Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing timing of financial requirements associated with Retirement Visa Extensions here in Thailand. I thought of making this video after getting a recent email from a viewer, according directly: "Hi Ben, thanks for your interesting videos on Thai legal matters. Regarding the financial requirements for said Retirement Visas I was given the attached document this week in Hua Hin Immigration Office. The rules now seem to require the money to be in the account for 2 months before and 3 months after the Visa approval. So you could say you need to have 800K that you can tie up for 6 months. This requirement is from Immigration not the bank." And he went ahead, and again hats off to you sir, I'll leave you nameless, but thanks very much for the email, much appreciate it. 

I'm going to go ahead and put this on screen; he sent this as well. So this is, again let's be clear, each Immigration Office in Thailand has slightly differing administrative protocols so they will basically administer Immigration law in slightly different ways, and they take different takes, or I should say they have different interpretations as to the rules. But basically, and the thing to take away from this video is that Thai Immigration in different offices may do different things but this is a pretty good rule of thumb if they are giving a handout on this. More to the point, it's not the financials themselves I am getting into with this video, it's the fact that you are having to hold this in the account for specified periods of time. 

Let's also be clear, before I get a lot deeper into this, we do deep dive analysis in videos that I make on our paid news service, Integrity News Service. If you are interested in that, please feel free to email us, [email protected], I'll get you on the email list for that; it is long form content. Also while I am talking my book, worth pointing out that my better half and I set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok, Pancake Palace, breakfast anytime as well as American Diner style food, links in the description below for our location. We will be happy to see you there. 

That said let's get into this. I'm going to put this on screen. Again this was sent by a viewer, and this is apparently from Immigration in Hua Hin directly; go ahead put this on screen. I'm going specifically under part 6 here: Proof of financial statement.

- A certificate letter from a bank and copy of saving or fixed account book in Thailand which shows at least 800,000 saved in the bank account for the past 2 months, also 800,000 baht must be saved in the account for the whole 3 months after the visa is approved, after that the applicant can withdraw the money from the account but there must be" - I think they mean - "must not be less than 400,000 baht in the account." So that is the important thing to take away from this video. It appears that not only is this being done sort of in a discretionary ad hoc manner, Immigration at least in Hua Hin has gone out of its way to write up basically a sheet that shows the rules or what they interpret the rules to be as of the time of this video regarding timing of maintaining the bank balance as 2 months prior and 3 months after the Visa is renewed for an ongoing extension. 

For those who may have a little bit of déjà vu about this, you may remember some, gosh, I can't believe it's this far back now, but it is going back almost 10 years ago, back to about 2017, '18, '19 when the "Big Joke" era at Immigration was in full swing and there was heavy scrutiny on bank balances associated with Retirement Visas, these were similar criteria that were put on folks through Immigration at that time. Also important to point out, as the viewer who wrote the initial email pointed out, this is coming from Immigration directly. This is not coming from the bank. The banks are their own kettle of fish quite frankly, and honestly I have real problems with the way the banks have been doing things with regard to this issue. But as discussed in other videos, certain Banks, let's call them certain “Big Banks” here in Thailand - not all of them by the way - those who are interested in information about Banks which are not imposing rather onerous requirements associated with immigration and getting an account with one of those banks, it may not be a terrible idea to contact us. 

But that said, moving forward, these are not bank requirements, these are Immigration requirements associated with maintaining an ongoing bank balance in order to maintain ongoing Retirement Visa Extension status here in the Kingdom of Thailand.