I’m European.
In Europe, when you work, you have to pay social security.
This social security gives you a “pension” when you become “old”.
The age for retirement depends from country to country.
In France, you have now mass demonstrations because the government wishes to increase the age from 62 to 64.
In Belgium, the age is 65. From 2025, 66, and 67 from 2030.
Specific professions, like the military or police, can go earlier on retirement (56).
There are always some tricks to go a few years earlier on retirement.
For the discussion, let’s say, you wish to retire on 65 with a pension of 1 500 Euro netto in the pocket. 1 500 Euro is now 55 000 THB. (1 500 Euro is the average pension in Belgium and France)
If you are a teacher in Europe, you will have minimally this pension, 55k THB per month.
If you are a government teacher in Belgium/France, you can add easily 50%.
These numbers bring me to my question.
If you are a teacher in Thailand, what do you think about your future?
If you calculate 55k pension per month, that makes 660 000 THB per year. (If we follow Thai immigration rules, you need 65k per month)
But we have inflation. For me, Belgian pensions follow inflation. (The government’s goal is 2% inflation per year.)
We can assume that for every year, we need 2% more “income” for the same spending level.
If you calculate now 660k per year, next year that has to be 660k + 2% = 673 000. A year later, 673k +2%, and so on.
A Thai income from 100k sounds very nice, if you spend these 100k every month.
But to have the same level of comfort for a pension compared to teaching in Europe, you have to save a lot of money and hope all comes fine.
And that makes me wonder, how do you do it?
Or you don’t think about your old days?
(For Belgium, you can become a member of “Overzeese Sociale zekerheid”. You pay every month around 850 euros/35 000 THB, starting at age 30, to have a pension of 1 600 Euro at age 65. But you have to calculate indexation for next year. You can start older, but the premium increases)
