Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the notion of retiring "on the margins" in Thailand. The reason I got to thinking about this was reading a recent article from the Thai Examiner that is thaiexaminer.com, the article is titled: Wealthy foreigners to own small land holdings associated with homes here agreed in principle. As we have discussed in other videos yeah "in principle", I think that "principle" probably ain't going to hold up ultimately but we discussed that in other videos; not the purpose of this video. The purpose of this video was an excerpt in the article. I urge folks who are watching this to read it in detail, a lot of insight in there. Quoting directly: "New regulations do not yet impact more popular Non-Immigrant O Visas for marriage and retirement." By these new regulations we are talking about a lot of the regulations associated with a bunch of the insurance requirements or so-called self-insurance requirements etc. Quoting directly: "These new arrangements do not impact current requirements for Non-Immigrant O Visas or extensions either for Marriage or Retirement Visas for now but may signal future intentions by the Government which have also been regularly aired publicly by senior officials. Thailand is moving up market and looking for wealthy foreigners to come to live and work in the Kingdom. In this respect, while efforts are being made to make investing in the Kingdom by foreigners seeking to live in Thailand easier and provide flexibility to those with assets and financial banking, the bar may rise in the future for those foreigners living on the margins.

I would say I mean first of all we got to define "margins" but if it is just a lower income expat, a lower income retiree or somebody that $25,000 is significant money, yeah I still do think that those retirees are going to be a part of the expat ecosystem here in Thailand. I have done another video contemporaneously with this one discussing the future of the O Retirement Visa just briefly. I don't think there is a great deal to be worried about here. I know there is some concern out there in the retired community that they may one day get rid of the O Retirement Visa or something of this nature or add all these requirements on to that, I don't think that is going to happen for a variety of different reasons but most notably Thai Immigration Officers and Thai policy makers are not wholly without sympathy. For example how does one who ages out so to speak from insurance requirements within Thailand maintain their status? If somebody comes over here in good faith and retires in Thailand in their 70s and they get up into their upper 80s or 90s and yeah they can't get insurance anymore, well what are they going to do? Well they are going to have an O Retirement Visa that doesn't require insurance. So I think for the most part it is probably not something to be overly concerned about but yes we did see a number of folks who were for their time "on the margins" fall by the wayside in the retiree community here in Thailand when they got rid of the Income Affidavits that were available through for example the American or the British or the Australian Embassies. When those Income Affidavits were no longer issued we stopped seeing a large segment of the retiree population. Now here is the question though. Being "on the margins" is very different thing from lying so in a lot of the cases frankly of folks that were using Income Affidavits, it begged the question: "Did those people ever have the financial resources they claimed in those income affidavits to begin with?" I would say evidenced by the fact that they are no longer here in many cases, it appears no, they didn't have those assets that could meet those financial requirements. 

So again big difference between sort of not being the richest retiree and being somebody who is going to get kicked out effectively out of the country. I just don't think that is going to happen to folks as of now. I think the kind of demography we are looking at with respect to retirees although we certainly want the numbers higher as we have discussed in other videos, I do think the demography overall is probably what it is going to be into the relatively foreseeable future.