Korean Job Discussion Forums

[lyonhead]

After hearing so much talk about how much other people are saving and how little I am (almost none) I want to figure out what I'm doing wrong. Please help.

As soon as I get a paycheck, I always pay my bills right away. This means after pension, taxes, healthcare, electricity, gas, cable, phone, internet, and student loans, of my 2.3mkw salary, I take home about 1.3mkw.

Note though, the exchange rate makes the student loan payments more painful than they used to be, but I'm about to pay one loan off entirely and that will free up a few hundred bucks a month.

At this point, I decide what kind of month, or weeks, I'm going to have. Either I can load up at the grocery store on the weekend and cook all my food and hardly eat out at all. Or I can keep little food at home and eat out (mainly 7-11 food) all month. If it's option A - then I'll drop loads of cash at Emart and need to spend very little on a daily basis. If it's option B - I spend almost nothing at the store but end up having a highly daily budget. Either way at the end of the month, I spend about the same, which comes to around a million won.

That leaves just a few hundred, that gets eaten up quick if I have a date, or pay a gym fee, or need some protein powder or what not.

Food is far and away my biggest expense. Now granted, I don't eat kimbap and ramyeon everyday. Sure I could spend just a few dollars a day that way, but I'd probably be 50 pounds overweight and be nearing a heart attack by the time I"m 30. Instead, I eat pretty healthy. Lots of fruits and veg, chicken breasts, lean beef, brown rice, etc.

Do I have to sacrifice my health to save more money? Is that what i'm doing wrong?

I mean, it's so frustrating. At this point, I just got paid, but I can already tell I'm just barely going to make it till next paycheck. I can't even afford new clothes, and I desperately need new clothes. Every pair of socks I own have holes in them, and I've been wearing the same 3 pair of jeans for years... years.

I don't blow my money. I don't drink, at all. Alcohol is just not for me. I don't buy new gadgets (using a 4 year old netbook still), I don't rent prostitutes, I take the bus, I don't go out on weekends. I will occasionally have a date, but I try to keep it pretty cheap. Samgyup sal, walks, maybe a movie.

I'm sick of living paycheck to paycheck. Why can I not get the hang of this?

[ttompatz]

Pay the bills and include the savings plan as one more bill.

Live on what is left.

No trick to it.

.

[loose_ends]

[Setaro]

[alwaysgood]

It sounds like you are paying a lot in student loans per month. Maybe 700,000? I wouldn't be able to save much with that kind of monthly bill. As far as food you mentioned, maybe substitute lean pork for the lean beef. Would need more details to help further.

[The Floating World]

Salary is 2.4, can save 1.3 easily per month. I don't have any loans to pay off though.

[loose_ends]

[adzee1]

After Tax and healthcare I take home around 2,100,000 then I pay - 65,000 per month for the apartment maintainance, 15,000 electricity and about 40,000 gas which leaves me just under 2 million.

I also have a wife who is not working so my salary pays for both of us.

I withdraw 250,000 per week and this is plenty to last me the week and includes eating out twice per week in a nice place and going out to a bar usually once per week.
I spend about 80,000 of it on the weekly shop from Emart, the veg market and the butchers, and that leaves us 170,000 per week to have fun or buy clothes etc.... Shopping at the butchers is worth it for me as I can get a kilo of beef for 10,000 won instead of 10,000 for about 400g in the supermarket.

With this I am saving 1 million per month

[alice_w]

Yeah, I would say it's the amount of money you spend of food that sets you apart from others. We're a family of four and we only spend 700,000 won per month on it, and we never eat out.

Making more money would help, too!

[OneWayTraffic]

Agreed, if you are spending more than 75,000 a week on food there's room to cut somewhere without sacrificing health. I spent something like 500,000-750,000 for a family of four per month including a bit of eating out.

Debt payment is a form of saving though. The trick is to keep that money rolling in once the debt is gone.

[duke of new york]

I'm curious about what food you buy that is running you a million a month. Other than the beef, that stuff is all pretty inexpensive. Do you buy a lot of meat, and if so, how much do you pay for it? It might be that you could save a fair amount just by shopping somewhere cheaper. On the other hand, if you consume a steady diet of ribeye steaks, you're either going to have to change your eating habits or just get used to dropping half your paycheck on groceries.

I don't spend a lot of money in general, but I love food, so it's the one thing I pretty much let myself spend as much as I want on (within reason). I still probably don't spend more than 400,000 a month at the absolute most. And that's including probably one or two restaurant meals a week of 10-25,000 won, and 3-4 quick work dinners a week (6000won bulgogi soup at the Korean restaurant or 4000won sub sandwich, etc). I also allow myself a good amount of overpriced and unnecessary "treats" like chicken wings, salsa, peanut butter, bacon, coffee...well, maybe coffee is a necessity.

You can eat a very healthy diet based around fruit, vegetables, eggs, rice and bread for next to nothing. You can even add a couple of nicer dinners throughout the week like a steak or something, and it still should be easy to stay under 200,000 a month.

[SeoulNate]

Agree with the other posters. It is impossible to spend a million won a month on food unless you are eating out at expensive places every night, or cooking steak at home.

I spend less than 100,000 won a week on food and that usually includes eating out twice a week.

[The Floating World]

Lol even steak doesn't cost that much!

A 250g American chuck steak or rump steak from emart runs around 5 - 6k, so only 40k if he ate it everday of the week.

[lyonhead]

I make a fruit and veg smoothie every day for breakfast. It's mainly a mix of spinach and banana with a few other little things thrown in. I know when I go to the store and just pick up enough of these ingredients for 5 smoothies (one each morning) it's about 25,000 won. I have this at about 10am.

I usually get lunch when I get to school around 1:30 or 2. This is mostly subway or local Korean place. Average is 5,000 a day, so that's another 25,000.

Okay, already up to 50,000 won a week and that's just two meals a day.

I usually get a second lunch or an early dinner while at work around 7 or 8. This is usually what I make at home. Chicken breast on brown rice, maybe lean beef meat ball in mix veg, hamburger patty with baked sweet potato... you get the idea. If I work it out per meal, that's usually another 5,000, once you figure in meat cost, veg cost, etc.

Sometimes I just skip dinner. Sometimes I just have another one of the above, and sometimes I'm lazy and grab some Jesters or curry to go. Again, about 5,000-7,000 per. We'll call it 20,000 a week.

95,000 just for food, just for the week, and I haven't even made it to the weekend yet. That's also not including other things at the grocery store I need like laundry detergent, shampoo, body wash, spray cleaner, garbage bags, etc. Again, nothing strange or drastic or expensive or unnecessary. Just normal things.

Once I count in what I need for that week and food on the weekend (lazy weekend, no date or anything) that's easily another 100,000 a week.

So 195,000 a week on basic things, we'll call it 200,000 just to be simple and that's 800,000 a month. And that's if every weekend I just live like a hermit and don't leave my officetel. If I have a date or two in that month, you can see how that shoots up to a million won easily.

So what should I do? Not eat during the day? Switch over to ramyeon cups instead and pack on 5 extra pounds a week? I don't see how someone can eat on 400,000 a month and have anything resembling a healthy body.

If I the only way to put back all that extra cash is to stop eating right and let a spare tire form around my middle and my arms dwindle in size, then I'll pass. But I need to know if that really is the problem or is it something else.

I want to save better, I really do. But I'm not willing to sacrifice my health and fitness for it.

[duke of new york]