Mark
Working in Bangkok
Monthly Earnings Around 60,000 baht
Q1. How much do you earn from teaching per month?
I earn 40K a month as a primary school teacher. Plus another 13-14K a month from corporate gigs and 7-8,000 from private students (who thankfully cancel quite often)
Q2. How much of that can you realistically save per month?
Not much at the moment! Maybe 20,000 baht a month. Things will get better this year when the car is paid off. Right now gas prices are really low, so that's a big monthly saving for me.
Q3. How much do you pay for your accommodation and what do you live in exactly (house, apartment, condo)?
I designed and built a large house in the country and borrowed some money from a Thai bank to do it. The mortgage is 9,800 baht a month.
Q4. What do you spend a month on the following things?
Transportation
This is the big one - car payment, gas and insurance about 15,000 baht a month. Sounds like a lot, but I travel a lot for work. The commute to my school is 500 kilometres a week! My other jobs require trips to Bangkok (I live in Ratchaburi.)
Utility bills
Electric, internet, and others add up to about 5,000 a month. This figure also includes street lighting, pool maintenance, water and security.
Food - both restaurants and supermarket shopping
Another big one, but entirely discretionary. About 5,000 a month. I have a nice kitchen and I cook a lot.
Nightlife and drinking
I never go out and I don't drink.
Books, computers
I'm a gadget nut and I love computers so that accounts for my 'fun stuff/hobby' spending. Difficult to say how much but probably 100,000 baht a year.
Q5. How would you summarize your standard of living in one sentence?
Perfect, I work at a reasonable pace and make a reasonable living. If I was in the UK/US I would have to work a lot harder and I would still never get what I have here in Thailand. I keep waiting for the dream to end and someone to tell me to wake up and sod off back to England. Life couldn't be better.
Q6. What do you consider to be a real 'bargain' here?
Property prices. Prostitutes... so I've been told.
Q7. In your opinion, how much money does anyone need to earn here in order to survive?
It varies and this question is impossible to answer. Some people can live very happily on half what I make and others would struggle to pay their bills. I'm smack dab in the middle, I think. If you are looking to move to Thailand, you should aim to be making at least 40,000 baht a month within a year of being here. 50,000 baht within three years. When I lived in Bangkok I earned more money, but I hated every second of it.
Phil's analysis and comment
Although Mark has put down 60K as his monthly income, I guess it's probably closer to 50K in a lot of months when those private students or corporate gigs start cancelling (December is probably a prime example) But as I've said many times before, private students, and to a certain extent corporate contracts, are the icing on the cake. Never ever factor them in as 'guaranteed monthly income' but enjoy the extra disposal income in a month when it all comes together and no one cancels.
I always had a love/hate relationship with private students. I used to teach a teenage brother and sister every Sunday for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Oh man, they were just the dullest students you could imagine. I think I only agreed to accept the job because I got on well with their father.
However, on the very rare occasion they used to cancel, I would punch the air and literally dance a jig around the living room. I didn't like losing the income but not having to give up my Sunday afternoons to teach those two deadbeats was more than adequate compensation.
Going back to Mark's survey, hats off to him for making his money go a long way. He's built his own house in the country. He runs a car. And he clearly enjoys life. You can't say fairer than that.
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