Job Discussion Forums

[sidjameson]

8 years ago I showed my students a newspaper estate agency add. A house in England cost 8 million yen. Today, that same house would cost 36 million yen.

Most teachers in Japan would have been better of buying the house in England and washing dishes for 8 years. At least financially.

There must be guys in Japan who can no longer afford to go back home.

Now the UK housing market and the Japanese yen are obvious extremes in what can happen, but then again they did happen. I suggest that all would be TEFLers be aware of what they may be sacrificing when they decide to teach English abroad.

[furiousmilksheikali]

Sure, if you can stand the sacrifice of washing dishes for eight years and missing out on eight years of life experience then the teacher made the wrong choice. It depends what you value more.

Which one would you prefer to chat to in a bar?

[tedkarma]

I guess we can choose currency fluctuations from many different countries - and yours is quite valid.

However, the 50,000 GBP villa, with a 100-meter walk to the beach, down the street from my house on Phuket (five years ago) is now selling for close to 280,000 GBP.

Perhaps they should have put their yen in baht - and worked for peanuts here? Truly, I don't know!

Currency fluctuations are an issue for those of us who live overseas. A big part of my income is in US$ and I live in Thailand where the baht is VERY strong at the moment. I buy my health insurance in GBP and see it going up every day.

And . . . ultimately I have to agree with furious - it is all about enjoying your life and experiencing it, isn't it?

On my death bed, I want to know I maximized my life's experiences. I think I will recall my years of seeing the world, rather than the value of the home I am dying in . . .

[denise]

[Stephen Jones]

If the TEFL teacher was washing dishes he wouldn't have been able to afford the mortgage payments on the GBP50,000 house.

The truth is it's a generational thing. At present the median house requires around six years median income. Where most jobs are the proportion is even higher. Those who bought houses before the latest boom are home laughing; the rest are high and dry.

[naturegirl321]

I don't think that many of it are in for the money, though there are a few, many times they go to Korea to save up. As for me, I wouldn't give up the past five years I've spent teaching. Got married to a wonderful man and we'll be buying a house next year, something that's nearly impossible to do in the USA. My parents still have 15 years left on their mortage and we plan on paying cash.

[Justin Trullinger]

Everything has an opportunity cost- if you decide to do something, you're obviously deciding not to do some other things.

Why do people moan more about opportunity lost in this field?

I have no idea.

Maybe because it's perceived as not being lucrative?

Friends back "home" don't look like they're laughing, either, though.

How often have you all heard "I wish I could travel, but I don't have the money?"

Sounds like a different kind of opportunity lost...

Best,
Justin

[denise]

[Guy Courchesne]

Keeping up with the Jones'...not my cup of tea really. Of course, there are the Garcias, the Lopezes, the Fernandezes...

[MikeySaid]

I think what it really comes down to is what your definition of success is. I guess what frustrates me most is knowing that ultimately I want to work for myself--and not just giving private language lessons--and that to generate that capital for myself may be rather difficult. Any angel investors out there?

[naturegirl321]

I suggest you start buying property or stocks. That way your money can work for you.

[Justin Trullinger]

Property, maybe. But the stock market often isn't kind to beginners or small investors...


Best,
Justin

[Moore]

As I see it, you can go and live in the country you want to be in now, and scrape by for the first three or four years until you find a way of making more cash than just relying on teaching, and quite possibly make yourself a very respectable amount of money, or you can stay at home working for 40 years in the rain and stress, saving up to go and live in that country, by which time you may well be too old to really enjoy it or not even make it there at all.

So many of my friends at home are "time poor, cash rich", whereas my lifestyle here in Spain is so much better than it would be in the UK: no matter how much money you have in the UK, it still p*sses down with rain most of the time.

If you use the extra spare time that TEFL teaching has as one of it's major benefits, productively, you can work on starting your own businesses, and with a lot of hard work and initiative you have the chance of ending up being well-off AND having lived in the country you really want to be in while you were young and active: for me that's well worth the risk

[fat_chris]

Different strokes for different folks.

I'm not into havin' a lot of things right now. I'm into doin' things, i.e., I've learned how to snowboard and windsurf and speak and read and write Mandarin while I was living abroad.

Maybe I'll be into owning property later. But for now I just want to sink that extra loot from TESOL into paying off student loans and credit card bills.

It's all about personal priorities I guess, but I like the comments made here about enjoying one's life. I seem to get more out of life when I am teaching abroad than when I am slogging through the nine to five in my home country.

Regards,
fat_c

[tedkarma]