07/29/2021
hi guys hello welcome to another live session my name is linda from itt and today
we're going to talk about a very very exciting topic i'm sure a lot of you are going to find it useful
it's all going to be about how to save money and also pay off loans and debt when teaching
english abroad um yeah so thank you so much for joining if you can see me if you can hear me as
always please just leave a hi in the comment section i'd really appreciate it so that i know that you
can see me and hear me because you know sometimes there are technical difficulties um and i might be aware of it so just
kindly let me know in the comment section um and yeah thank you so much for being
here again today uh last week's live session was at a different time you might have noticed
we're kind of experiment experimenting with a couple of new different times to you know reach people who maybe
normally don't have the chance to um watch if we always do it at the same time you know
so last week i was live six hours later than today so
now it is 10 a.m in south korea where i am and last week i was live at 4 00 p.m in
south korea um yeah hi juliana thank you so much for
joining
forget how it's pronounced but hi thank you so much for joining that's awesome awesome guys thank you
awesome cool i'm really hot today oh my god it's i think today is one of the hottest days
in korea and actually this room i don't have air conditioning i have a fan on behind me so if that's kind of
interfering with the mic do let me know but um i can't turn the
fan off or i think i'm gonna have a heat stroke hi yayan from indonesia
very cool thank you so much for joining yeah i i picked this topic and i hope you guys
are gonna find it useful i hope you're gonna take away something away from this today um because it's a you know
um paying off debt and saving money is one of the reasons why a lot of people decide to go
abroad and teach english and um so i think a lot of people are
gonna probably um find it useful and i hope so at least so
yeah before we jump in as always i just want to mention that please like and subscribe you know
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uh for tefl course takers also graduates you know teaching information teaching
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like and subscribe and then you also never gonna miss any of our future live sessions
we actually do go live twice a week once me and then once my colleague lisa
and she's many of you know probably she's from russia and she's an amazing teacher she's
teaching english online and she also has experience teaching english in china just like me
um and so i think yeah you get the best of both worlds native english teacher
and non-native english teachers i think that's really great um please also don't forget we have a 30
off discount code as we do every live um but they we only share them during
our live session so that's what makes them very special and 30 is a big discount so i highly
recommend if you haven't started your tefl or t-soul journey yet i highly recommend
you get on it and this discount hopefully is an incentive and will help you out so how
can you get the discount one you can either um
scan this qr code in the upper right hand corner or we also have a discount link
if you've seen my live sessions before you probably know this already and it's just the same same old same old but um
here you go it looks like this you click on that you
apply um it will lead you to the application form you fill out the application on the next
page you'll see your discounted price that's how it works um yeah as always feel free to uh
ask your questions during this live session at any time they're also going to there's also going
to be a q a session at the end where you can also have the opportunity to ask some
questions before i sign off today and typically our live sessions are between 45 minutes and an
hour long um if you don't have that much time that's no problem you can always come back and watch the replay
we always keep our live session videos on youtube in our playlist and also on facebook on our playlist so
they're always available and we also always turn our live sessions into podcast episodes
so if you're listening to this as a podcast thank you so much for the download um you can find our podcast on all major
podcast platforms it's called the tefl and tesol podcast by itt so if you're into audio only
formats um i highly recommend checking it out uh you know i always love listening to podcasts especially when i'm driving
so um maybe that's something for you and uh yeah then we're ready let me have
a look at the comments one more time there are a lot of people here now awesome we have rabindra from india it's
6 35 a.m wow thank you so much for being here so early that's awesome
letterg thank you have a great day thank you have a great day as well
juliana says i like your hair today thank you it took me some time to do that today and i don't
know the side is a little bit weird but we're gonna work with it
uh okay awesome what else is there anything else to say before we jump in i
don't think so i think we're good to go uh yeah so we're gonna jump right in i
have a lot of cool stuff to show you today a lot of tools that you can use um for saving money and budgeting
and figuring out cost of living and things like that in different countries so i hope you're
gonna enjoy that and yeah let's jump right in i'm gonna make myself smaller as always
so you can see the slides here and i'm also gonna take a sip of my coffee
and then we can get started okay so first off as always you know the
drill i have a quick self introduction because we do get a lot of new people in our live sessions um
yeah my name is linda i'm a travel writer and content creator under my name linda goes east
i've been living in asia pretty much since 2012. i started out in china and now i live in
south korea i've been here for six years and you can find my own content at
lindagose.com and also on instagram at linda goes east i love sharing my content there
so if you're on instagram follow me and hit me up on in my dms
i would love to start a conversation with you guys so if you have any questions always feel free to reach out
no problem at all i'm originally from germany in the us my mom is german my dad
