Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are going to do a comparison here between the O-A Retirement Visa and the Marriage Visa. So I am making another video contemporaneously with this one where I compare the O Retirement Visas to the O Marriage Visa; we're talking about the O-A here and I think it's a different analysis when you are comparing the two. 

Why am I making this video? Well a lot of folks who are looking to come to Thailand to live, especially retirees, they tend to sort of oscillate back and forth sometimes in their initial analysis between ‘should I do a Marriage Visa or should I do a Retirement Visa?’ Now first of all the thing to bear in mind is it is going to depend on the given facts in your case. Bear in mind the criteria associated with maintaining an O Marriage Visa in terms of financial requirements are lower for the Marriage Visa than they are for the O-A Retirement Visa. The O-A requires 800,000 Baht or its equivalent in some bank account or requires 65,000 Baht in pension income per month coming into Thailand in order to obtain, especially an O-A extension here in Thailand. Meanwhile it is only 400,000 Baht or 40,000 Baht in some kind of income; so it is 400,000 Baht bank balance or 40,000 Baht in income to deal with a Marriage Visa. 

Again I am not going to compare it to the O Retirement Visa, I'll do that in another video. But when compared to the O-A, I think the Marriage Visa if you are married to a Thai national, and again as I have discussed in many other videos, don't get married just to get visa benefits, that is never a good idea. That said, if you are in fact married, then if you are comparing the Marriage Visa, the O Marriage Visa to the O-A, I think it's a hands down winner, the O Marriage Visa.

Now there is heightened scrutiny on a Marriage Visa as we have discussed in other videos due to fraud in the past - I will get into that in far more detail when I do the comparison with the O Retirement Visa. That said, even that scrutiny, that level of scrutiny, I think is probably if you are doing a cost-benefit analysis, that cost is outweighed by the benefits accrued in the terms of the O Marriage Visa compared to the O-A. As we have discussed in other videos O-A Visas require medical insurance which is not a requirement for a Marriage Visa so when comparing those two, I think an O Marriage Visa probably looks better than an O-A Retirement Visa.