250 grand is enough for a life in Thailand?

IvaBigWun

Its something a frind of mine said to me recently and I find it hard to believe. He was thinking of selling his house here and, after paying off a few things, fecking off to live the rest of his life in Thailand.

He's in his mid 30's and recently broke up with his wife hence him looking for a change; presuming he lives another 40 years that gives him around 6 grand a year for hostels, travel, food and drink.

Surely its not this cheap? He's been to Thailand a few times before and claims he could do it.

gerire

Oh it is, I reckon on that he'll be grand. All he needs to do is set up some sort of import sompany bringing in cheap furniture or silk of something to Ireland to keep himself topped up. But the money goes so much further.
I spent 1500 in 1 month when we arrived in Australia, if we had have stayed in Thailand Id say that could have kept us going for atleast 3-4 months, which by your calculation of 6k for a year leaves it very close to what we were spending.

m1ke

250k in a deposit account would yield about 8000euro interest a year..... which is more than enough to live well on in Thailand. The cost of living there is about 5 times less then here, so it would be like living in Ireland on 40k a year, except in a low price economy.

Dave!

Wow, that's really cool...!

Seymour

I was in Thailand for a month in 2003. Well actually i was in thailand, Laos and Vietnam for that Month. I had 2 grand euro going over. Lived like a king, great hotels, great meals. did loads trekking etc, flew from Laos to Vietnam and then form Nam back to Bangkok. I couldnt spend my money. I ended up splashing what i had left on tailor made suits, shirts and jeans.

If you are going to just Thailand i would say 1500 euro per month to be comfortable but you could survive on 1200. Every time i travel (and im in Canada right now) and cash starts to dwindle im always gona be prone to think...why not go to Thailand for a few months and blow the rest. Its probably what ill do when i finish here.
To top it all off its a great place

Rcuomo

yea he'll be grand, just get an english teaching job to supplement it a bit...even in a place like thailand i'd say doing nothing for the rest of his life would get boring....

IvaBigWun

m1ke wrote:

250k in a deposit account would yield about 8000euro interest a year..... which is more than enough to live well on in Thailand.

What kind of deposit account would yield such high income without having to spend any of the lump sum?

Thanks for the replies so far, I thought he was winding me up!

vibe666

a friend of mine lives in thailand with his wife and son, and he built a 4 bed (english style) house on an acre of land on a beach in Surat Thani for just over £30,000 (GBP) and spends his time coming and going from the UK with imports/exports of various (cheap) kinds.

it very much depends on hwo you want to live. when we were there, we could have lived on about £5 (maybe €8) a day, with rented accomodation, but we decided to make the most of it and live it up, and spentr close to €6k in 2 weeks, getting loads of tailored clothes and stuff, which we really needed.

so, the long and short of it is, yes, no question about it. if you wanted to really budget, you could do it for less than €4k a year, but you'd be missing out on a lot fo the fun stuff that makes thailand so popular.

the other thing is, if you want the best value for your money, make sure you go outside of Bangkok or the other tourist traps and you can economize even more.

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lomb

but the 250k would be knackered from inflation within 10-15 years. if he wanted to do that, hes best renting his house in ireland or selling it and buying a cheap apartment in dublin city and renting that and living off the rent of it. that way if he changes his mind in 2 or 5 years, he still has his 250k inflation protected and the rent will pay his way there.

ronbyrne2005

lomb wrote:

but the 250k would be knackered from inflation within 10-15 years. if he wanted to do that, hes best renting his house in ireland or selling it and buying a cheap apartment in dublin city and renting that and living off the rent of it. that way if he changes his mind in 2 or 5 years, he still has his 250k inflation protected and the rent will pay his way there.

the apartment could loose its value too in 10-15 years! i'd use the 250k to buy several properties in thailand where they are cheap compared to rip off here and live off the rental income.

lomb

ronbyrne2005 wrote:

the apartment could loose its value too in 10-15 years! i'd use the 250k to buy several properties in thailand where they are cheap compared to rip off here and live off the rental income.

nah property rises with inflation. history tells us that inflation is in the up direction. true he could buy there, but from what hes saying re travelling i doubt hel b buying anything. 250 grand will be nothing in 15 years. id say the average lucan type house will be 1-1.2 million in 15 years conservatively.

the reason i suggested dublin city center was that it will be rent 100% of the time, supply is strangled from lack of space, and demand for rental accomodation is virtually gauranteed.

