Troy
Working in Bangkok
Monthly Earnings Around 60,000 baht
Q1. How much do you earn from teaching per month?
Weekends at a private language school make me just shy of 30,000 a month. The other 30,000 baht a month comes from on-line teaching from Monday to Friday.
Q2. How much of that can you realistically save per month?
10,000 - 20,000. Sometimes maybe even a bit more.
Q3. How much do you pay for your accommodation and what do you live in exactly (house, apartment, condo)?
I share a one-bedroom apartment with my Thai girlfriend. We've been together for three years and she earns about the same amount per month as I do so we split virtually everything down the middle. Our rent is 15,000 baht a month so 7,500 each. It's a nice place and from the 18th floor we have a great view of Eastern Bangkok when you're standing out on the balcony.
Q4. What do you spend a month on the following things?
Transportation
It's not a major expense for me. I do four journeys at the weekend by sky-train and the odd taxi fare. I bet this is no more than 2,000 baht. My partner runs a car so she has modest repayments, gas, repairs, insurance, etc. I don't pay anything towards that but might occasionally stick my hand in my pocket for a tank of petrol if we're out together (about 800 baht)
Utility bills
We always have the air-conditioning on when we're at home and I'm at home most of the time from Monday to Friday. Our electricity bill usually comes to around 3,000 baht. Water is another 300. Phones and internet, etc adds another 2,000 baht to the monthly expenses as well.
Food - both restaurants and supermarket shopping
My partner and I tend to do our own thing as far as eating is concerned and so keep our food bills entirely separate. On Saturday and Sunday when I'm working at the language centre, I grab whatever takes my fancy from the shopping mall. During the week, when I'm at home, I stock up on take-away meals from the supermarket (mostly Thai food) and stockpile them in the freezer to last me five days. I would say I spend about 6,000 baht on food for myself.
Nightlife and drinking
Chance would be a fine thing. I'm too busy with work at the weekends to meet up with my drinking pals and during the week, no one really wants to go out. So generally I don't bother. The weekday evenings are the only time I get to spend some quality time with my partner, albeit for just a few hours.
Books, computers
Nothing really. My laptop is five years old and still going strong. I bought a nice desktop computer last year for 50,000. I'm not really a great reader. I've never had the patience to sit quietly and read books.
Q5. How would you summarize your standard of living in one sentence?
Fantastic! But of course let's not beat about the bush, life is a lot easier when you have a Thai partner earning a decent wage. We've got 120,000 a month coming into the kitty minus the main expenses of accommodation, food and car costs. There's still plenty of disposable income there.
Q6. What do you consider to be a real 'bargain' here?
Food can be very reasonable if you get yourself organised (and I do) Buy some stuff from the supermarket and some from the street and you can combine it to make some great meals.
Q7. In your opinion, how much money does anyone need to earn here in order to survive?
I wouldn't want to live on less than 50,000.
Phil's analysis and comment
Troy went into a bit more detail about his 60,000 baht a month earnings and how his income is broken down.
"I've been very lucky to work for the same language centre for three years and the owner has always treated me well. I'm a decent teacher, I'm reliable and the kids and parents like me. The right attitude has taken me a long way because I make 600 baht an hour and do six hours on a Saturday and the same on Sundays. 30,000 baht for just your weekends is not to be sniffed at I guess.
From Monday to Friday, I do about three hours of on-line teaching per day. I could do more if I wanted but after those exhausting weekends (and they are exhausting) I value a bit of free time during the week.
The downside to my current schedule is that I probably don't see enough of my partner. She has time off at the weekend but I'm working. It's a very rare Saturday or Sunday when we get the chance to do something together. It's certainly something I would like to address in the future but I'm not sure what the solution is"
Thanks a lot Troy. To everyone reading this, come on! send us your cost of living surveys. We would love to hear from you! This is one of the popular parts of the Ajarn website and these surveys help and inspire a lot of other teachers help there.
Just click the link at the top of the page where it says 'Submit your own Cost of Living survey'
Submit your own Cost of Living survey
