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Teaching Abroad: How to Save Money & Pay off Loans

02/24/2023

hi welcome Linda here back this week with another live session for ITT the
tefl and tesol training um yeah thank you so much for joining
and for being here today uh if you're seeing this for the first time thank you
so much for tuning in I'm going to introduce myself in a little bit and I'm also going to share a 30 off discount
opportunity today um that you can use to uh get 30 off any
of itt's tefl or tesol courses today so
we have a wide variety of different courses um you can take a look at our website tefl
course.net and you'll see all of the different courses that we offer if you are not new here and you have seen me
before and you have joined this live stream before thank you so much
um I really appreciate all the regular views that we get and also of course I
appreciate all the new ones that drop by which is really cool and which is why we do these live sessions right to um just
provide free and real information Nation about all things tefl and tesol and
teaching English as a foreign language so throughout this live session
you can leave comments in the comment section we're live on Facebook and we're live on YouTube as well and yeah here we
have the first comments Hi how are you doing nice to see you again nice to see
you again as well if Le Bon or La Bon hi nice to see you
help me please um a teacher okay what do you need help with let me know
if you need to get certified I'm going to share the 30 off link with you guys in a minute and then you can check that
out and we're also going to talk about this today saving money and paying off
loans student loans any kind of other loans or debt with um teaching English
so that's actually one of them one of the big reasons some people choose to
pursue this path of teaching English abroad or online we're going to cover both
um yeah to save money and to co uh to pay off student loans that's why a lot of people actually go abroad and teach
English I've met many people um here where I live in South Korea and
I also taught English in China and many of them come to these countries
um to pay off student loans or other kind of debt or just to save a lot of money and then to go back home and you
know put down a down payment for a house or something like that or you know a car things like that so if you're also
looking to teach English in order to save money or pay off loans this live
session will be for you cool okay unfortunately I cannot uh read
arabics I'm so sorry I would really love to say your name but I cannot read it so
uh you say I'm an undergraduate student in the English Department awesome great
we love that and Lavan says I'm from Kenya and I want to teach abroad yes absolutely and
that's what ITT does that's what we're here for we uh help you guys teach
English abroad you get tefler tesol certified and then you um can pursue a
career in teaching English as a foreign language abroad different countries or online
it's all possible with a tefl or tesol certificate from Itt
then we have update here hi upday hello how are you I'm doing well how are you
where are you from and amitaba one of our regular viewers
is here hello Linda how are you faring during the onset of the spring season
yes very very well I love spring um I'm a little bit you know it's it's
my makeup is a little bit springy my nails are a little bit springy or maybe
um the nails are still like from Valentine's um but anyway I'm super excited for
spring season in Korea I live in South Korea and spring here is my favorite season it's still cold we still don't
have like spring weather but you can feel like when you go outside you can
feel spring is in the air if that makes any sense so soon it'll be here
all right updates from Egypt and update has a question I have a question how could I increase my vocabulary that's a
really good question and guys I'm gonna throw that back to all of you I know we have many uh non-native English speakers
here and I uh also learn many other languages so increasing vocabulary is
always um important and part of any language Journey so everybody else here do you
have any tips for update how to increase your English vocabulary let me know and
I'll share that here um yeah Daniela is back hi Daniella from
Venezuela thank you for the following Instagram I I really appreciate it and I
love your profile as well I checked it out it's the thing
Lavan says can I contact you please I seriously need your help to achieve my dream yeah so anybody who wants to
contact ITT you can do so via email here I'm just gonna share that uh courses at
tesolminist tefl.com you can reach out to us with all of your questions
um you can also reach me personally via Instagram for example here at Linda goes
east you can DM me if you have any questions as well but this is our email address and then my team who um
who know also a lot about the other side of tefl in terms of
requirements course jobs and things like that they are
better at that than me so they are definitely worth contacting as well
all right yep so how can we increase vocabulary while there are a ton of books out there how you can increase
your vocabulary right vocabulary books um here Lavan says he can increase his
vocabulary through reading more English articles that's really good too English newspapers
um I also really like if you Google BBC six minutes English I use those they're
podcasts but short six minute podcasts um on different current topics and
general topics that I use with my students six minutes English from BBC
and they always have a few um I think it's like seven vocabulary words per podcast that you learn and
that's also very useful so I recommend that as well we have Chio here hi Chio how are you
doing thanks for joining all right
then let's uh jump in and I think we have a couple of new faces here so let
me just introduce myself and of course I also want to share this super duper 30 off
yes six minutes English BBC check that out I really like that one
that's it um so yeah 30 off you can scan this QR
code here if you wish or I also want to share the link with you in the comment
section so go ahead and check that out it ends with FB live minus Linda this code if
you click on it and it will lead you to the application page for our courses and you'll also see a congratulations you
qualify for 30 off something like that um in at the top so you know it works and
then you can sign up and you can get 30 off any Teflon tesol course
all right and then I'm going to introduce myself real quick for everybody who is new and doesn't know
who I am so my name is Linda I'm a travel writer and content creator among
many different things I always say that I do many different things um but these are the main things and of course also a Teflon Tesla marketing
professional for ITT and I've been teaching English for probably 10 years
over and before that I was also tutoring English and French um so I have a lot of experience in the
