[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]Fox: They don’t regularly make more than those professionals. Some teachers do indeed make serious bank, but they’re very far from the average. Everyone is talking about how hard it is to get 20 hours/week these days, and they certainly aren’t getting anywhere near 700NTD/hour.
[/quote]
Well, I’m probably wrong, but it is certainly possible to make that kind of money easily. I don’t really have any idea what the average English teacher makes. I have taught for myself for the past 10 years. I think teaching English is a wonderful job and highly recommend it as a way of making plenty of money and getting ahead. It has always been good to me and I think many other people.
It isn’t the case in Taipei. It is easy to make money here. It’s falling out of peoples’ pockets. You need only walk down ChungHsiao East Rd with your eyes open for 10 minutes and you’ll soon be rolling in gold and seeing stars glittering in your peripheral vision.
It isn’t the case in Taipei. It is easy to make money here. It’s falling out of peoples’ pockets. You need only walk down Zhongxiao East Rd with your eyes open for 10 minutes and you’ll soon be rolling in gold and seeing stars glittering in your peripheral vision.[/quote]
Man!! Stop saying shit like that. You’re only encouraging the youngsters back in Debt Land to come over here!!!
Fox: You must be the English teacher most bullish on the prospects of teaching here that I have ever met/heard of, at least at the moment. The great irony is that you’re leaving/have left the place.
Well, I’m not leaving for financial reasons (at least for the most part). However on a financial level: the problem for me is that the NT is so weak compared to AUD that I’m making almost a third or even less than I was 7 to 10 years ago in AUD terms. On the other hand, Australia is getting so expensive if I ever want to live there again I had better go now. I still think you can make a quid teaching English in Taiwan, especially if you are young, single, and motivated. It’s not a bad life either. You get to blend with another culture, meet many interesting people, have a position of social responsibility etc. What’s there to complain about? THE WEATHER!!!
[quote] GuyInTaiwan wrote:Fox: You must be the English teacher most bullish bullshitting on the prospects of teaching here that I have ever met/heard of, at least at the moment. The great irony is that you’re leaving/have left the place.
Changed that for ya.[/quote]
Why are you like that?
‘If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools…’
Better luck next time. Ask around and see if Fox knows nothing about English teaching and how it works in Taiwan. I’m not pretending to be an expert (like you) but I think I can turn a quid as an English teacher and I think I know many who can also.
Fox: The trouble is that you got in when the game was a lot better than it is now. You had time to build up the good gigs when the money was being splashed about. I really don’t think newbies have those opportunities now.
I’ve written off Australia pretty much. Even if I were to go back now, as a teacher it wouldn’t be a great financial decision and that doesn’t take into account how awful most government school kids are there. Taiwan is not ideal, but it’s probably my best bet for now. I don’t know if I’ll still be here in ten, fifteen or twenty years though. A lot will have to change in the interim to keep me here once I’m wealthier.
Why am I like what? Why do you always take what I say in the worst possible way? You are hurting my feelings, fox.[/quote]
Delivery, mostly. I mean I don’t care. You are welcome to call bullshit if that is what you think. You don’t have to be decent about it.
It could be true. I was teaching English well before I came to Taiwan. From my experience things are about the same as they ever were, including teachers’ wages. They have definitely stagnated. They seem to be less now than when I arrived, but I’m sure if you are a good teacher you can still do well in Taiwan. Perhaps it is more competitive. I can honestly say I have never noticed. I’m sure I’ll learn all about it when I return to Australia though.
guyintaiwan: Your math is correct. I averaged 600NT/hr at 33 - 35 hours a week and the wage cap at the time was 710 I think. At least at Hess, if you’ve been there long enough to hit the wage cap you shouldn’t have too many unpaid hours. When I subbed I did about 47 hours a week and was fortunate in that all my classes were within walking distance of my apartment. This was about five years ago and I left when I sensed the market starting to get soft, but I didn’t realize things had gotten so bad that those days are considered a distant memory!
