Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing budget retirees. These are folks who they don't have all the money in the world to spend on their retirement but they do have some nest egg saved up; they are here to retire and they have some savings. The question posed is, "Is Thailand still the number one place for Budget retirees?" 

I would say yes for a variety of different factors most notably presently I don't know of any other Visa program on Earth that really rivals Thailand's standard Retirement Visa program, either the O-A or the O. The O is even less onerous than the O-A and quite honestly the O-A has pretty minimal requirements associated with retiring here in Thailand. You compare this to other jurisdictions where you actually have to pay in the money, you actually have to pay for your Visa, or the threshold, the financial thresholds are substantially higher than that of the standard O Retirement Visa. For those who are unaware, those who want to maintain an O Retirement Visa on a long-term basis - year-on-year basis - have to prove up that they're either maintaining 800,000 Baht in a Thai Bank Account, bear in mind that's not money given to the Government, to the state, that's just your money on balance in a bank here in Thailand, or they need to show 65,000 Baht per month in pension, some sort of pension income coming into Thailand. 

There is also a category and I have gotten into this before where there is sort of a mixing capability - as a practical matter not really, I have never seen Immigration Officers apply that - they want to see one of the other. They want to see that you meet, clearly meet either the lump sum or the pension income in some form. They need to see that and they need to see banking documentation associated therewith. That said, that is a pretty low bar. I mean what is that? US$23,000 at the present exchange rate 800,000 Baht, somewhere around there, or roughly US$2,000 a month coming in in terms of pension and you can get a yearly redeemable Non-immigrant O Retirement Visa that allows you to remain in the Kingdom.

I can't think of any other jurisdiction that has the levels of infrastructure, standard of living, cost of living that Thailand does and still has such quite honestly reasonable requirements, economical requirements I dare say, for maintaining that long-term status in a financial sense here in the Kingdom of Thailand.