Living in Chiang Mai on $500 a month?

[FiftyTwo]

Yes, you can do it comfortably.

10k gets a nice apartment with everything your need, even western kitchen etc. Roughly $300.

That leaves $200 or 200 baht a day per month to eat. Plenty.

Your on the edge, but can squeak by. I have plenty of days getting 30 baht meals for way under 200 baht everything a day even including coffees, and buying just about everything as I walk around, locally of course like a poor Thai would, not from German food places or sitting there with a red wine like some chump from France. This includes shopping at the local market and getting 10 baht fruit bags and 20 baht smoothies. I don't go hungry and have everything I need. It's just a lifestyle preference for me so I don't have the nag about having to only spend $500. But that's a cross some have to bear.

If you can bump up to 15k ($500 for a house) and $250 for expenses, your basically on easy street. Not many people can stick to a budget however, they get caught up in drinking, eating at western places (my pet peev), and paying for girls of course.

Long term it could be an issue if you run out of 6 month tourist visas and have to start getting radical with things like flying out of the country for new passports.

You can get a condo between Maya and KSK just off Huay Keow for 3,500k/month.

My pal just moved in, OK, so he did paint it himself, but it's perfectly acceptable now.

Even has covered parking.

True, even some places around here for 2,700. But in my experience most people are better off getting digs that are right up there with what they can afford, allowing for food and incidentials of course. If they are looking to live here, rather then just hang out for awhile.

When you start trying to save by going real cheap the places do come with problems that may get to you after awhile. Like loud neighbors that don't work, things that don't get fixed, to far out of town, sex tourists bringing in visitors all night and making noise etc.

It's a residential condo, mainly Thais, all long-term, very quiet, proper toilet and heated shower.

Thai terms condo, you want something minor fixed, you do it yourself.

No tourists, usually the sex tourists live in 6-10k/month places.

Anyway, what kills everyone in the UK is utils. and taxes.

In my 3 bed house, with a family of five, monthly I pay 1k electricity, 250 water, 100 gas, 631 internet, 30 rubbish.

That's it less than $50 a month for all the additions to the rent or home loan (including the luxury of internet).

Back in the UK I couldn't get anywhere near that, even if I risked freezing to death.

Food costs were almost irrelevant compared to utils and taxes.

[WinnieTheKhwai]

Please read the article. RENT for $500 a month, not live. There's a world of difference!

I'd read the article but that kinda feels like cheating, and an unnecessary distraction from having a rant.

[Lockheed]

Yes, you can do it comfortably.

10k gets a nice apartment with everything your need, even western kitchen etc. Roughly $300.

That leaves $200 or 200 baht a day per month to eat. Plenty.

Your on the edge, but can squeak by. I have plenty of days getting 30 baht meals for way under 200 baht everything a day even including coffees, and buying just about everything as I walk around, locally of course like a poor Thai would, not from German food places or sitting there with a red wine like some chump from France. This includes shopping at the local market and getting 10 baht fruit bags and 20 baht smoothies. I don't go hungry and have everything I need. It's just a lifestyle preference for me so I don't have the nag about having to only spend $500. But that's a cross some have to bear.

If you can bump up to 15k ($500 for a house) and $250 for expenses, your basically on easy street. Not many people can stick to a budget however, they get caught up in drinking, eating at western places (my pet peev), and paying for girls of course.

Long term it could be an issue if you run out of 6 month tourist visas and have to start getting radical with things like flying out of the country for new passports.

You can get a condo between Maya and KSK just off Huay Keow for 3,500k/month.

My pal just moved in, OK, so he did paint it himself, but it's perfectly acceptable now.

Even has covered parking.

True, even some places around here for 2,700. But in my experience most people are better off getting digs that are right up there with what they can afford, allowing for food and incidentials of course. If they are looking to live here, rather then just hang out for awhile.

When you start trying to save by going real cheap the places do come with problems that may get to you after awhile. Like loud neighbors that don't work, things that don't get fixed, to far out of town, sex tourists bringing in visitors all night and making noise etc.

