What we will list below are our total expenses as well as the daily average for our year in Thailand. We also had two big trips (Nepal, Dallas and some college expenses for Chase) that we will add in for the overall expenses, but we will keep just the Thai spending separate so you can see those totals.
(All amounts below are in US dollars. Remember, even though our rent was a constant 18,000 baht a month, the baht weakened to the dollar as the year progressed.)
Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug
Rent 560 550 547 548 556 553 553 537 534 530 513 535
Eating Out 473 377 437 418 665 433 464 478 280 745 470 336
Trans. 159 43 16 5 19 15 304 104 239 640 906 21
Groceries 205 181 148 171 191 141 233 181 137 171 195 97
Ph/Internet 66 21 20 20 20 21 21 15 21 19 20 16
Entertain. 208 241 314 343 273 114 243 244 519 235 65 73
Medical 9 87 40 12 39 8 0 281 2 522 117 823
Misc 197 207 71 217 133 90 239 228 280 584 108 41
Electricity 16 16 19 25 27 20 40 55 31 52 38 **0
Water 4 4 4 7 6 5 7 *0 4 4 6 **0
Visa 130 130 246 130 167 193 132 124 127 122 131 91
Total 2027 1740 1862 1896 2096 1593 2236 2247 2174 3624 2569 2033
Per Day 68 56 62 62 68 57 72 75 71 121 83 89
Total Expenses in Thailand for one year = $26,097
Average per day in Thailand = $73.66
* The $0 total for water in April was when the condo flooded and they didn't charge us for that month. http://freetirement.weebly.com/blog/rollin-with-the-punches
** When we sold items that we had already paid for such as the microwave, fans, etc., we used this money to pay our final electric and water bills. That is why there is a $0 balance for August.
Nepal trip- $5000
Dallas trip - $1700
College expenses for Chase - $1300
Total expenses for the Year = $34.097 (Added Thai expenses plus Nepal, Dallas and college)
Average spending per day for year one = $93.41
Conclusion: This was of course higher than we expected due to the extra trips this year and some unforeseen medical expenses. But that is what happens in life, right? Still, we are very pleased with this first year and Chiang Mai is a great place to keep overall living expenditures low. We don't expect that those same low numbers during our Europe trip and cruise, but we have to look long term and research different ways to cut costs later.