James
Working in Bangkok
Monthly Earnings 65,000
Q1. How much do you earn from teaching per month?
I take home around 60,000 baht a month from my job as an English support teacher in an international school in Bangkok. With a month’s pay as a bonus at the end of the year that works to around 65k I guess.
Q2. How much of that can you realistically save per month?
My savings are pretty fluid. With a baby, a dog and a wife there’s always something to spend money on. Pre-baby I could save 15k a month but haven’t got anywhere near that since she was born. Probably around 5k lately due to fixing the house up a fair bit.
Q3. How much do you pay for your accommodation and what do you live in exactly (house, apartment, condo)?
We own a 3-bedroom house in Bearing with the mortgage payments being around 13,000 baht a month
Q4. What do you spend a month on the following things?
Transportation
My school is a 5-minute drive and my wife has a company car for her work so we don’t pay for that. I guess we fill our car up twice a month as we don’t use taxis or the BTS so let's say about 2,000 baht. We are still paying the car off but the wife pays for that.
Utility bills
We have the doors open and fans on most the time downstairs and only use AC at night in the bedroom. Normally around 2,000 baht at the end of the month. Water is a couple of hundred, phone is 1,000 baht. I have no idea how much we pay for the basic True internet/tv package, 600 baht-ish?
Food - both restaurants and supermarket shopping
We eat at home a lot, especially since the baby. Wife eats Thai market food but I normally have some meat and potato variation. When we do eat out it’s normally western but nothing expensive. The killer is the baby milk formula, 700 baht every few days.. I’m guessing around 15,000t baht a month (including the dog food…)
Nightlife and drinking
I don’t really go out but I do have couple of beers after work, a sneaky sangsom and coke in the evening and a lot more at the weekend. I started working it out but got scared, so I’m guessing around 6,500 baht a month.
Books, computers
I use my computer a lot to download a lot of television and movies. Luckily the school library has a great selection of books which I can borrow from for free. So zero, yay for piracy!
Q5. How would you summarize your standard of living in one sentence?
Pretty good, My wife also works, so the bills are shared and we both prefer to stay in than go out. We find ourselves not wanting for anything (within reason) but as a foreigner in Thailand I should probably be saving more.
Q6. What do you consider to be a real 'bargain' here?
Compared to the UK, the rent. I could never afford a house like I have here on the equivalent wages in the UK. Beer maybe, 100bht for a pint. Can you even get a two quid pint anymore in the UK?
Q7. In your opinion, how much money does anyone need to earn here in order to survive?
45,000 baht for a singleton in Bangkok. If they could swallow the start-up costs of getting a cheap, decent place near the BTS, a laptop etc. then life would be great.
Phil's analysis and comment
I think James lives well within his means and despite having an expensive baby and dog to take care of, he has a property to his name (or he will have when the mortgage is paid off)
It would have been interesting to know how much James' wife earns, but perhaps that's being a bit too nosey. I was just interested in the fact that James and his wife 'split the bills'
I generally earn about 50% more than my wife does and we have the weirdest system for splitting costs. I pay all the utility bills and for the weekly supermarket shopping. When we go out for a meal together, we take it in turns to pay the bill. My wife pays for her own car and phone, etc.
We love travelling abroad and holidays account for about 40% of our monthly spend. My wife pays for her own air ticket and I pay for mine. But once we get to our destination, I bear all the costs of accommodation, eating out, car hire, etc.
The laugh is that we have never actually sat down and planned this system - you pay for this and I'll pay for that - it's just sort of happened this way. But it seems to work.
I'm far more careful with spending money than my wife. That's not to say she's reckless, but she has much more of a 'money is for enjoying' attitude. I often wish it was an attitude I had more of.
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