Dave!

Sorry to bump this... I was sure that I read in this thread someone saying that you could buy a house of some sort in Thailand for around €3,000, but after looking again I don't see it... Did I imagine it?

Can anyone fill me in on that? Like you say, it's a cheap country, and someone mentioned his friend built a 4-bedroom house for £30,000 (maybe that's where I got it from) -- but how much would say a 1 or 2 bedroom place cost, in an area that's not littered with crime or anything?

Cos I mean, if that luxurious house only cost £30,000, then a cheap 1 or 2 bedroom place could probably go for £5,000 or so...

Anyone got experience in this?

Cos if you could get a place for €5k or so, then that'd be amazing! Like if I were working full-time in Ireland and earning around

400 a week
-75 rent
-100 expenses
225

225 x 45 weeks = €10,125

That's no money over here, but I'd love to just be able to buy a place in Thailand and leave it there, maybe rent it out or something, and then just go over whenever I want and always have a place!

Anyone got any experience in this? Is it possible?!

Thanks folks

Dave!

jeez, just doing a bit of googling, and there seems to be alot of strict laws to make it difficult for foreigners to own land in Thailand...

empirix

DaveMCG is right, there a lot of very strict laws abot Farang (foreigners) buying places in Thailand, most that do it, find a good Thai woman and put it in her name, the danger there is if she divorces you, the gaff is hers, this has happened to many an english expat, particularly in Pattaya, some of them find themselves lost in disbalief that this thai woman they loved could just walk out on em and demand a divorce, many have threw themselves off apartment blocks cause of this.

I know in Phuket fairly recently a big apartment complex was built and it was advertised to the farang market, so things might be changing.

The cost of living in Thailand while compared to here is dirt cheap, but it gets dramatically cheaper if you can speak the lingo, the average wage in Thailand is about 6000 baht per month which is the grand total of about 120 euro.
The goverment has recently introduced a pension scheme, whereby when a Thai retires tey will get 1000 baht per month, i asked my thai friends how could they live on that and they replied, if the worst came to the worst they said it would be handy to survive on that living in the villages around Thailand, not the cities such as Bangkok, Phuket etc.

So if your mate learns the lingo, he would live very weell for the rest of his days on 250k, no doubts about it

Shep Smythe

Great place, Thailand. heehehehh

SS

clk

interested in property in thailand


check out

http://www.rimtalay.com

IvaBigWun

empirix wrote:

DaveMCG is right, there a lot of very strict laws abot Farang (foreigners) buying places in Thailand, most that do it, find a good Thai woman and put it in her name, the danger there is if she divorces you, the gaff is hers

I cant see him taking the chance there. Thanks for all the info so far. I'll forward this thread to him.

DaveMCG is right, there a lot of very strict laws abot Farang (foreigners) buying places in Thailand, most that do it, find a good Thai woman and put it in her name, the danger there is if she divorces you, the gaff is hers

There are a number of Aian countries that allow Pre-Nuptuals to be legally binding, so just draw one up in another country. The Marriage certification and legally binding pre-nup would hold regardless of what country you're currently in. To be extra safe, have the deeds/rights to assets held in trust/safekeeping in another country.

Sorted.

nitrogen

Everything empirix is true alright.

I lived and worked in Thailand for a year and visit almost every three months. Let's clarify a few things. A foreigner can not own land in Thailand, it must be in the name of a Thai. He / She may own a condo though.

A office employee (Whether it be Programmer / Sales) gets between 15,000 B - 30,000 B / Month (300EUR - 600EUR). Remember, this is work for people who have degrees and years of experience. That will give you an idea on what the cost of living is like. However, farangs tend to spend much more by indulging in western treats.

You are forgetting one big problem about jetting off to Thailand to live for the rest of you life. You only get a 30 day stamp on entering Thailand, you can keep crossing the border every 30 days or get a longer tourist visa (60 days). However, you'll have problems doing this visa run every 30 days for how many years? You will need a job, even if you have the cash to live there, you will need a visa.

