[Bushido]

(09-05-2013 02:22 AM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  

In regards to Japan - yes, I was also initially skeptical but I personally know two guys and one girl who were able to average about 10-12K USD annually by living and saving as teachers in Japan. That is the only reason that I am putting it on that list but I do not suggest it anyone's first choice. To really enjoy Japan, it appears you will have to drop dough.

I should point out that two of them worked in Nagasaki and the other worked in an even more boondocks rural spot. They all supplemented their teaching with some private tutoring gigs too.

Nobody should get the impression that you are going to be balling out in Tokyo.

Interesting. I wonder if your friends were there on the JET Program. It's a government scheme that is pretty tough to get into but pays MUCH better than your average English teaching gig in Japan. From what I hear, the starting pay is 300,000/month (roughly $3k) and your flight tickets are covered.

http://www.jetprogramme.org/

Contrast this to 230,000-250,000/month ($2.3-2.5k) with longer hours, no benefits, no health insurance and no plane tickets included that is standard fare for the McEnglish teaching jobs here. The bottom has unfortunately fallen out of the English education market in Japan. In the 80s and 90s you could make serious coin here but it's not as good as it used to be.

The hours for JET's are cushy too (20-25 hours per week max) so there would definitely be a lot of time free for building other skills. There also seems to a be a decent network of JET's who "graduated" from the program. Many later go on to work in business/journalism/IT in Japan so you have a fraternity there for you already if you go this route. I imagine it would be quite useful if you plan to build a career over here. If not, it's respectable international experience to take home with you.

So if your friends were on JET I can maybe believe that they saved that much. Maybe. It sounds like a boring lifestyle though! As you correctly stated, placements aren't usually in major cities. The goal of JET is to spread "internationalization" across Japan which basically means you are going to be living in the middle of nowhere. There are close to zero placements in Tokyo. Good for some perhaps but probably not what most guys on here are looking for.

South Korea gets a lot of criticism but I like it. Good food, slutty girls, fun drinking culture, cheap shit everywhere and great nightlife in Seoul. Would definitely recommend it to new graduates with student debt. Only do Japan if you have a special love for it already and you don't care about money.

[Bushido]

Just an update on South Korea...friends have told me that it is MUCH more expensive than 3-4 years previously when I was there, especially in Seoul. I guess the booming economy has done it. Anyone have info on this for those considering teaching to pay down debt?

[Brosemite]

@ Dreambig - Can vouch for Jet as my friends told me same thing about it in Japan. It even helped them out with certain connections in DC afterwards...(a married couple...not single dudes living in misery there lol).

[Feisbook Control]

A lot of good stuff has been written already, especially about second tier cities (or even the countryside).

I would also recommend avoiding other English teachers for the reasons mentioned above. Even aside from the fact that the industry is full of drunks and other assorted misfits, ESL in Asia is where dreams come to die. It's full of people with zero ambition in life. That can provide opportunities though if you're not like that. The trick is not becoming like that without realising it.

I'll just throw in a few expansions on some of the points that have already been made.

Private lessons are pretty common in Taiwan. It's also a far less xenophobic country than Korea based upon all the people I have known who have lived in both.

The trouble with private lessons is that, as with English teaching generally, the market is completely saturated unless you live outside a large metropolitan area or you're willing to do something different. Every single other sociology major from a state university in the US, plus seemingly half of Canada and South Africa, has already thought of coming here to pay off student debt. There's a bit of a race to the bottom with private tutoring in Taiwan or with the industry in general. I have known people here who have saved crazy money in a very short time, but that can be pretty difficult if you need to get your visa through your job. The cram school industry here is notoriously exploitative. It's also full of enablers: fat South African chicks who don't have boyfriends and will never get boyfriends. Bosses here are aware of this, even if only at an instinctual level, and they are also aware that said women cannot/will not leave Taiwan. Therefore, if they want someone to make posters on a Saturday night at home, there will be lots of willing victims. Compared to such people you can only ever look like a bad employee and so will have to endure massive amounts of bullshit as a result. Don't even play that game because you can't. The entire thing is a world of hurt.

