Who thinks the average Foreigner pay in Taipei is NT$187,000 per month

People are too focused on money and comparing themselves to others.

So for Taipei they give 77,000 as the “average,” and I think they need 90 “expats” to get that average. But remember that average is highly influenced by outliers. If there’s an expat here who make 200,000 cash, sends 3 kids to school at TAS (=60,000+), uses a house valued at 2000/month, and gets insurance, pension, maybe bonuses and trips home, that person could easily count close to half a million dollars, balancing out 10 other expats making a more conventional salary. You only need 8-10 of those to get these results. And that person is definitely top 1% in Taiwan or the US, but they’re not the median, they’re the person throwing off the mean. There may also be one guy making ten million US who owns a factory.

I also agree that envy is poisonous to the soul. I had a distant cousin on an expat salary in Singapore. Still was not a huge house, but live-in nanny and expat schools, and lots of shopping, and when they came home the family got divorced. There are a lot of alienated people living in enclaves and bubbles.

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I’m one of those “expats” from the States. I make about 200,000k a month but I pay my own rent, sent here to build run our local branch office in Taipei

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This is my fourth country to live in and I’ve always heard expats are people that are sent by their company from home.

Working in Singapore, we typically refered to foreigners working in Singapore as expats or not expats. And the other type was migrant workers like maids and construction workers.

And as far as English teachers, there were two types. Expats were sent from home, and the others that just came to work to Singapore but were not expats.

In that case, I don’t qualify to be an expat. I’ll have to be satisfied with being a mere expatriate. :slight_smile:

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My wife is one of the ones that believe this sort of tripe. Might be true for senior managers and diplomat staff but it’s certainly nowhere near the average for normal everyday plebs out here.

Its the average, as a statistic on its own it’s absolutely trash tells you nothing in reality.

With my head in an oven
And my feet on some ice,
I’d say that, on average,
I feel rather nice!

For a good part of the locals it is…if you just move the comma after the 8.

This number sounds about right to me. Most of the Americans I knew in Taiwan who weren’t teachers easily cleared 200k a month.

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Isn’t it the average of patents who send kids to TAS or TES? Its their definition of expats.

I’m neither average nor an expat.

I’m more of an extraordinary immigrant.

I knew one family once who worked for Nokia . They were pissed off they just get a regular apartment in Tianmu and some of the other managers got a house in yangmingshan. I attended one of their parties it was really weird to be honest. Inappropriate dancing with the wives and husbands just strange stuff. Didn’t get the vibe that they were too happy.

The seeds :grin: of trouble were probably rooted in Singapore. When I was an expat there in my early 20s, there were a lot of high rollers banging chicks left, right and centre while making beaucoup coin. Lots of spouses there happy with shopping and expat lifestyle for a bit at first but then endemic jealousy sets in when hubby starts sampling lots of local tasty cuisine.

Sometimes I feel bad because I am not making those amounts of money, but I think that as long as I have enough for me and mine, it is OK.

I mean, 200k could feed a lot of cats, but if I make 200k, can I take care of my cats?

With Expats, coming overseas isn’t always by choice. The ones that made their own choice are often happier.

Because back in the days most teachers were probably ‘backpackers’.

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You could hire someone to take care of the cats, I know someone that just does that for her dogs.

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Because the only foreigners there are white expats on a package.

As other posters have alluded to the concept of

“average” depends on your definition. The average as a “mean average” is highly influenced by very high salaries (such as CEOs). A median average would represent a salary in the middle of the range, in which case, I can’t imagine it being above 100K per month. In terms of “mode,” I cannot envision that the salary stated is the most commonly reported.

When you consider the low salaries of foreign laborers, this number becomes a “pie in the sky” figure.

The depressing part, I get paid less because I don’t live in Taipei, and that is even lower than the “ninth LOWEST paid in the world.” @@ Where to begin my confusion?

It’s kind of like how long is a piece of string ?

By the way there are stats on earnings in Taiwan , directorate of statistics has em online if I remember rightly.