I have for many months now tried to find the perfect example or examples of just how cheap things are in a country like Thailand which is one of the favorite countries for the ever growing location independent population.
Many times I will take a photo of things as I travel and post them over on my facebook page Like this dish below, cost just 60cts “kinda nice” it’s probably not enough to really drive home the true cost of living though.
The other day I was sitting at home in my doorway outside and as I looked around me at the building I live in these thoughts went through my mind:
- How many rooms are their here?
Next up was:
- So how much does that generate?
The result was pretty much mind blowing and found me having to recheck my calculation a few times.
The building below represents an above average example of the kind of accommodation a lot of the population live in. It is also in one of the nicest areas of town, brand new, has great views, very safe, and for the most part is rented out by young professionals, needless to say all this comes at a price and that price is probably around the double of the majority of rentals.
The numbers that I calculated were these:
If for some weird reason you wished to rent out this whole building 30 rooms paying top dollar for all the rooms, your total monthly bill would only be!
$2700 per month:
Just Two Thousand Seven Hundred US Dollars
You could have a 1 of the 3 floors for just $900 per month!
To add just a little more fuel to the fire!
Take a minute to imagine the owner of this building and how much they are likely to be netting from the above? for myself I would imagine regardless of whichever country I’m in that the owner of a building of this size would probably be a fairly affluent person that lives fairly comfortably within that country, as you can see from the gross numbers the owner of this building is not even making a western salary.
So their you have it, I hope that this example will give you that
“WOW moment” like it did me.
If you are still not sure whether to take a leap of faith and go it alone in a foreign country becoming location independent, a simple rule of thumb would be that your expenses will float around 1/6 of what you are used to. Here is another take on BKK and just how cheap things are
If your thinking of heading over to Asia and basing out of Thailand or the likes, be sure to checkout some of the prices Air Asia Thailand puts out every few weeks, with a little forward planning you can find very cheap flights out of London to Asia.