Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Not Angry]

Between my car and trips to Taiwan to see my boyfriend I dont' save as much as I could. But still manage to put a fair amount away. Considering last year I only saved up about 5,000,000 I would say I am doing a lot better...

Travelling = fun and lost savings....

Been in Korea for 18 months and have taken nearly as many trips. Excluding visa runs I have taken 15 pleasure trips. Air tickets are expensive. If I had the abiltiy to keep my butt planted in one place I would have saved a lot more...

[frogrocket]

You guys are planning on saving 10 million in one year???

I'll be saving $10,000 + cdn in 6 mths. I'm only making 1.9 mil/mth.

I have 2 privates and am charging them peanuts to be tutored...like $15/hour...

I'll be outta here with cash in my pocket the end of August....and I didn't waste a year of my life!

Small city life is suicidal ...but at night when I roll around in the 10,000 won bills that are shrewn around my room...it's all worth it!

[Harin]

I saved 10 million won and brought with me to the states. It only lasted about three years.

[just because]

10 million won wouldn't last me 1 year. You did well Harin

[TheUrbanMyth]

This is a good thread. I too find it amusing when the people who do privates claim that they can't live on a hakwon teacher's salary. This definitely proves that it is possible. As for myself I have saved 40 grand (Canadian) after three years. I put that into stocks and now (after a 2 for 1 split in the biggest) it is now around 60-65 (although a lot of that is paper)

[Bowden_PSM]

I have been here 8.5 months and if I stick to my budgeting I figure I will be happy. I will leave with 12,500,000 won (just shy of 15K CDN)I have seen a large part of Korea. I also have been to or will have been to Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan (X2), China and Taiwan. I didn't do privates but living in a small town and keeping a budget helped(s).

[JongnoGuru]

Reading over the posts here and in other related threads, I��m quite impressed by the amounts that so many of you are saving – especially in your relatively short stays here – and by your basic commitment and sacrifices to meet your savings goals. Good work!

[uberscheisse]

i save about 1 million a month.

i've blown some of my savings on a holiday trip to thailand but in general i put away at least 1M, sometimes more.

[schwa]

No commitment to saving here, no sacrifice. But it still accumulates despite my best efforts otherwise.

[JongnoGuru]

(Honestly did NOT want to re-post this here, as it looks like I'm trying to flood the boards with my painfully long soliloquy.... But I've been MOD-ified and will do as instructed. I just hope they do delete the thread I started as they promised.)

I direct this to the one or two of you out there who are more like I was (am?): totally bereft of any savings aptitude or money-management skills.

I was the worst budgeter in university, and that just carried right over to my ��career years.�� Maybe not having any loans (student or other) to pay off actually stunted my development of savings & budgeting skills. My first couple of years in Korea, income & expenses were so erratic that devising and sticking to a regular, predictable savings plan was impossible and pointless. I wasn��t a teacher and had no fixed salary or paydays. In good months when there was anything left in my bank account before the next infusion, I didn��t look at it as money, but rather as ��units of fun�� waiting to be had. ��Okay, I��ve got XXX won left over�� that��s X number of dinner dates with X number of girls, X CDs, X bottles of wine for the rack,�� etc.

In bad months – and these were not few – well��my Sony Walkman and Omega wristwatch (calm down now – graduation gifts from the grandparents) saw the insides of more Korean pawnshops than you can shake a dried cuttlefish at. In short, I was living & spending exactly like every Korean single male I have ever met. Well, maybe not ��exactly�� like my unmarried Korean buddies. They were never driven into the clutches of the moneylenders – they just asked mom for more money every month! (the #%$@s! )

This went on for so long that I didn��t really see any way out. And my living conditions �� god!��. equally squalid and a topic for another long, separate post elsewhere. The only saving grace was that each rat-hole was incrementally better than the previous one, though none were fit for a dog, and I never took a single photograph of them. When my parents asked to see photos of where I lived, I lied and told them I lost the film. (Am I the only one who��s ��been there��?)

That was until a few magical and unscripted developments changed the Guru��s life for good��and for the good. Better and regular income, plus an employer who took over my housing costs. That and an unprepared, unrehearsed decision to stop playing the field (finally kicking the ��I��m still looking from Miss Right�� nonsense), which was prompted by getting bit -- and bit badly -- by the stock-investment bug. Life has funny ways of telling you when it��s time to quit horsing around.

