[/quote]I can’t remember what you said you were going to be doing.
There’s an existing thread about pay rates for English teaching here;
[Pay Rates
Yep, I will probably be teaching, but I work in educational publishing at the mo and have heard there are export/repping jobs to be had for ESL publishers ?
Thanks for the link !
Just a bit of an aside from the bitching - are these salaries considered quite decent in Taiwan ? I don’t know what to expect to earn.[/quote]
You can live very comfortably in Taiwan on those salaries.
Just a bit of an aside from the bitching - are these salaries considered quite decent in Taiwan ? I don’t know what to expect to earn.[/quote]
You can live very comfortably in Taiwan on those salaries.[/quote]
Thats less than 30,000 pounds a year with both people earning .
Depends on your definition of comfortable.
If you are coming from the UK where you have a reasonable house & a decent car(s) etc then you need to adjust your expectations downward. You can live in a dismal appartment block &/or cheap area of town for low rent & drive a scooter rather than a car then you can live comfortably.
If you want to have a “western” standard of living & perhaps save a bit while you are here then I would suggest one of you needs to be earning a fair bit more than the above.
My house rent is NT$220,000 /month . Its a reasonable size, but if you were in the UK you wouldnt look twice at it . Housing stock here on the whole is lousy. But you can get a reasonable house (by local standards) in a reasonable area for about NT$120,000 /month. I think a reasonable small appartment is about NT$25,000 but I am not sure on that.
Petrol is much cheaper here than the UK & if you do drive a scooter ,which is an excellent mode of transport for Taipei (when its not raining) it will cost you next to nothing…just stay away from the worst accidents I have seen thread…
Come with no expectations & you wont be disappointed.
Just a bit of an aside from the bitching - are these salaries considered quite decent in Taiwan ? I don’t know what to expect to earn.[/quote]
You can live very comfortably in Taiwan on those salaries.[/quote]
Thats less than 30,000 pounds a year with both people earning .
Depends on your definition of comfortable.
If you are coming from the UK where you have a reasonable house & a decent car(s) etc then you need to adjust your expectations downward. You can live in a dismal appartment block &/or cheap area of town for low rent & drive a scooter rather than a car then you can live comfortably.
If you want to have a “western” standard of living & perhaps save a bit while you are here then I would suggest one of you needs to be earning a fair bit more than the above.
My house rent is NT$220,000 /month . Its a reasonable size, but if you were in the UK you wouldnt look twice at it . Housing stock here on the whole is lousy. But you can get a reasonable house (by local standards) in a reasonable area for about NT$120,000 /month. I think a reasonable small appartment is about NT$25,000 but I am not sure on that.
Petrol is much cheaper here than the UK & if you do drive a scooter ,which is an excellent mode of transport for Taipei (when its not raining) it will cost you next to nothing…just stay away from the worst accidents I have seen thread…
Come with no expectations & you wont be disappointed.[/quote]
Considering that the median income here is about NT$30,000 per month, you are talking about places that perhaps 5% of the population can afford. I’m sorry, but that’s just plain silly.
I’m currently subletting a nice rooftop apartment which rents for NT$8000 per month. I don’t know the pings, but it would be considered a 2BR back home – call it 900 sq ft inside, plus the outside space (in which there are some gardening boxes and storage). The building standards aren’t nearly as nice as Seattle, but it’s quiet, spacious, and very livable.
I’ve been burning through about NT$1000 per month on the MRT (it’ll be less now that I’ve gotten settled in).
Food from the vendors, or cheaper restaurants, will run about NT$300 per day; but if you want to eat at western-quality sit-down restaurants all the time, you can easily spend NT$500 for one meal.
NT$8,000 for a 2 Bedroom rooftop appartment with terrace in a nice quiet area. Jeepers I am completely out of touch. My apologies.
I was basing the NT$25,000 on a couple of people I know who rent in Tien Mu. Pretty ordinary appartments ie look pretty aweful from the outside but are OK inside . One OK size bedroom & one bed room that is too small to fit a double bed. Small living room + kitchen & bathroom. No garage or designated parking space.
BV mentioned that her BF has a good job so I am not really sure of the rental range they will be able to afford.
[quote=“Scuba”]NT$8,000 for a 2 Bedroom rooftop appartment with terrace in a nice quiet area. Jeepers I am completely out of touch. My apologies.
I was basing the NT$25,000 on a couple of people I know who rent in Tianmu. Pretty ordinary appartments ie look pretty aweful from the outside but are OK inside . One OK size bedroom & one bed room that is too small to fit a double bed. Small living room + kitchen & bathroom. No garage or designated parking space.
