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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing how much money one needs to retire in Thailand. In a recent article from Thai Visa that is thaivisa.com, the article is titled: Study Reveals How Much Money You Need to Retire in Thailand. Quoting directly: "Anyone thinking about retiring to Thailand should have the equivalent of around 11 million Baht in savings; approximately USD 390,000 dollars. That is according to a news study on the cost of retirement around the world. Apparently this is from online lender NetCredit, the study was titled: The Cost of a Comfortable Retirement Around the World. 

Quoting further from the Thai Visa article: "The study found that a person retiring to Thailand would need $389,835 in savings in order to maintain the same standard of living they were used to in the west."  I urge folks who are interested in this, that article is titled: Study Reveals How Much Money You Need to Retire in Thailand. That is at thaivisa.com, there is a lot more information in there.

I wanted to go ahead and cite this article because I definitely think that is a pretty erroneous statement. I think it depends, again to quote: "same standard of living they were used to in the west." Well what does that mean? The fact is moving to Thailand you are not going to have the same standard of living and that can be very good in certain ways. I know folks that find it a little difficult. One thing I do see is a lot of expats, they never really quite factor in that they really do have a taste for Western food and Western food can be a real issue with respect to cost of living over here. Now depending on where you live it might not be any issue at all. For example Pattaya, there is a lot of or as someone pointed out Pa-tay-ya; you know they say I pronounce it wrong sorry but it is just my English. That is how I say Pattaya and I am sure I will get burned in the comments for that. 

Long story short, if you go down to Pattaya, the food down there is plenty of Western food; Bangkok has plenty of Western food that is not overly expensive. Now there is a great spectrum of food choices and one thing I do hear a lot of retirees tell me is one thing they really didn't quite see coming and threw them for a little bit of a loop was "yeah I do like having a steak every once in a while; a little more often than I figured I would like and I do spend a little bit more on Western food than I ever thought I would", but other than that, I really don't think 390,000 dollars is required, just saved up in order to retire to Thailand. Again, it is going to be circumstantially factually dependent on one's overall financial situation. If somebody has a good pension coming in, maybe savings is less of a concern. If someone has no pension coming in which is pretty rare but it can happen, savings are going to be a real issue. Again it depends on the circumstances but bear in mind that standard of living in the West, well it is not the same here. Just for example, not having a car, that can have a tremendous impact downwards, a deflationary impact on one's budgeting because it is just not a requirement. That is just one example. Not to get into this too much but again it should be noted for Retirement Visa purposes, one needs to be able to show a balance on a yearly basis of 800,000 Baht basically for half the year. As a rule of thumb, just call it six total months out of the given year and then 400,000 Baht year round so it can never go lower than 400,000 Baht but for 6 months presume it needs to stay at 800,000 Baht just to be on the safe side. So that is definitely short of 11 million and then on top of that, there are going to be ongoing expenses, rent etc. but is this going to be dependent on your circumstances. Again having a pension will sort of offset some of the savings issues but it is going to depend on how one wishes to live and again that stand of living that they are used to and want to maintain here in Thailand.