field of course I'm also Teflon tisel certified through ITT that's how I stumbled upon Itt
so um yeah my own content I like to create content also for social media and I
travel right um is at
www.lindergose.com that's my own personal website if you're looking for travel content especially travel content
in Asia and how to travel solo as a woman for example a lot of content there
then we have Instagram of course at Linda goes east what I already talked about so go ahead and give that a follow
many of you have done so so thank you so much for doing that and you can also send me a DM on there if there's
something that you don't want to um ask here in front of everybody
um I'm originally from Germany and the US I always say my mom is German my dad is American so I have that bilingual
background here and I am based in South Korea I've been living in South Korea
since 2015 and before that I also spent some time in China I taught English in
China I also worked for a online marketing company in China um and yeah I'm in South Korea and I
work for ITT which stands for international tefl and tesl training which is why I'm here and I have the
privilege to speak with you all here over this live session you can find ITT online of course at
teflcourse.net and ITT is a leading Tesla and tesol course provider
worldwide um so many of you know this many of you are already ITT tefler tesol certified
um so you know what it's all about what if you're just kind of stumbling upon this live and you're like what is going
on um so a Teflon or tesol course is for people who want to pursue a career in
teaching English as a foreign language in other countries or also online and we
help people achieve this goal in a nutshell that's basically what we do
all right and then again this is today's topic So today we're really going to talk about how you can maximize basically your
earning potential if you want to go abroad and teach how you can save money while teaching English abroad and how to
pay off loans and all that good stuff a few little tricks techniques you can do
and also kind of what you can do before you even go abroad to teach to really
maximize your earning potential so we're going to look at that
we have Pedro here again hi Pedro how are you doing from Costa Rica right
I wish I was there I really want to go all right and amitava is sharing also
some tips how to learn vocabulary so do check that out in the comments section
oh I think um update is on YouTube so you probably can't see that on Facebook but this is
amitaba's tip for learning English vocabulary um so when I was a child studying in an
English medium school I used to read quite a few English storybooks and by using an Oxford English to English
dictionary as well as noting down the meanings of each such difficult words in
an exercise book I also used to view a number of English movies as well at the cinema halls with my parents and my
elder brother sibling okay there you go so some good tips for
learning vocabulary here uh uh all right and then Laban says how can
you help someone who is really struggling to achieve his dream of teaching abroad but lack support and
financial stability yeah so this is actually perfect it kind of ties in to today's topic but do know that we also
offer installment payments for our courses so if you don't have
um the full amount for the course you can also pay in installments okay
so okay I think this is about it for now
oh I also want to encourage you to please like And subscribe if you haven't yet right like our Facebook page
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subscribe so you get this 30 discount here
just kidding where's the link of the Facebook page oh good point okay yes we
have viewers on YouTube of course so let me share our Facebook page link
so you can check that out and then on our Facebook page we also link to our YouTube videos and stuff so this is the
Facebook page link check it out give us a like and a follow on there and you can
find some useful content all right good then let's jump in and as
always at the end of the session there will be a q a time but feel free to leave any comments that you have for
this live session anyway and then we're gonna check it out the first
topic here okay so for in order to determine how much you can save and how
much you can um pay back in terms of to your loans
you need to determine these factors first so this is kind of what we start with these three factors here which is
most importantly your disposable income which is your salary minus the taxes and
insurance and everything so how much you have left after we deduct all of these things and then any
fixed expenses you might have this is your rent if you have a car if you have
any additional insurance or um any other your phone plan all of
these things and then you're saving goals right so these are the three
factors that you need to determine first and then you can tell okay how much can
I actually save every month or if you have you know a two-month goal or for
the whole year for example if your goal is to I'm going to go abroad for a year and I want to save x amount of money we
need to determine these three factors first and of course they are going to vary
from person to person so again there is no one set amount or answer to all of
these things it really depends but we're going to look at each of these points so we're gonna first gonna look at
income the different incomes salaries in different places and if you really want
to make the most money possible where do you need to go so that your disposable
income is the highest possible we're going to look at that we're going to look look at how you can minimize your
fixed expenses it's also like food or your apartment housing all of these
things how can you minimize those keep them at the lowest possible and then we're going to look at your saving goals
how can we get our saving goals met the best potential
the best possible techniques to really save as much money as we can this is
what we're gonna do all right then we have also lab on here
hi Laban from QC Kenya oh we have do we have two law bonds
oh no different account oh you you're watching you're watching on Facebook now I see first YouTube then Facebook I
thought we have two lab ones okay good great thank you so much Laban
all right so we're gonna look at these three things these are the most important uh three factors when it comes
to saving money when teaching English abroad so let's jump into
oh this one first of course this is part of your disposable income Okay so
how and I know what you're thinking how Linda how is getting a tefl or tesol
certificate helping me save money I need to spend money to get a tefl certificate
um I know of course but actually there are many advantages of getting tefl or tesol certified that are going to help
you reach your savings goal okay so it
will really maximize your earning potential if you get a tefler tesol certificate you have access to the best
