Chelsea
Working in Bangkok
Monthly Earnings 23,000 (before insurance)
Q1. How much do you earn from teaching per month?
My full-time salary is 23k from a vocational college in Bangkok
Q2. How much of that can you realistically save per month?
Hahahahaha
Q3. How much do you pay for your accommodation and what do you live in exactly (house, apartment, condo)?
My apartment (with bills) comes to about 8,000 - 9,000 baht per month.
Q4. What do you spend a month on the following things?
Transportation
Transportation is my lowest expense as I live within walking distance to my school. Screw Bangkok traffic.
Utility bills
Utilities are expensive because my apartment owners are terrible people
Food - both restaurants and supermarket shopping
Food is my biggest expense because teaching is very stressful and I eat a lot (I'm only partially joking)
Nightlife and drinking
I spend nothing, because I'm too busy to go out.
Books, computers
Nothing.
Q5. How would you summarize your standard of living in one sentence?
Could be better. Could be worse.
Q6. What do you consider to be a real 'bargain' here?
Food, I suppose.
Q7. In your opinion, how much money does anyone need to earn here in order to survive?
To survive, 25,000. To actually enjoy life, 35,000 up.
Phil's analysis and comment
Oh Chelsea, Chelsea, Chelsea (and that's not a football chant by the way) I'm not sure how you do it.
Chelsea hasn't supplied any concrete figures but we don't really need them. Let me do some maths. 23,000 baht a month minus 9,000 for her apartment and she's left with 14,000 baht. That's 466 baht a day. As we say in England - it's a tenner! And from that 466 baht you have to feed and clothe yourself, etc. In Bangkok!
Surely living like this can't be better than the life and possibilities you left behind. It can't be. Surely those 35k jobs are out there if you look hard enough (as I'm sure you are already)
Submit your own Cost of Living survey