is american and yeah i'm based in south korea now for the past six years it's been a pretty exciting ride um i
taught english in china and also in south korea full-time in my first year in korea and
then i transitioned into this side here so becoming a teflon tesol marketing
professional for itt but i also still teach um you know on
the side because it's just fun i love teaching meeting new people that's always interesting and there's so many opportunities here
so why not take it um and yeah itttt stands for international
tefl and tesol training you can find us at teflcores.net
and on instagram also at international tefl training also do give us a follow and um like our
content over there uh itttt is a leading teflon tesol course provider worldwide we offer
a variety of different courses from online in class combined in over
30 destinations globally and also obviously a wide range of
different online courses so um yeah and i know many of you already have taken a course with itttt
so that's nothing new but i still need to mention it because we do get new viewers so i
don't want them to be like uh left out and not knowing what's happening
okay so that's that then we're moving on to the topic
today and i see there are a lot of people here today so um i see that you are interested in this
topic as i said before we are live on facebook and youtube at the same time so do leave your comments
and i can all see them um in one place here and i can get back to you um yeah so today's topic as you can tell
is all about saving money and paying off loans and debt when teaching english abroad and i
already mentioned that in the beginning but um saving money and paying off debt
is one of the main reasons why a lot of people actually decide to teach english abroad i know many i've met many people
along the way um who came to china or korea or other
different countries for that reason and many of them also successfully paid
off their student loans within one or two years of teaching abroad um and obviously the saving money part
a lot of people i know are regularly sending money back home or obviously saving money for them being
able to go on amazing trips while teaching english abroad so a lot of different options here yeah and today
we're going to talk about um basically a few like smart techniques and tips and
tricks how you can save money when teaching english abroad what you can do
the tools you can use to just maximize your saving potential and pay off debt and loans
and all that kind of stuff because and a lot of times like we're you know just out of college and yes you
do wanna go abroad and have fun and everything but you're also it's it would be just a smart
thing to also think about you know the financial side of things and saving money and stuff like that and so
it's just very important and a part of adulting isn't it okay so
first off um i just want to start off by um basically with these three things so
before we can talk about saving money and paying off any loans we need to determine these three
factors so those are the main factors that you need to think about in
order to figure out how and how much to save so first off we have the disposable income
so that is your income your teaching salary um that you're gonna get minus
all the taxes and insurance and stuff like that that's going to come out of it so that's one number we need to look at
the other number are then the fixed expenses so those are things like your rent and
your utilities and any kind of other like insurance things or than any monthly payments that
you have um also things like your phone plan um things like that
and then the third thing are your saving goals that's what we need to look at so the saving goals
and with these three numbers once you have that determined you can then go from there
and figure out your savings plan basically and yeah it's gonna take some time to
basically figure out uh these numbers i think the number
that takes figuring out the longest are the fixed expenses so that's probably going to take if you
move abroad you know especially the first month you're going to have a lot more expenses than the next month and it's going to just take some time for
you to figure out what your fixed expenses are and are going to be
but once you have those three things you can then work on your savings plan basically
so that's our ground uh groundwork and base of everything that's gonna basically the
soil that's gonna where we're gonna grow our flower out of basically that's an analogy that we
can work with but yeah so that's how it works and i mean that's the same everywhere not obviously only for teaching english
abroad right so um yeah great all right this is the first
thing to remember and then let me just say hi to amitava hi
hello linda how are you faring now this is amitava from calcutta india it is 6
45 a.m now yeah it's super early we just had another one another person rabindra from india it's
also 6 45. super early thank you so much for tuning in i really really appreciate it it's awesome okay so now
we're gonna start off looking into different strategies and tips and tricks how you can save money when teaching
english abroad and pay off debts and a couple of the tools that you can use for that
all right first off we have uh a little bit slow
hello okay there we go uh basically your teflon t-cell
certification so i know you're gonna say like how does this help me save money because you need to
pay for a tefl course it's not you need to spend money on a tefl course so how does that help
me save money i get it but listen basically
getting a tefl and t cell certification will maximize your earning potential right if
you are certified you have a tesol certification you then have access
to the best salaries and also the best working conditions and it will also widen your choice of
teaching jobs so with a tefl certificate or tesol certificate your salary is actually going to be
higher right so um compared to someone who doesn't have a certificate who's not certified
and i've seen that and witnessed that in many many instances i actually taught english in china
before i came to korea and i was not tefl certified at the time and it was not a requirement
in china at the time now it is a requirement to have a tefl but when i was there it was not but i
knew that i wanted to maximize my earning potential when i go to korea so i
