Chris
Working in Bangkok
Monthly Earnings 171,000 baht plus bonuses
Q1. How much do you earn from teaching per month?
I work full-time at a top-tier international school and my salary is actually 117,000 baht plus £1194. Plus I get a two-month bonus every two-year contract.
Q2. How much of that can you realistically save per month?
I save about 14,000 baht of my baht salary and all of the £1194 (which is the equivalent of about 54,000 baht)
Q3. How much do you pay for your accommodation and what do you live in exactly (house, apartment, condo)?
I pay 27,500 baht a month for a house located on a main street and not actually in a Thai moobarn. It's not in the city centre either.
Q4. What do you spend a month on the following things?
Transportation
I own a cheap old pick-up and a scooter on which we spend only 200 baht a week on gas because we are within walking distance to the school I work at.
Utility bills
Utility bills are usually broken down as 3500 - 4500 baht on electricity (direct to the board) as we use air-conditioning all night,. 699 baht on cable internet + 600 baht for an expat TV package. Mobile phone is PAYG at 699 baht x 2. Water rate is only about 120 baht a month I think plus a large water cooler bottle at about 50 baht
Food - both restaurants and supermarket shopping
Food we cook mostly ourselves and use local produce from the outdoor market to make mainly Asian dishes so around 2000 baht a week. For that we eat well and always have fruit, chicken offal and breast for our dog, fish, prawns etc. Every other weekend we might eat out but somewhere fairly affordable and Thai style so add another 500 baht a week to cover that. We take packed lunches for work so no extra cost there.
Nightlife and drinking
We are a married couple so if we have drinks, it tends to usually be Leo beers on a Friday night after work on our porch. We go out with friends in the city maybe once a month, but that comes out of 'personal money'. For 'personal money' we allocate 10,000 baht each a month for personal spending on non-mutual things. This works well in keeping control of our spending.
Books, computers
Nothing really.
Q5. How would you summarize your standard of living in one sentence?
Question is answered below in Phil's Comments section.
Q6. What do you consider to be a real 'bargain' here?
Eating out, petrol, manual labour (mechanics), lack of road tax / council tax etc
Q7. In your opinion, how much money does anyone need to earn here in order to survive?
It really depends on your goals and where you are going to live. If you are not trying to save any money I would say nowadays you would need 50,000 baht as as a minimum if you indulge in even just a few western luxuries and a budget trip someplace every holiday. You could get by on less, as many Thais do, but you would need to make sacrifices.
Phil's analysis and comment
How would Chris describe his standard of living? He had the following to say -
"Thailand is still cheap, but not as cheap as it was even four years ago when we arrived. I would say we have a good standard of living and do not need to worry about money despite saving around half the salary. Saving for a deposit on a house back in the UK was our goal when moving abroad and despite only one salary we have managed to save more than we intended.
We do have to holiday more frugally, using AirBnB and eating at local places which we enjoy more anyway. We decided to not live in a moobarn to save on rent and we love Thai food so completely changed our cooking to Asian food. We love cooking and found that the presumption that it is cheaper to buy cooked food than cook yourself does not hold true for us as. We eat much more healthy and cheaply as we cook enough for lunch the next day.
Compared to our colleagues we do not indulge in the expat lifestyle we could do as you really could live like a king out here on a top tier school teaching salary but would not be able to save to the levels we have over 4 years"
Nice survey Chris and you're earning about what I would expect for someone teaching at a top tier international school and not just a school that has the word 'international' in its name. There are plenty of those around.
So, I had to get the calculator out for this one. Chris's base salary is 117 baht + a portion in pound sterling which amounts to another 54,000 baht at the current exchange rate (I bet you would love to see that exchange rate creep back up to what it was a decade agao Chris? You could afford to buy two houses!) If we factor in the two-month bonus every couple of years, sprinkle on a bit of grated cheese, then we arrive at a total package of around 185,000 baht a month. Nice salary but what I would have expected.
Chris, I haven't met or known that many teachers from the top tier international schools, but you could be the most frugal I've ever heard of. And that's fine. Nothing wrong with a man who knows the value of a dollar. Your nice house in the UK is the prime target so good on you mate.
And as for your comment - "when you cook at home, you eat so much better compared to eating outside" - I couldn't agree more!
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