I’m hoping to be studying in Taichung from September for a few months and I’ll be bringing my son who is 7. I’m applying for funding from my university and I need to submit a budget but I’m stumped on how much we might spend on food a month. My son likes bread, cheese, apples, spaghetti, eggs, milk, yoghurt–simple Western food. I like vegetarian food, home cooked or Asian, happy to eat lunchbox type food and noodles too. What do you think we’d spend on food a month?
I would allow for a total of about 15,000-20,000 a month.
are you in Taipei now? If you are in Taipei and moving to Taichung, I would assume the same amount, especiallly with your child’s western tastes. But really there’s quite a variety. You could live on 100NT a day, or 1,000NT a day. A carton of milk (one litre) is about 100NT. Cheese is expensive, even the cheap sandwich slices are over 100NT for a small package. Vegetarian food is quite common and easily available here. I think one adult and one child could survive on a couple hundred NT per day, if you were budgeting. If you were requesting funds from the school, you could ask for 1,000NT per day (about USD33). If you can both survive on local food, that will be least of your expenses.
Thanks Alma John & Douglas.
I’m in Australia now. Used to live in Taipei but left in '98. I’ve been back to visit twice with my son. March 2006 I brought essentials with me for our 3 week stay in Taipei–vegimite, wheatbix, plain peanut butter.
We wasted some money buying bread that looked good but was too sweet. We had some disagreements about where to eat–he wouldn’t even walk near a chodofu stand and I really wanted some as it was a taste I’d missed (I won but it didn’t taste as great as I thought it would).
I think I’ll try to budget for NT 600 / day for food.
NT600/day for food?
If you cook sometimes,I dont think it costs that much a day in Taichung.
If you eat Western, imported food, you can easily spend that, or more.
Here’s a list of what I spend on the things mentioned:
Good quality cheese is expensive, 200+ dollars
Cereal around 200 dollars
Bread, 100 dollars for a ‘no sugar’ wholewheat loaf,
Apples, are most imported and kind of sweet and watery. They can be really cheap or really expensive. Local fruit is nice and some is cheap if you shop carefully.
Spaghetti is easy to find and not expensive. Make your own sauce, though.
Eggs are cheap and easy to find. Organic ones are available in supermarkets or local healthfood stores
Fresh milk costs 60-70 dollars per litre and tastes pretty bad. Dunno what they do it. Organic milk is starting to appear more and more.
Yoghurt; commercial yoghurt is available everywhere and is cheap but has lumps of jelly in it, no fruit. Sugar free is available in big supermarkets; about 60 NT for a small carton. You may be able to find it in small local stores.
My advice would be to find a morning vegetable market and cook your own vegetarian stuff at home, unless you need organic stuff. Cheap and probably fairly close to wherever you live. Figure out how to wean your son off the imported Western stuff; it’s always expensive! Although I’m not in Taichung, imported stuff won’t be muc diffeence in price from Taichung. Hope this is helpful
[color=green]okay, coming from Australia you will need to budget just a little bit more than you might think. But prices have not changed all that much since you were here before (on the other hand, I hear the exchange rate with Australian dollars has changed quite a bit!). What I mean is try to set an amount, like 600nt a day and then add 10% just in case when you are asking for funds. You should plan and request a higher amount and then you will “save” money when you get here.
Oh, there are some good places to get bread here in Taichung these days. There are a few bakeries, depending on where you are at in the city. Sugar & Spice comes to mind, and there is a bakery called Grapevine. A few years ago, I brought a bread machine back with me because I was tired of the local bread. [/color]
[quote=“douglas@taichungpaws.org”]Oh, there are some good places to get bread here in Taichung these days. There are a few bakeries, depending on where you are at in the city. Sugar & Spice comes to mind, and there is a bakery called Grapevine. A few years ago, I brought a bread machine back with me because I was tired of the local bread. [/color][/quote]BBR (on Huamei West St.) are still going, aren’t they? They make pretty much the best bread I had in Taichung.