decided to take the tefl course while i was still working in china and then when i applied for jobs and i moved
to korea i actually got a higher salary compared to other teachers because of
my tefl certificate and so the money you're going to spend on the
certificate you're pretty much going to make or get back with your first paycheck so it's
really really worth it um to make extra you know a higher income
so that would that would be the first step towards saving money and paying off debt
definitely get a teflor t-cell certificate to earn a higher salary so that you can
maximize your earning potential all right that's pretty much uh
self-explanatories i'm not gonna talk any more about that but yeah i'm sure that makes sense to you and for
anyone who's joined just now i just want to say again we do have a 30 off coupon
code or link um so you can get teflor t-cell certified with
30 off you can either scan the qr code in the right-hand corner
here or you can click on this
link that i shared in the comment section looks like this so it gets you straight to the application
form you fill out the application and then you get your discount okay
good let's look at the next point
so that would be the next thing so first you would get your tefl certificate you take your tefl course you get certified
and then you're going to think about what where you want to go teach and if your goal is to make you
know to save money to pay off debt you need to choose the right destination so what do i mean by right destination
you need to find a destination that has the highest salaries the best bonuses the best
benefits all of that if your goal is to save as much money as possible you need to yeah choose the right
destination because where you teach has a big impact on how much you can earn
and how much you can save so a lot of people they really want to go to the great european capitals like paris or rome or
london but those places are very very expensive um the cost of living is super high
uh apartment prices are high and usually the teaching salaries aren't that high
either so you're not going to be able to save a lot of money if teach in those destinations
unfortunately and if you're interested in teaching in europe or teaching in asia or any other destination we did
live sessions about that in particular before so you can go back in the playlist and take a look at that because i'm gonna go
in those live sessions i'm going into cost of living and salaries how much you
can earn in different countries so if that's something that interests you i highly recommend checking that out
in our playlist so yeah that is that and basically the highest earning
potential is in asia it's specifically east asia
um and i'm going to talk a little bit more about the best countries when it's time and also the middle east
basically the middle east has the highest salaries in all of like all of the world for tefl
teachers um also mentioned the middle east before in one of our live sessions so i
recommend checking that out as well but yes choosing the right destination is very important
if your goal is to save as much money as possible then you should look into asia and the
middle east and so one big thing to remember is the cost of living
and one really great way to figure out the cost of living in different places
if you don't know obviously because you don't live there i'm gonna show you this really really cool tool
it's the cost of living what is it called cost of living calculator so it looks like this this is
how you can find it and i'm just going to show you real quick so if you're for example we're
just going to take um korea as an example and i'm actually going to share that
with you now we can do it together so i can show you how it works uh i'm gonna stop that
[Music] let's see here we go
i hope you can see that soon okay so this is the cost of living
uh calculator or thing what is it called
uh the largest cost of living database there you go and actually this is really
great i've used this a lot and there's over 7 million prices
from 10 000 over 10 000 cities in the world and by over half a million contributors
so what this is basically real people can add real prices of the city they
live in into this database to then offer you a first hand real-world idea of the cost
of living in the place so we can pick a location we can pick a city
so for example we could pick seoul seoul south korea
and then you can find a little bit of a summary right at the top so it's this family of
four estimated fi monthly costs are 4.4 hundred
thirty one thousand one without rent using our estimator okay now it says
one so then you would have to probably calculate that or you can actually change the currency here okay great
uh so let's change it to us dollars what happens okay here great
so this is what a family of four will need monthly costs for family for a
single person's monthly costs without rent and then it also says things like seoul
is 20 less expensive than new york without rent but rent in seoul and rent in seoul is
on average 64.49
lower than in new york so for example and then we can even we can even go lower down here
and then you can see different uh prices for different items for example
so here we have a mac meal at mcdonald's how much that is
a meal for two people domestic beer imported beer a cappuccino and the prices
right here on the side also grocery items what they're priced at in
that location transportation costs utilities
also different activities child care clothing apartments rents that's very uh
interesting to know and also i like that they do it by in city center outside the center
one bedroom three bedrooms so you get a great variety of different things here so yeah
and also monthly average average monthly net salary for people
so yeah i think this is a really really great uh
tool to use if you know or you think about oh i want to move there i want to move you know to seoul i want to move to
tokyo i want to move to wherever you can kind of compare the cost of living with this tool
and here you can also see the distribution of expenses for example and just a lot of other
little facts good and i think you can also um
i don't know if you can compare oh compare with yes that's a really great feature too so you can compare that with
maybe your hometown right so if we do uh
maybe like chicago
