If you have a Thai bank account then you won't be stiffed 220 THB at the ATM. I think cashless is very popular with Thais. It seems like you can use PromptPay on your phone's bank app for pretty much everything these days.
How much would a person actually save, if any, by muling in $20K cash and exchanging at SuperRich vs using something like Wise etc. to transfer straight into a Thai bank account?
Non O Visa based on retirement for you and Non O visa based on trailing spouse for your wife. First both of you apply for 90 day Non O retirement visas from Canada showing your banks statements to get them. In Thailand near the end of the 90 days, take your Canadian marriage license and rev Canada statement of income to your local Canada consul/embassy and get an affidavit of income/proof of marriage (1250 THB) and take it to immigration when you apply for your Non O visa extensions. Then only you need to prove > 800K THB income and your wife slides in with you. 🙂 Repeat the Thai steps every year. You'll also need to do 1 in person 90 day report and the rest take 30 seconds online, every 90 days. This is what my Canadian wife and I do in Chiang Mai. Got all the details off the Thai Visa Advice FB group. Just search for my name in there for all the posts about it. You 100% do not need an agent.
What is "notarization etc."? I only had to book a consulate appointment online in CM and spent 20 mins getting the affidavit of income. Just needed to show my statement of income (available free online from rev Canada) showing over 800K THB annual income.
Thanks. The 90 day reporting website was down for ages so it does happen here. The big downside for us with the LTR is that we only pay ourselves what we need to live on and it's nowhere near $120K CAD/$80K USD. I'll take a look at their website once it comes back online to see if there's a way to make it work for us. If only they'd allow us to show investment account and/or HISA funds.