Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Bank Balances and pensions as it pertains to Thai Retirement Visas. I thought of making this video after reading a recent comment on our channel, quoting directly: "I have seen somewhere "or a combination of the two". Is it possible to have 400k in the bank and a pension slightly less than the minimum?" I have discussed this previously. So what we are talking about here is there is two options regarding Thai Retirement Visas when you are proving up the financial threshold. You are proving up your ability to support yourself essentially here in the Kingdom in retirement status and there are two options for dealing with that. One is a Bank Balance if it is a Thai Retirement Visa either O-A or O category, you are going to be looking at 800,000 Baht maintenance on balance in a Thai bank account. Meanwhile, there is also a possibility to use a pension. If you can show that you receive 65,000 Baht or more per month in your Bank Account via a pension then that is another way of proving up your financials for purposes of either conversion to or extension of Thai Retirement Visa status. 

The question posed is "can you combine the two if you have less?" My general answer to this and I want to be clear it is a general answer is no, that's really not an effective possibility because I have never seen it in the regs. that that is actually allowed. Now I have heard anecdotally from folks much like this poster who have said well I went to an Immigration Office and they said yeah you can use a combination of the two. Different Immigration Offices do things differently and remember Thai Immigration Officers have the ability to use their discretion to one degree or another with respect to adjudication of that Retirement Visa applications so the thing to understand is, in theory I guess that is possible, a combination. You might have a situation especially I would think under certain exigent circumstances where a Thai Immigration Officer says "hey look I see your situation, I am going to go ahead and grant a favourable exercise of my discretion to go ahead and allow you", usually it is like a one-off. They say we are going to allow your extension based on sort of the totality of your financial situation. Again I think that may be possible in limited circumstances where sort of the facts warrant it but understand this is not the standard protocol. Thai Immigration is pretty by the book quite honestly and they either want to see that full balance of 800,000 or they want to see that 65,000 regularly coming in or more. Again this is Thai Baht so remember we are talking about roughly 23,000 US Dollars maintained on balance or roughly about 2,200 US coming in every month. That is what you have got to prove in order to maintain a Retirement Visa here in Thailand. 

Now again, as I said there may be some circumstances where Thai Immigration Officials go ahead and say look we are going to exercise discretion and allow you to sort of use that in combination. Do not presume that that is the hard and fast rule. That if anything is an exception and I suspect it is only happening in exceptional circumstances where the facts warrant it so don't depend on that. You need to be looking at one or the other; 800,000 Baht or 65,000 Baht coming in monthly. That is what you are looking at.