Complete Taipei living expenses for a year? (Apartment, insurance, food, transport, phone+data etc.)

Let’s say you eat 3 meals per day, a coffee and cheap sandwich can cost 150NTD, a lunch + drink can cost 200NTD, dinner around 200NTD. 500NTD you need to eat per day because you still can find ways to save those 50NTD from breakfast. Forget snacks, forget treat you a “better” meal during the weekends and don’t get sick.

In my case, I will not say that I spend 500NTD every day, but I have days that I spend over 1000NTD, some other days I pass with 300NTD, however, my mind is free because I’m not in a short budget, if I feel hungry or I want to eat something, I just go and do without tomorrow. Was like always that? Of course not, I have been on the other side and it sucks, you want to eat or drink something and you cannot because if you do perhaps tomorrow you will have no breakfast. People will invite you to eat something cheap, but it goes over your budget and you cannot. Personally, for me, it is not a way to live, but it is me :slight_smile:

The intensive classes are already pretty small, I never did 1 on 1 and I liked having classmates personally, make friends etc.

I was studying at MTC on the Huayu scholarship for a year between 2018-2019, 25k ntd/month, and I managed to to live quite alright on that budget without touching my savings account too much for day-to-day stuff. I did pay for each semester out of my own pocket, as I didn’t want to calculate and hold off scholarship money on the side just for that, but It’s not that expensive anyway (if you’re not taking the intensive class, which is not worth it IMO).

I lived in a pretty modern looking apartment in Guting (10 minutes from NTNU) with 2 more roommates, paying 12k a month (also included a doorman, an elevator, garbage disposal service). Was mostly cooking dinners by myself from groceries I bought at Welcome (usually meat and mixed stir fried veggies), avoiding supermarkets like Jason’s.

Also had a pretty decent nightlife, only rarely going to the super expensive Xinyi clubs, but usually going to house parties (MTC is great on the social life aspect), Triangle or getting in free/cheap to clubs like Omni through connections. I might add that I didn’t do much traveling during that time as I was mostly focusing my free time on studying, so that saved some money (though I would recommend to travel and explore more, Taiwan is beautiful and I have some regrets about not seeing enough of it).

Overall, usually the 25k ntd a month was enough for a pretty solid lifestyle. If you’re frugal enough you could pull it off. I do recommend to have some money is your savings account for any case and do try to find some tutoring job on the side (I had one for a brief time).