Tim
Working in Bangkok
Monthly Earnings 161,000
Q1. How is that income broken down? (full-time salary, private students, on-line teaching, extra work, etc)
My full-time salary is 133,000 and there is a housing allowance of 28,000 on top.
Q2. How much money can you save each month?
My wife is also a teacher, so we save her wage each month (100,000) and about 30,000 baht from mine too, so a total of 130,000.
Q3. How much do you pay for your accommodation and what do you live in exactly (house, apartment, condo)?
We pay 38,000 for a condo with a sky pool and yoga studio and gym included. It’s dog friendly too, so we pay more than the housing allowance for that ‘luxury’.
Q4. What do you spend a month on the following things?
Transportation
About 6,000 baht.
Utility bills
Air-con is 3,600 and another 700 for water.
Food - both restaurants and supermarket shopping
Supermarket food comes to about 10,000 baht a month but we eat take-aways most nights so this equates to another 10,000 baht a month too for the both of us. On the weekends we like to splurge at nice restaurants and that comes to around 15K. So it's probably around 35K a month on food.
Nightlife and drinking
Once or twice a month we like to go out with friends and we'll spend about 7,000 baht on a good night out.
Books, computers
Hardly anything. I use a kindle to read books and my work gives me an iPad and Mac.
Q5. How would you summarize your standard of living in one sentence?
Fantastic.
Q6. What do you consider to be a real 'bargain' here?
Quality housing and food.
Q7. In your opinion, how much money does anyone need to earn here in order to survive?
I’m not sure about surviving but I think if I was single and wanted to have a good time and save a little bit, I would need at least 80,000 baht a month
Phil's analysis and comment
Not much to add really. A couple living on a joint salary of over a quarter of a million baht a month are always going to have a pretty decent standard of living.
Please send us your cost of living surveys. We would love to hear from you! This is one of the most popular parts of the Ajarn website and these surveys help and inspire a lot of other teachers. We'd especially love to hear from more Filipino teachers being as there are so many here and so many looking for teaching jobs. Where are you all?
Just click the link at the top of the page where it says 'Submit your own Cost of Living survey' or click here.
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