I know everyone’s experiences are different, but I’ve never had a job in Taiwan that paid in the 50ks, but you know that’s just fine given the price of living in Taiwan. The only problem is that I have some credit card balances to pay off, though the much bigger issue is my outstanding college loans. Granted, my debt isn’t exceptionally large, but even so it would take a lifetime of laboring under Taiwanese wages to even imagine paying that off – and just forget about buying property or a car here or anywhere else on that salary.
Basically NT dollars don’t go very far outside of Taiwan (or cheap travel destinations), so if you’re saddled with obligations back home it seems that a career here is rather not a viable option. So how does everyone do it? For foreigners who take up a career in Taiwan, or for Taiwanese who study abroad, how do you handle the large payments overseas with a meager Taiwanese salary?
I think a Taiwanese salary is more than enough and if you take into account the lower tax rate, no capital gains tax, and the lower prices for many food items, I think it offers people more than enough income, even though salaries in many sectors have stagnated.
When I lived in Taiwan and worked in the private sector in high tech (and not the Taiwan public sector), I made in the mid 70s, but with extra work usually made 100K Nt a month. What really helped were the stock options and annual bonuses (sometimes as much as 6 months salary for the latter). So if you included those into the mix, it would be more like 150K a month or like 5K US or 60,000US/year. Not a lot, but if you take into account the lower costs for food, the lower tax rate etc., Taiwan provides a very good lifestyle for professionals. If you have a spouse that’s a local, and that makes even half of that, you’re laughing because you’re making like $85,000 US in a country where, outside of real estate in Central Taipei, the cost of living in pretty reasonable. In North America, it is hard to have a similar lifestyle on the same or even higher salary.
In my opinion, anyone who complains about Taiwan salaries isn’t looking for additional gigs etc., is likely single, or perhaps expects things to be handed to them.
Making 70k or a 100k a month would put you closer to the top end of earners, in Taipei. In the rest of the country you just wouldn’t make that.
The only people who get paid well are some professionals (still crap compared to overseas), government officials of certain rank, engineers and senior management level employees. I think some bakers get paid well these days too! Pay for the same positions in Taiwan can be as low as 1/3 of Singapore or HK!
Most people survive on their meager salaries by keeping out of debt , reducing their expenses and help from the bank of mom and pop I.e family money. Both partners working is common , jobs are easy to get so that helps but women do not earn much in general, office job maybe 30-40k mth which they get taxed on. Then you have to pay childcare unless folks help out.
It’s become widely recognized over the last two years how far salaries have fallen behind here.
Low paid workers still pay into the tax net in Taiwan, the do not get much exemptions so you have people earning 20k/mth+ paying income tax on that aswell as health and labour insurance, it’s really tough for them as Taiwan is not that cheap a place to live.
It’s also not a great place to have a high salary as you pay disproportionately more taxes than business people or property owners, who often pay almost nothing after deductions.
As for stock options and massive bonuses, the days of stock options meaning much were over a decade ago (the taiex has suffered severe stagnation) and bonuses can help but the average bonus last year was 0.5 months. Yes, 0.5months. Who gets six month bonuses, maybe finance people on a banner year or people connected to the semi state companies, otherwise regular people these years are lucky to get 13 or 14 months salary.
Let’s be honest, Taiwan is a really crap place to be a salaried worker when you thrown in lack of vacation time and lack of work rights into the mix. It’s a good place to be a boss though.
Taiwan clearly has a problem with stagnant salaries. An average income of 37k a month would be difficult to live on for most people. Graduate level entry jobs are in the 20-25k range. It must be pretty soul destroying to be a newly graduated Taiwanese kid these days. If your parents are poor then you’re pretty much screwed.
There’s still shed loads of money floating around, though. My mate teaches golf to rich people’s children and bored housewives and he’s pulling in 200k+ a month. Making a lot of money seems to require a very specific skill. I’m relying on my devilishly handsome good looks to pull me through (does that count as a skill?).
