The Real Cost of Living in Thailand With Family and Kids!

[00:00:00] You can live a good life in Thailand for just $2,000 a month, and there are plenty of videos explaining exactly that. They’ll show you the luxury condos for $500 a month and delicious street food for two to $3. But raising a family here is much different. When I first moved to Thailand, my wife and I spent very little, but as our family grew, our cost of living increased.

[00:00:23] by a lot. The fact is Thailand is much cheaper as a gap year traveler or as a retiree. But when you’re working and raising children here, there are a ton of new expenses that you need to account for. I’ll break down my $6,000 a month budget, which is equivalent to about 200,000 Thai Baht Now, hold on. I can already anticipate the comments.

[00:00:43] I’m not saying that you need 200,000 Baht per month to raise a family here. You can get by on much, much less, but by seeing my budget, you might learn about a few expenses that you didn’t anticipate. You’ll also get a better understanding of how far $6,000 goes, and it might not be the luxurious lifestyle that you might imagine.

[00:01:04] I’ve also included a free budget calculator in the description of the video so you can calculate your own monthly budget. alright. The first expense we’re gonna talk about is gonna be the housing or accommodation. And in our case, it’s a mortgage, which is 35,000 Baht per month. When it comes to housing, you’re gonna have to strike a balance between location and space. And as much as we enjoyed living in a small studio apartment as a couple, when we had kids, it just wasn’t gonna work.

[00:01:30] So if we decided to live in like a nice location like Thonglor or Phrom Phong then. And we wanted actually a bigger space, then we would’ve spent maybe 70,000 Baht a month, and that was a bit too much for our budget. So we had to think, well, can we live a space a little bit further out but still have more, more room for the kids?

[00:01:50] And that led us to places like Bang Na and Rangsit, and those would give us the option to have a house or a yard. Now, originally our ex monthly expense or our mortgage was about 25,000 Baht, but since they have adjustable rate mortgages here, after three years, you have to renegotiate your rate. And we were able to keep our rate down at that low interest rate of about 3% if we increased our monthly payment.

[00:02:15] So that’s why we have a 35,000 Baht per month mortgage. But again, expect to spend maybe 25,000 Baht if you’re gonna live in a separate house like this. But again, another big sacrifice we made was we moved out to Rangsit, which is north of the city and it’s a great gated community. It’s really nice, we love it, but it is a commute into the city.

[00:02:34] And so to get on a tollway, it could take 30 minutes. It could take an hour. again, that was just a sacrifice we’re willing to make, especially since our location put us pretty close to a good school for our kids, which I’ll talk about later. Then there is a community fee, and whether it’s a condo or a house, expect a space, something a little bit extra for maintenance of the pool or things like that.

[00:02:55] In our case, we do have a pool, a lake with a bunch of fish, a small gym, and it also pays for our security guards and gardeners. So housing altogether is 37,500 Baht. Then we have utilities. Now the biggest one is gonna be electricity, which is 2,500 Baht, and that’s because we are decent with our AC running, right?

[00:03:20] So I use it in my office all the time, and we do keep our AC on at nighttime, but not every room. So I think we’re doing pretty good at about the 2,500 Baht a month for electricity bill on average. Of course, it’s much higher in those warmer months, March to June, but averaging 2,500 Baht per month. The second utility is gonna be our home internet, which is quite cheap, with 3BB at 650 Baht.

[00:03:45] And then we also have our phone plans. And in our case we just have it for my wife and I. And her plan is more expensive than mine ’cause she talks more than me on the phone. But 1100 Baht per month for phone and internet. And there’s also water. Water’s incredibly cheap, the tap water. So we get that from the city and we do filter it out.

[00:04:04] But that’s gonna be for our showering water. Uh, maybe again 300, 250 to 300 Baht. And then we spend additional, about 500 Baht to have water delivered for drinking water from Sprinkle, which I think works quite well. Utilities all in, we’re talking 5,000 Baht Groceries and dining. This is gonna be a big one for us.

[00:04:23] So yes, you can get by on maybe a 30 to 60 Baht street food meal, but it’s not realistic when you have a family, just in my opinion at least, we do most of our shopping at Big C and Makro and Tesco Lotus or now just Lotus and We also just get a lot of fresh food, fruit. We got, uh, a lot of meat and we cook most of our meals, maybe 80% of our meals are home cooked.

[00:04:48] So we are always going to these big, uh, super grocery stores, uh, to, to get all of our food. And occasionally we’ll go to a villa market. But this is really just budget oriented grocery stores here to get that meat. It can really add up for a family of four. There’s also the non-food that we get at the grocery stores.

[00:05:08] I kind of included things like pharmacy, uh, you know, shirts for the kids, little supplies here and there, things like that. And it’s pretty high at 9,000 Baht, but just ballpark. There’s just always things that creep up and things that we have to maybe pick up at the local shop. Then there’s dining out.