Whilst there must be other people doing this, I've only ever met one other person who does what I do (well, one thing that I do). I never do one on one private lessons unless 1) they're willing to pay me as much as a group would anyway (more on that below), 2) they're quite interesting. Even when I have dealt with rich, successful people in the past, a lot of one on ones are like pulling teeth. Many people here literally base their entire lives around working a desk job, eating and shopping (and outsourcing their kids if they have them). Even when they travel abroad, most of them having nothing interesting to tell. Avoid "conversational English" like the plague, though you may want to do one on one test prep (something I've never done). One on one kids are often doing it under duress from their parents. Teaching one on ones is like self-lobotomising.

On the other hand, I would recommend setting up groups. Indeed, you can often find one enthusiastic mother/socialite who will happily do all the leg work for you in this respect. I've done this both with adults and kids. One benefit is that there's a much higher level of energy with the group dynamic. This is good for both the teacher and the students. Another benefit is the money. You could, for example, charge $30-40 for one person, or you could charge $10/person x 8 people. That's the way I first started (i.e. a fixed rate per person and a minimum class size), but now I charge a flat rate to open a class, up to three students. After that, it increases by increments for each additional student. I earn more, they effectively pay less per student the larger the class is. Win/win. It also gives them an incentive to go out and find more students for you. A flat rate is a disincentive because they pay the same to share the class.

As mentioned by others, there are plenty of other side hustles you can do, especially if they're online and you can take advantage of lower living costs.

[OSL]

This is a great resource for those of you trying to figure out which location independent skill you want to pick up so that you can make mobile income:

http://www.locationrebel.com

I am not an affiliate and that is not an affiliate link.

[Feisbook Control]

I wanted to write some additional things about the actual financials of teaching English in Taiwan.

There are three main ways you can be in the country legally that would pertain to teaching English. You can get a visa/work permit through a job, you can eventually get permanent residency or you can have a marriage visa.

Most people would fall into the first category. In order to do this, you need to work a particular number of hours (I think it's 14/week) at a specific location. This location will appear on your identity card. This would mean that if you were caught working at another location, you could be deported. Supposedly, you can add an additional two places, for a total number of 32 hours/week. Again, anything not on your card is illegal.

How likely is it that you would get caught? How long is a piece of string? People do get caught, perhaps not often (most English teaching businesses are cutting corners and bribing the local cops, but occasionally someone pisses someone off or a local politician decides that it's time for a blitz). Maybe it would never happen to you, but maybe it would and that would throw your life into complete disorder.

All of this said, due to the hours involved (most language schools -- also known as cram schools or buxibans) classes are in the evenings, most likely from 4pm onwards (there are some earlier than that). This is true whether you're teaching kids or adults (not such a big segment of the market here). That means you could fit in 4 hours x 6 days (Saturday mornings) = 24 hours/week.

The market rate is 600-700NTD/hour. Higher hourly rates are fairly uncommon, lower hourly rates are somewhat common, especially the father south you go. 1USD = 29.6NTD (call it 30).

700NTD x 24 hours x 4.3 weeks = 72,240NTD/month

For the first 183 days of your first year, tax is about 20% (you would get some back if you didn't earn over a certain amount for the entire year). After that, it's about 5%.

So, for the first six months, you'd be looking at 72,240NTD x 80% = 57,793NTD/month.

Some caveats. Any time you don't work is time you don't get paid. National holidays, typhoon days, if you're sick, if you take a vacation, etc. mean lost income. Some jobs give certain bonuses (e.g. if all of your students sign up for the next course), but pretty much what you see is what you get. Many jobs also require unpaid overtime (yep, on a wage!) in the form of preparation, marking, doing demonstrations for prospective clients, end of year/Christmas/Halloween performances, etc. They will hold your legal status/work permit over your head like a sword for all of this. If you quit or are fired, you have two weeks to get another job that will sponsor your work permit.

Cost of living can vary tremendously, but to live a basic life (not excessive partying, no travel and no expensive hobbies), you're looking at about 25,000NTD/month, possibly more.

Here are some basic breakdowns of that:

Accommodation
Living in Taipei, 15,000NTD will get you a one person dog box. Outside of Taipei, it will get you a 2-3 bedroom apartment (so you could share) in a city. In a town/the countryside, you could pay anywhere from 3,000NTD-10,000NTD for your own house.

Food
This really depends upon what you want to eat. If you want to cook for yourself using local ingredients, you could get out of this for 200-300NTD/day. Meat, dairy and anything imported is going to run this up a lot.

