Hey, whats up everyone? I visited Taipei a few months ago and absolutely loved it. I’m looking to head over and teach there, and had a question about earning potential (bet you don’t get enough of those questions on here!).
I’m looking at obtaining a Masters in the near future and need to save some cash, which is why I’m asking. I know some will say to go to Korea for the money, the thing is I’ve just left from there not too long ago and would prefer to not go back there. It was rather unpleasant!
Basically, I’d like to know how one can maximize their earning ability there?
Find one school that would offer me a ton of hours? Juggle 2 or 3 part-time gigs? A low-hours visa-provider w/ tons of privates?
I don’t mind teaching a lot of hours. In Korea the standard was 30 hours/week, which I know is a lot compared to Taiwan. For a small portion of the time I was actually teaching about 40! (by choice, it was tiring but good $) I would, of course, rather find a more palatable combination of lower hours and higher hourly salary. What would you recommend?
Is saving $1000US/month doable? Or would getting the hours/schedule needed to do so be difficult to obtain?
BTW, I have a degree and 2 years teaching experience. I am thinking of getting a TEFL cert or CELTA first, but from what I’ve been reading it doesn’t seem like it would make much difference in terms of salary.
What’s the “near future” for your Masters? It can take a year to get up and running here to the point that you’re saving any kind of substantial amount, or so I’ve heard.
If you’re looking to maximize the cash you pull in, I would recommend hitting the Middle East rather than Taiwan (assuming your Masters would be in TESOL / Applied Linguistics or something related). You’ll be able to save a heck of a lot more than $1000 a month in most jobs in the Gulf and you won’t have to teach a crapload of hours. On the other hand, it’s not as exciting of a lifestyle as you would get in Taipei, so I guess it depends on what’s more important to you.
It’s gonna be hard to save $1000 a month coming here with no contacts. My first year I was saving about $500 dollars a month living FUCKING cheap and teaching cram school 20 hours a week. After taxes I was taking home $1000-1100 USD cuz of that 20% tax.
Second year I was making $60,000NT(~2000USD) a month teaching 20 hours 1-6 M-F because a friend hooked me up. I was on my wifes ARC and they didn’t care. So i was getting the full 60,000 a month paying no taxes, and the gov’t had no idea I was working. I was saving like $1200USD a month and actually spending more than 100NT for meals!
I’m going back to states in a few weeks for good, but I still sub and look around at jobs every few weeks just out of curiosity. I definitely don’t see the high paying jobs like I had last year. I haven’t seen a job advertised for $700+ per hour like I did just a year or two ago. All I see these days are 9-630 for 60-65,000 a month, or 2-10 hours for $600 an hour at various schools. If you’re living in Taipei, you can prolly get a full time 9-6:30 for 60-65k a month. Remember you gotta pay 18% tax your first 6 months, and Taipei is expensive. If you live like a poor college student, sharing a small apt with roommates and eating fried rice/fried noodles/dumplings everyday maybe you can get close to $1000 a month savings. Pay in smaller cities is usually a little more and rent will be cheaper. If you wanna save money look towards Hsinchu/Taichung/ChangHua/Taoyuan/maybe even Kaohsiung.
Anyways if you want my two cents, if you aren’t dead set on Taiwan, I’d say try out Japan. I’ve been researching Japan. Seems like the pay is around 2500-3000USD a month, and you can save over $1000 dollars if you aren’t living in Tokyo.
To save 1000 USD/mo I think you would need about 25 hrs/wk. You would be spending about 1000 and saving 1000. Not impossible but difficult to find that many hours w/o running all over town and possibly working weekends. To really maximize your earning potential your best bet would be kindy in the morning/afternoon and then subbing or privates at night. But I would hate this (both the kindy and the split up hours).
FWIW - I’m saving money, not living like a pauper (although I live a simple life w/o material items - for the most part) and enjoy living in different parts of the world with no long term commitment in a job/career.
As Abacus says. First, land a morning paid by the hour kindy gig. Say, 8-12 at around 700 an hour. That should keep you ticking over while you look for evening buxiban work. Get M-F 5-8 at, say, 650 an hour and you’re laughing. Then, see if you can fill part of the 12-5 period with some privates. If you really want to push it, so some weekend work. You should easily be on 100k+ a month.
I think for a new to Taiwan person that’s the best way to maximise income. However, you should be aware that teaching kindy is illegal. Teaching in multiple schools where none of them is providing you with at least 14 hours and therefore not sponsoring your work visa is also illegal. It’s the only way to make decent money, though, until you’ve been here a few years and built up some contacts.
imo it’s going to be difficult to fill the 12-5 period with privates. Most potential privates are either in school or have normal jobs. But if you do have nights free (most buxibans teach 5-9 (or similar))then it’s a big advantage to getting private gigs. And most kindy jobs that I’ve seen advertised are for 2-3 hrs in the morning and 1.5-2.5 in the afternoon (not sure if the 8-12 only jobs are out there). But having the kindy job gets you an ARC (not legal however) and a stable 20-25 hrs/wk (55-70K/mo). Add in some privates and you’re making a lot (compared the avg teacher) like tom says.
1000 USD a month saving…well if you worked 50-60 hours in any Western country you should be saving way more than that…hell where I’m from you can save at least half as much claiming unemployment benefit and doing nothing (living the lifestyle of Taiwan that you’d have to do) maybe I am missing something (girls…most likely…).
Except I work 20 hours with about 10 extra hours of grading (whenever I feel like). And I have all of the daylight hours free because it sucks working an 8-5 and going to work when the sun is rising and coming home when the sun is setting (winter months).
If someone worked 50-60 hours teaching English (if they could find that much work) they could be saving a lot more than 1k/mo.
Taipei is definitely the wrong option if you want to save money teaching English. Obviously, Taipei is probably where it’s at for most other career choices, but for English teaching, it has a massive over-supply of teachers coupled with a high cost of living. As others have mentioned, hit up Xinzhu and Taoyuan in particular because they have a lot of wealthy, professional Taiwanese. So do Taizhong and Gaoxiong, obviously, but those two cities have more going on, and so probably suffer Taipei’s fate of being a cool place to live, and thus, having an over-supply of teachers driving hourly rates down. I don’t know about the cost of living in those two cities, but I’m sure it’s considerably lower than Taipei. No one moves to Taoyuan or Xinzhu for the nightlife or the cool stuff to do. Then again, no one in Taoyuan or Xinzhu pays a ridiculous sum to live in a dog box either.
As for people talking about struggling to save $1,000 here, how much do you guys spend per month? Try cooking at home for a change and hanging out at the local ex-pat bar a little less. My wife and I (plus our dog) spend less than 5,000NT/month (167NT/day – which many people spend per person per meal every day) on food and everything else we buy from the supermarket. If you live outside of Taipei, it should be very easy to save $1,000/month. There was a point where I was saving close to double that living in Taoyuan. I know one guy, who admittedly is completely illegal, who makes more than $4,000/month living in Taoyuan teaching English. He has a particular personality and he works like a dog (although he crams it all into only a few days each week and he is a hardcore traveller), but he’s very focussed on what he does and doesn’t do, and how he goes about achieving it.
I know how I would make a lot of money teaching in Taiwan, but I’m just not prepared to go down that route because I find it so soul-destroying.