Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing exchange rates in the context of retirement in Thailand. Most folks who come to Thailand who are retirees, they are either on a fixed income or their income does not fluctuate very much. They are basically not earning income, they are sort of living on a passive income and whether or not that is fixed, it tends to not like sort of go up exponentially. So the issue of inflation obviously becomes an issue and I was originally going to make this about exchange rate and inflation but I'm going to save inflation specifically for another video so stay tuned for that. 

In this video though we are discussing exchange rate with a little twist on inflation. So what we are talking about, different nationalities over the years I have noticed sort of ebb and flow. For example years back, when I first came to Thailand 15 years ago, a lot more British folks were here in Thailand especially retired in Thailand or just living long term in Thailand. Far fewer are here now and I suspect that has to do with the relative strength of the British Pound. When you are dealing with again sort of a fixed income or passive income these exchange rate fluctuations can be substantial. I remember being here in 2011 when the Baht to Dollar exchange rate sort of inverted and the Baht was down around like 28 and change against the Dollar and man it had a heck of a bad impact on American expats, American businesses out here; it wasn't good at all. American retirees were having a heck of a time because their Dollar went a lot less further than it once had.

For now I think, at least into the immediately foreseeable future, I don't think exchange rates are going to be a major problem but as we are seeing, the world is sort of reorienting in terms of supply chains, economic relationships, the sort of unipolar moment is coming to an end or it seems to be and where does that leave us? I know there are a lot of folks out there who are very worried about the Dollar reserve status and all this kind of thing. I personally believe that Dollar is probably going to remain relatively strong compared to the Thai Baht into the foreseeable future and by that I mean at least through this year, probably longer. I am not overly worried about the Dollar per se. That said, in the longer term it may be a concern to some folks. Meanwhile other currencies which may not have I don't know, may not have some of the strengths like the dollar has or even the Euro, depending on the circumstances, some of these currencies may have some real problems and that can have a tremendous impact on a retiree here in Thailand. In some cases it can be a boon. Every now and again you will see a currency, I remember the Australian Dollar got very strong years back and there were a number more Australians here and Australian retirees seemed to be having a good old time. 

So one of the things associated with being a retiree here I think is kind of being able to go with the ebb and flow of the overall exchange rate.