Job Discussion Forums

renzobenzo1 · Joined: 22 Oct 2007 Posts: 85

With or without accommodation...
Living a moderate yet not lavish lifestyle......

Thanks

forest1979 · Joined: 10 Jun 2007 Posts: 507 Location: SE Asia

To be saving NT$60,000 a month you need to be:

- working a lot more than your contract hours, and included evenings and/or weekends in that category. It might help to be working at a university, doign overtime and given the limited teaching hours still be out and about doing private classes
- probably sharing accommodation, you'd be very lucky to get your employers to pay for rent unless you're on an expat contact, so if you can cut this cost down in any way then it's pertinent to saving more
- living wisely and not spending cash as if it's going out of fashion
- avoiding pricey bars and drinking at home

There's other factors too. I'm sure these shall be raised be others.

BJ · Joined: 03 Dec 2003 Posts: 173

On a salary of 60k a month you should be able to save about half. (around a 1000 US)

It will fluctuate on where you live, acomodation,food, life style. But most people that is about right as a general rule of thumb atfter the inital settling period (first few months few savings)

MomCat · Joined: 02 Dec 2004 Posts: 297

Hmmmmm... I think the OP is asking how much will he/she be able to save if they're earning 60,000NT a month.

Between 20,000 and 30,000 NT is my guess at the answer. So much will depend on where you live, how you live, who you live with ...

The first month what you'd like to save will probably go towards your rent and deposit, the second month it may pay for the scooter. If you only stay for a year, the last month may pay for your airfare home (if you didn't come on a round trip ticket.)

renzobenzo1 · Joined: 22 Oct 2007 Posts: 85

forest1979 · Joined: 10 Jun 2007 Posts: 507 Location: SE Asia

On a salary of NT$60,000 to be saving just $20,000 is not a great return. I suppose though the savings sum depends on a variety of factors. Choice of lifestyle, housing, city to live in, social habits, etc., collectively these will all affect what can be saved and what will be spent. Certainly NT$60,000 has a lot more value outside of Taipei, but as other threads have noted outside of Taipei means a greater reliance upon the use of Chinese and for a newbie this could be a problem.

BigWally · Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 9:53 pm Post subject:

Not entirely true....Kaohsiung gets a bad rep, and I think if people could get past the pollution (which is pretty bad, especially in the winter) you would find a big city, with a surprising number of people who can, or at least will try to help you out in English, even if you try to initiate a conversation in Chinese....now I dont want this to digress into a TPE vs KHH debate, i'm just saying that I've lived in Kaohsiung for almost 15 months, I cannot read more than basic Chinese characters, and my verbal Chinese is enough to get me by at a local restaurant/bar, but I can by no means carry a conversation...

KHH is a decent place to save money too, i've been sending home between $30,000-$40,000/mth for the past 6-7 months now...my gf is doing the same, mind you we are in a cheap apartment ($10,000/mth shared), and we are both on 2nd year contracts (which means higher pay)....when we first got here however, we were sending home more like $15,000-$20,000 for the first good while, probably 7-8 months....

Most people that are serious about saving money, will stay for 2 years...its just not feasible to save that much in your 1st year for it to be lucrative...especially now with the rising CDN dollar...

forest1979 · Joined: 10 Jun 2007 Posts: 507 Location: SE Asia

Big Wally - I get your point. But really aren't TPE and KHH, given their large size, naturally going to be more internationalized and so open to English than say Taoyuan or Ilan?

BigWally · Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 7:19 am Post subject:

Oh I totally agree that if you're pretty much anywhere outside of the major cities, you're gonna need some Chinese ability...

I just find a lot of the time, Taipei gets put up on this pedestal and Kaohsiung gets completely ignored as a good place to live...and I just wanted to point out that the need for Chinese isn't critical to living here....

forest1979 · Joined: 10 Jun 2007 Posts: 507 Location: SE Asia

Spot on, Big Wally. It's almost as if Taipei is Taiwan, and vice-versa, and KHH is a footnote and ignored as a large-sized, cultural community.

773 · Joined: 29 May 2005 Posts: 213

Taylor · Joined: 24 Oct 2003 Posts: 384 Location: Texas/Taiwan

Since you lived in Ping-tung, you were hearing Taiwanese about 80% of the time (not Mandarin Chinese).

I don't like the sound of Taiwanese either, but it is important for 'foreigners' who live there to at least realize the difference between the Taiwanese dialect and Mandarin Chinese.

Best wishes,

Taylor

shyarra · Joined: 28 May 2006 Posts: 22 Location: Taichung, Taiwan

i live in fongyuan, outside of taichung. my chinese consists of "ni hao" and "xie xie". it hasn't been a problem. my rent's MUCH lower than rent in the city, and food tends to be cheaper too. i'm making about the same as you and i've been able to save a third of it after paying off my student loans every month.

773 · Joined: 29 May 2005 Posts: 213

BJ · Joined: 03 Dec 2003 Posts: 173

Not sure I agree that Taiwanese is more of an old peoples language, although most use it, the further south you go from Taepei the more Taiwanese you will hear. Most young people I teach speak Taiwanese to each other, and nearly all of the teachers do as well. Also outside of the big cities Taiwanese is the norm,
Schools teach in MAndarin (or used too) as such most young children speak to each other in Mandarin at school, but when you get to university Taiwanese becomes more widespread.