Taksin's government is getting much stricter on farangs living in Thailand, it's not getting easier.

Yes, you could get a house for 2 million Baht, 40K ish EUR. This would be a standard Thai town house and nothing could compare back home. You wouldn't get anything for much less than this. Well, you would but...

nitrogen

Rcuomo wrote:

yea he'll be grand, just get an english teaching job to supplement it a bit...even in a place like thailand i'd say doing nothing for the rest of his life would get boring....

Long gone are the days where any foreigner can teach English. Most schools now aren't just happy with a TEFL, even when one also has a degree. You'll actually need to be a qualified teacher.

Even then, the money would still be crap compared to Japan or S Korea.

empirix

Yeah Nitrogen, i was thinking that alright i wasn't sure if the laws recently changed on the property etc, as for the visa thing, also very true but i think there must be a way around it as i have met a lot of expats/sexpats living there and i'm sure one of them mentioned a way around this, just recently on my way back from Oz i spent a month in Thailand and i met an irish guy from Raheny, he was 48 and he married a 22 year old Thai girl(who was a cracker even compared to other thai girls, anyways), now this guy had some money behind him but i am sure he mentioned something, i was well on the way to a land of haze at this stage, Is it if you marry a thai girl then you qualify for some sort of long term visa, i am only guessing here though.

OP - your mate could lease a little bar somewhere, while he would have to put up with the odd bit of corruption here and there, he would still make enough to get by on living in Thailand and this will cut out the visa runs(as far as i know)

over n out

mise_me_fein_V2

He's gonna have to fork out quite a bit for a wife

nitrogen

The thing is, even if you marry a Thai and have kids there. Your visa still depends on your job and you can only get a max of 1 year.

It's a great country but I wouldn't thing of ever settling there! A refugee in Dublin has more rights than a legal working foreigner in Thailand.

There's so much truth in this article, It's not all pretty faces and blue skies.

IvaBigWun

nitrogen wrote:

There's so much truth in this article, It's not all pretty faces and blue skies.

That article comes across as very over the top tbh

nitrogen

IvaBigWun wrote:

That article comes across as very over the top tbh

Have you lived there?

hedro

I just came across this thread and thought I would put my opinion up for any one who was looking at this later.

First some background.

Moved to Thailand in 1999 and returned to Ireland in late 2004.

€250,000 will be around 11 million baht, you could live on that quite comfortably for about 10 years allowing for inflation maybe a little less than 10. If you wanted to go 'native' and live in a small house in rural thailand you could probably strecth it to 15 or 16 years.

If this is for the rest of our life, we're not really expecting a long life are we?

Can you make this work?

Take your 250 grand and first of all set up a company, this sorts out niggiling little issues like visas and banking regulations. Now go and buy some condos, you want about 4, one for you to live in or use as your base for travelling around and you want to rent out the other three.

You can buy apartments with tenants already in them and this is better as it gives you cash flow from day 1.

Monthly Income:
You are renting out three condos getting on average around 16,000 baht a month each in rent. you want the rents to be paid into the company and the company to pay you a salary equal to 80% of the rents. This gives you a monthly income of around 40,000 baht, just enough to have a work permit issued. As you wont be paying rent on your condo this will give you a pretty nice life in bangkok.

Fringe Benifits of this system are that there is nearly always work to be had in BKK, the hard part is being able to do it legally, as you have your own company and work permit you should be able to get involved in some business over there with out too much trouble.

Allthough it only works out at a return of about half a percent a year your principal is relativly untouched, just tied up in property.

Having looked at the numbers that I just worked out, I would personally perfer to do this with 500 grand and get a higher monthly income. The song says that one night in bangkok makes a hard man humble, but that humbling is damn expensive

Tony

Alkers

Ha, excellent first post, welcome to boards.

hedro

Simona, thanks for the welcome.

Just a quick follow up -

The Thai government have decided that you need 60,000 baht to get a work permit issued now.

They have decided in their infinite wisdom that you as a foriegner should live in a certain level of comfort and the cost of that comfort is around €1,250 a month.

So you really do need a little extra to go for more apartments another 4 million baht (€110,000) should do it.