Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing retirees in Thailand as well as Expat folks that work in Thailand. I was having a discussion over this past basically this past weekend with two different friends in very different age groups. We were all together sharing a meal and I thought it was very interesting just seeing the juxtaposition and the differences between the perspectives of each of them. They had very different and I sort of am aware of it but I never really understood how very different the concerns are of different expats. Expats who are for example working here in Thailand have just a totally different set of concerns from retirees. I know there are probably going to be folks in the audience, folks watching this channel that will say, "Well duh, of course!" I do understand. I am hitting on something that is blatantly obvious but sometimes I have a problem seeing the forest for the trees because I am down dealing with things on a very individualized basis so sometimes my perspective gets skewed.

One thing that was really interesting to discuss was the difference in thinking about visas. That was a big one that I noticed. There was just a totally different perspective on. One individual while concerned about it, their Retirement Visa, it was more or less a once a year issue; something they basically had to think about for about a month, maybe a few weeks and then, okay no problem. The other person I was talking to, a younger person and self-employed who deals through a Company here in Thailand, they have their Work Permit sorted out all of that, they are going ahead and it is a month by month thing that they are looking at because documentation pertaining to one's Immigration status is something that has to be maintained so it is something they think about relatively frequently. I can definitely say from personal experience having been a working expat here in Thailand before I had my permanent status sorted out, I thought about my Work Permit and my Visa frequently. It was almost a monthly thing. Being self-employed does create a different impetus on you to for lack of a better term, keep a closer eye on your Visa status whereas retirees again I don't want to make it sound like they are not thinking about visa issues, I think it is very clear, retirees in Thailand are very up on Immigration policy. They keep an eye on it but it is just not quite as personal I guess for lack of a better term as I have seen especially with self-employed expats and even expats that have a Work Permit that work for maybe a large corporation here or even a smaller Corporation but they are not self-employed, teachers, these folks it is a little bit different. They are more aware at almost a day-to-day level about their visa status as opposed to retirees. Like I said, I am not talking about everybody but it is just in the broad strokes and not to stereotype but just what I have seen is they think about it for about a month and then they are done worrying about that for another year because they just get that sorted out and they move on. 

So again, different people are going to view things differently. I thought it was interesting. Another major issue that most retirees I should say do not really have a great deal of concern about is taxes here in Thailand because for the most part and there are exceptions to this especially with offshore income and some things like that where you need to plan out and those retirees who do feel they may have an issue with offshore income, it may not be a terrible idea to contact a legal professional, gain some insight and guidance into how best to structure your holdings so as to not get in the way here in Thailand. But for the most part, it can be handled in such a way or those on a pension, it just is a fact that they don't really have to worry about Thai taxes to the same extent as working expats in Thailand. It is just not something that comes up in the day-to-day.

So again just pontificating off the top of my head that yeah there are major differences in perspective. I think age makes a big, big difference. The other thing I find rather interesting in Thailand is, although I am coming up on what is oftentimes referred to as middle age, there always seems to be kind of a gap. It is like there are retirees and then there is kind of a 10-year gap usually, not all the time, there are people that are in the 40 to 50 range and then you have people at about 35 you start seeing a number of folks here and there really isn't anybody in the middle so it is kind of interesting to watch these perspectives kind of bounce off one another because they are in very different points in their life and they just have very different perspectives.