What options do I have for extending my stay in Thailand on a TR Visa without using COVID extensions?

Where do you want to live? Do you want to do an education visa? I did the self-defense education visa in Chiang Mai two years in a row, then I did the Thai language visa there. I heard in October 2019 immigration stopped allowing back-to-back ed visas but I'm not sure if that's true. Some schools I talked to claimed they could get around that rule but I think that's because they bribe immigration officials. I didn't want to take the risk and I was all out of long-stay options so I went with the 5-year elite visa which was 500K baht. Now it's 600K baht but the 20-year elite visa is still 1M baht which is a good deal IMO if you plan to stay that long. There's also the volunteer visa if you want to do some part-time volunteer work. And there are many other types of ed visas available in various cities for cooking, muay Thai, massage, scuba diving, etc. Let me know if you have any questions.

I'm going to assume you're not married to a Thai, 50 years of age or over, or have 500,000 baht burning a hole in your pocket. The covid extension is not a bad deal assuming it's continued past May (as it has been for months). However, if you want a little more security, then I think you are looking at an ED Visa. Discussion of that has already started here:

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