Its marginally cheaper, the big ticket items: school, rent, home visits will not be much cheaper.
International school: I am familiar only with Morrison Academy, and its 524K per kid per year. let’s say 1 million for 2 kids.
Housing : a nice 3BR apartment → 45K per month including rent and management fees = 540K a year
home visit once a year for a family of 4: 150K
utilities: 6K a month (internet, cell phone, water, gas etc.): 72K a year
food: 25K a month 300K a year
We are at 2.1 million a year, without any other expenses like transportation, going out, kids activities, clothes… These are more discretionary (do you have a car, or just public transport, do you go out much or not) but i have a feeling they will add up towards the 2.5 million quite easily, even in Taichung.
And, and this is an important AND, the OP is not coming to Taiwan to cheap out, but is hoping to make more :), or at least not get the short end of the stick.
That is not true. you need to be a certified teacher to work in a proper international school. If the school’s hiring criteria is "be white, have a degree " its not a school you want to send your kids to.
Thank you Izzy. Your information is perfect as I have got a family of 4. My 2 kids are in highschool so these are very important points to me to make sure they do have a very stable and happy lifestyle. Funny enough that it is mentioned in the conversations, my wife is a music teacher and teaches music at different schools and we currently have a studio at home.
If you’re on a Taiwanese contract and you’re in Taiwan for more than half the year, I believe you’d have to pay tax to Taiwan only because the UK and Taiwan have a double-taxation treaty. But your HR department should really clear all this up with you before you make a decision.
If you own a property in the UK though, it gets a whole lot more complicated…
if they are high school kids, depending on their age and matriculation exams, maybe its not worth for them to move. The international schools here teach International Baccalaureate (IB), though accepted in the UK, these are not the same as what is taught in the UK.
If your kids already started taking A levels for their high school diploma, you need to make sure that they can transfer here and continue under a different teaching method and testing system.
high schools are also ~10% more expensive than elementary schools. check tuition fees.
your wife: if she conea as your dependant, she will not have a work permit. try and check if she is eligible for gold card visa, this will give her open work rights too.
Teaching at a school is of course great, but depends also if the school is hiring.
The UK education system is a joke at this point. Besides some of the worlds best universities, I would never send my kids to public education in the UK. Now they’re even talking about cutting schools to 3 days because they ran out of money.
I don’t think they’ll be worse off going to a international school in Taiwan.
But I just think schools are all awful now unless you can learn that particular way. I hope to be able to homeschool my kids if I ever have any.
How do you know this, especially if you don’t have kids? The media over emphasizes every negative… I’m sure the majority are pretty awful, but there must also be some good ones, probably in towns not cities.
