He lives in Thailand but ‘supercommutes’ to Singapore—living off what he makes from 3 hours a week

Shao Chun Chen used to work more than 40 hours a week in his corporate career 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 in the city-state before moving to Chiang Mai, Thailand, with his wife in November 2024. Today, he “supercommutes” from Thailand to Singapore, flying over 1,200 miles once a week to work as an adjunct lecturer at the National University of Singapore.

He says he brings in about $2,000 to $4,000 Singapore dollars ($1,540 to $3,070) per month teaching a weekly three-hour digital marketing class, and the amount that he makes teaching the course is enough 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.”

It took a layoff to make Chen realize he was financially independent in early 2024, giving him the flexibility to change his life.

Over the course of almost a decade working at Google, he lived below his means and consistently set aside up to 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 over the years meant he no longer needed to rely on a paycheck for a long time.

His portfolio was worth about $2 million at the time, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Using the 4% rule as a guideline meant that he could safely withdraw about $80,000 from his portfolio and that same amount, adjusted for inflation, in each subsequent year.

In theory, that amount would likely be small enough for his portfolio to support him for at least 30 years. Therefore, rather than jumping into another corporate role, Chen decided to give himself the opportunity to lead a different kind of life.

“I’ve been working for the last 14 years of my life, and because of the layoff, I was forced to take a break,” Chen told CNBC Make It. “It was very devastating, it was a huge blow to my ego, my identity, but it turns out, with time … it sort of mandated me to think [about] what I really wanted in life.”

Although Chen found that he could live off of the interest, dividends and capital gains from his investments, he chose to treat them only as a source of passive income, withdrawing money only when necessary to supplement his active income.

In the past year and a half, Chen created multiple new sources of passive and active income.

Along with teaching as an adjunct lecturer for three hours a 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 main source of income teaching at a university in Singapore, where the currency is stronger, Chen doesn’t need to work as much to support a comfortable life with his wife in Thailand where cost of living is much lower.

“Find a way to improve your skill sets, or to reach a position where you can charge a high per hourly rate,” Chen said. “If you combine a high per hourly rate with a low cost of living, you only need to work very few hours to cover your expenses.”

Cities and jobs that can pay a high hourly rate tend to be expensive areas, but that’s less of a problem now that digitalization has enabled remote work arrangements, he added.

While his job as an adjunct lecturer is enough to cover his and his wife’s living expenses, Chen’s other active income sources cover his discretionary spending. He says that in total, he spends between four and eight hours a week working, which includes his teaching, coaching and making YouTube videos.

Since moving to Chiang Mai with his wife in November, Chen says, his lifestyle and quality of life have become “so much better.”

“I’m also conscious that not everyone can do it, and the locals are not making as much as we are. [We are] earning in dollars, spending in baht,” he says. “I no longer feel the need to … be on that hamster wheel or to always 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.

Along with not feeling as much financial or time pressure on a daily basis, Chen says, he no longer feels the need to “over-plan” his life. “For the first time in my life, I could just sort of … enjoy what Thailand has to offer,” 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 new one-bedroom condo which costs him $450 a month — and it’s much more luxurious. “I’m already overpaying because I’m [paying] on a monthly basis … If you sign a yearly lease, then it will be closer to $300,” Chen says.

“It’s a ridiculous condo,” Chen says. “It has multiple pools. It has a water slide … a fully equipped gym, a huge 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 each round-trip flight to Singapore every Friday.

“The strategy for anyone who wants to live in a country like Thailand is to really embrace the local culture, the local options, the local way of life,” rather than try to bring your own lifestyle to the place, Chen says.

“I’ve actually met a few expats here, and they’re really not happy because they were only attracted to Thailand because of the cost of living,” he says. “They were complaining: ‘Oh, the croissant doesn’t taste as good as back home. They don’t use real butter here, they use palm oil’ … and then they need to find a specific cafe, and that’s actually more expensive.”

Instead, expats can save money by buying local products like Thai food, Thai medicine and Thai beer, Chen says. “Everything made in Thailand is cheap, but the moment you want to buy international options, like wine from France … it’s more expensive,” he adds.

Although the decision to leave the corporate world to live in Thailand has given him more time and flexibility to enjoy life and build up his different streams of income, Chen says, there are downsides.

For example, he no longer has the structure and predictability that corporate life once afforded him. And when it comes to supercommuting from Thailand to Singapore, traffic is often a big hurdle, as is the amount of energy that it can take to travel so often, he says.

But ultimately, he says, he’s happy with his life in Thailand, though he is open to moving back to Singapore if the right opportunity comes along.

Want a new career that’s higher-paying, more flexible or fulfilling? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Change Careers and Be Happier at Work. Expert instructors will teach you strategies to network successfully, revamp your resume and confidently transition into your dream career.

Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.