so you can compare seoul with chicago for example and right at the top the differences you
can see so consumer prices in seoul are 1.7
uh 24 higher than in chicago however rent is lower
rent prices are lower than in chicago restaurant prices are lower than in chicago but grocery prices are higher and the
local purchasing power in seoul is lower and then here you can kind of compare
a meal in an inexpensive restaurant in chicago is 17.50 but in seoul it's 6.99 so
um a little bit of a difference here however look at milk milk is a lot more
expensive in seoul than it is in chicago for example so yeah this is a tool that you can use
to kind of compare and see before you go what the cost of living is like in the place where you're
interested in um i hope that makes sense i hope it's interesting uh feel free to leave a comment also if
you are from chicago i know um juliana is from illinois that's why i picked chicago real quick
um but yeah we can do this for any city and you can just compare yeah they also see have a lot of
different indexes here also crime index healthcare index pollution all of these things so this is
a really great website to kind of just get an idea of the place where you want to move to
all right good then let's go back
to the slides
one second
okay it makes sense thank you julian awesome yeah so uh if i think that's a
really great tool for people you know moving abroad definitely very useful so uh you can check that out numbeo.com
with a lot of great statistics you can compare cities and countries cost of livings and all of that stuff so very
very useful keep that in mind something to remember for sure
okay and now let's talk a little bit about the recommended locations with high earning potentials so those
are basically the four biggest places with the highest earning potential so we have china and south korea over
here and then we have saudi arabia and the united arab emirates on the other side
all of these locations share these two things so all of these locations typically have
paid accommodation free airfare and also bonuses and severance
so very high earning potential paid accommodation means your employer your school will give you
accommodation you don't have to worry about rent which is great because rent is actually the costliest expense
um for um you know per month typically so if you don't have to worry
about that that is going to give you a lot of opportunity to save money and then also obviously free airfare is
great and then bonuses and severance typically there's things like end of contract bonuses
so if you finish one year you get a extra bonus and then also severance is great for
when you before you leave the country for example um in korea it's like that they have the
national pension scheme so you pay into the national pension scheme every month um but then when you leave korea you get
all of that back and depending on how long you stay that's a couple of thousand dollars that you can
actually get back which is great you can then use um back home to pay off debts and things
and yeah in all of these locations you can save between 30 and 50 of your monthly income
so in china and in south korea that means you can save between 500 and 1500 us dollars per month
and for saudi arabia and the united arab emirates this even means you can save as much as two thousand dollars per month
so the saving potential is very high in those four locations is anyone interested in
teaching in one of those four locations let me know in the comments section and then which one are you interested in
and also why i'm curious so i've personally lived and taught english in china and south
korea so i know a little bit about that but maybe if there's someone who has experience with these two locations that
would be really interesting actually um and later
says that's a nice tool calculating the cost of living thank you for sharing i don't know about it it's interesting
yeah you're welcome i also really liked i don't know who showed me that um but i
also really really thought it was super interesting uh when i learned about it and
it's just great to get an idea about it but yeah so china south korea saudi
arabia and the uae are the locations with the highest earning potentials so
if your goal is to save as much money as possible to pay off debts you should look into
those four locations and we did live sessions about um
the best locations to teach english abroad before where we mentioned all of these and then i also did a separate live
about just teaching english in asia where i go in depth in uh
about teaching english in china and south korea so do check that out i highly recommend it if you're
interested in one of these okay moving on next we have
a great tip and that is earning extra income so a great way to obviously save more
money is making more money so what you can do is earn an extra income
for example by providing private language lessons in your free time that's probably not something new a lot
of teachers do that and uh what's interesting to know is actually that in many asian countries
parents they sent their children for additional english english instruction outside of school hours that is very
very common uh in korea that's very common in china very common
and also japan and taiwan and in these locations you can charge anywhere from uh 20
to 50 us dollars per hour for a private class and i know a lot of
people who are doing that i am doing that so pretty much everyone um i know is doing that because it's
just so lucrative um there's a super high demand especially if you're a native english
speaker because that's what parents are looking for basically for their children
and then you just yeah tutor them in your free time there are a lot of great resources as
well where you can get material from obviously you need to create your own material in most cases for private
tutoring um but the more teaching experience you have if you've taken your tefl course your
tesol course you're gonna have a lot of um lesson planning and like access to materials and you can use all of that
then for your private tutoring lessons basically so yeah that's a great way
to earn an extra income next point also earning extra income if
you don't want to do tutoring private tutoring that's totally fine another great way is just to teach
