Money, Pay & Finances

Among the top things good about teaching English in Taiwan is that you can earn a reasonable amount of money. But, more importantly, you can SAVE an extraordinary amount, because your cost of living will be dramatically lower. Without a car payment / insurance payment, health insurance, and living with roommates (or – outside the main cities - in the dramatically lower priced housing) your costs are much lower.

Additionally, while you’ll have a great DEAL of free time, the common things that you might spend on in terms of entertainment et.al. wind up being sort of off limits to you unless you are fluent in Chinese. Add that to the fact that the weather’s pretty good, the country is 70% mountains, the ocean is always minutes away, there’s parks, tennis courts and soccer fields all over so… you just don’t spend that much having a good time.

As such, after a year, of teaching a fair amount, or two years – and taking fewer hours - you can find yourself with a cozy little pile of cash! It’s quite possible to earn enough to pay off you student loans & credit cards and in short order be in the black.

What to do THEN?! Well, when you get your job squared away, you’ll want to open a bank account. You can find all the information you need about that in this section.

What to DO with all that extra cash? Well… that’t up to you. There’s certainly investments to be had here. The surprising thing is that, after teaching for just a while, you can HAVE some money to invest. You could put it back in the stock markets in the West, or follow the funds from back home that center in Asia, or even the locally managed ones.

Which is really such a neat side-effect. You go half-way around the world to do something most everyone says you are crazy to do, and you wind up not just IN another place, extra-special cool to begin with, but liquid, and putting your money to work.