When foreigners choose to make Thailand their home, Thailand becomes the same exact struggle foreigners faced in their own country.
When the holiday to Thailand is over and the full-time move is completed, life in Thailand becomes the same exact life that you left in your own country.
With the exception of foreigners that worked their entire lives in their own country to save enough and have a pension to retire in Thailand.
Foreigners that are not yet retired and have to come to Thailand and work, work at teaching English, their own business, Youtube or whatever job they have chosen, are right back in the same work grind as they left in their home countries.
It becomes ALL about income. Income required to pay bills.
Rent, utilities, mobile phone, internet, insurance, food, exactly the same bills as you left in your own country.
The daily grind of working to survive is no where near the same as being in Thailand on a holiday.
In this situation, the only thing you can do, is do your best. Your best is NO guarantee you will succeed.
Sure you can move, rent a 1 room condo and survive. Evidence shows many foreigners try this as long as they can and give up down the road a year or two; or even longer.
They give up because sooner or later they learn, just like Thai people, there is no end out of this just surviving mode.
Life requires saving your entire life for a pension to be able to retire someday.
It is impossible to save, when you are just barely surviving financially.
Single men move to Thailand, wanting a girlfriend or eventual wife.
She is NOT going to want to live in a one room condo with you the rest of her life, no matter what you believe.
She will want a house, a car, support and if you cannot provide that? Heart break city straight ahead.
When you have to put up with the daily grind working in Thailand, it is hard to accept you cannot afford everything you want to have.
The Thai mentality of Sabai Sabai is not a prevalent trait of foreigners.
You are working merely to pay your bills each month. No extravagant international holidays, no land/home ownership, no luxury cars. You might have had ALL of these things in your home country where the incomes are much higher.
In moving to Thailand and doing your best, one has to look down the road to retirement age.
Is there any possible way I can work in Thailand for many years and save enough for retirement or quality for a pension?
As much as you think living in Thailand is the bomb, if you cannot answer that simple question, guaranteed, you will not make it and end up going home.
Living anywhere in the world, requires income. Income to live and income to save.
Without both, your best simply will not be good enough.