[00:05:26] We don’t do this very frequently. Maybe once a week. Eating out is about. 800 Baht for our family. When we go to like a Jones Salad in the mall, again, nothing super extravagant, but you got, compare that to like a Homecooked meal, which is about 300. Baht a meal out is about 800 Baht and a pizza delivery.

[00:05:44] Again, getting a couple pizzas for the kids that last a little bit longer. Again, about 800 Baht. So that’s why our D Dining out budget adds up to about 3000 Baht per month groceries and dining altogether, 45,000 Baht. Now again, this is a really big portion of our expenses, but. When you break it apart, the food portion of this groceries and dining budget ends up being about 300 Baht per person daily or about a hundred Baht per meal.

[00:06:10] So really it’s not super crazy when a typical street food meal is, let’s say 50 to 60 a Baht. We are spending about a hundred Baht on average, so it’s not much more than street food, and that’s because we do a lot of home cook meals. Next we have health insurance. This is a big part of our budget as well, and that’s because we don’t just have that basic health plan that might cover you for a doctor’s visit.

[00:06:39] We really prioritize our catastrophic care, and that would mean things like. What happens if you get into a car accident? If you get cancer, something that is gonna cover you up to a hundred or 200,000 Baht isn’t gonna cover enough, in my opinion, for those catastrophic events. So we went with a company called Luma, which provides.

[00:06:59] Care up to 30 mil, uh, 32 million Baht in coverage, which is almost a million dollars. So it’s pretty extreme. Uh, but that does cover us and our kids. For each of the adults, it’s about 60,000 Baht per year. And for the kids it’s about 35,000 Baht. So our average monthly is about 15,000 Baht. Then there’s preventative care.

[00:07:22] When we take the kids to the pediatrician, to the eye doctor, to the local clinic when they have a flu, something like this, just 1500 Baht a month. And then there’s life insurance because when you have kids, of course you wanna protect the kids, your wife, your family, uh, in case something does happen. So I went with Unisure which is an international, uh, insurance agency for life insurance, and a term life insurance policy is running just over 2000 Baht per month altogether.

[00:07:52] Healthcare insurance, including life insurance, is about 18,000 Baht. Then we have education yet another really big one. Now, the international schools are crazy expensive. If you wanna send your kid to a top institution like NIST or ISB, they charge between 500 to 900,000 Baht per student annually. So as much as you might look at my budget and think it’s crazy high, if you’re a parent that’s sending your kids to one of these international schools.

[00:08:19] I think my budget will pale in comparison, uh, because we send our kids to a bilingual school, which I’d consider it to be kind of an in-between. You have your public schools, which are cheap or free or very little, right? And then you have the bilingual schools, and then you have the international schools.

[00:08:35] So to send two children to primary school at an uh, bilingual school is costing us 20,000 Baht per month total. Now that is for a 50 50 program, meaning 50% in Thai and 50% in English. ’cause we really do wanna prioritize them being good at speaking Thai and they get a lot of their English at home. So altogether I think it’s a good deal and we’re really happy with education they’re getting but.

[00:09:01] It’s not small money. It certainly does add up, and there is one additional fee related. The last expenses that I share does include things like the books and tuition and everything altogether, but I didn’t include the school van, which is separate here, to have them picked up and dropped off every day for those two semesters is 5,000 Baht education all in.

[00:09:23] We’re talking 25,000 Baht. Now transportation, just us getting around, running errands, going on a trip, that all in is gonna be 2,500 Baht. That does include about 2000 Baht for gasoline. That includes, um, you know, just. Uh, things like the tag to keep it renewed. So there’s always other expenses here, but 2,500 Baht for our main mode of transport.

[00:09:48] And I don’t include the upfront cost that came from purchasing a used Honda CRV That’s gonna depend on the year that you get and all these other things. But if you don’t want how, uh, uh, you don’t want a car payment and you don’t want a loan like me, then you’re gonna think still there’s additional maintenance cost and gasoline cost that you have to account for.

[00:10:08] And there’s also ride share. So I actually go into the city every once in a while and I will pay for the MRT or BTS, and I will pay for a grab taxi to go to and from on evening events when I come into the city. Uh, so that does add up quite a bit. So I budgeted about 3,500 Baht per month on ride sharing and public transport.

[00:10:27] So altogether the transportation costs are 6,000 Baht per month. Shopping is a much smaller portion. We do occasionally go to our local mall, which is future park. Rangsit And, you know, getting B books, getting gifts, getting small things for the kids. I budgeted 30, uh, or 3000 Baht per month from just these local shops.

[00:10:46] And then online shopping for other items like, um, I mostly shop on Lazada, but it could be household items, electronics, 5,000 Baht per month. So our shopping budget totals to 8,000 Baht per month. And then entertainment is another relatively small one. We let the kids go to play centers at the local shops.

[00:11:06] We also occasionally will go to an aquarium or a zoo. But to be honest, a lot of what we do is kind of free entertainment. So we’ll go outside a lot, we’ll go to our local park, we’ll go to the playground that’s in our neighborhood. We’ll feed the fish. So uh, we’ll fly a drone, right? There’s a ton of little things that we can do for free, but still, we budget about 2000 Baht a month for those paid activities.