online which i'm also doing i started teaching english online in march of this year
and yeah because the digital digital learning is the quickest growing market in the
education industry at the moment and what's great with that is you can attract students from
all over the world and teach location independently so for me i teach a lot of students
actually from japan i don't live in japan but most of my students are from japan i also teach people in korea but not in
my town in korea i also teach people in europe um so you don't need to worry about
location transportation costs or anything like that and there's so so many online
teaching platforms to choose from it's i mean you can do a quick google search for
online teaching platforms or teaching english online or something like that and there's a plethora of um
different teaching platforms so we have vipkid for example palfish q kids magic ears ef english first
say abc data abc camli preplea cafe talk and many many more
there's so many out there so um this is another great way
to do that and also again most of these platforms you do need to upload credentials
so if you also have a teflon or t-sol and you upload that you're also going to earn more money so again a teflor t-salt is
just going to enhance your saving and earning potential
all right we have a comment from amitav i just want to look at uh i would like to venture into teaching
in south korea one important aspect of choosing this country is that i can have you as a friend philosopher and guy a
guide whilst living in the same country itself oh that is so sweet thank you so much that's awesome i love
that thank you i would love for you to come yes hit me up and we grab some coffee
and um have a chat that would be awesome okay great so private tutoring
face-to-face then we have teaching online where you are location independent you don't need to worry about um
meeting any students face to face and gathering students in your neighborhood you can you have access to thousands of
students thousands of willing students uh waiting for you basically when you teach english online
so yeah and actually we did i know that definitely my colleague lisa she did a
live about teaching english online because she's very experienced in teaching english online so if you're interested in that do check out that
live session as well that was really really helpful actually after i watched that i started teaching online
because of her tips and everything so um thank you lisa that was awesome
good next point very important how to save on accommodation so we already talked a
little bit about accommodation and basically accommodation housing is generally the costliest
expense right it can be anywhere from 40 to 50 even 60 of your salary that some people need
to uh use for rent and things like that so um if you are not
lucky and work for you know one of those one of the schools
that offer free accommodation there's still a few things that you can do to save
money on accommodation um but like i said most places like china
i know also places in japan um in korea they generally offer free accommodation
but if you know you teach in a place where you don't have free accommodation that still
doesn't mean that you won't be able to save you can still do a few things to maximize that so one thing you can do is
share a house or apartment with a friend or a colleague so a lot of schools they
will actually have like they they will help you out so they have like their teachers and then they
will help them find a teacher apartment together so that you then can save money
and also another great tip is to look for housing on the outskirts of the city rather than in the center obviously i
think that's pretty um pretty much uh self-explanatory or like common sense
usually the center is obviously much more expensive even though maybe your school might be in the center you should
still if you want to save money look for an apartment outside the city or just on the edge
to save more on rent so and there's also a lot a lot a lot of
facebook groups i know i love mentioning facebook groups but those are great to
find people to share apartments with and also to find cheap rooms in shared apartments because if
you move to a new place you generally don't really know where to look or like the area or any
websites that they use so facebook is a great place to start um you can find groups like tefl
teachers in korea or tefl teachers in china wherever there's a group for everything
and then you can ask there if anyone knows anything about shared apartments and housing and you can make connections
that way so that's not not another thing i can't talk today
another thing to keep in mind let me take one more sip of my coffee
okay good so that is accommodation let's see what we have next how we can
save more money okay this is another great one so this is once you're already there
in the country and you're living your life you're teaching abroad living expenses so if you don't pay
attention your living expenses they can't really bite a huge hole into your pockets and even it's just like little things i
know for me like korea has so many amazing coffee shops and you just go to cafes all the time
and get a coffee here coffee there coffee here coffee there uh and then that's slowly heading up
and then uh you you know if you write everything down we're gonna talk about budgeting also in a little bit if you
write everything down what you spend and then you look at it and you notice like oh my god i buy
way too much coffee at the coffee shop and the coffees are like five or six dollars
that's adding up so that's we're going to talk about living expenses so another thing
especially for expats living abroad are obviously the foreigner areas right
we want to eat at foreign restaurants you go to 400 bars and all of those things
which is great you can certainly do that but maybe not all the time so generally it's better to
avoid bars restaurants shops and other services that are specifically aimed at expats
workers because those are a lot more expensive than like the local places
obviously so that is uh one thing you can do and then also
another great thing is doing your grocery shopping at the local market compared to big supermarkets and also
hanging out in areas that are not solely aimed at foreigners so if you look at the picture here this
