Thursday, June 4, 2015

Cost of Living, Taiwan Vs. 'Murica!



So, recently I’ve been taking a look at some jobs back in the US. To determine the feasibility of an eventual return. While it looks I could probably make a living there, I’d be living off of much less. Let’s do some of the math here…

There was an ad for a public school teacher in Phoenix, AZ at $38,000 a year. Of course, numbers are deceiving seeing as how nearly 9,000 of that is going to go to federal and state tax and social security. 

By comparison, a foreign teacher in Taiwan can make about 28,000 a year, more or less, but only 1400 of that will go to tax. 

Adding it up, so far it’s $26,400 in Taiwan vs. $29,000 in the US

Now lets factor in health insurance. In the US, it's going to cost you about 1,200 a year if you're enrolled in the company plan...if not, could cost you $5,000. The Arizona gig is a public teacher job, so lets call it company sponsored. In Taiwan, national health insurance is free, besides negligible deductibles...let's call it $400

After that, we’re at $26,000 in Taiwan vs. $27,800 in the US…

Now look at rent:

In Phoenix, the average rent is about $800 per month. In Taipei, it's about $450. 

Taking rent out of the pile, now it’s only  $20,600 in Taiwan and $18,200 in US leftover for everything else.

Now public transit is up to the individual. But, it is true that there are many more jobs that you need a car for in the states than in Taiwan. Here, you can just ride a scooter, which you can buy for about a grand and which takes very little gas. Or, you could just take the very timely and convenient public transportation here, which is world class. I’ll take my car payments for example when I was living in the US. All told, I paid about $500 a month for financing, insurance and gas. To be fair, I did have to replace a bunch of things on the scooter. Amounted to about a grand US…hopefully the thing will be tip top for some time to come now though. Gas doesn’t cost anymore than like 10 dollars a month.

So…


In Taiwan with a scooter (including cost of purchase): 18,500 …In America with a Car: $12,200.


Of course, that’s not all! The cost of eating must be taken into account! Now, for eating out in the US, we're talking like between 7 and 30 dollars usually (if my memory serves). In Taiwan, it's usually between 3 and 15. I mean, you can get nice lunches here for 4-5 dollars and nice dinners for 9-12 dollars. In the states, anything marginally nice costs like at least $20.

So, I’m not going to do the math for that part, but I think you get the point! Taiwan is tough to beat for cost of living and expenses. America really needs to get its act together though and start giving average Americans a bigger slice of the pie. Good, I'm sure now that I've said something about it, our senators will have a good think and get right on it! Only in my dreams....