If you read our last piece, 10 Money Mistakes That Catch Out British Expats in Thailand, you’ll know how easily things can go wrong: frozen pensions, surprise tax bills, dodgy offshore “opportunities” sold over a beer.
Knowing what not to do is half the job. This is the other half: what British expats who get it right are actually doing with their pensions, tax, and investments once they’re settled in Thailand.
Start with a proper pension review, not a guess
Colin, a retired firefighter living near Hua Hin, had three separate UK pensions when we first spoke to him: an old workplace scheme, a personal pension he’d forgotten the details of, and his state pension. He didn’t need to consolidate everything, but he did need someone to actually look at all three together, work out the charges, the growth, and whether they still matched what he needed now he was living a very different life to the one he’d planned them around.
A proper review isn’t about being sold a new product. It’s about understanding what you already have before anyone suggests changing it.
Get your tax residency status confirmed in writing, not assumed
We mentioned Thailand’s tightened rules on foreign income remitted by tax residents. The fix isn’t complicated, but it does need to be deliberate: work out your residency status in both the UK and Thailand for the tax year, and plan when and how you move money accordingly. This is genuinely one conversation with the right adviser, not months of stress.
Build an investment strategy around currency, not just returns
Diane, a former school office manager now living in Phuket, used to convert her whole month’s income from sterling to baht the moment it landed, regardless of the exchange rate that day. Once she understood how much that habit had cost her over two years, she moved to a simple, unglamorous fix: a staggered transfer schedule and a portion of savings held in a multi-currency account. Nothing exotic. It just stopped her finances being at the mercy of the FX market’s mood swings.
Use regulated advisers only, and check, don’t assume
This is the one piece of advice that undoes almost every horror story in our last article. Before anyone manages a penny of your money:
- Confirm they’re regulated by a body you can independently verify (FCA in the UK, or the relevant regulator wherever they’re licensed)
- Ask directly what happens to your money if they disappear tomorrow
- Get everything in writing, with no verbal “trust me” arrangements
If an adviser can’t calmly answer those three things, that’s your answer.
Revisit your will and your beneficiaries this year, not “eventually”
Peter and Joan, married 34 years and now in Chiang Mai, hadn’t touched their will since before they left the UK. It didn’t account for Peter’s Thai bank accounts, and it named a UK executor who had no legal standing to act quickly in Thailand. Updating it took a few weeks once they actually started. The two years they’d spent putting it off had cost them nothing, but easily could have.
The pattern this time
Every fix above has the same shape: get proper, independent, regulated advice, put things in writing, and revisit decisions instead of setting them once and forgetting them. None of it is dramatic. That’s rather the point: good financial planning as an expat should feel a bit boring. It’s the exciting-sounding stuff that tends to go wrong.
Ready to actually get this sorted? If you’d like a no-obligation review of where you currently stand, whether it’s pensions, tax residency, or investments, get in touch and we’ll walk through it together.
Names in this article have been changed to protect privacy; the situations described are illustrative composites drawn from common patterns among UK expats in Thailand.
This article is for general information only and isn’t personal financial or tax advice. Everyone’s situation is different, so speak to a qualified, regulated adviser before making decisions about pensions, tax, or investments.
