How much does it cost for you and your family to live in Chiang Mai?
As noted by many expats, your cost of living will greatly vary on your standard of living. What I tried to do is to have a similar standard of living our family had in Dallas, Texas.
We are paying about $6,000 a month, including international school tuition, which is the largest expense. Excluding tuition, we are paying about $3,800 a month. This is about a quarter of our cost of living in Texas.
The below histogram shows the itemized cost of living in Chiang Mai as a percent of the cost of living in Dallas.
Several insights emerge as you look at this graph:
Expect to get only a slight discount for a car – we purchased a $20,000 vehicle here in Chiang Mai, the 2023 Hyundai Creta. A similar vehicle is the 2023 Hyundai Santa Fe back in the U.S. with a MSRP of $25,000. While I purchased both vehicles with cash, I wanted to do an apples-to-apples comparison with a monthly car payment calculator. Assuming 5% APR on a 60 month loan with zero money down, this gets to about the Creta being 80% of the cost of the Santa Fe. That being said, car fuel and car insurance in Thailand are going to be cheaper – about half and a third, respectively – to similar items in the U.S.
Housing and Utilities are about a third of U.S. costs – we live in a safe neighborhood here in Chiang Mai, close to our kids’ international school. We have a 3-bedroom townhouse, which is smaller than the 4-bedroom single family home with pool that we had back in Texas. That being said, our townhouse in Chiang Mai is more centrally located to the city, whereas our house in Dallas was at least a 30 minute commute to the city center. Utilities are also about a quarter of what we were paying in the U.S., given much more expensive electricity rates and the water we were using for our Texas-sized pool.
Meals are a quarter of U.S. costs – Yes, we spend the most on meals here in Thailand. That may be surprising because of what you may hear from expats that food in Thailand is super cheap. That may be true if you’re eating street food or local Thai food at a hole-in-the-wall place serving Pad Thai or Green curry with outdoor seating. But if you’re like my family, we’re eating a combination of Asian and Western food in Thailand, almost exclusively at sit-down restaurants with a server waiting on us; when we eat at home, we rarely cook and instead order in Grab (similar to that of Uber Eats). Overall, though, we pay about a quarter of what we otherwise pay in the U.S.; this is largely due to lower labor rates (especially on Grab deliveries), reduced commercial real estate costs, and not having to pay for tip at most places.
Housekeeping and medical insurance are a fraction of what we used to pay – Likely not surprising because labor costs in Thailand are so much lower. We pay for house cleanings at only 5% of what we paid in Texas, and we get an extra cleaning per week! While the company I was working at in the U.S. paid for most of the medical insurance I had, I still had to pay a monthly premium – and that premium is still over three times as much as what I have gotten with a global insurer here in Thailand! And our medical insurance in Thailand covers all major costs, including surgery and ambulance expenses, and provides us coverage not just in Thailand but pretty much anywhere in the world (except for, you guessed it, the U.S.).
I plan to have a separate post that shows you a photo gallery – side-by-side comparisons of what we are paying for in Thailand versus what we paid for in Texas.
Costs are, though, only one part of the equation when looking at a mini-retirement destination. You also want a great quality of life; please take a look at my post to see what quality of life I have found in Thailand.