would be a great example of a local market we have them in china we have them korea
the traditional markets the little street vendors those are great places to get your to
get some of your groceries so you don't need to go to the more expensive supermarkets um and you're also helping
out some local people at the same time which is great so those are this is my advice and also
yes with juliana just mentioned julianna said my best tip is to cook by yourself yes that's also what i added here so
cooking your own meals at home is often less expensive than eating out i say often because it also depends on
what kind of food you cook so this is one thing what i realized in korea
if i were to cook like western food food i eat at home like pasta and
steaks and i don't even know that kind of stuff it's actually more expensive than eating out
at a local korean restaurant so because it's all like it's not
ingredients that are normal in korea so those ingredients that you use to cook your
own food um are most likely also imported so they're
actually more expensive so the way you can actually save the most
money would be to cook local food right at home so i'm in korea if i were to cook only
korean food at home that's how i would save the most money
obviously i don't want to eat only korean food and i'm also not good at cooking korean food
so this one's a little bit tricky i do cook my own like i cook like a bunch of
different things but um yeah i think a great tip if you're not really into cooking is
just to look for uh like smaller authentic restaurants
and also street markets uh those traditional markets to get new groceries and then also to
eat out at like smaller more like local places compared to chain
restaurants or like foreign uh chain restaurants international restaurants and stuff like that so yeah that is that i think i have
nothing more to add let me think i think that's about it but um yeah but that's what a lot of
i remember like my first year also in china actually my first six months in china we used to just go
to like foreigner bars all the time and that is very expensive also in korea you used to because you
don't have any local friends yet you don't really know anything yet so you always stick to what
stick to what's comfortable right and what's comfortable are other foreigners so you tend to go there but that's
more expensive so um obviously i'm not saying never go to foreigner bars or never go
to foreign restaurants but just know that they are more expensive and if you really want to save
money maybe don't do it as often and also consider you know going more local yeah
all right good next point this is very important now once we figure out all of these things
so those things what i talked about are basically the two things out of the three numbers that
we need in the beginning so our uh disposable income we can't really
we can kind of change that by earning extra income what we mentioned tutoring and teaching
online and you can also do a lot of other things if you have other skills obviously um
that is that the disposable income and then the other thing was um your
fixed expenses so once we figure that all out our rent
how we can save on our rent our living expenses how we can sort of uh keep them lower that is that and now
we can set up a budget plan to then figure out how much you can save from that
if that makes sense so uh for the first three months
of teaching abroad and that also includes actually taking an in-class tesla course we have
a it's called the tefl budget planner i'm also going to show you that in just a second
and so you can use that for your first three months and then once you have figured
everything out the three things we talked about you then set up a regular
month-to-month budget plan and i'm sure everyone at some point in their school life
had probably had a class about how to budget so um yeah but the thing is like we learned
about budgeting but then we end up never doing it but if you really want to save money you need to
pay off debt a budget plan really is important and you should do it
and it's a great way to just find out where most of your money goes and what changes you can make so by
writing like i said by writing down everything um writing down
all the expenses you have every time you spend money write that down you're gonna notice oh my god i spend
way too much time way too much money on coffee or things like that you're gonna you can determine uh where
you can make cuts basically so that's what we're gonna do um and yeah let me show you that budget
planner now and i'm also going to share a link to
the budget planner so you can download that
later okay this is what that looks like
so this is the um tefl budget planner spreadsheet and as you can see uh
you're gonna find first month second month third month and then monthly budget so
the first second and third month are basically for people who are actually taking an in-class tefl course abroad
um so if you're not taking an in-class tefl course four weeks abroad or you are going abroad
to interview and finding jobs um you can ignore actually the first
three months and then can jump right into the monthly budget but i'm just going to go over this very
briefly and then you can look at this more if you're interested i'm going to share the
link to it so you can just look at that later on your own time but yeah month one this is your tefl
certification expenses uh here oh why is this sheet okay
here we go good all right so these are the core expenses to become
tefl certified over four weeks so if you take a four week in class course it includes course tuition food in
incidentals and accommodation and you can add your own rows as well so for example tefl course you write
down what it costs you can also find what that would be a daily if per day
your apartment how much is that per day internet food transportation uh living costs and
entertainment and this is the budget that you need for your first month um the month where you take a tefl
course abroad for example now if you take an online course obviously you only have this one expense
and it's gonna be significantly lower than a thousand two hundred dollars uh depending on what course you take
it's like 200 150 200 250 300 something like that and then you
obviously you do it in your own home so you don't need to worry about any of these other expenses right but then we move at month two this