It's a residential condo, mainly Thais, all long-term, very quiet, proper toilet and heated shower.

Thai terms condo, you want something minor fixed, you do it yourself.

No tourists, usually the sex tourists live in 6-10k/month places.

Anyway, what kills everyone in the UK is utils. and taxes.

In my 3 bed house, with a family of five, monthly I pay 1k electricity, 250 water, 100 gas, 631 internet, 30 rubbish.

That's it less than $50 a month for all the additions to the rent or home loan (including the luxury of internet).

Back in the UK I couldn't get anywhere near that, even if I risked freezing to death.

Food costs were almost irrelevant compared to utils and taxes.

A good overview of costs, do these condo's have western style kitchens or at least something to cook on.

Utility's kill us in OZ as well, they find ways to impose taxes on you for everything.

An example is collecting rain water and storing it in your own tank, they were talking about or have imposed a tax on that. The other one is generating solar energy, the surplus you sell back to the grid, the government tax you on your sale.

[northernjohn]

Please read the article. RENT for $500 a month, not live. There's a world of difference!

I'd read the article but that kinda feels like cheating, and an unnecessary distraction from having a rant.

Did you read the part where she said about $1,200 to live here in Chiang Mai?

[WinnieTheKhwai]

Please read the article. RENT for $500 a month, not live. There's a world of difference!

I'd read the article but that kinda feels like cheating, and an unnecessary distraction from having a rant.

Did you read the part where she said about $1,200 to live here in Chiang Mai?

Nope. After Mizztravellers mood-deflating yet ultimately factual statement I briefly flipped to the article to confirm, but tried to ignore as much of the other stuff as possible.

Now you made me check again. Author says $1,100 monthly and $400 in rent in the article linked from the linked article, but possibly she added $100 to get to $1,200 / $ 500 in a paragraph I overlooked.

Sticking to those numbers, $1,700 USD ( 55,000 Baht ) is of course a 5 star budget on which anyone would live like a king. (Rinse, repeat topic. )

[vagabond48]

Please read the article. RENT for $500 a month, not live. There's a world of difference!

I'd read the article but that kinda feels like cheating, and an unnecessary distraction from having a rant.

Did you read the part where she said about $1,200 to live here in Chiang Mai?

Nope. After Mizztravellers mood-deflating yet ultimately factual statement I briefly flipped to the article to confirm, but tried to ignore as much of the other stuff as possible.

Now you made me check again. Author says $1,100 monthly and $400 in rent in the article linked from the linked article, but possibly she added $100 to get to $1,200 / $ 500 in a paragraph I overlooked.

Sticking to those numbers, $1,700 USD ( 55,000 Baht ) is of course a 5 star budget on which anyone would live like a king. (Rinse, repeat topic. )

I believe when she writes $1100 / $400, the $400 (rent) is part of the $1100 monthly expense. I didn't think she was adding the 2 figures to get new total of $1500 so assuming there is another link that I didn't spot with the $1200 / $500 quote, I again assume the $500 (rent) is part of the $1200 and is not being added to it.

[Frank James]

If I read the article correctly, the author is talking only about rent, and not supporting an automobile. It's quite easy to rent reasonable quarters here for $500 or less, but then there's food and etc. It's a superficial analysis, not worth reading.

[moe666]

yes you do need to be reasonably health to start because "environmental obstacles" are much more frequent than the west. if i have gastro-intestinal issues in the west once a year is probably more than i would get while here food delivered issues will be at least weekly. then also there is toxic air and respiratory things which will knock you frequently too. eg moz eradication bi-monthly. rice and garbage burning including toxic cooking burning fuels. extreme drain stench etc.