salaries and best working conditions that means additional bonuses and all of
those things year end bonuses contract and end of contract bonuses
um severance pay all of these things and it also widens your choice of teaching jobs
so you have access to better schools in better countries Etc in better places
cities um all of that so A tefl or tesol certificate will really boost your
earning potential and then we can we can take it one more step if you get a regular just a standard 120 hour tefl
certificate which is great um you can take that a step step further and also get additional specialized tefl
certifications like teaching English to Young Learners or teaching business English and this can further increase
your salary as well so um just these are things to keep in mind
so this this should be your first thought getting a tefl or tesol certificate is really the it it lays
like the pathway to your best earning potential so for example from my own
experience I like I mentioned earlier I taught English in China and then I moved
to South Korea after now in South Korea a tefl certificate is not a requirement
especially at the time it was 2015. um now definitely more and more schools
are gonna even put it in their job um job description that you need to be tefl certified but at that time it
wasn't still that um yeah that required at the time
um but I still got it because I was teaching English in China and I knew that I wanted to be in South Korea and I
wanted to move to a very specific city in South Korea and so I thought if I have a tefl certificate my chances of
Landing a good job in this specific City would be higher and so
I got tefl certified and then actually I had other colleagues of course who were
not tefl certified and I found out that I actually had a higher salary compared to those people without a Teflon
certificate and of course that is going to help you with your saving goals if you make more money you can save more
money so a tefl certificate is really going to help you um with that and you're gonna you're
gonna spend a little bit of money it's a couple hundred dollars that you're gonna get back in your first and second
paychecks so it really is super valuable okay to get tefl certified
so that's first up and again we have a 30 off discount right if you are not yet
tefl certified tesol certified you want to get that uh certification you can
have a 30 discount and save even more money and then you're even closer to
your money saving goals and paying off your debt and Loans so
all right good so this is first up then of course we also need to talk about
choosing the right destination and I'm just going to make myself smaller now so we can really see that better here
um choosing the right destination has a huge impact on how much you can earn and
of course how much you can save when teaching English abroad
um I think when we start this journey we all kind of have an idea of where we want to teach English ultimately
um unless you're really like oh I'm just all about the money I don't care about the destination at all I just want to make as much money as possible that's
cool too that's great but maybe some of us we have a idea of where we want to teach some of us might want to go to
um Europe and we want to teach English in Paris or in Rome or in Barcelona in
Madrid in London wherever it may be just know these locations are actually
not great if you want to save money teaching English abroad we I call them
here the great European capitals so like I said Paris Rome London all of the big
cities um in Europe are actually not very good the cost of living there is incredibly
high and what we see with most teaching positions in Europe you're not going to
get great benefits there so other benefits that you get in some other places include Free Housing free airfare
free health insurance all of these things you're not really gonna have that especially free housing
and airfare you're not going to have that in most European places and then
rent finding an apartment is incredibly expensive in Europe so you're lucky if
you break even with your teacher salary when teaching English in Europe to be honest so if your goal is to really save
as much money make as much money as possible and save a lot of your salary Europe is not going to be a great
destination and actually as is Latin America I haven't mentioned it here but Latin America is also not a good
destination if you want to save a lot of money because their salaries are very very low
and again they don't usually provide any benefits so not a good place to go if
you're after money and you're trying to um yeah make as much money as possible and safe uh pay off student loans for
example so where should you then go uh High earning potential areas include
Asia or the Middle East so those are typically the biggest
places in terms of tefl teaching salaries you want to go to Asia and
specifically East Asia so countries like Korea where I live uh China Taiwan Japan
are good uh sometimes even Hong Kong even though sometimes you don't get
housing in Hong Kong depends um and of course Middle East Middle Eastern countries Saudi Arabia uh United
Arab Emirates Qatar Oman Kuwait Bahrain those are some of the highest paying
countries when it comes to teaching English abroad but they also have some of the strictest requirements so usually
they want people um with sometimes even a master's degree
already teaching experience so you really need to bring something to the
table when you want to go to the Middle East but for Asia it's not that strict so
um a lot of people actually start out in Asia and then after a couple years once they have this teaching experience they
decide to move over to the Middle East which is a possibility um so but anyway these are the two areas
with the highest uh earning potential for teaching English as a foreign language if you're
all about the money basically all right
cool tool I want to show you if you're like oh I really want to go and teach in XYZ place but I don't know about the
cost of living you can use this website this tool to figure it out so this is
the cost of living calculator um I shared this in a previous live
session so some of you might know this but um just want to share this again I put it in the uh in the comments here
and just as an example I'm going to show you how it works so give me a second
I'm going to share my screen so I can type this in here yeah okay so guys for
example if we are uh so we're gonna pick a city so for
example we're gonna pick Seoul in Korea
we're not going to log in okay um and then you can compare this also
but just as an example summary about cost of living in Seoul and this is local currency you can also change the
currency let's say uh US Dollars where's US dollar oh up top US dollars so I'm
going to change that so family four of course if you teach English alone this is going to be a lot
