind of fluctuate or just something unforeseen happens and there is a hiccup if you will in one's income coming into the account and that hiccup being it is not meeting the 65,000 Baht threshold either due again to exchange rate issues; maybe there is an issue with their pension and just something happened and it just didn't come through one month and they had to deal with signing something and rectifying some discrepancy to get those funds to flow back in, whatever. I could kind of see where all things considered because with income you are constantly concerned about getting that amount of money in there whereas with lump sum it is just a one-off deal and if you just keep it in there, it just sits there. 

Again, different people are going to have different priorities with respect to this and different people's circumstances are going to dictate a different methodology for how they go about dealing with this. I have seen more issues over time with folks maintaining status via income compared to lump sum, but again it may be because lump sum just simply isn't an option.