I do not know where you eat or what you eat but been here 3 years and only had a couple of food related issues and I eat any where and what ever I like. I do pay attention to the cleanliness of a restaurant

[binjalin]

Please read the article. RENT for $500 a month, not live. There's a world of difference!

please read the title? LIVING in Chiang Mai

[anonymouse]

If you lived in a really cheap room with no aircon and only ate in the 20 baht vegetarian restaurants all over town, you could do it, but it would not be fun.

We own our home and car and don't have any debts and can live quite well on around 15K baht per month. 80% of our meals a prepared at home. Having said that tho we do fork out around 45K every 3 months for the sons education and if we didn't have him then no problems living on 500 dollars. If we had to pay rent etc then I would say no way could we do it.

HI chooka,

I hope you won't think I am being rude, but I find it pretty shocking that you say you can get by on 15K baht, with 2 adults and a kid. I also find the other posters who think $500 a month is enough here, questionable. I mean, yes, if you have to, and for a short period of time, one person could do it.

But overall, in life, we need things beyond food and water, and minimal shelter. Don't we? I own my house and car too, and have a child in private schools, so am like you Chooka, but there is no way I could get by on 15K a month, even excluding my medical costs, dogs, the cost of school, and a few things like this which everyone doesn't have.

BUT ....don't you need clothes some times, dental checks, teeth cleaning, a pair of eyeglasses, or contacts, cleaning solutions, some medical costs here and there, a new piece of furniture, a set of sheets, new towels, house repairs, car insurance, gas, toys for the kid, books, school trips, and you even say ONLY 80% of your food is eaten at home, so I can only assume the rest is at street stalls? No special Xmas dinner, or birthdays, or anything???

I'm just wondering if you are someone who is not in touch with their actual budget/spending, and you just think you only spend that much?? I mean, that is approx $150 per month, per person. I can't feed people on that, much less pay utilities, and all the other things. Well, maybe I could, but we could never drink anything other than water, eat mostly rice, etc ...that is a bit strict for most Western people.

Sorry, if I am being rude ...really if you are doing that, that is great ...you must be very disciplined and I also would give you ++10 LIKES for sending your kid to such an expensive school, vs, your living budget. I also spend for that, but it doesn't cost me quite that percentage of my living income/budget.

So again, just double checking, this isn't some kind of hyperbole on your part, either accidental or not. Or are you some kind of maniac saver and forcing this lifestyle for a while to meet some other goals? Or do you need to start a spreadsheet and start tracking things, and then you will find that 15K is really 30K ??

I'm not calling the guy a liar or anything but I hear this from friends of mine all the time how they live on xxx amount a month and they so obviously don't! It reminds me of a TV show they had in the UK a few years back where they asked people who wanted to lose weight to keep a food diary and secretly filmed what they were actually eating, turned out they were eating a ton more than they were actually writing down, they would forget about the chocolate bar in the morning, the cake in the afternoon, those couple of beers with a friend after work and so on.

I'm not the most organized of persons but I keep track of what I spend on a daily basis averages out about 35,000 a month for a family of four this excludes accommodation, School Fees, trips or insurance of any kind.

[vagabond48]

Please read the article. RENT for $500 a month, not live. There's a world of difference!

please read the title? LIVING in Chiang Mai

The title was misquoting the article the OP was referring to, so as it's been suggested already, perhaps you need to read the article.

I am learning that replying to this thread with its misleading title is like beating your head against the TV virtual wall.

[binjalin]

Please read the article. RENT for $500 a month, not live. There's a world of difference!

please read the title? LIVING in Chiang Mai

The title was misquoting the article the OP was referring to, so as it's been suggested already, perhaps you need to read the article.

I am learning that replying to this thread with its misleading title is like beating your head against the TV virtual wall.

oh fair enough but odd to have a title that is misleading and I had not read the post carefully enough I grant you but that's because there have been a zillion on 'live on $500 a month' and there are various web sites too so skimmed it

Mea Culpa

[FiftyTwo]

It's easy to eat well, almost anywhere on little money.

But you have to do a little work yourself, especially if you want luxury items like these.