It makes sense that there is lots of money in Taiwan with large numbers of SMEs and electronic companies, if they don’t pay much they can make more profit. As I mentioned already its very easy for business owners to hide their income from the taxman, laughably so.
I could see things getting tight for families or for those that have significant debt to pay off but you can live pretty comfortably in Taiwan for 50+ K/mo. The part that frustrates me (single) is that it’s hard to really put significant money into retirement savings every month. I think this is the area where longtime expats are most vulnerable.
If you live in an animal shelter or with the Salvation Army, walk to work and don’t have an air conditioner and computer or TV. Eat rice and filthy lunch boxes every day and have absolutely NO social life.
If you live in an animal shelter or with the Salvation Army, walk to work and don’t have an air conditioner and computer or TV. Eat rice and filthy lunch boxes every day and have absolutely NO social life.
Seriously, dude?
100K, minimum.[/quote]
I spend ~75K a month on keeping the both of us alive. That includes a mortgage (an empty, for-sale house) and two lots of rent (the house we live in, and my office). We have an extremely comfortable lifestyle, as does my wife’s credit card company, to whom she gives most of her substantial salary (I have no f’ing idea what happens to the rest of it - it certainly doesn’t get used for day-to-day living). You wouldn’t have much fun on the typical office salary of 30-35K, but you could do just fine on 50-60K.
This isn’t enough for some people because they insist on buying a ginormous SUV that they drive once a week to 7-11, crateloads of useless iCrap, and don’t realise the aircon can be set higher than 13’C. There is a fairly sharp dividing line between ‘comfortable’ and ‘struggling’, though. For example, $230 buys you a really good meal out. $170 (25% less) buys you a decent one. $130 (25% less again) buys you some greasy slop. $20000/mo (in Taipei) gets you a really nice apartment. $15000 will be habitable. $12000 is scraping the bottom of the barrel, unless you’re very lucky.
If you live in an animal shelter or with the Salvation Army, walk to work and don’t have an air conditioner and computer or TV. Eat rice and filthy lunch boxes every day and have absolutely NO social life.
Seriously, dude?
100K, minimum.[/quote]
I live in a very nice nearly new apartment with AC on all of the time, computer AND TV. I also never eat rice boxes but cook my own meals. And I don’t buy crap food. I do walk to work but that’s because I enjoy the 15-20 minute walk. I don’t drink heavily and instead travel all over Taiwan. I even have a car but it is admittedly a POS. I spend about 40K/mo. Perhaps you have budgeting problems.
Like abacus, I also live in Kaohsiung and live on about 38,000 a month.
$7500 a month for rent which people tell me is somewhat high, plus 1200 for the guard fee. i run the aircon a lot and only get a bill of $2000 for 2 months so pretty reasonable. I dont cook at home however but can get pretty good meals around the area for $150-200 which my friends also tell me is expensive. No car however but i work in Tainan which takes gas to get up there or train tickets and I am quite comfortable on what I make part time.
The only complaint I have is that it leaves little savings at the end. I need to find a better industry to be in.
If you live in an animal shelter or with the Salvation Army, walk to work and don’t have an air conditioner and computer or TV. Eat rice and filthy lunch boxes every day and have absolutely NO social life.
Seriously, dude?
100K, minimum.[/quote]
I live in a very nice nearly new apartment with AC on all of the time, computer AND TV. I also never eat rice boxes but cook my own meals. And I don’t buy crap food. I do walk to work but that’s because I enjoy the 15-20 minute walk. I don’t drink heavily and instead travel all over Taiwan. I even have a car but it is admittedly a POS. I spend about 40K/mo. Perhaps you have budgeting problems.[/quote]
Yeah, well, what do you pay for your apartment? I have a CHEAP apartment, quite nice, at 18k per month. I rarely use the AC, but still have an amenities bill of around 5k per month. I call my family once a week, because I love them and they may die before I see them again. That comes to around 5k per month. I take a taxi to work, instead of walking; being drenched in sweat in a lecture hall isn’t quite my idea of professionalism.
I eat at home, rarely go out, except for forum functions. My BASIC costs are around 40k per month. Pray tell, Mr Economist, where I have budgeting problems? I’m all ears.