Australia is certainly due for a housing price re-adjustsment. Not quite convinced that it is a bubble. Although if the behviour of the current government continues in undermining everything that holds up the property market, it will be a bubble.
Either way I agree, now is not the time to buy property in Australia!
PigBloodCake: The trouble is that even if the housing bubble pops, the general cost of living is not likely to follow. There isn’t going to be a massive deflationary spiral there. As such, for me as a teacher (and I really don’t think I’d want to go back to teaching in Australia), I’d be earning about the average salary (actually, because I’ve been out of the system for a while there, I’d be worse off than the average person who has been a teacher for as long as I have). Also, my wife, not being a native speaker, not having been educated in the West, etc., would have a harder time than average in getting an average or better than average job. Besides which, being average in Australia is not that great anymore. Living in Australia is not a viable financial option for me.
naijeru: It’s crazy how much things have changed in the past four years. Back then, I had friends who used to just walk out of jobs at the drop of a hat and could walk into another one within twenty-four hours and start on 650NTD/hour or even 700NTD/hour, and that was within their first six months of living in Taiwan! They could get as many hours as they wanted also. Now, people seem like they would almost be grateful to have too many hours. I’m in a completely different situation because I work in the government system. If I weren’t in that, I’d be looking to leave Taiwan I think.
Well, I know a guy who owns one of the biggest plastic factories to the medical industry located here in Taiwan. He drives a Teanna while all of his sales drive BMW 7 series…He has a theory about who makes the most in Taiwan, and much like above, it has very little to do with actual salary, lol.
Tech analysts at brokerages make in the region of 150k - 300k basic and can expect bonuses of zero months to 24 months depending on the economy. It’s probably zero months this year. Heads of research or sales would likely be on 350k at least plus bonus. In the Good Old Days a top salesman could make a million US a year and I know three personally who indeed did.
The lowest I saw a tech analyst make in Taiwan was 100k, but that was at a local company. Non-tech analysts were on 80-100k in my day. Things have changed a lot though since the Good Old Days.
When I taught English at the train station the local guy I was with was on 300k but he said there was a famous maths teacher working there (a woman, forget her name) who was on 600k. I was on 1500 an hour for standing there as decoration. There were hundreds in the classes, all cramming for the Daxue Liankao. Yu Meiren, her of TV fame, taught buxiban Chinese for a few hundred thousand per month as she has admitted recently. She’s also admitted her TV income is approaching 3m a month.
Train station buxiban teachers’salaries have always dwarfed foreigners’ salaries - the famous local teachers that is.
A sausage stand at Yonghe night market that I know of brings the owner in 100k a month minus his 30k rent. He says it’s better than his previous job as a lawyer. Go figure.
Taiwan is not a ‘salary’ society, the way to make money here is to be a business owner, property owner or professional who charges fees. Salaries have stagnated for 10-15 years without even taking inflation into account.
The example of the sausage stand is a common one, I have also met college grads who dream of opening ‘ji pai’ stands. Some night market vendors can make up to 1 million NTD sales per month, many average 100,000s/mth. No tax. It is hard work and not for everybody though.
It’s easy to calculate, a rice and pork sausage can retail at 50 NTD, sell 200 of them a day, that’s 10,000 NTD cash. Raw material cost, maybe 2000 NTD. Labour- yourself or 100 NTD/hour. The rent can be very high though for certain areas.
There were indeed ‘golden days’ during the economic boom period 1990-2000 when big bonuses and fees were easy to come by. It pretty much crashed to a halt in 2000 though when they started moving their factories en masses to China and stopped investing in Taiwan. Competition for remaining jobs in Taiwan increased along with margins dropping year by year and therefore there was no incentive for business owners to pay keep paying. In many cases staff got a last bonus or stock options to thank them for their service before moving almost everything to China.
I read a few years ago that harbor pilots at Keelung and at Kaohsiung earn in excess of 9 million Taiwan dollars per year !! They are retired sea captains with vast experience in moving different types of vessels. But this is a very high pay.
Looks like the top paid? Computer company directors get the highest pay:
That’s not bad at all.