is the interviewing phase so this is for people who go abroad for their in-class tefl course they do
their four-week course that is month one and then they stay in the country and interview
right so a person let's say goes to bangkok takes the four-week class course
and now they stay in bangkok and try to find a teaching job so this is month two and then it says
your tefl tuition disappears in month two yeah obviously so we already paid
that in full and we have other things we still need to pay rent and internet and food and
transportation and then you can can add other things so this is however long it's gonna take away the
sheet is acting weird uh okay here so this is however long it's
gonna take to find then a position typically not that long maybe just hopefully just a month
typically faster than that and then you add up your month one and your month
two and then you have this expense month one and two and the third month is then your first
teaching month so you in your first teaching month you don't have a salary yet
so you need to think about that um so you need to find a way to be able to
afford your first month without having your salary right so these are still all the same and then
you just add them all up plus your airfare if your airfare obviously is paid for
and maybe then also your apartment rent will be paid for by your school if you have a contract
where they pay for accommodation so that will depend on what kind of job you get but this would be the first
month and then this means if you add up all three months one two and three how much money you
needed to begin your teaching career now obviously like i said
if you are taking an online tefl course this is much less and very
different you only have your tefl course expense and that might even be it you might have some expenses like
getting your documents uh for your visa those sometimes cost money
um and then you might have to pay for your airplane and then you get reimbursed by
your employer or your employer pays and books your airplane ticket um but yeah if you take
an online course this would be much much less obviously and then so if
you don't take a four week in class tefl course you can start here
in this tab the monthly budget tab and you can just use this one for your month to month budget
okay so here you have your expenses you can put them in there's also tab for local currency you
can change that this is bought now but you can change the currency to whatever you
you need if it's korean one or chinese yuen or whatever um and then
you'll see that here so you have your total expenses they're all added up and then also your paycheck you would
add that here and then you'll see what's left to spend basically and it's very
important that you also include your savings into your expenses
already that's a very important thing so you need and i'm actually going to
talk about this next um yeah i'm just gonna wait i'm gonna talk about this next
but this is the budget planner that you can use obviously there's many many other budget planners out there online if this one
doesn't work for you you can find another one no problem but i'm gonna share the link
to this with you right now
um like so in the comment
box
i think that's it looks like this and then you can make a copy
and use this for yourself very useful
okay looks like that okay good
then i'm gonna go back to my uh other slides
[Music] and let me know if you have any questions about that
okay so this is that your budget budget planner and then that's what i was gonna say
next so make it a habit to pay yourself first so pay yourself before you pay
your bills um basically make automatic payments into your
savings account every time you get paid and treat your savings account or your savings the amount of money you want to
save like a bill that you have to pay that's why it is included in our budget
under expenses because if you leave it until oh this is what i have left to spend
so i'm gonna this month i'm gonna save i don't have that much left so i'm not gonna save as much no you
need to uh treat your savings like a bill like an expense that you have to pay that's how you will be
successful at saving and paying off your debts basically that's just my tip for you um that's how it should be done
basically so pay yourself before you pay bills obviously you need to pay your bills
um you know if you can't make ends meet that's not good but treats your savings savings account like
a bill that you have to pay so you can get a savings account in your there's a lot of
different ways how to do this you know get a savings account in the country that you're teaching or you keep your
own account at home and you send money back home a lot of people do that too and um i thought about including um
that in this presentation you know how to best send money home what's like the cheapest way but it
literally it depends on the country that you're teaching in what
kind of bank you use there what kind of bank you use at home where your home country is so this it's
not really i can't really include that because it's just really depends on case by case
obviously popular options are always paypal payoneer uh western union things like
that or just direct bank transfer which might be really cheap depending on what bank you're using
um basically what you can do is ask other teachers your colleagues or your
employer about that because they're likely they likely have more experience and they probably also send money back
home or they know more what the cheapest options are so it really depends on you know
different situations different countries so i can't really say a lot about that but um that that's
my advice just ask people who have already done that they likely know
exactly how to go about and your employer okay this is it uh
those are my tips i hope it was something was in there that was useful for you the
um the cost of living tool the budget planner and some of the tips here and there i hope you found
that useful um it's always hard to say you know more specific things like sending money back
home like i said because it really depends and varies from situation to situation and country to country
um but this is what i came up with and i hope you enjoyed it i hope you took