less um oh here a single person a single person estimated monthly costs are 1.1
1129 Etc without rent okay um and this is actually a very good
example because it says without rent for most teaching positions I would say really 99
uh they provide free housing so you don't have any uh you don't have any um
you don't have to worry about rent at all so you could be like okay I'm to to
just live I'm gonna need like a thousand one hundred dollars so 1.4 and then the rest I have at my
disposal and then of course you need to know how much is the celery in Korea and
then you can deduct that but just as an example Seoul is 21 less expensive than
New York okay rent in Seoul is on average 66 lower than in New York and
also it says restaurant prices how much a beer is McDonald's it's the Big Mac
Index right if you've heard that before how much is milk all of these things Transportation
how much is the taxi utilities might be important to look at
uh for oh this is quite a big apartment actually in in um in Korea this is a big
apartment so your apartment will be a lot smaller a school apartment but still
um so this is really great and then you can also for example if you live in okay
compare this with or you want to compare oh I want to go to Seoul or I want to go to Tokyo I don't know which one so we're
going to compare Seoul and Tokyo we're not going to sign in again okay
and then it says oh consumer prices in Seoul are 10.5 percent higher than in
Tokyo rent is higher than in Tokyo interesting rent prices are higher restaurant prices
are higher than in Tokyo see I did not even expect that I thought Tokyo was more expensive that's really interesting
okay good so you can also of course so if you're torn between Tokyo or Seoul
you'll be like oh maybe I should go to Japan instead it seems to be cheaper or
we can compare um where do you live now yeah so if you
live in like where do you guys live if you live in I used to live in San Diego
let's put San Diego and we compare it with Seoul let's do that okay and then it shows you
grocery prices are actually higher in Seoul interesting consumer prices are lower rent is lower
28 lower that's crazy rent prices are oh no here 56 lower wow imagine restaurant
prices are lower but some things are higher interesting so you can use this
website and you can pair you can compare um you know where you currently live
with the destination where you want to go to kind of get an idea of um cost of
living and then also compare maybe two places that you have you have like in
mind where you want to go like I did with Seoul in Tokyo and compare those
um so you can get an idea and also here what's really interesting you can get actually more uh indexes here so you you
can have a quality of life comparison Healthcare comparison crime also very
important so if you want to see what's the crime index like let's do this can we compare places here too
Asia uh
let's see I have not done this before okay so this is I guess the highest crime
so if I want to search for Seoul okay so crime index is
24 which is here which is really low right really no crime okay which is
important to know right if you are moving to a different place you can also search for things like pollution you're
going to notice in Asia that's a big thing air pollution index
um yeah other things so this website I just really recommend so you can get kind of an idea of what things cost
all right a rainbow Hi aramo how are you doing everyone this is awesome Daniel
says I love it that Linda really cares about our personal finances as English teachers well yeah I mean we all care
about the coin right you've got to care about the money it's very important
okay good so now I'm going to turn this off I'm going to go back to our
presentation but yeah this is just a great tool to use to kind of get an idea of cost of
living in other places and you can compare two places with each other and you can can compare new destination with
where you currently live to also get an idea of what things are which things are more expensive or less expensive all of
these things and they can have a huge impact on your earning potential all right next up then these are the
high earning potential locations that I talked about and how much you can actually earn right so you figured out
kind of the cost of living and they said it this cost of land calculator in Seoul you're gonna need a thousand one hundred
dollars uh without the rent so uh how much do you actually make there
oh it doesn't actually say the celery but um it says you can save between 500
and 1 500 us per month in China and Korea and actually this is very accurate
based on the uh one thousand one hundred dollars that we just found out from the
um cost of living calculator that you will need in Seoul very accurate and
then it will leave you with 500 to 1 500 US dollars a month so yeah in Korea for
example you earn about 2 500 2200
depends between 2 200 and 2500 US dollars so that is very accurate that
you can then save you can probably easily save a thousand dollars a month which is great in China same in Saudi
Arabia United Arab Emirates like we talked about the Middle East which is really the highest paying
um teaching region in the world you can save as much as two thousand dollars per month or even more again this
all depends on your personal lifestyle as well if you like to go out
um you know and eat at nice restaurants do a lot of shopping you travel a lot then of course you're not going to be
able to save as much but you know if you um if you live a
different lifestyle um then you can save more of course all of these regions what they have in
common is that they usually have paid accommodation you will get housing from your employer an apartment you also get
free airfare you don't have to spend any money on airplane tickets you also often get bonuses and severance pay
and this means you can save between 30 and 50 of your entire monthly income
when teaching English in these places so these are the recommended locations with
high earning potentials for English teaching
all right let me know if there are any questions if I go through this too fast or too
slow also let me know leave any comments any feedback that you have
um or any questions of course
and then we can have a look so this is all for maximizing your disposable
income right to get the highest salary possible again we talked about getting
tefl certified which is also going to get you a higher salary and this happened to me I was tefl certified and
I got a higher salary compared to colleagues who didn't have a tefl so it certainly is true and then
choosing the right destination for your tefl uh not for you tefl choosing the right destination for your job for your
teaching position means this earning potential so already we're
closer to figuring that out and then if you happen to go to a
location where you have to pay for your own accommodation here are some tips
um how you can minimize these costs so if you're not going to China or Korea I
