Shao Chun Chen moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand, in late 2024.
Courtesy of Shao Chun Chen
Shao Chun Chen used to work greater than 40 hours every week in his corporate profession in Singapore. Now, he has a three-hour-a-week job that sustains his and his family’s life in Thailand.
The 39-year-old grew up in Singapore and spent most of his life within the city-state before moving to Chiang Mai, Thailand, together with his wife in November 2024. Today, he “supercommutes” from Thailand to Singapore, flying over 1,200 miles once every week to work as an adjunct lecturer on the National University of Singapore.
He says he brings in about $2,000 to $4,000 Singapore dollars ($1,540 to $3,070) monthly teaching a weekly three-hour digital marketing class, and the quantity that he makes teaching the course is sufficient to cover his travels and all of his and his wife’s living expenses in Thailand.
“I’m gaming the system,” Chen told CNBC Make It. “Three hours of working in Singapore can sustain my entire expenditure in Thailand.”
No paycheck, no problem
It took a layoff to make Chen realize he was financially independent in early 2024, giving him the flexibleness to alter his life.
Over the course of just about a decade working at Google, he lived below his means and consistently put aside as much as half of his paycheck for investments. So when he was unexpectedly laid off by the tech company in February 2024, Chen realized that the seven-figure portfolio he had built through the years meant he not needed to depend on a paycheck for a very long time.
His portfolio was price about $2 million on the time, based on documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Using the 4% rule as a suggestion meant that he could safely withdraw about $80,000 from his portfolio and that very same amount, adjusted for inflation, in each subsequent yr.
In theory, that quantity would likely be sufficiently small for his portfolio to support him for no less than 30 years. Subsequently, quite than jumping into one other corporate role, Chen decided to present himself the chance to steer a distinct form of life.
“I have been working for the last 14 years of my life, and due to the layoff, I used to be forced to take a break,” Chen told CNBC Make It. “It was very devastating, it was an enormous blow to my ego, my identity, nevertheless it seems, with time … it kind of mandated me to think [about] what I actually wanted in life.”
Although Chen found that he could live off of the interest, dividends and capital gains from his investments, he selected to treat them only as a source of passive income, withdrawing money only when essential to complement his energetic income.
Recent sources of income
Up to now yr and a half, Chen created multiple recent sources of passive and energetic income.
Together with teaching as an adjunct lecturer for 3 hours every week in Singapore, Chen also makes money by creating educational content on YouTube and from his coaching business, through which he says he can charge $500 an hour, depending on the client.
He also decided to try geographical arbitrage. By keeping his predominant source of income teaching at a university in Singapore, where the currency is stronger, Chen doesn’t have to work as much to support a cushty life together with his wife in Thailand where cost of living is far lower.
“Discover a technique to improve your skill sets, or to succeed in a position where you may charge a high per hourly rate,” Chen said. “In the event you mix a high per hourly rate with a low price of living, you simply have to work only a few hours to cover your expenses.”
Cities and jobs that will pay a high hourly rate are inclined to be expensive areas, but that is less of an issue now that digitalization has enabled distant work arrangements, he added.
While his job as an adjunct lecturer is sufficient to cover his and his wife’s living expenses, Chen’s other energetic income sources cover his discretionary spending. He says that in total, he spends between 4 and eight hours every week working, which incorporates his teaching, coaching and making YouTube videos.
Making dollars, spending baht
Since moving to Chiang Mai together with his wife in November, Chen says, his lifestyle and quality of life have turn into “so significantly better.”
“I’m also conscious that not everyone can do it, and the locals should not making as much as we’re. [We are] earning in dollars, spending in baht,” he says. “I not feel the necessity to … be on that hamster wheel or to all the time be producing.”
“[Here] I make breakfast for my wife, and in my previous life, I didn’t even have that privilege. [I was] just rushing,” he added.
Together with not feeling as much financial or time pressure each day, Chen says, he not feels the necessity to “over-plan” his life. “For the primary time in my life, I could just kind of … enjoy what Thailand has to supply,” Chen says.
In Singapore, he says, he was paying about about $2,450 a month for his two-bedroom condominium.
Now, he lives in a brand recent one-bedroom condo which costs him $450 a month — and it’s rather more luxurious. “I’m already overpaying because I’m [paying] on a monthly basis … In the event you sign a yearly lease, then it should be closer to $300,” Chen says.
Shao Chun Chen lives in a one-bedroom luxury condo in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Courtesy of Shao Chun Chen
“It is a ridiculous condo,” Chen says. “It has multiple pools. It has a water slide … a completely equipped gym, an enormous co-working space [and] its own Pilates studio,” he added.
As for other living expenses in Thailand, Chen says, he spends between $300 and $500 a month for food and groceries for him and his wife, and about $200 a month for transportation. He also spends about $250 for every round-trip flight to Singapore every Friday.
“The strategy for anyone who desires to live in a rustic like Thailand is to essentially embrace the local culture, the local options, the local lifestyle,” quite than attempt to bring your individual lifestyle to the place, Chen says.
“I’ve actually met just a few expats here, and so they’re really not completely satisfied because they were only drawn to Thailand due to the price of living,” he says. “They were complaining: ‘Oh, the croissant doesn’t taste nearly as good as back home. They do not use real butter here, they use palm oil’ … after which they need to seek out a selected cafe, and that is actually dearer.”
As a substitute, expats can lower your expenses by buying local products like Thai food, Thai medicine and Thai beer, Chen says. “Every little thing made in Thailand is reasonable, however the moment you must buy international options, like wine from France … it’s dearer,” he adds.
Although the choice to depart the company world to live in Thailand has given him more time and suppleness to enjoy life and construct up his different streams of income, Chen says, there are downsides.
For instance, he not has the structure and predictability that corporate life once afforded him. And in the case of supercommuting from Thailand to Singapore, traffic is usually an enormous hurdle, as is the quantity of energy that it could take to travel so often, he says.
But ultimately, he says, he’s completely satisfied together with his life in Thailand, though he’s open to moving back to Singapore if the fitting opportunity comes along.
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