Chris
Working in Bangkok
Monthly Earnings 35,000 baht
Q1. How much do you earn from teaching per month?
My government school salary is just under 35K a month. I very occasionally do private lessons as well but that wouldn't amount to more than 2,000 - 3,000 even in a good month. My full-time job tires me out enough.
Q2. How much of that can you realistically save per month?
Virtually nothing. If I have a month where I manage to save 5,000 baht, I'll spend it the following month on a weekend away or something.
Q3. How much do you pay for your accommodation and what do you live in exactly (house, apartment, condo)?
I live in a 5,000 baht a month studio apartment with lots of nosey neighbors around me. I bet everyone in the building knows that I bought a plant on Saturday morning. I've been to friends' apartments that cost double what mine costs. You don't get a place to live that's twice as good, you get somewhere that's TEN times better! Renting accommodation at the very low end of the scale in Bangkok is not something I would ever recommend but I do it because I don't budget for more than 5K.
Q4. What do you spend a month on the following things?
Transportation
Very little. Less than a thousand a month. I live a short bus ride away from the school but sometimes I walk if the temperature is comfortable. I have to start work at 7.30 am so I'm often leaving the house well before 7.00 and it's still fairly cool at that time.
Utility bills
The building owner makes it up as he goes along, then he gives the figures to the reception staff, who double it and add the date in. Joking apart, probably about 2,000 baht a month. It seems a lot to me because I don't turn on the air-con that much. Perhaps the a/c unit needs a good service.
Food - both restaurants and supermarket shopping
I came out to teach in Thailand for a year and I did a lot of research on costs of living. The cost of eating well in Bangkok has really shocked me. Breakfast (a coffee and a snack) will cost me 60 baht a day. For lunch and dinner, I will seek out what I call tier 2 Thai restaurants, where the food is far better than street food, but still costs about 80 baht a dish. With a fruit smoothie that gets bumped up to about 130 baht. There's 10,000 baht a month on food right there and we're not even at the w/end.
Nightlife and drinking
I wish. Those wild nights out on Sukhumwit cost far too much for me. I'll have a couple of beers with teaching colleagues at a Thai bar instead. Even doing that a few nights a week adds up to 4,000 - 5,000 a month.
Books, computers
Not a lot. I have a smartphone like everyone else does but I tend to use the ancient computers at school.
Q5. How would you summarize your standard of living in one sentence?
It's a day to day existence. No more than that.
Q6. What do you consider to be a real 'bargain' here?
Bus fares are very reasonable as are taxi fares. So getting around the city never really costs you an arm and a leg.
Q7. In your opinion, how much money does anyone need to earn here in order to survive?
Honestly? I wouldn't want to come and teach here again for less than 60,000 baht a month. That's enough for a better apartment and to have the money to travel and to see some of the country at a certain level (decent hotels, etc)
Phil's analysis and comment
Chris also had the following to say and they make some interesting footnotes.
"One thing that people forget to factor into these cost of living surveys Phil are all those horrible non-food supermarket items that you invariably need to buy on a regular basis. And they are often quite expensive. Last weekend for example I bought a can of shaving foam (250 baht) razors (125 baht) a can of air freshener (125 baht) hair conditioner and shampoo (300 baht) and cleaning stuff (200 baht) I find there's always one weekend in every month when all that kind of stuff seems to run out - and replenishing them is not cheap at all.
If I can add something else to the monthly food spend section as well. I'm amazed at how pricey Western food is here. I really don't know how teachers on a similar salary to mine can afford it. A meal at Burger King can easily set you back 300 baht. Places like Pizza Hut and Sizzler are even more expensive! When you're playing around with a budget of around 700 baht a day, to spunk more than half of that daily allowance on a pizza or burger (and an average pizza or burger at that) is just ridiculous"
Thanks Chris for a very honest survey. Someone commented on the ajarn facebook page today - "I don't know how people survive in Bangkok on 40K a month" (and that's 5,000 more than you earn Chris) In another comment, a teacher said "40,000 baht a month is becoming the new 30,000"
I don't think we're at the stage yet where we can label Bangkok as 'an expensive city' - but we are certainly getting there.
Last April I was in New Zealand - in an affluent little town called Nelson - and I got chatting to a very nice, middle-aged lady who ran a jewelery stall on the footpath (interestingly, Scottish comedian Billy Connolly was a regular customer she said) Being interested in the cost of living in New Zealand and how much people earned there, I was surprised to hear that this jewellry seller seemed almost to exist on the breadline. She used McDonalds as an example. "I go to McDonalds once a year on my birthday. I class McDonalds as a treat that I can't normally afford"
I felt genuinely sorry for her but here we have Chris - a teacher in Bangkok - in exactly the same boat wouldn't you say? Except one is struggling to survive in her native New Zealand and Chris is experiencing the Asian dream / adventure. If you believe the hype that is.
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