Cost of Nomad Living in Taipei during the coronavirus

The world is still at a pause due to covid19 and that is especially true for nomads like us. Most borders are still closed off to foreign visitors and travel has halted. It feels unsettling to be without a home during a time when everyone is supposed to be staying home but we are happily making ourselves at home in Taiwan. We are making the most of the situation and using this opportunity to reflect, develop a routine and enjoy time in nature. We are fortunate to be in a country where things are under control and for the most part, people are able to live out their lives.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been sharing how this pandemic has been affecting us as well as many others like-minded nomads. We will share our regular content every Monday and dedicate our Wednesday to share additional stories of fellow nomads that are going through this crisis.

In this post, we will take a look at our past month of expenses and share what our cost of living in Taipei has been during this pandemic so far. We will also check to see how we are doing towards our new yearly budget goal for 2020 that we recently decreased from $30K to $20K. Are you ready to escape the day to day and take an early look at the cost of living in Taipei, Taiwan?

For the purpose of this cost of living analysis, we are covering a period of one month (30 days). During this time the two of us spent $32.37 per person per day, or $1,941.93 in total.

Where We Traveled Taipei, Taiwan

What did we do, see, eat?(this will be covered in an upcoming post)

Number of Days 30 days (from March 17, 2020 to April 15, 2020)

Type of Travel Married Couple, Slow Travel/Nomadic, Price Conscious

Total living cost $1,941.93 (for 2 people) or $23,630.1 per year (for 2 people) or $1,941.93 per month (for 2 people) or $32.37 per person and per day

Note: Unless specified otherwise, prices are in USD and were converted from the local currency (TWD or Taiwan New Dollar) to USD using a 1:30 ratio. (so 1 NT$ = 0.033 USD).  

World travelers since July 2018

We started to travel the world in July 2018 and we’ve so far visited the following 20 cities: 

Our average monthly cost of living through this journey is around $32 / person/day (or $24K / year/couple). (Note: this doesn’t include non-living cost as we are only interested to compare the cost of living between countries. If you want to know how much we spend overall, check our latest spending reports). 

To be more specific, here is the cost of living per person (red bar) for each country we’ve traveled to and the total living cost (green bar) for each trip.

How does Taipei fit into this picture? 

We spent a total of $1,941.93 so our first month in Taipei was on par with our average with a daily budget of $32.37 / person / day. (or $64.73 / day in total for the two of us).

On what did we spend this money on? 

Let’s look at a breakdown of our spending across all our living expenses categories: 

This was a very unique month in many ways, but since we are talking about our cost of living in this article, let’s look at it from a budget perspective. Our accommodation topped our budget category (representing 66.78% of our living expenses), followed by our groceries budget (representing 14.46% of our living expenses), our dining out budget (representing 9.38% of our living expenses), and then our local transportation budget (representing 4.5% of our living expenses).

Let’s look at a breakdown of our spending per day through this entire month.

For most nomadic folks still sheltered at home (like our friends Berit & Martin in Kuala Lumpur or Kristy & Bryce in Toronto as I write this), their budget expenses would mainly go into two main categories: accommodation & groceries. Which is exactly where our budget went during our quarantine at home. Once we were allowed to get out, our allocation went back to almost where it was pre covid19 with spending across categories like local transportation (pink color), eating out (blue color), snacks (purple color) and even entertainment (orange color). 

We want to call out that this has been made possible since Taiwan has been on top of their game to contain the spread of the virus and we are very grateful for the people in this country for keeping everyone safe.

How much did we spend in Taipei? 

Note: If you are curious about how we generally decide to spend our money, check out this article where we explain our decision-making process.

Accommodation: $21.61 / person / day (OR $648 / person / month).

Accommodation in Taipei is usually on the higher end for short-term accommodation. That being said, since borders have been closed for new foreigners coming in, the number of people looking for short-term rentals has been reduced, which has been to our advantage.

For instance, you can currently find a place like this 1 bedroom, 1 bath entire apartment centrally located in Taipei that usually rents for $1,629 for only $1,010 (see listing picture below). This place is marked as “new lower price” by Airbnb that indicates that the host recently lowered the price to meet with the extra supply of rooms. By experience, we know that we could get this place even cheaper by reaching out to the host. (If you also want to get a great deal using AirBnB, please check out our ultimate AirBnB guide that has helped us save on average 50% the regular AirBnB listing price). 

For us, because we had to spend two weeks in quarantine and with the uncertainty of our ability to make it to Taiwan initially, we only booked a place for one week. Once we successfully landed in Taipei we then extended our stay to cover our entire quarantine window. While we managed to get a discount on our first week ($331.11 or $47.30 / night), we didn’t have much time to negotiate the second week as we needed to extend this reservation to comply with the quarantine rules so we bite the bullet and paid the normal weekly price ($488.73 or $54.30 / night) for a grand total of $819.84 (or $51.24 / night) covering us for respectively 7 + 9 nights (or 16 nights).

This quarantine was a really enjoyable 2 weeks stay. Our Airbnb was in the Da’An district which is a nice neighborhood (that we were only able to enjoy for 1 day after our quarantine finished). It was well equipped like a proper home and had everything we needed. The kitchen had everything for cooking proper meals (pots and pans, utensils, rice cooker, tableware etc.) which can be hard to find in Taipei. There was plenty of space and was really comfortable to stay in all day, it was also well furnished and there was a ton of storage! The wifi was extremely fast and the host was available whenever we needed. 

As our quarantine was going well, we started looking for another place to stay for an entire month. This time we found a place for a much better deal at $890.65 for 28 nights (or $31.80 / night).

