Eat local food you can save money! The meal in photo below, Taiwan chicken rice US$1.95 (NT$60). Date, go here: https://campaign.mcdonalds.com.tw/2019SignatureAvocado/?utm_source=MCD&utm_medium=innerbanner&utm_term=LBMcD&utm_content=0731_newsTextPC_2019Avocado&utm_campaign=newsTextPC_2019Avocado_0731
Should be young date or good friend though. My female co worker (has higher standards)does not go rice bowls for a date, expects food 10X the cost and her date have nice car.
Also some advice, eat the good Korean Food in the Los Angeles Area before you move away (I like now days the Fullerton area), or even in San Diego Korean market food courts, you will not find as good food in Taiwan (Korean). There are a few ok ones, but most are Korean food made for Taiwanese tastes and budgets.
khh-dinner|375x500
I worked in Taiwan for years (to be fair it was Hsinchu and not Taipei). Hsinchu sucked. I now work in SoCal near SD.
That said, Taiwan overall kinda sucked too. San Diego is immensely better. Mind you I was making a true expat salary in Taiwan (200k+USD), but I went over when I was 30.
Look, if you had a choice I would never do it. Even if I had to take a pay cut to come back to the US I would do it. Working in a Taiwanese company is awful, even if it’s a US branch office it’s still run by Taiwan politics. That said, one year isn’t bad, it just gets progressively worse after the first year. In fact, it might even be fun to spend a year there. But stay indoors as much as you can. The pollution is terrible as I have lung nodules from my time there.
At 2M nt, after taxes (about 300k), and housing (400-500k), you would be left with 1.2-1.3. Which is pretty good. You should be able to save 20-30k USD for the year. Which is honestly probably less than in San Diego (given the salary discrepancy) unless you are getting a bonus in Taiwan.
All in all, it won’t be awful to spend a year in Taipei.
It’s very doable to come to Taiwan for a year on that salary. But the company is out of order cutting the salary down like that. Looks like they are taking advantage…
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