Cool. Pick any one of the other numerous sites that come up when you Google COL difference between Taipei and Singapore, then. They all show the same theme.
The Numbeo rent averages look pretty spot-on for Taipei, to me, though I realize rents have been trending up here recently as with many other places.
Is that the one that says the average salary in Taiwan is NT180k/mo?
If youāll look at the screen shot I posted youāll see that it says 45k NT/mo.
Just one of the many reasons why the website is a piece of shit.
Numbeo is a pretty decent crowd sourced website. Most of the prices they quote are pretty accurate.
Hsinchu is the cringiest romanization ever, so I just spell words just ad they sound.
I think they stole that style from Jim Cramer.
It isnāt.
Any crowd sourced stats without third party veritfication are trash. Itās a Serbian website ffs.
Is the real average higher or lower than that? I donāt claim to know. I know 45k has to be far closer to correct than 180k, though!
Itās lower than the average of the country, let alone in Taipei city.
Thereās likely a brigade of Chinese trolls posting fake stats about Taiwan. Just check the comment section, itās almost comical. The website has no way of checking the sources which means it has zero credibility.
The Chinese put their trash comments on it but the actual numbers on the website are fairly solid.
I thought grocery prices here looked pretty accurate on numbeo last time I checked.
I was just trying to show a general ballpark comparison of COL between Taipei and Singapore. Didnāt realize I had (apparently?) picked a controversial source. Like I said, though, pick another source if you want. The overall theme will be the same.
[quote=āTianmu, post:58, topic:212009, full:trueā]
My comparison isnāt really fair: Iām just comparing getting a lifestyle close to my US one near the school my kids attend. Despite what everyone else is saying, I suspect your more broad comparisons are more generally applicable and accurate.
But my costs for housing in Taipei similar to my one in the US are over three times higher. It is 50% higher than Singapore (around TAS). And the Singapore one is much nicer and in a much nicer place. Food is also much more expensive here than in Singapore (again, assuming you want stuff comparable to US). Drinks are most expensive in Singapore with their ridiculous taxes and I donāt even know what the costs are here. Electricity is more expensive here than Singapore, but other utilities are cheaper (Iām least confident about this statementā¦and again, itās an unfair comparisonā¦I work from home and the houses here donāt keep in cool at all, so I constantly run the A/C. In the US, this isnāt a problem. In Singapore, the house kept the cool in much better, so I consumed much less A/C. Actual electricity may be cheaperā¦I have no idea. But I spend twice as much on electricity here than in I did in Singapore.)
Yes many here are comparing a single lifestyle to the lifestyle of a family. Families have higher costs naturally.
They need larger spaces, more convenience, more clothes, more food etc etc. getting more expensive.
[quote=āMithrandir, post:74, topic:212009, full:trueā]
Interesting. Iām also comparing costs relative to lifestyle back in the US, though, as are others Iāve talked to (most of whom lived near SAS). I have a nice enough 3br/2ba apartment near TAS for around $1,000 USD, which wasnāt anywhere near possible for me in the US, and I canāt imagine would be possible near SAS either, but maybe Iām wrong. Going out to eat here is way cheaper than in the US, but I realize Singapore can be even cheaper than Taiwan for eating out if you do the hawker stall thing or whatever. Alcohol is ridiculous in Singapore, as you said, and is way cheaper here (cheaper than the US, even, for the most part), though I realize not everyone drinks.
Electricity is ridiculously cheap in Taiwan! I donāt work from home, but on hot days I leave the AC running all day anyway, and it barely shows up as a blip on my bill. I wouldnāt have dared to do that with US electric prices. I could easily spend over $100/mo in electricity in the US in the summer, and havenāt spent that much yet here even with a larger home and hotter weather, despite being far more liberal with my AC usage. Maybe Singapore is even cheaper than Taiwan for electricity? Water is also crazy cheap in Taiwan. Internet and phone, too, at least compared to the US. But maybe all those things are also crazy cheap in Singapore. Thatās not what others who live there say, though.
I havenāt lived in Singapore, and you have, so Iām not doubting you. Just finding it interesting and surprising.
They are not. At least the salary and housing numbers are not. But you wonāt change your mind so why bother.
at that price I believe its unlikely to be up to expat standards of non-crumminess?
Iām an expat who pays a similar price for a non-crummy (actually fairly nice) place in Taipei, but Iāve noticed they are getting harder to find in recent years. It helps that landlords donāt seem to be into raising rent on current tenants here, and Iāve been in my place for several years. If I wanted to leave my current place and find a place of similar size and quality without moving out to the sticks Iād probably have to pay at least 50% more than I do now. Rent doesnāt seem to be rising as quickly out in places like Tianmu and Beitou as it is downtown, though, and I would think even the newer, higher prices are still lower than Singapore prices (which are presumably also rising).
The housing numbers look accurate to me, especially when you consider how crappy and small many places are. (Obviously newer and nicer places are going to skew higher.)