Expats in Thailand, what not to do if considering living here

I've been here for about 5 years longer than I planned to be already. My original plan was to do a bit of living overseas while developing my skills for a career of some sort in my home country but that kind of evolved over the years. These days I am still plugging away at sort of a dead end job, but I also do other, online work and manage to save about as much money as I could be saving with a "real job" back in the states. Therefore I don't really view my time here as wasted and think that this is ok as long as I am making more than I am spending.

That's kind of the secret to a decent life anywhere I think.

But in my time here I have seen a lot of people come and go and unfortunately, I would say a majority of them have certain issues or even mental problems that probably make their time spent here pretty damaging to their own lives.

First off I am going to focus on a particular group that I have seen continually fail withe a near 100% failure rate*. This is something that you really should recognize when it is happening and do whatever you have to do in order to avoid it happening to you.

I know at least a dozen people personally that this has happened to, and there are always more that seem to be lining up to have it happen to them as well.

The barely scraping by financially guy

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I've seen this happen to primarily teachers, or i should say unqualified teachers. But this does happen to anyone who works in tourism in almost any capacity as well as dive guides, scuba instructors, and even small business owners.

The ability to ID this is probably universal and should always be avoided, but for some reason people living in Thailand let it go for far too long and of the people I personally know, they had to be bailed out by family members or friends back in their home countries, because they couldn't scrape together enough money for even a plane ticket home.

This isn't something that sneaks up on you, the signs are there all along the way. It's just budgeting that seems to elude a lot of people or if not that, not thinking that you making zero savings is just fine because you live somewhere cheap.

Yes, Thailand is cheap to live in, but it has gotten significantly more expensive in the years that I have been living here.

When I first got here the stock standard salary for a first year unqualified TEFL teacher was around 25,000 Baht per month which at that time was around $900 a month but now it is about $750. Some schools are still paying this amount but only the really bad ones that should be avoided anyway. The standard these days is around 30,000 Baht, which is still a pittance of a salary and coincidentally it is around $900 a month so there must be some sort of USD standard they are utilizing here.

There were times when it was possible to get a house or apartment for $300 a month but these options are kind of dried up these days. A horrible house or apartment can still be acquired for this price but do you really want to live somewhere that isn't very nice?

Thai people manage to get by on much much less than $900 a month, but they have the support of family or neighbors that they have known their entire life. Do you? I live alone in my 2 bedroom house that costs about $400 a month and the only reason why I am getting that prices is because I have been here for years.

Food is really inexpensive here so it really isn't that difficult to get by on $100 a week or even less. The problem that we run into as far as this is concerned is that a great portion of the expat population drinks quite regularly, and we have seen the cost of this go up year after year as the government keeps raising "sin taxes" on booze. It used to be quite common to get a beer in a pub for a bit over a dollar, nowadays it is quite uncommon to find any that are under $2. So even if you are drinking on the cheap you are paying twice as much for drinking as you used to just a few years ago.

If you are working for $900 a month straight salary, which believe me is very common and your rent is $400 a month and your food and drink is kept to $400 a month, you don't have to be very good at math to see that this is a mere $100 left over at the end of the month. A couple of "party nights" on the weekends can completely wipe that out.

I know a bunch of teachers and I would say about 50% of them live from paycheck to paycheck and some of them end up borrowing money from other people until they get paid. This is sheer madness and the fact that people continue to live like this is just astounding.

I have never thought that the unqualified TEFL teacher jobs were worth having even though I have one. I keep it just to maintai
a visa and I work part time. I work an online job that is a majority of my income and I am not much of a "party boy" either. My costs are kept low and I manage to save at least as much as I spend every month. Therefore I am doing better than most.

But I believe that a lot of the low-level and starter jobs here are designed to pay you just enough so that you don't quit and the salaries are never designed to have you be able to build up anything resembling a career or any meaningful savings.

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_{A number of people I know live in places like this. Is that living to you?}

So many people that I have known have come here, worked a job they essentially hate for a 4-5 years or so and then had absolutely nothing to show for it after all of that time. All of these people aside from the ones who have wealthy relatives that I believe are paying them to stay away have had to tuck tail and run back to their home countries at the expense of someone else in their family or friend network.

The despicable thing about all of this is that these people really should have seen this coming. How is anyone who is a legal adult not going to recognize that they are not building any wealth and are one paycheck away from being homeless? You would think that people would notice this but so many of them do not. A lot of this has to do with the kind of person that is drawn to teaching jobs in Thailand and sadly, a lot of these people are just straight up alcoholics.

It's true everywhere else in the world and it is true here: If you can't manage to live for less than what you make... you are doing it wrong!