something away from it and now is your time to ask more questions before i sign off for
today and also just don't forget the 30 off that we have so you can scan this qr
code or i'm also gonna share the um the discount link just one more time in
the comment section if anyone missed it they can see it now
looks like this this is the discount link and then we're gonna start our q and a
session now so now is your time to ask any questions about today's topic about uh korea china teaching abroad
our tefl course anything that you're curious about you can just feel free and ask
all right and there was a really long comment that i didn't look at before so i want to just read that now real
quick from amitava do you have a local cheap and ex and inexpensive chinese and tibetan
restaurants in and around south korea serving say chicken chow mei chicken fried rice and or fried and steamed
momos by the way are there any local indian restaurants serving indian dishes
yeah so there's actually a lot of indian restaurants in china which i love a lot of indians and
nepalese people in pakistani they live in south korea so there's a lot of
restaurants for that tibetan i'm not sure um in seoul
i'm in story in seoul you can get pretty much anything um so i'm sure there's tibetan
restaurants i know there's like mongolian a few like mongolian places also around
and chinese yes but um there's more like korean chinese so
not so much the american chinese version of the food but you can also
find that especially in seoul so there's for example panda express in seoul and a few like
american chinese food places um there's actually one that opened near my house which is really nice they
also have like southeast asian like fried noodles and
things like that so that's really nice um they also had okinawan okinawan rice and tainanese
chicken rice i think so a lot of different options but yeah for sure a lot of indian food
and nepalese food in korea all right that's a good question i'm
hungry now i love indian food love indian food and nepalese food i went on this amazing
food tour in 2019 in nepal oh it was so good and i had chai
every day and lassie um so good hungry now
it's 11 and i'm getting hungry turk says interesting topic i find it useful i'm
learning thank you for walking me through it thank you so much i appreciate it i
appreciate it thank you all right if there are no
other questions then i would sign off but i just want to give it one or two more minutes
just to be sure um making sure that no one's left out um but yeah we are
back again next week i'll be back probably also friday maybe again friday afternoons a little
bit later than today um but my colleague lisa she will be back i think tuesday
so um do check that out and also check out our playlists like i mentioned there's a lot of useful information if
you haven't seen that yet um information about teaching in different
areas regions like asia um yeah also tefl contracts and
i don't know i talked about so many different topics before and now i can't think of a lot but we have a wealth of
information out there for you guys so check that out juliana says thank you so
much thank you for always coming back here i really appreciate it it's really awesome
amitava says it is quite nice to know that you like and love both indian and nepalese cuisine food in
fact i did my tefl in class course in kathmandu in june of 2019. no way oh that's awesome did you like it
kathmandu i was there in october 2019 so just a few months after you
cool i really like kathmandu it was so amazing very different from any other place i'd
been before and i've traveled a lot around southeast asia east asia but south asia
is really a whole other region and i i was in kathmandu for
not a long time like three four days and then i actually did a tour in bhutan i was there for one week
and you can't fly into bhutan from every airport so the closest airport to
fly into bhutan was kathmandu so that's why i decided to go there and spend a few days in
kathmandu before going to bhutan and then going back to kathmandu and then spent one more day
one more day there and then i went back home but it was so nice so i really want to
go back to nepal again um beautiful beautiful country
it's so colorful and like the food is so great so yeah i loved it
awesome all right if there are no more questions then i think i'm going to sign off before i just start rambling
and it's not going to be interesting at all um but yeah if you're interested more into you know
my travels traveling around asia what that's like do check out my instagram
uh here at linda goes east i share a lot of my travel
experiences on there so that's something that's interesting to you i recommend checking that out um
yeah and then let me just read this comment one more
time thanks linda a lot for your kind insights suggestions and thoughts i like nepal
i also went to bhutan in october november 2018 both nepal and bhutan were wonderful to
visit yeah same i really want to go back to both i want to go back to bhutan as well
um and you're lucky because you're indian so you can just um enter bhutan and travel around by
yourself that's really cool only indians i think can do that because you have like an agreement
between india and and bhutan but for non-indians you need to book through
an agency and you cannot just travel around by yourself so you have to have a
local guide and a driver so it was just me and my guide and my driver and we um
traveled around bhutan it was amazing it was so good so yeah
awesome all right then i'm gonna sign off this was really great i hope
i gave you some incentives for saving money and some ideas on how to make more money
and then um yeah i will be back next week i hope i'm
gonna see some of you again next week as well i really really appreciate it and then i'm gonna think of a new
exciting topic hopefully to talk about next time and i can't wait to see you all again
and i hope you are going to have an incredible weekend with great weather and lots of good food
and fun and friends and anything that you want and yeah signing off don't forget to
check out the budget planner that i shared the link with you and also the cost of living
tool and um yeah the 30 off link of course
right don't forget that either all right then i'm signing off this is it and then i'm gonna see you
again next week alright guys thank you
bye-bye