BV mentioned that her BF has a good job so I am not really sure of the rental range they will be able to afford.[/quote]
No worries, mate. It’s not “Western standard”, but it’s nicer than the place I lived in when I was a student in Boston. Then again, Taipei as a whole is nicer than Boston. 
This place is cheap because it’s across the river in Yonghe. However, it’s only four blocks (5-10 minutes’ walk) from the MRT, and 15min more to get to Taipei Main Station. If it were by Sogo, it’d probably be 30K/mo.
I think MaPoSquid and Scuba are both right, depending on location, quality and if the place has to be furnished or not.
Nice apartments in the city center are expensive and if furnished easily break the 40k mark, even it’s only 1 bedroom.
I have seen enough such apartments while searching and even you can have a 2 or 3 bedroom apartment, furnished and in the city center, for around 25k it’s not a place I would feel comfortable living in. Unfurnished apartments for the same price can be really nice though.
I think there needs to be some clarification for BritishVick… most posting in this thread are talking about English teacher salaries right? For Scuba to be living in a place rented at NT$220k I can only assume he is an expat being looked after by his employer.
Yep, sounds like Scuba’s got what they call “The Package” and a big one at that (no pun intended!) NT$220k/month? Sounds like Wellington Heights. Very nice digs. Come on, Scuba: all that and still no Tiki shirt?
Admiringly,
CK
On Salaries
First off, you CANNOT apply Western salary standards to Taiwan. Graduates of NTU (the best university in Taiwan) will start in the upper 20k range per month. 30-35k if you’re and EE major. Most people won’t hit 60k/month until they have about 10 years experience.
Yes, locals are getting seniority towards retirement, etc, etc. It just goes to show that English teaching is only suitable as a short-term job, not a real career. That being said, if you can manage to put 20K nt/month in the bank and invest it wisely, you’ll be in decent shape for retirement.
On Housing
If you’re used to your nice 4 bedroom, 3 bath, 3 car garage house in the English countryside or US suburbia, Taipei apartments are going to be a letdown… However, southern Taiwan might meet your expectations in terms of size.
If you’re coming from any major metropolitan city where single-family homes are rare, then you won’t find Taipei housing to be too different. (Aside from the lack of 3-prong grounded sockets that are available in the US).
Tien Mou prices are waaaay overinflated because so many expats live there. I know someone living in a furnished, 3 bdrm apartment in ShinYi for about 50k or so(company is paying).
MNCs and ‘embassies’ get ripped off in a big way. A mate who was a diplomat was paying (rather the taxpayers of his country were paying) NT$180k for an apartment in the Xinyi district. Another mates mother was living in an apartment directly above the diplomat and paying NT$90k.
When the people from said MNC or embassy ring an agent, the agent automatically rubs hands with glee and jacks the price 100%…
It’s very possible to find a clean, unfurnished, nice-looking (if not especially impressive) apartment for $25,000. Our current apartment (and our last one) is 3 bedrooms/2 bath, 24 hour security, 40 ping (not very big but definitely livable) and nicely maintained in the hallways, lobby, basement and garden.
[quote=“AWOL”]MNCs and ‘embassies’ get ripped off in a big way. A mate who was a diplomat was paying (rather the taxpayers of his country were paying) NT$180k for an apartment in the Xinyi district. Another mates mother was living in an apartment directly above the diplomat and paying NT$90k.
When the people from said MNC or embassy ring an agent, the agent automatically rubs hands with glee and jacks the price 100%…[/quote]
Chances are, it’s the Taiwanese government that’s paying for the diplomat apartments. Considering the type of countries that Taiwan has diplomatic relations with, I highly doubt they could afford paying 180K/month for an apartment. Supposedly, the cars of some embassies are “sponsored” also.
I doubt that agents can really go around and do stuff like that with most MNCs. The ones I know of have strict limits on how much they will pay for housing.
I spend more on beer than rent.
Being ripped off also does happen if you work for big internationals where employees (expatriates) get a budget for housing. Once the agents learn about your budget they will make full use of that knowledge and make you pay, which in particular hurts in case where the company pays you the budget and doesn’t care how much you actually pay for the accomodation and thus keep for yourself.
Which is what I said above - MNC - multi national corps.
As for embassies - I was referring not only to official ones but also expats from AIT, ACIO etc
OIC. Haven’t heard that term before, hence missed it.