also here in Japan you have to usually pay for accommodation which is why it's
not listed here because the salaries in Japan are usually also among the highest in East Asia but in Japan you usually
have to pay for your own housing and that of course can be very expensive
so and accommodation as we all know is generally the costliest expense of all
which is why we recommend again these four places because they give you paid housing Free Housing you don't have to
pay rent but if you go to a place where you do have to pay rent how can you minimize
um a lot of times what many schools will do they will actually um you know put you in a shared house or
apartment with other teachers from the school for example um and you would live there you have a
room maybe even your own bathroom but you share the apartment so you can split the rent of course
that's really smart to do you can also find because if you're like the only teacher at the school and they don't
have like the system set up you can find house sharing you know on Facebook Facebook groups I always mention
Facebook groups in every live session but they're great um you know there are a lot of Facebook
groups for housing in Seoul housing in San Diego whatever it is any City
and you can find shared housing there of course they're also house share um or shared house not Health share but
um shared apartment uh websites that you can use um to find rooms right roommates and
stuff um so but if you don't want to do that
um you could look for housing on the outskirts of the city rather than in the center if your school is like really in
the center uh of course we all know this in every city the center is usually the
most expensive in terms of rent so you can move further outside of the city so the the further you move outside of the
city right the less expensive so this is just some tips of course also then get a
small apartment smaller apartments are usually cheaper right all of these things those so these are just some
ideas for how to save on accommodation so we can get those expenses monthly
expenses the fixed expenses down if you happen to go to a place where you
actually have to pay for your own housing but again if you choose one of these
places you get free housing 99 of the time
all right then living expenses we need to further reduce those if we
want to save more money what can we do okay and usually for if you for
foreigners living abroad right so for example in Korea English teachers from
Western countries foreign countries we live here um and this is what I see a lot of
people do especially newer teachers because they don't know of course they would go to Foreigner bars Foreigner
restaurants Foreigner districts and use services that are aimed primarily at
expat workers at foreigners and these are usually the most expensive right
they're more more expensive than local restaurants local markets Etc if you if
you wanna so if you eat there at foreign restaurants all the time if you visit
Foreigner bars all the time it's just gonna really eat into your wallet it's
more expensive so what we recommend always no matter where you are actually do your grocery shopping at the local
supermarket or the local actual Market which we have a lot of in Asia local
markets they are cheaper and just hang out in areas that are not solely aimed at foreigners
of course um as foreigners living abroad we also want to connect with other foreigners
and we do want to go to Foreigner bars but what I'm saying is you don't need to do this every day or every weekend right
um because it's going to eat into your wallet if you want to do that sure you can do that but you might not be able to
save as much as you could if you ate at local restaurants and shop at a local
market so that's on sing but again this depends on your own lifestyle if this is something that you absolutely want to do
and need to do then go for it but also if you only hang out in areas that are for
foreigners you're not going to have a really immersive experience right I think everybody who wants to go and
teach English abroad does so because we want to experience life in a different country and if we only hang out at
places that are aimed at foreigners or tourists you're not really going to get that local experience anyway so
um that's just my advice in my personal opinion but anyway and then of course as we all know
cooking our own meals at home is often less expensive than eating out right
um so maybe now is a good time to learn to cook and then you don't have to order as much
takeout but actually oftentimes uh depending on where you live in Asia and many countries it's actually cheaper to
eat outside than cook cook in your home especially southeast Asia where even the
culture is like that most people just grab something from outside from a little street food vendor and then they
eat it and they don't cook so it really depends on where you live to and how the
local culture is what what is cheaper it depends because a lot of times again cooking
your own meals at home if you for example in Korea if you wanted to cook European or Western meals it's often
actually more expensive to buy these ingredients than going out to a restaurant eating local food so it
depends on cooking your own meals it really depends but it's it depends on the country where you are
that's what I'm saying but these are some things how you can reduce your living expenses and here really the key
thing is to avoid like tourist traps really things that are specifically made for tourists because we all know they
are the most expensive and just Branch out and do as the locals do when in Rome
right when in Rome do as the Romans do so follow that follow that wise
statement foreign okay now we're at the point where we
know our uh disposable income we have figured out our expenses so now it's
time to set up our budget plan okay you've maybe spent a couple of weeks or
even a month in the new place and you've figured out all of your expenses you figured out your salary so now it's time
to sit down and make a budget and actually I'm going to share with you a
thing called the tefl budget planner which is specifically for the first three months but you can also adapt it
and then extend it and set up a regular month-to-month budget plan using this tefl budget
planner and then with this basically the goal is to find out where most of your money goes and what changes you can make
okay I have done that myself before and
it's really eye-opening what you spend your money on and you don't even realize okay so for example in Korea cafes are
super popular Cafe culture is blossoming okay exploding you have so
many cute cafes everywhere and you go and you buy a coffee there you buy a coffee here there you go to the latest
cafes and that adds up those coffees are like five dollars a piece which ends up
adds up okay so and then you once you put that all in your budget you really you really see oh
my God how much did I spend on coffee