50-60k a month is fine for some people who live cheap, never own a home, either have a cheap car or don’t own one, never golf or have expensive hobbies, and aren’t the type that buy new Apple products or have a wife that buys new bags and shoes. For frugal people like that, 60k a month can provide them everything they need, for now. I say for now because 60k NT a month isn’t nearly enough to cover those things that aren’t immediately necessary but should at some point be saved up for.
Kids college education. A lot of foreigners in Taiwan forget that it’s actually pretty normal for people back home to try to save up 100,000$ or so in case your kids want to go to a good school. The last thing you want is your kids to be swimming in debt when they are 25 years old. A lot of parents like to pay it all for them. Or maybe you want your kids to be able to go to the American or British schools here? Well that isn’t cheap. Last I heard it’s about 250,000 NT per semester. So if you do want your kids to go to a good school you have to start saving now. If your kids will be responsible for paying for their own school I guess you can skip this part but then you’d be putting them at a serious disadvantage by either sending them to cheap schools or forcing them to carry large amounts of debt if they want to be a doctor, lawyer, MBA, things like that.
Retirement. It surprises me sometimes to see so few foreigners actually saving money for their retirement. Remember we don’t have pensions or senior citizen money coming to us when we are in our late 60’s. My parents are retirement age now and combined they receive about 4,500 Canadian dollars a month for the rest of their lives. For me if I choose to live in Taiwan I will receive exactly zero. It’s up to me to save for my retirement. Also, people are living longer and retirement is getting more and more expensive.
In order to be able to retire comfortably, you have to save a minimum of 30,000 NT a month for 30 years and you also have to achieve 7% investment returns on that money every single year. If you do that, you’ll still only have 500,000 USD when you retire which isn’t living like a king by any stretch. Also, 30 years of inflation will make that 500,000$ seem like not nearly enough. So to be prudent you’d probably want to start saving 50,000 NT a month.
So take your monthly salary and knock off a minimum of 40,000 NTD from it, and closer to 60,000 NTD to be safe, and build your retirement fund. The rest of your salary is yours to spend now. Factoring this in it’s not hard to see why some people don’t feel comfortable making any less than 100,000 NT a month.
Due to working in a profession that is very much “feast or famine”, I’ve learned to live on around $30K which is what a famine month looks like. While money is tighter those months, it’s not that bad. I don’t drink (or do so very, very rarely) so that makes a big difference, and generally when I have a feast month, put as much back into my business as possible, so still live cheaply. Maybe $40K for living then. Of course, my wife has a good job and we split most bills, mortgage etc so that makes a difference.
If you live in an animal shelter or with the Salvation Army, walk to work and don’t have an air conditioner and computer or TV. Eat rice and filthy lunch boxes every day and have absolutely NO social life.
Seriously, dude?
100K, minimum.[/quote]
I live in a very nice nearly new apartment with AC on all of the time, computer AND TV. I also never eat rice boxes but cook my own meals. And I don’t buy crap food. I do walk to work but that’s because I enjoy the 15-20 minute walk. I don’t drink heavily and instead travel all over Taiwan. I even have a car but it is admittedly a POS. I spend about 40K/mo. Perhaps you have budgeting problems.[/quote]
Yeah, well, what do you pay for your apartment? I have a CHEAP apartment, quite nice, at 18k per month. I rarely use the AC, but still have an amenities bill of around 5k per month. I call my family once a week, because I love them and they may die before I see them again. That comes to around 5k per month. I take a taxi to work, instead of walking; being drenched in sweat in a lecture hall isn’t quite my idea of professionalism.
I eat at home, rarely go out, except for forum functions. My BASIC costs are around 40k per month. Pray tell, Mr Economist, where I have budgeting problems? I’m all ears.[/quote]
I don’t understand how basic costs are 40K/mo but someone needs 100K to live comfortably. What are these 60k/mo comforts that you speak of? I think you have budgeting problems if you need 60K extra to live comfortably.
I think you need start using skype if you are spending 5K/mo on int’l calls.