People will tell you that you can eat out and pay 60NTD/meal. That's nonsense. Firstly, you'd have to be a skinny Asian chick to pay that. Secondly, eating out is crap here anyway for anything less than a few hundred per meal. It's going to be white rice and some unidentifiable, additive laden concoction (hence why the average person looks like shit here). If you're paleo, forget it, though local produce (when it's not full of chemicals) can be good value. Eating at any western establishment, you're still going to get fairly low quality food, but it's going to be way more expensive (300NTD+/meal).

So, you're looking at 6,000-9,000NTD/month for food if you don't want to eat absolute crap.

Utilities
Internet will cost you somewhere around 700-1,000/month. You could get out of a phone bill for about 300NTD/month. Water, electricity, gas are dirt cheap.

Transportation
Only Taipei and Gaoxiong/Kaohsiung (second largest city in the far south) have subway systems. Taipei's costs 20NTD-30NTD (I think, I don't use it that frequently) per one way trip. There is a national rail network that charges by distance. To go from one end of the island to the other you're looking at about 800NTD, if I remember correctly. There are also local buses (18NTD per one way trip, but it's been a while since I used one) and long distance buses that are slightly cheaper than the national railway. Getting around by public transport, especially outside of Taipei (the MRT -- subway, is good if where you want to go is near a station), is a major hassle. Taxis cost about 150NTD for 5-10km, depending upon traffic levels.

Most people get scooters, which can be picked up second hand from 5,000NTD+. Petrol is about 33NTD/litre. Scooters are a deathtrap though. I really wouldn't recommend riding one. I have had a couple of bad accidents. I now exclusively drive a car. It costs a few thousand per year for on road costs, and I picked it up for 50,000NTD, plus some repairs that took it up to 60,000NTD or so. (It's a basic Ford sedan.) You woudn't really want to run a car in most cities of Taiwan though. Traffic is infuriating at times.

Healthcare
I should have mentioned this above. Basically, it's deducted from your pay along with your tax, and your employer and the government pay most of it. It will cost you about 700-1,000NTD/month, depending upon how much you earn. A trip to a clinic or a check up at a dentist is 100-150NTD, which includes medicine. A non-emergency hospital consultation is 440NTD. Going to the emergency room costs about 700-900NTD (I can't remember exactly). Most non-cosmetic stuff is covered by the above and the quality of treatment is generally fairly good as many doctors, and most dentists, train overseas at some point. Some things are lacking (especially in areas such as sports medicine).

I'm not going to do a full break down of costs, but you can see that 25,000NTD/month is not unreasonable. Basically, anything imported is going to be more expensive than in the West. Just one quick word on this. Gyms are not great here and tend to be expensive and full of utter wankers doing bizarre things and hogging equipment. There isn't a proper gym culture here. Setting up your own home gym would cost multiples of what it would in the West unless you improvise. Supplements and so on are supposedly hideously expensive, though I can't say from experience.

So, you could save 57,793NTD - 25,000NTD = 22,793NTD/month. Not much, right?

Most people end up supplementing that working at a kindergarten in the mornings (the dreaded split shift which leads to a rather antisocial lifestyle). You could probably get up to another 15 hours/week working kindergarten. So, 700 x 15 x 4.3 x 0.8 = 36,120NTD/month.

However, working at kindergarten is illegal and would get you deported if you got caught. Again, it does happen, and it's a bit of a cliche of foreign workers hearing that an inspection is occurring and having to hide on the roof or climb down a fire escape.

There is a whole lot more about the ESL industry here (these are not the only options, but they constitute 90% of what's available, especially for newbies), but this is just a taster.

Under ideal conditions (i.e. no unpaid overtime, no time off, etc.), you could save about 2,000USD/month in the first six months for 39 hours of teaching each week, but you'd be running the risk of deportation to do so. Is that a good deal? That's for you to decide, but it's not to me, which is why I only did it for a very short time many years ago.

The tales of big money you have likely heard either consist of people working in particular niches, running their own show, or cutting a lot of corners, working a lot of illegal hours and leading fairly crappy lives.

[Yeti]

(09-08-2013 09:06 PM)dreambig Wrote:  

(09-05-2013 02:22 AM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  

In regards to Japan - yes, I was also initially skeptical but I personally know two guys and one girl who were able to average about 10-12K USD annually by living and saving as teachers in Japan. That is the only reason that I am putting it on that list but I do not suggest it anyone's first choice. To really enjoy Japan, it appears you will have to drop dough.

