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 company profession in Singapore. Now, he has a three-hour-a-week job that sustains his and his household’s life in Thailand.
The 39-year-old grew up in Singapore and spent most of his life within the city-state earlier than shifting to Chiang Mai, Thailand, together with his spouse in November 2024. At present, he “supercommutes” from Thailand to Singapore, flying over 1,200 miles as soon as every week to work as an adjunct lecturer on the Nationwide College of Singapore.
He says he brings in about $2,000 to $4,000 Singapore {dollars} ($1,540 to $3,070) per 30 days educating a weekly three-hour digital advertising and marketing class, and the quantity that he makes educating the course is sufficient to cowl his travels and all of his and his spouse’s dwelling bills in Thailand.
“I am gaming the system,” Chen advised CNBC Make It. “Three hours of working in Singapore can maintain my complete expenditure in Thailand.”
No paycheck, no drawback
It took a layoff to make Chen notice he was financially unbiased in early 2024, giving him the pliability to alter his life.
Over the course of virtually a decade working at Google, he lived under his means and persistently put aside as much as half of his paycheck for investments. So when he was unexpectedly laid off by the tech firm in February 2024, Chen realized that the seven-figure portfolio he had constructed over time meant he now not wanted to depend on a paycheck for a very long time.
His portfolio was value about $2 million on the time, in response to paperwork reviewed by CNBC Make It. Utilizing the 4% rule as a tenet meant that he might safely withdraw about $80,000 from his portfolio and that very same quantity, adjusted for inflation, in every subsequent yr.
In idea, that quantity would possible be sufficiently small for his portfolio to help him for no less than 30 years. Subsequently, fairly than leaping into one other company position, Chen determined to present himself the chance to guide a special type of life.
“I have been working for the final 14 years of my life, and due to the layoff, I used to be compelled to take a break,” Chen advised CNBC Make It. “It was very devastating, it was an enormous blow to my ego, my id, however it seems, with time … it form of mandated me to suppose [about] what I actually wished in life.”
Though Chen discovered that he might reside off of the curiosity, dividends and capital good points from his investments, he selected to deal with them solely as a supply of passive revenue, withdrawing cash solely when essential to complement his energetic revenue.
New sources of revenue
Prior to now yr and a half, Chen created a number of new sources of passive and energetic revenue.
Together with educating as an adjunct lecturer for 3 hours every week in Singapore, Chen additionally makes cash by creating instructional content on YouTube and from his teaching enterprise, by way of which he says he can cost $500 an hour, relying on the shopper.
He additionally determined to strive geographical arbitrage. By maintaining his foremost supply of revenue educating at a college in Singapore, the place the foreign money is stronger, Chen would not must work as a lot to help a cushty life together with his spouse in Thailand the place price of dwelling is far decrease.
“Discover a means to enhance your ability units, or to succeed in a place the place you may cost a excessive per hourly price,” Chen stated. “When you mix a excessive per hourly price with a low price of dwelling, you solely must work only a few hours to cowl your bills.”
Cities and jobs that may pay a excessive hourly price are usually costly areas, however that is much less of an issue now that digitalization has enabled distant work preparations, he added.
Whereas his job as an adjunct lecturer is sufficient to cowl his and his spouse’s dwelling bills, Chen’s different energetic revenue sources cowl his discretionary spending. He says that in whole, he spends between 4 and eight hours every week working, which incorporates his educating, teaching and making YouTube videos.
Making {dollars}, spending baht
Since shifting to Chiang Mai together with his spouse in November, Chen says, his life-style and high quality of life have turn out to be “so significantly better.”
“I am additionally aware that not everybody can do it, and the locals don’t make as a lot as we’re. [We are] incomes in {dollars}, spending in baht,” he says. “I now not really feel the necessity to … be on that hamster wheel or to all the time be producing.”
“[Here] I make breakfast for my spouse, and in my earlier life, I did not even have that privilege. [I was] simply speeding,” he added.
Together with not feeling as a lot monetary or time strain every day, Chen says, he now not feels the necessity to “over-plan” his life. “For the primary time in my life, I might simply form of … get pleasure from 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 model new one-bedroom apartment which prices him $450 a month — and it is far more luxurious. “I am already overpaying as a result of I am [paying] on a month-to-month foundation … When you signal a yearly lease, then it is going to be nearer to $300,” Chen says.
Shao Chun Chen lives in a one-bedroom luxurious apartment in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Courtesy of Shao Chun Chen
“It is a ridiculous apartment,” Chen says. “It has a number of swimming pools. It has a water slide … a totally outfitted gymnasium, an enormous co-working house [and] its personal Pilates studio,” he added.
As for different dwelling bills in Thailand, Chen says, he spends between $300 and $500 a month for meals and groceries for him and his spouse, and about $200 a month for transportation. He additionally spends about $250 for every round-trip flight to Singapore each Friday.
“The technique for anybody who needs to reside in a rustic like Thailand is to actually embrace the native tradition, the native choices, the native lifestyle,” fairly than attempt to deliver your personal life-style to the place, Chen says.
“I’ve truly met just a few expats right here, and so they’re actually not blissful as a result of they had been solely interested in Thailand due to the price of dwelling,” he says. “They had been complaining: ‘Oh, the croissant would not style pretty much as good as again dwelling. They do not use actual butter right here, they use palm oil’ … after which they should discover a particular cafe, and that is truly costlier.”
As a substitute, expats can get monetary savings by shopping for native merchandise like Thai meals, Thai drugs and Thai beer, Chen says. “Every part made in Thailand is reasonable, however the second you need to purchase worldwide choices, like wine from France … it is costlier,” he provides.
Though the choice to go away the company world to reside in Thailand has given him extra time and suppleness to get pleasure from life and construct up his totally different streams of revenue, Chen says, there are downsides.
For instance, he now not has the construction and predictability that company life as soon as afforded him. And relating to supercommuting from Thailand to Singapore, visitors is usually an enormous hurdle, as is the quantity of vitality that it will possibly take to journey so typically, he says.
However finally, he says, he is blissful together with his life in Thailand, although he’s open to shifting again to Singapore if the proper alternative comes alongside.
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