Where Does My Salary Go?

Money's story, and the seven weeks that changed how she thinks about money
by Smith Taweelerdniti

About the book

เงินเดือนออกแล้วไปไหน? is a Thai-language book for people early in their working lives who want their money to work as hard as they do, but have never had anyone sit beside them and explain how.

It grew out of Happy Money, a Wednesday book club at Nithi Foods, a family-owned food company in Chiang Mai, where the managing director reads a personal-finance book with six or seven employees at a time around the meeting table in his office.

The first half is a thirteen-chapter novel about Money, a 27-year-old office worker who earns 25,000 baht a month and has 300 baht left at the end of it. The second half is the real classroom: the seven-step ladder, the seven sessions, and tools for Thai salary earners on tax, fund fact sheets, insurance tables and a 30-day practice plan.

Why I wrote this book

This story did not begin in a classroom. It began at the provident fund committee table at Nithi Foods.

Our fund used to invest mainly in Thailand, and over the long run the returns were modest. One day the asset management company that looks after our fund proposed adding foreign investment options.

For three years I refused.

Back then I was afraid that if I opened those options to people who did not yet understand them, they might choose something they did not know and get hurt. I believe many executives whose companies have not opened these options think the same way. It is not that they don't care. They care, and so they are afraid.

But every time I compared the returns of the company fund with my own portfolio, which I had spread abroad, one question rang in my head.

If our employees have no option that can go this far, are we really doing the right thing?

In the end I chose to open it, and I knew at once that opening it was not enough. I had to teach my younger colleagues myself, because a choice that arrives without knowledge is like handing car keys to someone who cannot drive. And the money in a provident fund may be the largest sum many of them will ever have at retirement. If they don't know how to choose, they will stay in the same plan for another thirty years without knowing what they lost.

At Nithi Foods we have three core values: Credible, Creative, Care. This classroom comes from the last one. Caring for the people in our house is more than paying salaries on time. It also means helping them see how that salary can work on their behalf.

We named the club Happy Money, after one of the eight kinds of happiness in the Happy 8 Workplace framework of the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, because people who don't have to worry about money at the end of every month really do work more happily.

The club meets on Wednesdays, from half past four to half past five. Any week I am in the office, that hour is reserved for the club. My secretary arranges the schedule and gathers each cohort, and I owe her my thanks here.

We learn book-club style, at the meeting table in my office, six or seven people at a time. Everyone reads beforehand, seventy to eighty pages a round, then comes with questions and talks about how the reading made them feel. My part is to fill in the basics the book assumes its readers already know, and my colleagues don't yet. Since September 2025 six cohorts have passed through, and nearly everyone on the office staff has now sat at that table.

The book we read is The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins.

Before choosing it I listened to the English audiobook twice and read the Thai translation once, until I was sure it was the right backbone for our reading, and equally sure it would be hard to understand.

Hard because it was written for Americans. It talks about accounts that don't exist in Thailand, funds we can't buy directly, and taxes we don't pay. And when you read it, nobody sits beside you to say "this is what that means," "this is why he says that," "and what if it's in baht?"

At that table I try to be the person sitting beside them, answering those questions. I call myself a forest guide. The investment forest is vast, and without someone to lead the way it is easy to get lost. I don't invest for anyone and I have nothing to sell. All I can give is a point of view and the knowledge I have gathered.

But that table has only eight chairs.

Outside there are millions of new graduates and working people who want to start but don't yet dare, and who will never get to sit in that room. This book is my attempt to put that table on paper.

The first half is the story of "Money," a 27-year-old woman who earns 25,000 baht a month and has 300 baht left at the end of it. She is fictional, but her questions come from the real questions my colleagues asked me in that room. The second half is what we discussed over the seven sessions, rearranged so you can come back to it.

Before we begin, two things.

First, I am not a licensed investment adviser. Every number in this book is an example for learning, not advice to buy or sell anything. The decision is always yours.

Second, if someone gave you this book, turn to the first page. That person wishes you well, more than you think.

Enjoy the walk in the forest.

Smith Taweelerdniti
Managing Director, Nithi Foods Co., Ltd.

The story so far: Money decided not to enter the "investment forest" because everyone who offered to help her had something to sell. Then she joined Happy Money, where Khun Smith taped a laminated sheet with four questions to the whiteboard and drew a ladder of steps toward financial freedom. She realised she was standing on step zero.

Whose Salary Is It?

16:02

On the 28th at 16:02, Money's phone buzzed on her desk.