I should point out that two of them worked in Nagasaki and the other worked in an even more boondocks rural spot. They all supplemented their teaching with some private tutoring gigs too.

Nobody should get the impression that you are going to be balling out in Tokyo.

Interesting. I wonder if your friends were there on the JET Program. It's a government scheme that is pretty tough to get into but pays MUCH better than your average English teaching gig in Japan. From what I hear, the starting pay is 300,000/month (roughly $3k) and your flight tickets are covered.

http://www.jetprogramme.org/

Contrast this to 230,000-250,000/month ($2.3-2.5k) with longer hours, no benefits, no health insurance and no plane tickets included that is standard fare for the McEnglish teaching jobs here. The bottom has unfortunately fallen out of the English education market in Japan. In the 80s and 90s you could make serious coin here but it's not as good as it used to be.

The hours for JET's are cushy too (20-25 hours per week max) so there would definitely be a lot of time free for building other skills. There also seems to a be a decent network of JET's who "graduated" from the program. Many later go on to work in business/journalism/IT in Japan so you have a fraternity there for you already if you go this route. I imagine it would be quite useful if you plan to build a career over here. If not, it's respectable international experience to take home with you.

So if your friends were on JET I can maybe believe that they saved that much. Maybe. It sounds like a boring lifestyle though! As you correctly stated, placements aren't usually in major cities. The goal of JET is to spread "internationalization" across Japan which basically means you are going to be living in the middle of nowhere. There are close to zero placements in Tokyo. Good for some perhaps but probably not what most guys on here are looking for.

South Korea gets a lot of criticism but I like it. Good food, slutty girls, fun drinking culture, cheap shit everywhere and great nightlife in Seoul. Would definitely recommend it to new graduates with student debt. Only do Japan if you have a special love for it already and you don't care about money.

Probably better these days to go to China and learn Chinese.

[Thrill Jackson]

So from what I read on this thread, unless your Caucasian Korea is a no go...China is a no go for the average college graduate..Japan is a no go to stack cash as well unless you get into JET...Thailand and Vietnam are a no go....What country's are their now where the average minority college graduate can jump ship, teach English, and stack cash without running the risk of being deported with side hustles?

[zatara]

(08-02-2015 10:36 PM)Phil Jackson Wrote:  

So from what I read on this thread, unless your Caucasian Korea is a no go...China is a no go for the average college graduate..Japan is a no go to stack cash as well unless you get into JET...Thailand and Vietnam are a no go....What country's are their now where the average minority college graduate can jump ship, teach English, and stack cash without running the risk of being deported with side hustles?

I've known of 2 people personally (both in my extended friend group) who got hired to teach English in Asia, based on their CVs and telephone interviews which showed they had perfect educated British accents. Both girls were later refused the job when they arrived in the respective countries because they were black. I think being non-white is still a huge negative in the industry in Asia, unfortunately.

The UAE/Qatar are where most people I know have gone to "make bank" teaching. One guy I know saved 20k euros in a year. But he a) was doing private lessons on top of teaching in a school and b) said he had an absolutely awful year. He was essentially stuck in a tiny isolated Arab village with no social life, maybe getting to head to Dubai at most once a month to go mad there. I'm not sure of how the racism situation is here though, could be less bad than in Asia.

[DonJuanBrown]

With all due respect to the OP, as his write-up is certainly a way to pay off debt, I find the notion of moving halfway across the world to do this a bit overkill. If you wanna teach abroad, then do it to see the world and enjoy yourself. That's what I did. The money that I made and saved was a bonus.

If we are going by the same assertion that teaching English is a dead-end job that won't help you get settled in any other field than TESOL, then why not just stay home? If you live in the US, there is money to be made everywhere. If the goal is to find money and pay off debt, then there are a million and one ways to get it, and in the same time frame as long as you're committed to working hard.

TESOL itself is a joke of an industry. It's what I like to call a "Plan B Career," in that no one ever woke up and said, "Gee, I wanna be a TESOL teacher when I grow up." It's something people do when something else doesn't work out. Basically, treating it as anything other than an opportunity to see the world is mistake number one.

The issue at hand for these so-called worthless major college grads is swallowing pride and doing what needs to be done to pay off their debt and eventually get the job they WANT. You guys are definitely right that running away to another country is a way for these people to delay the reality of their situation. But it doesn't have to be that way. Work hard. Get paid. Problem solved. Travel abroad for yourself, not the cash.