This was the early/mid-1990s. Not long thereafter, online trading meant being home before midnight to catch the opening bell of the NYSE. (That��ll really screw up your dating & sleep schedule.) I wasn��t a day-trader, but managing your own little portfolio and studying stocks & trends can be wonderfully addictive and educational, too.

As the years rolled by, monthly stock purchases went from a few hundred thousand won to 1.0, 1.5, 1.8, 2.0 million won – whatever my rising salary could withstand. After that and regular expenses & bills, there was usually nothing left by month��s end. I��d take one two months out and spend on additions to the home (new sofa, fridge, washer, etc.) or a vacation.

I want to make clear that this was by no means a ��budgeting�� or ��savings�� thing. It was purely a stock investment ��obsession��, nothing more and nothing less. Whereas I had previously been obsessive and acquisitive in other ways (fine dining, fine wines, dinner & dancing dates, designer clothes, custom-made everything), I had now shifted the focus of my ��obsessiveness�� to annual returns, 5-year averages, payout rates, stock splits, whatever.

Then fate intervened again with the financial crisis in the late ��90s. The Korean government finally honoured longstanding promises to allow foreigners like me to set up companies and buy real estate. This I could do, but only because of the Won��s ghastly meltdown, the business contacts I��d made during years of slaving for ��the Man�� and a stock portfolio that was then earning more than I ever could. So I set up shop, bought income property, and at long last got my own home in my own name – all at reduced IMF-era prices.

Literally two weeks after gutting my stock holdings to establish ��roots�� in Korea, the bottom fell out of the US market. I momentarily toyed with the idea of setting myself up as some kind of Financial Fortune-telling Guru God-King. You know, get myself a little folding card-table, tack up a palm-reading chart, and move in alongside the old duffers down at Topgol Park? (Hey, it could happen!)

So, what the Hades does all this have to do with ��saving��?? What pearls of wizdum does this offer anyone, besides a long-winded ��Damn, it��s good to be the Guru!�� or ��It��s fun & profitable to catch one of history��s longest stock market runs at just the right moment & then bail before the crash!�� ??

Well, first of all, it isn't a requirement that every post be some moral or practical life lesson. Many of the posts here are basically, "Hey, I've made XXX won in XXX years/months. How 'bout that!"

However, for those of you with clear savings goals and the ability to do what it takes to meet them, I am impressed, particularly because I don't think I'd be able to do it myself. I've drawn up savings plans for myself over the years and failed to stick to a single one of them.

For me, it's been all about longevity in the country (couldn't've done what I did had I left after year 4 or 5), and a whole lot of dumb luck.

[Homer]

frog...1.9 a month..6 months and you save 10 million won?

Lets do the math:

6 months means 11.4 million won in wages (before taxes and expenses).

You stated that you do pvts but for peanuts (15 bucks an hour, so lets say 12 000 won-hour).
Now let us assume you teach these pvts 10 hours per week (5 each).
That adds up to 480 000 per month.

This means an extra 2.8 million at the end of 6 months.

This brings in your take to 14.2 million (still before taxes and expenses (no tax on pvts of course).

Now, this means that for six months, you lived less then 4.2 milion won which in theory is possible (it is about 700 000 won per month).
Of course in reality this amount had to be less because your 1.9 per month figure is less because of taxes and other deductions....
You need to redo your accounting my friend or to fess up...

On topic: we (my wife and I) save about 30 000 $ per annum.

[oneiros]

I'd be saving loads if it weren't for the fact that a chunk of my salary goes to the Big Bank of Student Loans every month.

That said, I've still managed to squirrel a few million away, and that's after blowing a couple million each year on trips back home, and buying toys like my laptop and PS2.

And no, I don't do privates, so, as someone else said, I really don't understand how people say they can't live on a hogwan teacher's salary.

[TheUrbanMyth]

[fusionbarnone]

Social drinking and a girlfriend are the fastest ways to watch your bank account remain static. Even with non-drinking these days and just the girl friend I'm surprised to find I'm blowing a mil won and she pays as well. Still saved 20 mil though.

[Mosley]

Just noticed this thread today....

I'm calling BS on this inspector gadget character.

He saved $25K Can. in one year?! On a salary that, gross, would work out to just under $31K/yr.?! That's 475 Can. a month to live on! And he worked little OT, travelled to Thailand, Japan and around the ROK?! Went out for drinks now & then?(He claimed all that).

The stench is overpowering....