Job Discussion Forums

[ScruffyPete]

Hello,

I'm currently looking into teaching English for 12 months starting in the first quarter of next year, I have had a look around to see if this has already be answered before, but without luck, please do link me if I have been silly and overlooked a post.

I have a 2/1 BA in Politics from a good UK University, experience as a Teaching Assistant for one term in a secondary school and could take a CELTA if it's worth it.

So my question is- "how much can I save in 12 months?" I tend to cook my own food and drink little. I would live anywhere but the middle of nowhere, and teach kids or adults.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Pete.

[Perilla]

SP, your post is so generic and there are so many variables it is impossible to answer with any accuracy. Suffice to say though, with your quals and experience to date you will be at the lower end of the pecking order.

Basically, you'd be looking at private language academies, which pay anything from about 13K-20K HK$ per month. The schools at the upper end of that range would probably expect CELTA. How much you might save would depend on where you choose to live and allsorts of stuff.

Since coming to HK 12 years ago I have generally regarded 15K as the critical amount for basic survival, though I'm not very good at scrimping and certainly some folk get by OK on less. This topic has been looked at before and some posters seem to be able to save reasonable sums on these relatively low salaries.

[RiverMystic]

[Perilla]

[Jospeh]

I'm one of the people who lived on HK$13k for my first year and found it totally doable. If you got a job with that kind of salary and spent 3-4k on rent and 4k on living expenses, you'd have savings of around 5k/month. However, rent that low means sharing a probably tiny flat with 1-2 flatmates - add living alone, more space and a more popular location and the rent starts to shoot up immediately. Whilst 4k is not hard to live on, if you really like shopping/gadgets, go out drinking regularly, always want to eat western food, etc. you'll end up spending more. You may also want to go abroad as often as possible, considering all the countries on HK's doorstep. Plus, remember working conditions and work-life balance aren't the greatest in HK. I adored my 13k job and had set job hours - but you could easily end up somewhere which expects hours upon hours of unpaid overtime every week. It's easy to feel resentful and burnt out working under those conditions without a decent salary to make up for it.

I have no idea how someone can call themselves budget-conscious then state they need 25-30k/month just to survive in HK. RM - 12k for rent, 4k for travel/bills/essentials, and another 9-14k for ... what? How do you get through that much money with the frugal lifestyle you describe?

My own budget-conscious lifestyle involves living alone in a nice two bedroom flat, eating out and buying western food when I feel like it and doing social/touristy things again as I feel like it. Not a big drinker or shopper but I don't restrict myself when I need/really want something. I earn 34k/month and put 15-20k of that into savings/holiday funds. Do you have a partner and kids to support that you forgot to mention? What are you doing with your money??

[Perilla]

[RiverMystic]

[Jospeh]

Oh, it's definitely very, very easy to blow through a lot of money quickly. I'll take out 1k "for the week", then the next thing I know I've hit the cheese section in Citysuper and accidentally walked into H&M and hey, might as well go into this bookstore seeing as it's here - and there's my budget gone in a matter of hours. I don't find it at all surprising that someone could spend 25k a month without much thought.

What I do find weird is stating you spend that much a month alongside a claim of being "always budget conscious". If I actually put some thought into meals, 1k lasts two weeks easily - and I'm still talking about actual meals, not $10 noodles three times a day. Whether or not you find that kind of lifestyle restrictive or "living like a monk" depends on the kind of person you are and what purchases you value. However, that's rather what frugality is. I was just amazed that RM usually spends over 10k/month on non-essentials and still claims some kind of budget lifestyle.

[Jospeh]

Heh, kept the window opened too long. RM, I was assuming you were including food under the heading of "essentials" - and it's not very helpful to the original poster if you don't explain that that 25-30k is supporting two people, not one!

I don't think I've had even one meal of packaged noodles in HK. I'm vegetarian, so I doubt there are any brands I could eat anyway. Sure, I much prefer the dining options a 34k salary brings over the limitations of the 13k one, but you can make real, decent meals on 4k/month. I've done it, and it was not stressful.

[sistercream]

[RiverMystic]

[RiverMystic]

[Jospeh]

As you can see from the present tense I used above, I'm still in Hong Kong. I'm three months into my third year here, so that first year wasn't too long ago. And (present tense again) if I really put my mind to it, yes, I can still live on 4k/month. And eat real, actual food and vegetables (not so many organic free range eggs, but then, I don't go through six in two days, so I don't need to budget for that). It's much harder to do when I know I don't need to, but it's possible if you avoid things like buying a $14.50 bottle of juice every day - a habit which hardly comes under the heading of 'essential for survival'.

And you're the one who's decided I lived on $50/day. Actually, my utilities were mostly included in the 4k rent - allowing $300 extra for summer A/C and a monthly commute costing $800, that's actually more like $90/day. Take off the summer extra and imagine I used the tram twice a day instead of the MTR (in reality, I never got up early enough) and I could have had nearly $130/day.

Our lifestyles are clearly very different, but I'm not lying about mine, and it's simply not true that less than 25-30k/month dooms you to a life of miserable, malnourished poverty in a slum.

[Perilla]

I was intrigued by the egg business because I had no idea how much we spend on our eggs. So I took a look on the way home yesterday. Looks like we buy the same as - or similar to - RM, as the brand we buy (NZ organic free range) cost around $55 to 60. We also pay a premium for organic meat.

RM, your morning OJ is cheap compared to mine! I always indulge in a fresh juice from Simply Life on arrival at work. These cost $26 a hit, but I think they're reasonable value as they're freshly squeezed and you get 3 or 4 oranges' worth of juice. Late morning I always pop out of the office for a coffee from Pacific Coffee. This also costs $26. So, the two combined means I rack up $260 a week just on morning treats. As far as I'm concerned, these are the little things that keep me sane and healthy living in HK.

[RiverMystic]

Yeah, I used to do stuff like that, Perilla, but I have disciplined myself because I was just spending too much money. e.g. I never buy coffee from coffee shops during week days, only on weekends, where it is a special treat. I now buy prepackaged coffee and keep it at work, so if I feel like a coffee it only costs me $5 or so. On the odd occasion I eat out I now I keep to a budget of below $50, so the expat joints are out of question. On weekends I used to head out on an empty stomach, go to some expat joint and order a meal and have a few drinks, then maybe go to bar. Now I eat at home first, then go out, and try to limit myself to no more than 4 drinks, (hopefully two-for-one happy hour) and only on one night a week.

That's what I mean by being budget conscious. It's not about living like a uni student.