My breakfast this morning, total cost less than 15bht, English pancakes, chocolate ice cream and fresh lime.

Tea earlier this week, less than 40bht, scones with raspberry jam fresh whipped cream (15bht without the cream).

Whole-meal bread to eat every day, about 25bht a loaf.

All made with local CM ingredients.

[beau thai]

It's easy to eat well, almost anywhere on little money.

But you have to do a little work yourself, especially if you want luxury items like these.

My breakfast this morning, total cost less than 15bht, English pancakes, chocolate ice cream and fresh lime.

pancakes.jpgve with a little milk

Tea earlier this week, less than 40bht, scones with raspberry jam fresh whipped cream (15bht without the cream).

scones and cream.jpg

All made with local CM ingredients.

Agree. Run out of my usual home made muesli so just had eggs scrambled in the microwave with a little milk, and topped with parmesan, on toast.

Probably less than 15baht and as good as i would get (probably better actually) in a 5 star hotel. Why do so many good hotels struggle to cook good scrambled eggs?

Maybe they try to do to many other things at the same time and spoil them.

[vagabond48]

Homemade normally wins out healthy, delicious and low cost meals.

[Lockheed]

Why do so many good hotels struggle to cook good scrambled eggs?

Maybe they try to do to many other things at the same time and spoil them.

I've just about given up on getting a good pancake, i've had some disasters but the best one was poached eggs. They brought out hard boiled eggs, the menu said poached but I can live hard boiled, i cracked the top open and they hadn't been cooked, just dipped in hot water so I showed them a picture of what I wanted and they brought out a fried egg, I got charged for the lot though but rather than try and sort it out through translation, I gave them the money and hit the road. These are the good things about travelling, you learn to appreciate the simple things like cooking your own food.

The pancake was about an 1,5 inches thick, the egg was slightly cooked around the edge.

[Lockheed]

It's easy to eat well, almost anywhere on little money.

But you have to do a little work yourself, especially if you want luxury items like these.

My breakfast this morning, total cost less than 15bht, English pancakes, chocolate ice cream and fresh lime.

pancakes.jpg

Tea earlier this week, less than 40bht, scones with raspberry jam fresh whipped cream (15bht without the cream).

scones and cream.jpg

Whole-meal bread to eat every day, about 25bht a loaf.

bread.jpg

All made with local CM ingredients.

Thats lovely, you're living like a king eating that stuff, keep the good pics coming.

Porridge and coffee is my staple for breakfast.

[Throatwobbler]

The title of the post was misleading.

If you read the article. it was only stating that you can rent an apartment for $500 or less a month NOT that you can live on $500 or less a month. In that limited context, her quote was reasonable. I think most of us pay much less than $500 (16000B) for an apartment or house. As far as additional expenses (food, transportation, health insurance, travel, entertainment etc.), your lifestyle choices will determine whether you spend from $10 to $ ??? a day.

That is how I read it. Everyone has totally misread the article and jumped on their bandwagons as usual. The article clearly states that the $500 a month is for rent, not living.

[Jose]

Homemade normally wins out healthy, delicious and low cost meals.

Agreed.

And as a bonus, one can be excessively gratuitous with his/her favourite ingredients.

[chooka]

It's easy to eat well, almost anywhere on little money.

But you have to do a little work yourself, especially if you want luxury items like these.

My breakfast this morning, total cost less than 15bht, English pancakes, chocolate ice cream and fresh lime.

pancakes.jpg

Tea earlier this week, less than 40bht, scones with raspberry jam fresh whipped cream (15bht without the cream).

scones and cream.jpg

Whole-meal bread to eat every day, about 25bht a loaf.

bread.jpg

All made with local CM ingredients.

Thats lovely, you're living like a king eating that stuff, keep the good pics coming.

Porridge and coffee is my staple for breakfast.

A bit of vegemite on toast and a coffee for me, probably 10baht total. Lunch what is that and dinner is normally Thai food at about 50 baht.

