Bill
Working in Petchaburi
Monthly Earnings 50,000+
Q1. How much do you earn from teaching per month?
I have a target of 50,000 baht per month and I would say I reach that target most months with a combination of private language school work, corporate teaching and on-line teaching.
Q2. How much of that can you realistically save per month?
I don't really save any of that. I have a nest egg that I built up from working in the UK and I have a decent pension on top. Teaching is something just to keep me busy and I figured that if I can make enough to cover my living costs here, then it's all good.
Q3. How much do you pay for your accommodation and what do you live in exactly (house, apartment, condo)?
I have a very nice townhouse with a decent-sized garden that I rent for 12,000 baht a month. It's probably way more than you need to pay to rent a house in this part of Thailand but it's a very comfortable house. There is plenty of room here for when I get family or friends visit me from England.
Q4. What do you spend a month on the following things?
Transportation
I have a pick-up truck and a small scooter and probably spend about 3,000 a month on gas. There are also repairs of course that you have to take into account but they are difficult to quantify on a monthly basis. I use the pick-up to travel to a handful of corporate jobs and I use the scooter for zipping around locally to places like the market and local grocery store, etc. You need to have your own transportation where I am because it's pretty remote.
Utility bills
I very rarely need to turn on the air-conditioning because the environment is so green and fresh. My monthly utility bills rarely come to more than a couple of thousand baht.
Food - both restaurants and supermarket shopping
From Monday to Friday, I exist totally on Thai food and packed lunches (usually sandwiches and a salad) but at the weekend, the wife and I will drive down to Cha'am or Hua Hin and sometimes do an overnight stay. I will generally eat Western food three or four times over the course of a couple of days. So Monday to Friday I can eat on 100 baht a day but at the weekend, that will go up to several thousand. Let's say 12-15,000 baht for food.
Nightlife and drinking
As I said, we usually spend the weekend in Hua Hin or Cha'am but I don't really do the nightlife thing. I'm tucked up in bed with a good book well before 11 pm. The money I spend in these places goes on food rather than beer.
Books, computers
I'm a big book-reader and I probably download four books a month from Amazon onto my Kindle. Probably around 1,000 baht a month depending on if they are new titles or not.
Q5. How would you summarize your standard of living in one sentence?
It's a strange situation because I'm in my late fifties and seriously I don't need to work. I could stop all the teaching tomorrow and still live well. I started teaching purely as 'something to do' so I offered to do a few hours at a local language school. Students liked me so I got more hours. Then a couple of local companies asked me to come and teach their staff in the evenings. I've ended up probably way busier than I ever wanted to be but it's nice to have teaching cover your basic living costs.
Q6. What do you consider to be a real 'bargain' here?
Compared to the UK, just about everything. I went back for a holiday recently for the first time in five years and I honestly don't know how people survive. I was astounded by how expensive life in Europe has become.
Q7. In your opinion, how much money does anyone need to earn here in order to survive?
Out here in the sticks, I could survive easily on 30,000. Even less if I downgraded my living accommodation. My weekends down by the beach probably double my overheads - but I couldn't do without them.
Phil's analysis and comment
Wow! Nice one Bill. You often hear foreigners of a certain age say 'make your money elsewhere and THEN come to live and enjoy Thailand. And that's exactly what you've done.
I think this is the classic example of a farang who moves to a remote part of Thailand (but not too remote) and becomes the go-to English teacher. I imagine Bill to be a friendly, chatty sort of guy who everyone likes and once word got out that he did a bit of English teaching, everyone wanted a slice of the action. "Will you teach my two small children?", "can you come and teach my staff after work on Tuesdays and Thursdays?" - and before long word of mouth becomes the best marketing tool and things start to snowball. The only thing to keep in mind is that your time is money and you don't end up working for shit and grins.
But the very fact that Bill could stop any time he wanted and still live well is an enviable position to be in. It certainly takes the pressure off.
And although Bill lives in a quiet and rurual area, he's got the busy seaside resorts of Cha'am and Hua Hin just down the road. It's like having the best of both worlds! This is a guy who's really hit it right.
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