Our apartment isn’t as big as the previous one, but since we can go out as much as we need to, this isn’t as much of a constraint on us. The kitchen was lacking some basic essentials and our host was able to provide most of these items for us at no additional cost, which is always something we really appreciate. It’s still not as well-stocked as we’d like and is more suitable for short stays so we plan on moving after this month.

You can check out our 1st AirBnB rental listing here and our second AirBnbn rental list here. If you want to know how we score great deals with Airbnb, check out our own Airbnb tips.

⇒ In total, for our first month in Taipei, the 2 of us spent $1,296 on two apartments for a total of 30 nights.

Local Transportation: $1.46 / person / day (OR $44 / person / month)

Public transportation is excellent in Taipei! We’ve been mostly using a combination of the subway (MRT) and the public bus system. Both of them can be easily accessed by loading money on the Easy Card (100 TWD per card) and tagging your card every time you hop on and hop off. We put about 1,000 TWD on each card and used about half of this amount for our 14 days out of quarantine. A big chunk of the amount was spent on a 3 hour commute to get to and from a wild hot spring.

Usually a ride on the subway is between 20 – 45 TWD (or 0.66 – 1.5 USD) and a ride on the public transportation is usually between 15 – 30 TWD (0.5 – 1 USD), which makes this option a bit more affordable but also a bit slower as it depends on traffic congestion.

Beside public transportation. we used Uber to get from the airport to our apartment and between our apartments.

⇒ In total, for the length of our stay, the 2 of us spent $87.31 on local transportation.

Groceries: $4.68 / person / day (OR $140 / person / month)

During our quarantine, we relied on food and grocery delivery services like UberEats and Food Panda. Mrs. NN has some family here in Taipei who also dropped us some groceries, which was a really sweet and nice surprise.

Once our quarantine was over, we went grocery shopping at stores like Carrefour and Wellcome who have a large selection of produce. 7-Eleven and Family Marts are at every corner in Taipei and they can be convenient if we need a last-minute item or a snack.

⇒ In total, for the length of our stay, the 2 of us spent $280.82 on groceries. This covered 9/87 meals (breakfast, lunch & dinner) which is about $1.80 / meal.

Eating Out: $3.79 / person / day (OR $113 / person / month)

During our quarantine, we splurged a few times on food delivery services since we could not go out to eat.

Once our quarantine was over, we tried a few restaurants in Taipei. Ranging from hole in the wall vegetarian establishments to higher-end vegan places. Even though we aren’t strict vegetarians, we like to reduce our meat consumption and we would say that it has been easy to do so while in Taipei.

⇒ In total, for the length of our stay, the 2 of us spent $182.13 on restaurants + $44.83 on snacks for a total of $226.96. Our restaurant budget covered 78/87 meals (mostly lunch/dinner). The average cost of our meals was $9.79 which is about 4.5 times more expensive than eating at home (by doing the ratio between what a full day of eating out would cost vs a full day of eating at home as per our budget). 

Activities: $0.22 / person / day (OR $7 / person / month)

Our activity budget has been pretty low as we like to enjoy activities that are usually free. We did join a hiking group in Taipei (Hiking in Taiwan – English/Chinese) that charges a small fee per hike. We also went to a great hot spring and did other hikes for just the cost of the public transportation that we covered earlier.

⇒ In total, for the length of our stay, the 2 of us spent $13.34 on activities. 

Living expenses: $0.61 / person / day (OR $18 / person / month)

We spent some money to get myself a haircut (100 TWD or $3.33) and Mrs. NN signed up for a private Chinese class for 2 weeks (1,000 TWD or  33.33 USD).

⇒ In total, for the length of our stay, the 2 of us spe@nt $36.66 on living expenses. 

Our Money Savings Tips

How did we save money for this trip?

• Use your two feet every day! This helped us reduce our footprint while increasing our exercise activity. Double win! 
• Use travel credit cards with sign-on bonuses to maximize free miles that you can apply towards your trip so you can travel for (almost) free. 
• Use this amazing debit card to avoid hefty ATM fees. In Chiang Mai alone this saved us 30 USD in ATM fees during our stay.
• Use Airbnb (if staying one month or less). Airbnb is a website that allows homeowners, in destinations all over the world, the ability to rent private spaces (or entire apartments) for a fee. As nomadic long term travelers, we like to call AirBnB our home as it has helped us save a lot of money and provides us with really great places managed by wonderful hosts! Pro tip: If you sign up for Airbnb using our referral link, you will get a 45 USD credit, which should give you a pretty nice discount on your first night.
• Use food/grocery delivery services (especially during covid19). We are sharing our favorites with some promo codes for you to use, that will make your first order either free or pretty damn cheap:
  • Uber Eats (sign-up then enter this discount code eats-0glcp on your mobile device to get $20 off your first order)
  • Postmates (sign-up with code XREGDD to get $100 in delivery fee credit) 
  • Doordash (use this referral link to get $5 off on your first 4 orders for a total of $20)

Our Bottom Line

First and foremost we are extremely grateful that Taiwan has been welcoming us during this pandemic. As we wrote earlier, we believe that Taiwan is a very safe haven for nomads during this pandemic and we are trying to make the most of this as we are well aware many people don’t have such a luxury.

If you’ve been following our adventure, with the pandemic affecting everyone, we’ve decided to be more conservative with our finances and readjust our budget for 2020 from $30K / to $20K. While we have been above this budget during this first month, we believe our cost will get closer to our $1,500 monthly target as we already booked the month of May for the same price than our first two weeks while in quarantine.

And while we are staying in Taiwan, we are looking forward to exploring more of Taipei and its surroundings through hiking, hot springs as well as enjoying many of the local delicacies.

So that’s it folks! What do you think about our budget in Taipei during the pandemic? Is it as affordable as you thought it was? Feel free to share your experience and ask questions by leaving a comment below.