Monique and Husband
Working in Bangkok
Monthly Earnings 95,000 baht
Q1. How much do you earn from teaching per month?
I work for a private company primarily teaching standardized test preparation (TOEFL, IELTS, etc). I am guaranteed 48,000 per month but lately I have averaged about 10,000 per month more than that. My husband works as an English teacher at a Thai high school and earns 37,000 per month.
Q2. How much of that can you realistically save per month?
We try to live on only my salary and save my husband’s salary. We haven’t always been successful but we’ve managed to send home 50,000 every two or three months (to pay off credit card debt, ugh). This is after paying for a 20,000 baht holiday every three months and several smaller daytrips/overnights in between, so if we cut those out we could save more (but what’s the fun in living in Thailand if you don’t take the opportunity to explore?).
Q3. How much do you pay for your accommodation and what do you live in exactly (house, apartment, condo)?
We have a two bedroom condo in a nice building with gym/swimming pool. We’re in downtown Bangkok three minutes by foot from the BTS. We have a roommate and split rent equally with her; the apartment costs 28,000 per month and our share is 14,000.
Q4. What do you spend a month on the following things?
Transportation
I walk to work every day, but occasionally take a motorcycle or taxi or hop on the BTS. I estimate that costs no more than 1000 per month. My husband takes a motorcycle and the MRT to work each day – about 2500 per month.
Utility bills
We pay two thirds of our apartment utilities, and our share comes to 400 per month for internet, 150 per month for water, and around 1300 per month for electricity. We try to use a fan rather than the aircon, but during the summer our share of the bill can get as high as 2200. We pay 650 baht per month for our phones.
Food - both restaurants and supermarket shopping
We almost exclusively eat out and try to limit ourselves to 500 baht per person per day, so about 30,000 per month. Some days we eat mostly street food, but we also have go to a fair number of sit down restaurants and have many Western meals (just not necessarily very good ones!)
Nightlife and drinking
We’ve cut back a lot lately, but we probably average about 3,000 baht per month. We don’t go out much, though, as we prefer to drink at home with friends.
Books, computers
We recently purchased my husband his first smartphone which ended up being 16,000 baht – at least 4,000 more than it would have cost in the States! This has been our only major purchase, although we’re eyeing tablets for around 8,000 each. We access almost all of our media online (no TV or paper books), but we like to go to the movies about once a month or so – less than 300 baht including drinks and popcorn.
Q5. How would you summarize your standard of living in one sentence?
With my relatively useless undergraduate psychology degree, there’s no way I’d be able to live in a building this nice or eat out as often as I do if I were working an entry-level job in the US.
Q6. What do you consider to be a real 'bargain' here?
Transportation. Sometimes I get annoyed when cabbies won’t take me with the meter running, but then I realize they’re only asking me to pay the equivalent of $3 (even if it is double the meter price!). We’ve also been able to explore a lot of Thailand via minibus and, although we really hate the cramped space and the fact that they always make the farang squeeze into the smallest seat, we still feel lucky to have the option of paying only 300 baht or so for a daytrip outside of the city of smog.
Q7. In your opinion, how much money does anyone need to earn here in order to survive?
We have to watch ourselves during months when we’re trying to survive on only 48,000 and we often end up dipping in to the 37,000 that we’re trying to save. You should really have some wiggle room in case of emergencies (like when I accidentally dyed all my clothes blue in the washing machine) so I think 60,000 for a couple is probably the minimum to survive but not save anything. For an individual, 45,000 will be comfortable but you could probably do it on less by finding a cheaper apartment.
Phil's analysis and comment
I like this survey. It raises a lot of interesting points. Thanks for giving us such an honest insight into your financial world Monique.
OK, we've got two teachers here (a married couple) earning 95,000 baht a month. Monique is earning what I would call an 'above average' teacher salary and her husband earns slightly below average. I would have said straight off the bat that a married couple with no kids should be living 'fairly comfortably' on 95,000 baht a month in Bangkok - but it's certainly not a fortune, especially when you have credit card debts back in your homeland.
One aspect of the survey that really caught my eye was the 30,000 baht a month they spend on food. Wow! That strikes me as a lot of money for a couple - even a very hungry couple. I bet if Monique and her husband could find their way to the kitchen, start planning meals together and buying fresh produce at the supermarket, they could cut 10,000 baht a month off that expense easily. No one's saying give up the occasional splurge on Western food, but strike a happy medium and eat at home a few nights a week.
Only yesterday, I bought an enormous chicken breast fillet at the supermarket for 40 baht (which I grilled in the oven), A large bag of salad stuff (lettuce, tomatoes, raisins, boiled eggs, peppers, chopped fruit) which cost 65 baht - and a couple of baking sized potatoes for another 40 baht. I will get two very filling meals out of that for just 150 baht (75 baht a meal) - and Monique's daily food budget for two people is 1,000 baht. See what I mean? You can save a fortune by cooking at home and you eat far better than you do by buying those bags of streetfood as well.
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