it can be very eye-opening okay so hold on okay nice let's take a
look at this budget planner and I already put this here
on my screen I'm gonna share my screen with you excuse me and then we can have a look at this budget planner
that I'm also going to share with you guys and you can then use for yourself
so um I'm gonna share that
okay like this I think will work so I'm gonna paste
this here sorry in the comments and then maybe you can follow along or you can
just save it so this is the link and what I want you to do like before when I share the sheet
with you you click on file and you can click on make a copy and then you can
um save it and then you can edit it for yourself so again you would click on
file make a copy and then you can save this for yourself
good okay I see some people are in here now we have the anonymous mink and
the anonymous make us here okay so and you can see here on this sheet you have different tabs
first month month one second month third month monthly budget okay so this is for
your regular living expenses and so I want to say that
um this is actually for the first three months specifically this is for people
who take a in-class tefl course um in a different country and then stay
in this country and do job search there so that's why you might be confused but
these are the core expenses to become tefl certified over four weeks so this is for in-class tefl if you're not doing
an in-class tefl you could gen actually skip to month three basically this is
the first month of teaching but I'm just gonna go over this briefly because we also have a lot of people who are going
down this route so it just makes sense so this one month one includes the
tuition course tuition for the in-class tefl course your food your accommodation
and your own rows for expenditure expenditures what you want like
entertainment other living costs laundry Transportation blah blah
so this could look like this here tefl cords this is the price depends of
course where you go the Prices range between a thousand to a thousand six
hundred seven hundred I think depending on the course location and so you can use this one for your first month for
your four week tefl course abroad this is what it looks like
so usually you have to pay for your own um housing there for the tefl cores and
then all these other things and so this is the total expense and then I also really like this column which means how
much is that per day so you can kind of kind of get an idea oh it's like 72 dollars per day
okay so then you work through your four week in-class course oh Sam Sam says hi
Linda finally managed to catch a live well I'm glad hi we're just going over the tefl budget planner so you can click
on this document spreadsheet and then follow along you can also click on file
and make a copy and save this for yourself all right and then months to this is
interviewing phase so now you're finished with your tefl course again the in-class tefl course and then you have
to stay in this place and you have to start looking for a job and interview that's why the tefl course here is paid
so you don't have to worry about this anymore but you need to still have housing and all of these other expenses
and then month one is included so now this is month one and two that you spend
over three thousand dollars and this is the in-class tefl course again when you
stay in this country and you start looking for a job and this is specifically for Thailand I believe
too and then uh we factored in a Visa rent to Malaysia which is very common
when you are in Thailand and all of this
okay so then you do that you interview for this month it you know no no one
knows how long it might take to get a job so you factor in this whole um second month and then month three is
your first teaching month so if you're taking an online tefl course and then
you interview right you interview at home you don't have any expenses right zero unless like you quit your entire
job and you don't have any you don't have anything and you still have to pay for housing Etc
um so it depends but typically if you take an online tefl course you would start here in the third month in this
tab so in month three a new deposit may be paid for a new apartment but if you
go to a location where you get free housing you also don't have to worry about that so yeah and then just food costs
um and yeah so your first month teaching you just need to be aware that
um you will you don't have any salary yet right you've worked one month and then you get paid right they don't pay
you on your first day so this is kind of important the first month that you're there you need to kind of find
um you need to be able to support yourself right so you need to come with a little bit of money right
which covers the living expenses which you can figure out here are you seeing this no which you can figure out on the
cost of living uh website that I showed you guys kind of a roundabout number
so you can do that and then you can use this one as a month to month
budget planner once you know how much rent you have and here's zero and I also
like this they have a local currency and again this is for Thailand so that's why it's bought but you can adapt this to
your own so you can prevent here if you don't have any rent great and then
internet food Transportation miscellaneous living costs and then the savings
that's why and this is actually very important right that we put the savings
onto our sheet so we are trading the savings as a uh fixed cost fixed what is it
fixed expense for treating it and then here it's the total expenses and your paycheck and
then what's left okay if you do if you don't have the savings
here right you put the savings under here what's left and then oh minus that I'm going to
do the savings not a good strategy you should put the savings and I'm going to talk about this more in just a second
but but the savings on to your fixed expenses that's how you successfully
save all right yeah Daniel says managing a budget is
easier than ever with the help of many app planners we have within reach these days yeah that's true you can also use
app of course yeah so just wanted to show you this
um that we have here that you can use but of course any app would work too just make sure
um it kind of looks something like this but absolutely yeah okay good so then we did that we set up
our budget plan what is next what's after that so you
can earn a extra income so now you're like oh how can I save even more how can
I save even more money how can I make even more money and a lot of people a lot of people teaching English abroad
they earn an extra income tutoring right private tutoring so you can provide
private lessons in your free time after your regular job you can have one-on-one
sessions with students in your free time and this is very common in many Asian countries where parents send their
children for additional instruction outside of school hours and especially if you are a foreign teacher living in