[00:11:27] And then there’s the small subscriptions like Spotify or Netflix, 5,000 Baht in our case, or uh, yeah, 500 Baht in our case, entertainment, 2,500 Baht per month. Then vacations. We do have to take a break every once in a while and we go to places like Hua hin and Khao Yai uh, usually it’s just places that we can drive to.

[00:11:49] Uh, we haven’t done a lot of airfare or domestic flights, but they can be relatively affordable. In our case, just compensating for the nightly stay at hotels. If we stay, let’s say two to three nights. A lot of times they’re gonna range around a thousand to 1500 Baht per month, or sorry, per night. And so that’s why we will save up to go on maybe twice a year domestic vacations, and that’s just 3000 Baht per month.

[00:12:19] International travel would really make our budget kind of crazy to be honest, because to go to the US for instance, could cost 150,000 Baht, if not more, for a family of four, for a nice round trip ticket. And that would not even include accommodations if you don’t have a place to stay. So, uh, that would be a huge chunk.

[00:12:38] And in our case, since we haven’t been back to the US in a few years, I put no budget for that right now. Um, but international would add quite a bit. So vacation budget is just for those domestic trips, which is 3000 Baht. And then saving and investing. Now, this is one that I consider a non-negotiable. Before we even think about our food budget or our other, uh, budgets that I went through, we first set aside money for the future.

[00:13:04] Because remember, everything’s very different if you’re a pensioner or a retiree and you’re pulling from your current savings, uh, or from that pension. In our case, we are building up our wealth here in Thailand. I think people forget that as soon as you’re not vacationing here. You really have to put money away.

[00:13:21] And so we put away about 22% of our budget into saving and investing, which is 50,000 Baht. And so that’s, I’m not gonna break that down for you. Uh, the, but the, the gist of it is, is 50,000 Baht. And then there are a bunch of other considerations, so don’t forget about things like visa expenses. Don’t forget about maybe Thai expenses, going to a school or getting a local tutor.

[00:13:45] Don’t forget about all the emergency things that come up. We had situations where we had to have our engine replaced on our used car, and that was. 30 or 40,000 Baht. We also had a couple health emergencies, which resulted in having to pay the deductible on our insurance plans. That’s another 30,000 Baht.

[00:14:04] So it, there’s just always just miscellaneous expenses that come up, uh, summer school, uh, activities for the kids that, you know, might not be thinking about. So there’s just a ton of little things. Now, I, I didn’t put that budget here ’cause I did blend that in, but I just want to put this as a reminder for you to think about all those other things that do, uh.

[00:14:23] Come up outta nowhere sometimes. So here’s the summary all in. And as you can see, that adds up to a 200,000 Baht budget, which is about 6,000 US dollars, and I’m sure there are some of the bigger items on here that you might disagree with. But as a whole, as you can see, this is not an extravagant. Life.

[00:14:44] This is not living and, uh, going out on yachts all the time or going to hi-so hotels, when you’re dealing with family and you’re paying for the education and you’re paying to feed a bunch of kids, these things really do add up. And before you know it, you can get to pretty high numbers. And this is something of course we can afford and that’s not a big deal for us, but.

[00:15:05] You know, you can certainly get buy off on less, but I just wanted to share this so you get an idea of how much a family could cost if you’re in a similar situation to me. So I hope that got you started. Now, having said that, I do wanna show you a. A tool that I have for you here, which is going to allow you to create your own budget.

[00:15:25] And if you go here, and I am gonna share the link in the description of this video, but you can make your own copy of this calculator and you can fill in all your numbers and all of these yellow cells here can be filled in. With the numbers that you want in whatever currency and whatever duration that you want.

[00:15:41] So for instance, you could change and say, oh, my budget is $500 US dollars per month. Or you can say that I’m willing to spend 200 Baht per day. You can put in all the numbers in the way you want just by clicking the dropdowns and selecting what you want, and it’ll calculate out what your monthly budget is in various currencies.

[00:16:00] You can also scroll down to the bottom And you’ll see a summary of your monthly expenses, your yearly summary, as well as a daily summary. And lastly, it has a percentage breakdown here. So all of these gray cells or calculations, I would recommend not adjusting those. But again, if you adjust and put in all your expenses here in these yellow cells, then you’ll figure out what your family budget is, and hopefully that gets you started.

[00:16:28] As you can see, tying can cost as much or as little as you want. You can certainly get by on $2,000 a month, but if you have a family, it’s easy to spend a whole lot more. Having said that, kids are well worth it. No matter what your budget is, you can make it work. I hope you got some value outta this video.

[00:16:45] If you did, please give me a like, and if you like videos like this about living in Thailand or about starting a business here. Go ahead and subscribe to the channel and don’t forget to use the free budget calculator. I have linked in the description. Alright, I’ll catch you on the next one.