When you decide to move to Thailand fulltime, it is not about today or tomorrow, it is about surviving the rest of your life here.
Surviving means having enough monthly income from the day you move until the day you die.
If you do not have that figured out, sorry, you will never make it here.
Once you move and get settled into Thai Life, it is no different than surviving in any other country in the world.
You need a place to live, food, transportation, utilities, insurance.
Those cost money and along with a fluctuating baht rate, those costs can increase year in and year out.
The biggest mistake I see young people making is not understanding, (due to old age), they will have to stop working?
If you have been living in Thailand for years and have no pension or retirement from your home country, how are you going to pay the bills and health insurance once you are forced (old age) to stop working?
It was calculated at 30,000 thb a month, you would need 7,200,000 thb (~US $220,000) in the bank to live from age 70 to age 90. That is only spending 30,000 thb a month.
To save US $220,000 when you are living in Thailand and not earning much is a huge, huge challenge.
One that many people fail to plan for.
It is too late to plan when you haven’t saved and are approaching old age.
If you are young and live in Thailand fulltime, you should be setting savings aside each and every month for retirement and never touch them.
So savings mean you will never survive here.