Jamie
Working in Bangkok
Monthly Earnings 60,000
Q1. How much do you earn from teaching per month?
I work at a private all-girls school and my take home salary is 38,000 (500 baht / hour) but I teach private students two hours a day six days a week.
Q2. How much of that can you realistically save per month?
Around 10,000 baht. I'm terrible at saving up because I like my comforts.
Q3. How much do you pay for your accommodation and what do you live in exactly (house, apartment, condo)?
I pay 5,000 a month for my room in a three-bedroom townhouse in Huai Khwang, sharing with one other person.
Q4. What do you spend a month on the following things?
Transportation
1,500 baht a month or so. I use my Honda PCX to get around and it's a handy little scooter with tons of storage space for teaching materials
Utility bills
Utilities come to around 2,500 baht a month for air-con, water and internet
Food - both restaurants and supermarket shopping
I think food is my biggest expense because I grew tired of Thai food after a year here. I can spend up to 1,000 a day on Western, Korean and Japanese food. Why eat a small plate of stir-fried food and rice when I could have a nice sushi platter or delicious beef cheeseburger?
Nightlife and drinking
Close to zero. I don't drink much, at most two bottles of beer a month
Books, computers
I buy one or two books a month as I don't have much time to read with all the work I did. I recently bought a new laptop for 15,000 baht plus some accessories.
Q5. How would you summarize your standard of living in one sentence?
My life is comfortable but busy. It seems that in order to have a fair life standard as a teacher here (in most cases) you have to do private tuition work, and use up your free evenings and weekends. Sometimes it's not worth it for me.
Q6. What do you consider to be a real 'bargain' here?
Food. If I was in the UK eating what I do here, I could easily spend twice as much in a day.
Q7. In your opinion, how much money does anyone need to earn here in order to survive?
Certainly at least 50,000 a month. Anything less and you're just getting by. Teaching is meant to be a professional career, and as such, one expects to live like a professional with a comfortable living standard.
Phil's analysis and comment
The cost of food within these surveys is beginning to interest me more and more. It's sometimes a monthly expense we 'overlook' and yet we all need to eat and the costs can mount up considerably depending on your tastes and cravings for Western food, etc.
Jamie earns a comfortable 60,000 baht a month but private lessons six days a week means he only has one full day off. I've never felt that one day is enough. I worked six days a week myself for many years but it finally dawns on you that life is becoming al work and no play.
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