Deposit received: 23,375.00 baht

Her payslip said twenty-five thousand, but what actually arrived was over a thousand short, every month. Social security, and some fund or other she had never looked into. Money grumbled about it nearly every 28th, "what on earth are they deducting," then forgot about it until the next month.

She smiled. It was a smile that came once a month and lasted about four hours.

At half past six she transferred her dorm rent. At seven the motorbike instalment was debited. By eight the smile had quietly gone, along with the number in the app.

Earlier, at five past four, the colleague at the next desk had leaned over to look at her screen.

"Payday, and look at that face glow."

"Glowing till eight tonight."

"So how much have you got saved?"

Money turned the phone face down on the desk.

"...Don't open it. My heart's not strong enough."

They both laughed. Money laughed louder, because the real answer wasn't funny at all.

At 27, five years into working, she had once idly tried to work out how much money had passed through her hands. The answer was in the millions. Then she stopped thinking, because the next question was so where did it all go?

The second Wednesday

Khun Smith had not even opened his laptop before he pointed at the same laminated sheet on the edge of the board.

"Number one. How did the reading make you feel?"

"Like being scolded by my dad," the one from Sales answered first. "He's writing to his daughter, but I felt he was scolding me."

"I kept falling asleep," the one from Quality confessed. "One nap per page."

"How many pages did you get through?"

"...Seventeen."

"Seventeen pages, seventeen naps." Khun Smith nodded gravely. "Well rested, then."

Money didn't raise her hand. She had read twenty-three pages, six more than Quality, but not enough to be proud of. She had underlined only one passage, where the author says money doesn't have to be complicated. She underlined it because she didn't believe it.

"Number two. What questions do you have?"

"The index fund he keeps mentioning, what is it?" asked the one from R&D. "Where do you buy it?"

Khun Smith wrote index fund in a corner of the board and circled it once.

"Good question. Park it there. Several Wednesdays from now we'll walk that far," he said. "But today we have to start with something closer to home. Anything else?"

The room was quiet. He stood up and picked up a marker.

"All right, then. On to what I want you to know."

He wrote a number on the board.

25,000

"Let's say this is a monthly salary," he said.

Money flinched a little. Exactly her salary. She lowered her head, as if afraid the number on the board would turn round and look at her.

"I have only one question." Khun Smith put the marker down. "The salary you receive: whose is it, really?"

Silence.

Then the one from Quality answered softly.

"...The dorm's."

Half the room laughed.

"Shopee's," said another.

"...The QR code's, Khun Smith," said a third. This time the whole room laughed, except the one who had answered.

He laughed too, then asked in the same even voice.

"And where is ours?"

Nobody answered.

The life receipt

Khun Smith handed everyone a blank sheet of paper.

"You don't hand it in. You don't show your friends," he said. "Write down last month's spending, as much as you remember. I call it a life receipt."

Money wrote slowly. For some lines she had to open her banking app.

She went down it line by line. Every line had someone's name on it. The dorm. Mum. The finance company. The coffee shop. Friends. Online sellers.

Not one line was named Money.

The line that stopped her longest was the last one. Two thousand four hundred baht paid by QR, thirty at a time, fifty at a time. Milk tea, snacks outside the office, parking, who knows what. She scrolled through the history in the app and could remember less than half.

One scan and it's done. No reaching for a wallet, no counting notes, and it never hurt, not once. Which may be the biggest problem of all.

"I think you've all seen something by now," Khun Smith said. "Most of us pay everyone else first and save whatever is left. Which, almost every month, is nothing."

He wrote another line on the board.

Spend nine, keep one

"A book from a hundred years ago, The Richest Man in Babylon, teaches just this. For every ten parts you earn, keep one part for yourself first, then spend the rest. These days it's called Pay Yourself First."

"Save first... and what if there isn't enough to live on?" asked the one from Purchasing.

"There will be," Khun Smith replied. "Strange but true. If we save first, we spend what's left. If we spend first, we spend what we have."

The price of staying out of the forest

He handed each of them a printed table.

"This is a hypothetical table, not a promise," he began. "Say you are 30, earning 25,000, and you save 20% every month until you are 60, and put it into long-term investments."

"Why 30?" Money blurted out, then quickly added, "I'm 27."

"Then you have a three-year head start." He smiled. "You'll soon see how expensive those three years are."

Everyone bent over the numbers, reading down year by year. In the first year, the money that grew on its own came to just 4,800 baht. It sounded so small that someone yawned.

Down at the bottom line, at age 60, the growth in that single year was about one million baht, nearly four times what was saved that whole year.

The room began to go quiet. The one who had yawned was no longer yawning.

