How much does the average Taiwanese save? Could be an average
By average, I am referring to the store clerks, office workers, engineers, repairmen, mechanics, the common people.
Married? Kids? Living at home? Spending habits? Too many variables.
I would imagine that an average single guy living and eating at home saves 10~15k a month. Just a guess.
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Wages seem to be low here for the average person. Saving 10-15K is impressive for someone earning 20 to 37K a month when you consider how expensive everything is here. I guess that person must not buy much or go out a lot.
Wages are indeed low, but many people live at home with their parents (who lived with their parents and so on down the line) so there is no mortgage. Only household costs are utilities, food and taxes. Assuming an average Joe takes home 30k, kicks up 10k for his folks (which may or may not happen depending on how well off the parents are). Spends 10k and saves 10k. My BIL makes an above average $60k. Kicks up 10k, spends maybe 10k. Saves 40+.
*edit: The BIL is single and as 宅 as 宅 can be. Weekends and nights are on the computer gaming.
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around 30% per worker according to the gov statistics, but nearly 2 M househould are negative saving
which means there is a huge income gap between rich and poor.
that’s why atomsphere in this society now is furious to KMT.
Thanks Kevin for contributing some stats. Just as an aside the saving rate in the UK is …4%.
Taiwan also has an exceptional number of millionaires.
Just imaging how much money the laobans put each month from their semi legal factories and their 25k/mth workers who they don’t pay overtime too.
So roughly 6000 to 10000 ntd per month in savings? Percentage wise, 30% is good, but in actual amount, that’s not good (200 to 350 USD)
Yeah but it’s all relative right? A top 1% salary in the US is about 450,000 USD a year, where as a top 1% salary worldwide is about 35,000 USD a year. So exchanging Taiwan savings back into US dollars, of course it’s going to sound low. But Taiwan has an average monthly income roughly 3.5 times lower than the US does.
Saving 30% a month is amazing, even though 9600 NT a month doesn’t sound like much. It’s a lot better than most other countries…
The problem comes in when Taiwanese people want to spend like they have an American salary. Purses, clothes, cars, lobster dinners, and pretty much any non essential item will cost as much or more here than it does in the US. So when a young girl in the US buys an LV bag for 2000$, given her salary is likely 3500 a month it doesn’t completely break the bank. Not advisable, but not the end of the world. When a young girl in Taiwan buys the same LV bag for 2000$, but her monthly salary is 1000$, now we have a major problem…
Yes now, in the current generation. But give these spoiled rich kids one or two more generations of spending the shit out of their parents money without adding or building to it and watch how fast that ends…
When i was a student i used to work part time and do extra stuff, i was making around 35,000 ntd/month in Taichung, i used to pay 5,100 in rent and around 1,400 in services such as electricity and water, for transportaion was about 300ntd/month, 600 phone plan, about 400 a day for food, so that adds about 12,000ntd, and i used to set aside around 3 to 5 thousand ntd to spend on weekends on short trips or eating at nice places, at the end i used to save anywhere from 10,000 to 13,000 every month at 19
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You just replied to an 8-year-old question asked by a user who is no longer active here, but good job saving $10k a month at 19! That’s impressive.
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How times have changed. It’s now at what? 2 times? Still a lot but not crazy. Also US did well the last decade, compared to EU it’s even more impressive.
According to Allianz wealth report, Taiwanese on average own around 140,000 euro in financial assets (aka savings + stock + insurance and pensions).
According to a survey conducted by TABF in 2022, 18.8% of all Taiwanese would not be able to cover a NT$100,000 expense in a week, a slight improvement from 19.5% in 2020.
Contrast that to Fed’s 2022 Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households, 37% of Americans do not have enough to cover a US$400 expense (not $4,000), up from 32% in 2021.
I think the numbers speak for themselves.
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I’ve no idea if you’re already doing it, and it sounds really boring, but if you invest that 100k or so you save a year into stocks you will be laughing.
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Do you know how averages work? What about the Gini Coefficient?
What if you gave them a week to come up with it? They could sell assets, go to family, etc…
Taiwan number 1?
Did you read the title of this topic?
The way the question is phrased tells you all you need to know. One asked about US$400, the other more than US$3,000.
Well America certainly isn’t number 1.
Nor is Canada for that matter.
Oh yeah, your comparison to the US is totally off topic
Yes, you are comparing apples and oranges.
Things are rough in Canada, but, er, did you read the thread title?
The average Taiwanese savings are a concrete box in the sky :).
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Good question. Here’s an article from 2020 but it shows a comparison of how Taiwan ranks on the gini coefficient vs other countries.
Gini coefficient measures income inequality. A score of 1 would be all resources are owned by 1 person. A score over 0.5 would be high inequality.
Since we’re talking about savings, it would interesting to see savings rates for Taiwan vs other developed countries as well.
Explaining Taiwan’s current Gini coefficient of under 0.4, lower even than that of Norway and Denmark, geography professor Max Woodworth of Ohio State University notes that “apart from mega-earners (the 1%), Taiwan is still largely a nation of small businesses and entrepreneurs.” Although incomes in the two Scandinavian countries are probably four times higher than in Taiwan,” he says, “what Taiwan’s low labor income inequality suggests is that people who earn money through wages tend to find themselves close in income terms to their neighbors.”
Woodworth adds that many Taiwanese likely supplement their wages with capital income, given the large number of small business owners, widespread participation in the stock market, and investment in rental properties. He notes that income inequality generally translates into inferior health outcomes for people at the low end of the income distribution. The U.S. is a prime example of this disparity.
https://topics.amcham.com.tw/2020/11/taiwan-gini-coefficient/
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That article is garbage no way did Chinese get richer last year or this year.