Eric
Working in Bangkok
Monthly Earnings 100,000 - 170,000 baht a month
Q1. How much do you earn from teaching per month?
My base salary is 72,000 after deductions. I supplement this with private lessons. In a good month I can rake in an additional 100,000. In light months I earn as little as 20,000. I'd say the private teaching averages over the year at something like 60,000.
Q2. How much of that can you realistically save per month?
I generally save my salary and I use my private tuition. My school auto-deposits my salary into a bank account. The private tuition is usually cash in hand. Some months I take money out of my bank account and other months I put some cash into it.
Q3. How much do you pay for your accommodation and what do you live in exactly (house, apartment, condo)?
I live in a one bedroom condo with my wife and newborn. It's kind of tight but it's quite livable for now. I'm planning on moving to a larger place soon, mostly for the kid to have more space. My rent is 10,000 including utilities.
Q4. What do you spend a month on the following things?
Transportation
I walk to work and take other types of transportation 2-3 times per week. I also have a motorcycle. About 700 for me. But my wife has a long commute. About 4,000 for her.
Utility bills
Telephones are about 1,000 between the two of us for top up slips. Nursery for the baby is 10,000 per month.
Food - both restaurants and supermarket shopping
I try to eat cheap but good. Usually it's pad gra pao or some similar fare but a couple times per week we go mid-scale (B400++). Baby milk isn't cheap either. My little family eats for about 20,000 per month.
Nightlife and drinking
I don't go out too often. As I teach on a Saturday, Friday nights are not going to be late nights. I'll go out just a couple times spending about B3,000 per month. More than drinking I'll spend my money on travel. In the trips I took around Thailand this past year I spent a collective total of about B100,000.
Books, computers
This year I've spent about B30,000 on some new video games. It's a mini-fortune for video games, but I like games now and then. This year has also seen other large costs paid like: tuition (B60,000), baby delivery (B45,000), baby stuff (B30,000) and add-on construction to the family-in-law's home (B50,000).
Q5. How would you summarize your standard of living in one sentence?
I wouldn't want to work like this forever but I'm happy at present to earn big and save.
Q6. What do you consider to be a real 'bargain' here?
Transportation is really cheap. Street food is cheap. Clothes can be cheap. Electronics are not cheap.
Q7. In your opinion, how much money does anyone need to earn here in order to survive?
I lived quite happily on 45k for years as a single man. I had enough savings at that time to take some months off just for traveling and also to support myself for a while when I returned to the west when I decided to upgrade to a BEd. Now that I have my BEd and a young family I'm aiming to earn as much as possible to eventually invest in a property.
Phil's analysis and comment
Wow! A teacher who can sometimes earn 100,000 baht a month from private teaching! Although Eric didn't say how much he charges per hour for private tuition, he did have the following to say about his workload -
"The "good" months are very busy months where I work 12-hour days from Monday to Friday and another 8 hours on Saturdays. I like tutoring as much as possible, but Sunday is a work-free day, even though I could earn another 40k per month if I was open for lessons then. My BEd has paid off but not in the way that I thought that it would. Instead of earning a much increased salary, I got a somewhat increased salary and a much increased opportunity for well paying private tuition"
I take my hat off to someone who can hold down a full-time job and juggle around all those well-paid private lessons. That's an incredible achievement.
Eric didn't actually state where in Thailand he works, but I'm assuming he's in Bangkok.
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