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, along with his spouse in November 2024. Immediately, 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 informed CNBC Make It. “Three hours of working in Singapore can maintain my whole expenditure in Thailand.”
No paycheck, no downside
It took a layoff to make Chen understand he was financially impartial in early 2024, giving him the flexibleness to alter his life.
Over the course of virtually a decade working at Google, he lived beneath 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 not wanted to depend on a paycheck for a very long time.
His portfolio was value about $2 million on the time, in line with paperwork reviewed by CNBC Make It. Utilizing the 4% rule as a suggestion meant that he may safely withdraw about $80,000 from his portfolio and that very same quantity, adjusted for inflation, in every subsequent yr.
In principle, that quantity would doubtless be sufficiently small for his portfolio to help him for at the very least 30 years. Subsequently, somewhat than leaping into one other company position, Chen determined to present himself the chance to steer a special form 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 informed CNBC Make It. “It was very devastating, it was an enormous blow to my ego, my identification, but it surely seems, with time … it kind of mandated me to suppose [about] what I actually needed in life.”
Though Chen discovered that he may dwell off of the curiosity, dividends and capital positive factors from his investments, he selected to deal with them solely as a supply of passive earnings, withdrawing cash solely when essential to complement his lively earnings.
New sources of earnings
Up to now yr and a half, Chen created a number of new sources of passive and lively earnings.
Together with educating as an adjunct lecturer for 3 hours every week in Singapore, Chen additionally makes cash by creating academic content material 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 attempt geographical arbitrage. By conserving his most important supply of earnings educating at a college in Singapore, the place the foreign money is stronger, Chen would not have to work as a lot to help a snug life along with his spouse in Thailand the place price of dwelling is far decrease.
“Discover a method to enhance your ability units, or to achieve a place the place you possibly can cost a excessive per hourly price,” Chen stated. “Should you mix a excessive per hourly price with a low price of dwelling, you solely have to work only a few hours to cowl your bills.”
Cities and jobs that may pay a excessive hourly price are typically 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 lively earnings 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 movies.
Making {dollars}, spending baht
Since shifting to Chiang Mai along with his spouse in November, Chen says, his way of life and high quality of life have change into “so significantly better.”
“I am additionally aware that not everybody can do it, and the locals do not make as a lot as we’re. [We are] incomes in {dollars}, spending in baht,” he says. “I not really feel the necessity to … be on that hamster wheel or to at all times be producing.”
“[Here] I make breakfast for my spouse, and in my earlier life, I did not even have that privilege. [I was] simply dashing,” he added.
Together with not feeling as a lot monetary or time stress each day, Chen says, he not feels the necessity to “over-plan” his life. “For the primary time in my life, I may simply kind 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 rental 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 … Should 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 rental in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Courtesy of Shao Chun Chen
“It is a ridiculous rental,” Chen says. “It has a number of swimming pools. It has a water slide … a totally outfitted gymnasium, an enormous co-working area [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 dwell in a rustic like Thailand is to essentially embrace the native tradition, the native choices, the native lifestyle,” somewhat than attempt to convey your individual way of life to the place, Chen says.
“I’ve really met a number of expats right here, they usually’re actually not comfortable as a result of they had been solely drawn to Thailand due to the price of dwelling,” he says. “They had been complaining: ‘Oh, the croissant would not style nearly as good as again house. They do not use actual butter right here, they use palm oil’ … after which they should discover a particular cafe, and that is really dearer.”
As an alternative, expats can lower your expenses by shopping for native merchandise like Thai meals, Thai medication and Thai beer, Chen says. “Every thing made in Thailand is reasonable, however the second you wish to purchase worldwide choices, like wine from France … it is dearer,” he provides.
Though the choice to depart the company world to dwell in Thailand has given him extra time and adaptability to get pleasure from life and construct up his totally different streams of earnings, Chen says, there are downsides.
For instance, he not has the construction and predictability that company life as soon as afforded him. And in terms of supercommuting from Thailand to Singapore, visitors is usually an enormous hurdle, as is the quantity of vitality that it could take to journey so usually, he says.
However in the end, he says, he is comfortable along with his life in Thailand, although he’s open to shifting again to Singapore if the precise alternative comes alongside.
Need a new profession that is higher-paying, extra versatile or fulfilling? Take CNBC’s new on-line course The best way to Change Careers and Be Happier at Work. Professional instructors will train you methods to community efficiently, revamp your resume and confidently transition into your dream profession.
Plus, join CNBC Make It is e-newsletter to get suggestions and tips for achievement at work, with cash and in life.