Westerners and Their Money

[Gaybutton]

The way I see it, I budget for the amount of money I know I will need each month. As long as the exchange rates can provide that amount, great. Anything beyond that amount is gravy. I spend whatever I need to spend or want to spend. At the end of the month, whatever is left gets saved in a Thai bank account.

So far that has done quite well for me and now I have backup money if the exchange rate ever gets so bad that I won't receive the minimum amount I need.

[fountainhall]

Dollar is going down (entirely due to Trump) and though Chinese arrivals getting a hit, Thailand is getting more direct investments because international companies moving their supply chains from China to South East Asia including Thailand.

This to me makes a lot of sense. It reminds me a bit of the 1980s in Japan. The Reagan administration was determined to get Japan to upvalue is currency as its exports were flooding into the US. It succeeded but only at a cost of Japan entering a nearly 20-year recession!

When I first visited Tokyo in 1981, US$1 bought about 265 Yen. By 1990 the rate was down to about 160. By the end of 1992 it was 118. By then Japan had started moving much of its manufacturing out of the country, most into China and cheaper S E Asian countries. Although there has been no pressure yet on the Yuan, moving manufacturing offshore is one way of getting around import quotas and tariffs.