@Natalie *******

Great info! Thanks for taking the time to post this. My wife and I are also over 50 Canadians living off our investments (no actual "pension"). Currently I do a non-o with a letter from the Canadian consulate confirming that my monthly income is over 65K THB via my tax return and my wife just uses our wedding certificate to come as a trailing spouse (no proof of $ required for her). This works great as we can leave all our $ in Canada. This LTR does look interesting though. Did you actually have to move $ into Thailand for it (other than the 50K THB fee) or could you just show your funds back in Canada? The LTR website appears to be down at the moment.

@David ********

Have you looked into your wife coming in as a trailing spouse so only you would need to show the funds? That's what my wife and I did. We are both Canadian so I just used the consulate for an affidavit of proof of income vs. transferring the funds and a letter confirming she is married to me based on showing them our Canadian marriage certificate.

Not sure where OP is from but just a heads up that not everyone needs 800K in a Thai bank. Some Embassies/Consulates give affidavits of proof of funds. For example we just went to the Canadian consulate in Chiang Mai, showed them our Canadian tax return with our income and they gave us a letter that the local immigration accepted in lieu of 800K in a Thai bank. Other countries do the same. Not UK, US or Australia though. EDIT: This was for a Non-O retirement visa extension as we are both over 50. You don't need to show funds if you get the visa in your home country. Search in here for my posts and you should find a long thread about it (summer 2021 timeframe).

If you can get to a Canadian consulate/embassy you can get an affidavit of income from them so you don't need to put money in a Thai bank account. You just show them your T1 or statement of income form that you can get from the CRA website. Just did this a couple of weeks ago via the Chiang Mai consulate.

P.S. the 1250 THB for the income/marriage affidavit from our Canadian consulate was an extra expense but it saved us from having to put 800K THB x 2 in a basically zero interest Thai bank account. We do have a Thai bank account now but we prefer to keep our $ invested and working for us. The US, UK and Australian embassies/consulates no longer provide these affidavits for their citizens but some other countries still do. Doing it this way means that the money you bring into Thailand and keep in Thailand is entirely up to you and not dictated by immigration requirements. We had never heard of this affidavit method of income proof so hopefully this will help inform others.

@Ken *****

As mentioned, we 100% both had Non-O (just look at the attached photo) retirement visas from the Vancouver consulate. We didn't want OA due to the insurance requirements.

Canadian here. They don't issue them and we were not asked for a letter at either the Chiang Mai or Satun Immigration offices.

Final update for future searchers. Yesterday we received our new "stickerless" Non-Immigrant O visas from the Canadian Consulate in Vancouver. The process was extremely easy using the thaievisa.go.th site. We gave the consulate a call and they confirmed there was no need to upload signed guarantee letters or signed/stamped statements from our bank. We simply uploaded 3 previous months of bank statements and investment account statements. We also contacted the Canadian consulate in Chiang Mai. They were very friendly and familiar with the process of providing affidavits of proof of income letters along with our marriage license to take care of Helen's trailing spouse extension. We will do a separate post for the extensions but based on the conversation with CM consulate we should not need 800K in a Thai bank. 🙂 Thanks to the amazing help and info from the folks running this group for helping us figure this all out!

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@ *************

r and others, this is a fantastic resource you have setup here, thank you so much. 🙏

Ok, would just like to summarize what we are planning to do and hear if it makes sense.

I apply for the Non-O retirement visa in Canada. This does not require money in a Thai bank account. I just need to show that we have the funds. My wife (Helen) applies for the Non-O trailing spouse visa from Canada referencing my Non-O retirement application. She will not have to prove any financials. This will give us 90 days in Thailand.

Once we get to Chiang Mai, make an appointment with the Canadian consulate to show them my annual income using tax statement and get them to issue an affidavit of income letter. After I get the affidavit of income I apply for the 1 year extension based on retirement. Helen applies for the 1 year extension as a trailing spouse referencing my retirement application.

Every year we re-apply for the same extensions before the date that we received our initial extensions.

Couple of questions:

- At what point of the initial 90 day Non-O visa should/can I apply for the extension? Anytime after I get the affidavit or some specific time before the expiration?

- Does Helen have to wait until I get the 1 year extension before she can apply for the trailing spouse extension referencing my retirement visa or do we do it at the same time?

- For subsequent extensions after the initial one, how soon before our initial extension anniversary date should we apply for new extensions?

Feel like we are almost there with a good plan. We will still open a Thai Bank account but it'll be nice not having to move 800K into it. Thanks again! 👍🙏

@Ellie ******

Cool, thanks. I need to do more research on this as it sounds like the US and British (and maybe other) embassies used to do this as well but stopped. While it sounds like the Canadian embassy still does it.