[amykat]

HI Fiftytwo,

Did you make all of that yourself? Including the scones, jam and bread? Why did you leave the cream off, because the cream cost 100 baht per scone?

I mean, some of the posts above, cherry picking a few things here and there, does not an argument make!

However, if you do cook so many things from scratch, 52, could you consider leaving your current wife, and coming to live with me??

[amykat]

chooka,

I really don't believe you could live on that amount of food, unless you are on some kind of serious diet.

What about the other 2 people you live with, what do they eat?

[amykat]

My new meal plan,

Find grains of rice in the market, on the floor, for free. Tell my neighbor that my rice cooker is broken, and my elecricity out, can I use theirs? Use her water while washing, to save mine. Use her electric of course too.

Eat the snails in my yard, that are free, cook in neighbor's rice cooker in the the steamer thing.

Result, FREE food! Try to find a new idea like this again tomorrow!

Sorry, guys, I am just joking around, but are you all really totally serious? I want to write an article about how to live for free in CM!

[FiftyTwo]

HI Fiftytwo,

Did you make all of that yourself? Including the scones, jam and bread? Why did you leave the cream off, because the cream cost 100 bath per scone?

I mean, some of the posts above, cherry picking a few things here and there, does not an argument make!

However, if you do cook so many things from scratch, 52, could you consider leaving your current wife, and coming to live with me??

All made by hand, myself, no mixer, just a fork, a wok, and a 900bht Otto convection oven. Takes forever to make the whipped cream. Meiji fresh whipping cream costs a fortune 150bht/liter at Rimping, but worth it and goes a long way.

I even have to do my own washing up after!

Plans for shortbread fingers on Monday.

[amykat]

Okay, FiftyTwo,

I would like to formally submit my resume as your next potential wife (although I would prefer not getting legally married in reality.)

I will even pay for all the ingredients of our food, and help you cook, if you teach me your ways! And I will clean up too! Other things, we can negotiate! I can afford some gold, but I don't love men wearing lots of jewelry! You can keep it locked up??

Love, Amykat

[DavidMavec]

If you lived in a really cheap room with no aircon and only ate in the 20 baht vegetarian restaurants all over town, you could do it, but it would not be fun.

perhaps you could mark all these 20 baht veg restaurants on a map because i have never seen any of them. rest is BS too.

Then you are blind. Look for the yellow sign next time. Oh wait, you can't... because you're blind.

[chooka]

chooka,

I really don't believe you could live on that amount of food, unless you are on some kind of serious diet.

What about the other 2 people you live with, what do they eat?

No diet, just mornings a cup of coffee and vegemite and my wife cooks in the evening. I'm 183cm and weigh in at 81 kgs. My son loves vegemite as well as cornflakes but doesn't drink coffee, juice in the morning, has lunch at school (provided) but apparently doesn't like it. My wife refuses to each lunch as she thinks she is fat at 46kgs.

I have eaten this way for over 20 yrs as it was part of my job where we very rarely had the chance for a lunch break and my body just came use to it.

[amykat]

Well chooka, thanks for the answer above re food ...any answer to the larger post I made a while back, about your total budget? I guess a bit of your son's food could be in the school budget, but still I find it stretching credibility ...over a long period of course.

Like many people, we can come here, and buy nothing for some years, our old clothes, our old things will cover us, but over the long run, let us say an averge of 10 years, one must need to buy certain things?

Any comments?

[amykat]

HI FiftyTwo again,

I was just looking at a close up of your photos, which I did not do before. I notice you have 3 different backgrounds, like black granite, white marble and maybe some tiles?

Are you sure this is YOUR food?

I noticed the photos you sent of yourself, look a lot like George Clooney ...which makes my offer of gold go up. Obviously. I hope you understand that I will need in person examples, of both your looks and your food, before I can decide, right? But you stil seem promising!!

[NeverSure]

Homemade normally wins out healthy, delicious and low cost meals.

Yes, and I love tipping the chef.