Katieteacher
Joined: 06 Jul 2012 Posts: 3
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Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2012 9:55 am Post subject: Newbie questions |
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I'm wading my way through all the posts but I have a couple of basic questions.
I will be coming with my boyfriend, we have 5 years of experience in Korea each, BA degrees and online TEFL certificates (120 hours).
Where should we start looking for jobs? What salary range can we expect? And out of that how much can we realistically save assuming we live together but won't overly scrimp. |
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sistercream
Joined: 18 Dec 2010 Posts: 497 Location: Pearl River Delta
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2012 3:58 am Post subject: |
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What time of year are you planning to move? Barring amazing serendipity, all the "real" school jobs for the coming academic year have all been sorted, so unless you apply for PNET (applications don't close until next February or so for positions for the 2013- 2014 school year), you are almost certainly looking at language mills or the kind of private kindergartens that don't manage to retain staff.
As for where to look for jobs, my first port of call would be the ClassifiedPost section of scmp.com (no payment necessary for using the classifieds).
Salaries? In the kind of jobs I mentioned, I wouldn't settle for anything less than HKD20,000 per month for each of you, but if you get hired by somewhere like Wall Street, you could be looking at >5K more. A lot depends on how desperate you are to move ... I undersold myself on my return here just to get a foot in the door, and just stuck out the one contract before moving to somewhere that actually suits me
Living costs are definitely the same as the length of a piece of string ... if you want to live in the centre of things, eat western foods and go to expat bars, two of you'll be struggling on $40,000. If you're happy to live and work out in the New Territories (specially the north-western area), are pretty much adapted to Asian diet but for the occasional splurge, and prefer swimming/ hiking to bars or clubbing, then you could easily bank >10K of the hypothetical 40 and not feel deprived. That would be allowing for MPF contributions and buying tax savings certificates so the provisional tax doesn't give you a nasty shock in the first year.
Edit to add - setting up here isn't cheap; flats typically come unfurnished (if they are furnished the stuff is usually pretty dire), starting a lease typically requires 1 month rent, 2 months deposit, 1/2 month agency fee, and possibly deposits for utilities. |
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