The final figure at 60:

13.67 million baht

"If you draw it down gradually so it doesn't run out," Khun Smith tapped his calculator, "you get about 45,000 baht a month. A salary you pay yourself, after you've stopped working."

"Forty-five thousand. That's more than my salary now," someone murmured.

"But forty-five thousand in thirty years won't buy what forty-five thousand buys today," he got in first. "I'll take you there later. For now, look at one more row."

He pointed everyone to the small table at the bottom of the page.

"Same savings, baht for baht. The difference is where it lives." Khun Smith pointed at the gap between the first row and the second. "I call this difference of nearly nine million the price of staying out of the forest."

Money stared at that number for a long time. Only last month she had decided not to enter the investment forest, for fear of getting lost. She had never known that standing outside the forest came with a toll as well.

"And if we save only 10%?" asked Quality.

"Half of that," he answered. "The savings rate is the accelerator we control ourselves. Market returns we can't control. There are years the market falls, and years it falls hard. This table doesn't say every year will be positive. It only says how much time and discipline can do the work for us."

At twenty-five past five he put down the marker and pointed at number four.

"How do you feel, now that you've heard today?"

"My heart sank," said Sales. "Nine million gone because I stayed out of the forest. I've never had nine million, but it feels like I lost it."

"I'm going back to reread those seventeen pages," said Quality. "No naps this time."

Money answered last. She looked at her own receipt lying on the table. Every line with someone else's name. The dorm. The finance company. Shopee.

"I feel like my receipt doesn't have my name on it anywhere."

Khun Smith didn't say anything. He nodded slowly, then told everyone to read another seventy pages.

300 baht and 5,000 baht

After class Money walked over to him as he gathered papers at the meeting table.

"Khun Smith, 20% for me is five thousand. But I have three hundred left a month."

He didn't answer right away. He finished squaring the papers into a stack first, then asked back.

"If you started tomorrow, how much could you save without it being torture?"

Money thought for a long time. "...A thousand. Maybe."

"Then start with a thousand."

"How far will just a thousand get me?"

"Nowhere yet," he said plainly. "But it builds something more important than the number: a line on the receipt with your name on it. When your salary goes up, move it up."

"And I don't have to go into the forest at all?"

"Not yet." Khun Smith smiled. "Step one is just to open one separate account and set an automatic transfer every month, so the dorm doesn't get paid before you do. And don't link a debit card to that account. We're not going to make it easy for ourselves to swipe."

"Set it for the morning of the 29th," he added. "Our salary comes in at four in the afternoon. If you set it for the morning of the 28th the money isn't in yet, the transfer will fail, and you'll think you've failed in the very first month, when really you just set the wrong time."

"And the motorbike instalments? Should I rush to pay them off first?"

His hand stopped on the notebook he was about to close.

"That is a very good question. So good I'd like to keep it for two or three weeks, because the answer comes in an order," he said. "But here is one piece of homework. Go back to your hire-purchase contract and see whether the interest is written as a flat rate."

Money didn't know what a flat rate was, but she wrote it down.

He closed the notebook and said one thing Money would remember for a long time.

"Money that's already spent can't come back. But money not yet spent, we can still choose where it goes."

21:47

That night Money spent twelve minutes in her banking app. She opened a new account, nicknamed it "Money's," set an automatic transfer of 1,000 baht on the 29th of every month at 08:00, and pressed confirm.

The screen said Setup successful.

She sat looking at that message for a while. It was the first time in five years she had paid herself before anyone else, even though she hadn't actually paid a single baht yet.

Before she could put the phone down, a message popped up from her closest friend from university, the one who had just got back from Japan on Sunday and earned nearly twice what she did.

"Money, can I borrow two thousand for now? I'll pay you back at the end of the month 🙏"

“For every ten parts you earn,
keep one part for yourself first.”

About the author

Smith Taweelerdniti is Managing Director of Nithi Foods Co., Ltd., a family business in Chiang Mai, and Chairman of the Federation of Thai Industries, Chiang Mai Chapter, for the 2026–2028 term. He studied industrial engineering at SIIT, Thammasat University, and earned an MBA at UNC Chapel Hill, and worked at Accenture and in finance at Dell before returning to the family business in 2009. In September 2025 he began inviting employees to read a personal-finance book together in the Happy Money club. This book is what came out of the conversations at that table.

© Smith Taweelerdniti. All rights reserved. The characters in the story are fictional, except the author. The author is not a licensed investment adviser and sells no funds or courses. All figures are examples for learning, not advice to buy or sell anything. This book draws on ideas from The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins; it is an independent work, not endorsed by that book's author or publisher.