an Asian country people are might even talk to you on the street or if you're like ordering coffee in a coffee shop
they're like oh excuse me can you teach English to my kid stuff like that
um so a lot of opportunities there for private tutoring I said this before but I get like messages because I'm
registered on like a um on this website where you can upload like your profile and your skills like a
resume and then people can contact you this is specifically for Korea I get messages almost every week for job
offers so it's really there's a lot of demand for private tutoring like this um and in China Japan South Korea Taiwan
this is very very typical and you can get paid anywhere from 20 to over 50
dollars per hour so it's really really good especially if you find a family who are
you know kind of tiger parents if you know what I'm saying um and they have a lot of money to spend
so you can really get your money's worth here I actually know people who um quit their
actual teaching job because they have a Visa that allows them to stay in Korea anyway and they only do private tutoring
and they make like four times as much money as they would with the actual
teaching job because the hourly rate is just so much better so you could also do that
all right so you can do this oh this is a good point Sam do companies
allow you to work outside of their contract so in many contracts actually it says that you should you cannot do
that uh so you need to be discreet right don't put any advertisement up for
yourself anywhere usually you you need to do this kind of under the table right because this is not you don't pay any
taxes on this uh in most cases so it's not
something you want to advertise but it just really happens pretty much anywhere right it's very
common for people to do um and usually a lot of schools they know you know their teachers are doing
this in their free time and as long as it doesn't interfere with your school work uh with your job and as long as you
don't like take their students away from the school they're like cool with it it's no problem
but technically legally speaking it is not allowed in many cases it depends on
the country sometimes you have like yeah you can do up to so and so many hours additionally or it's like you need to
ask your um boss before doing something like this but it's very common practice and nobody
really bets an eye um like I said as long as you don't take their students from them
um and as long as it doesn't interfere with your work it's no problem yeah but
that's a good question um you can also if you're not into private tutoring but you want to teach
English online for example you can teach English online and earn an extra income so digital learning like we talked about
in many previous live sessions is the quickest growing industry in a quickest
growing Market in the education industry is booming it's still booming now and it you can attract students from all over
the world and teach location independently right so for for example me I I work in South Korea I teach
online and I actually teach a lot of people from Japan a lot of my students are from Japan because of the teaching
platform that I'm on and I also had some Chinese students I
get uh Japanese people living in other countries around the world so
um really really cool and you can just increase your student pool so much more and some online platforms that we
recommend are for example vibkid palfish cute kids magic ears EF English first
say ABC etc etc Cafe talk for example that's a
good one uh many many more preply some people I think it's pre-ply I always say preply I don't know pre-ply
that's also we are actually partnered with pre-ply ITT is so that's a really good one
so that's another thing you can easily do in your free time um online teaching super popular super
easy to do and and a good extra income stream if you're after even more money
even more savings so a tip here
um yeah and this is something I touched on when I talked about the budget planner just now
um remember this how I said to put your savings onto your fixed uh expenses so
this is part of that so make it a habit to pay yourself first pay yourself first
before your bills so make an automatic payment into your savings account every time you get paid or just treat your
savings account like a bill that you have to pay okay don't wait until you uh
do your shopping you know do your trip and then what's left after that okay
then I I'll save what I have left make it a habit to treat your savings like a bill you
have to pay every month and so also my advice here is don't
overdo yourself don't be like oh I want to save a thousand dollars every month sometimes might not be possible so just
maybe start small 500 for sure you know and then oh if I if I still have like
300 left on top of that okay I'm gonna also put that on top of it extra don't overdo yourself because if you're like
oh a thousand and then oh I don't have anything left it's not going to give you a good feeling
but if you're like okay I'm gonna say 500 and then everything I have left after all of my other fun expenses
um maybe that's that's just personally me what I would do makes more sense
so maybe you also have some tips on how you can save
um and you know everybody's different everybody has different like incentives what makes them like save more money for
example so um figure that out for yourself and like Danielle said maybe you have a
good app that can help you with that as well um yeah and this is it
now we are in Q a already so and I just want to mention again we have 30 off you
can scan this QR code I know we have some people new people coming in who maybe haven't heard we have 30 off so
you can scan this code here or you can use the code that I'm gonna share with you guys now in the comment section
it looks like this and you can get 30 off your tefl or tesol certificate and
like I mentioned in the very beginning a tefl certificate is really going to maximize your earnings even more so if
you are tefl certified you are making a higher salary compared to teachers who are not tefl certified and that is a
fact because it happens to me I can I can attest to that
I made more money because I had a tefl in my old school compared to my
co-workers who didn't have a tefl there you go
all right and then we are one hour in now but I'm still gonna take some time and to answer some of you guys questions
if you have any so let me know what you want to know if there was something not clear or any feedback or comments you
want to add to today's topic I'd be more than happy to speak about it and share your own experience so please let me
know please let me know your questions and uh we can get into it also if you have any
other questions about tefl or tesol or ITT anything like that let me know and I
will do my best in answering it but as always I just hope that you found
today's live session useful maybe you picked up a few tips here and there um and these are really things that you
can do even if you don't teach English you know as a foreign language these little budgeting tips are very helpful
in general I hope and I'm not saying I'm an expert I'm not a financial expert at
all I actually recently just got into budgeting um and saving
um so these are also a couple things that I've just followed and that were very successful for me so I just wanted
to put that out there but I'm not again I'm not a financial advisor or anything like that these are
just my personal tips and things of course that I've found with other teachers and
um from articles about teaching English and saving money abroad so
good
well I'm just looking at the comments and seeing if I missed anything I don't
think I missed anything though but if I missed something a comment that you made before let me know
I don't think I did it's looking good and again if you have any questions
let's give it 30 more seconds and then if there are no questions coming in I'm
gonna take that as a no and I'm going to sign off
oh and yeah I saw this earlier Lobo or lab on
who said I sent you a message via Instagram please when you get it reply yeah I'm gonna check that out later
thank you okay Danielle says I just downloaded the
tefl budget planner spreadsheet you shared it's very convenient thank you yeah please do please do
all right samsa's firstly good morning it is nice to catch another live yeah thanks for being here I appreciate it
secondly how much does health care cost so it actually depends on where you
teach what country you teach in in many countries like South Korea where I am
um it is part of um it's already deducted from your salary so it's
yeah it's it's paid for 50 50 by you and 50 50 by you 50 by the employer and it's
deducted from your salary but it's not that much [Music]
um so it depends on the country so usually yeah these countries China to Japan they
already have um Public Health Care and you're part of the Public Health Care system
you don't have to pay extra for that then we've icann or econ sorry if I'm
saying that wrong what are the requirements for the Celta cores okay so
let's have a look we do offer a Celta option
ah so done I'm gonna share that with you let's see
[Music]
[Music] because the Celta is actually
something that we partner with I cannot find the information now
because it's not so common on our website the Celta course so what I recommend you do
please email us and my colleagues and they know about this stuff so much
better than I do especially the Celta because we at ITT really focus on Teflon
tesol and up to 550 hours and salta I know that we do also have a Celta option
but it's not so common we have more Teflon tesol so please
um email us courses at teslines tefl.com and ask specifically um about the Celtic Wars and they will
give you all the information that you need okay Sam that's awesome what about taxes
can you just file them by yourself or do you need to hire someone or get some outside help for taxes no
um I've no you get like a um tax ID I
mean again this depends on the country where you go to um so it's all done automatically I've
never filed any taxes it's all done automatically um so you don't actually have to worry
about it if you are a U.S citizen and you also need to file your taxes in the U.S so this is separate because for some
reason America the United States taxes their citizens even if they do not work
and live in America which is crazy to me um so that's a whole other thing and
they're actually agencies that can help you with that you can find a lot of information
how to do that and also I believe the U.S embassy can also help you with that
if you are U.S citizen if you're not you don't have to file taxes back home usually if you don't
work there so but again this really depends on the
country that you teach in
actually I believe for uh teaching English in Korea the employer files all of that
and I remember my employer had a um like a person
so a Tax Advisor and they did all that I remember that so you don't have to
really worry about it but uh there is help for
any things like that as well you don't have to go through that alone
good all right uh let's see I'm gonna wait a
couple more seconds to see if there's more questions coming in but if not
I think this will be it we're already in one hour seven minutes eight minutes now so very good I hope you guys learned
something today there was something interesting you picked up um
yeah absolutely so Sam says thank you Linda also can you share the email for job support that I can I reach out to
you on Instagram yes please you can reach out to me on Instagram absolutely
absolutely do that and the other email for job support
is this I'm going to share that with you as well now
oh I just posted a v I'm sorry that was by accident here jobs at
tefl.ac that is for job support So reach out to us as well and reach out to me on
Instagram no problem at Linda goes east you can see that here under here at
Linda goes east DM me all cool and then Daniel says I thought it was a great live session Linda also thanks for
introducing the term tiger parenting to me I didn't know that one okay well
because you know I live in Asia and tiger moms or tiger parents are
incredibly common here so I think that's why uh it's it's a very common term but
I'm glad I could um teach you something new today it was great do you have a lot
of tiger parents in Mexico I wonder probably not I feel like you guys are more laid back right
Daniella says thank you Linda this was great thank you Daniella for joining
thank you so much I appreciate it all right cool and then I hope to see
you all again next week guys please be here next week I'll be here and if you have any topic suggestions you can also
DM them to me here at Linda goes east on Instagram if there's like hey Linda for
next live session can you talk about this or this or this just DM me let me know I'm always looking for new things
to talk about so don't be shy there are no stupid ideas I
always say that no stupid questions no stupid ideas just DM me let me know and I'll make it happen
amitava says thanks a lot Linda for providing us with your ever helpful ideas and suggestions thank you I
appreciate that so much Amitabha and you're really here week after week after week and it's so early where you are so
I really appreciate that thank you so much all right guys then I think I'm gonna
say goodbye now and if there are any questions that you have after this live has finished still drop them down below
in the comments and we will get back to you still even after this life is finished you can always watch the replay
always add new comments we will see them and we will answer them and other than
that I hope to see you all again next week I'm super excited Sam take care I really hope to catch you
in the next one too and have a great weekend and um yeah I think that's it
all right guys thank you so much bye



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