 Hi, welcome, Linda here, back this week with another live session for I-T-T-T, the TEFL and T-SOL training. Yeah, thank you so much for joining and for being here today. 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 that you can use to get 30% off any of I-T-T-T's TEFL or T-SOL courses today. So we have a wide variety of different courses. You can take a look at our website TEFLCourse.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. 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 to just provide free and real information about all things TEFL and T-SOL and teaching English as a foreign language. So throughout this live session, you can leave comments in the comments section. We're live on Facebook and we're live on YouTube as well. And yeah, here we have the first comment. So hi, how are you doing? Nice to see you again. Nice to see you again as well. Maybe if Laban or Laban. Hi, nice to see you. Help me please. 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 teaching English. So that's actually one of the big reasons some people choose to pursue this path of teaching English abroad or online. We're going to cover both to save money and to pay off student loans. That's why a lot of people actually go abroad and teach English. I've met many people here where I live in South Korea and I also taught English in China and many of them come to these countries 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 put down a down payment for a house or something like that or 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 read Arabic. I'm so sorry. I would really love to say your name, but I cannot read it. So you say I'm an undergraduate student in the English department. Awesome. Great. We love that. And Laban says I'm from Kenya and I want to teach abroad. Yes, absolutely. And that's what ITTT does. That's what we're here for. We help you guys teach English abroad. You get Teflor TESO certified and then you can pursue a career in teaching English as a foreign language abroad, different countries or online. It's all possible with a Teflor or TESOL certificate from ITTT. Then we have Upday here. Hi, Upday. Hello. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? Where are you from? And Amitabha, 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. 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 the nails are still like from Valentine's. 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. Upday is from Egypt and Upday has a question. I have a question. How could I increase my vocabulary? That's a really good question. And guys, I'm going to throw that back to all of you. I know we have many non-native English speakers here. And I also learn many other languages. So increasing vocabulary is always important and part of any language journey. So everybody else here, do you have any tips for Upday? How to increase your English vocabulary? Let me know. And I'll share that here. Yeah. Daniella is back. Hi, Daniella from Venezuela. Thank you for the follow on Instagram. I really appreciate it. And I love your profile as well. I checked it out. Thank you. Lavanzas, can I contact you please? I seriously need your help to achieve my dream. Yeah. So anybody who wants to contact ITTT, you can do so via email here. I'm just going to share that. Courses at tsolminusteffel.com. You can reach out to us with all of your questions. You can also reach me personally via Instagram, for example, if you're 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 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. Yeah. You can increase vocabulary while there are a ton of books out there how you can increase your vocabulary, right? Vocabulary books. Here, Lavanzas, he can increase his vocabulary through reading more English articles. That's really good too. English newspapers. I also really like, if you Google BBC, six minutes English. I use those. They're podcasts, but short six minute podcasts on different current topics and general topics that I use with my students. Six minutes English from BBC and they always have a few. 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 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. 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, 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 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. But these are the main things. And of course, also a Teflon TESOL marketing professional for ITTT. And I've been teaching English for probably 10 years over. And before that, I was also tutoring English and French. So I have a lot of experience in the field. Of course, I'm also Teflon TESOL certified through ITTT. That's how I stumbled upon ITTT. So yeah, my own content. I like to create content also for social media. I also like to travel right is at www.lindagosease.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 ask here in front of everybody. 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. And yeah, I'm in South Korea and I work for ITTT, which stands for International Tefl and T-Salt 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 ITTT online, of course, at teflacourse.net. And ITTT is a leading Tefl and T-Salt course provider worldwide. So many of you know this. Many of you are already ITTT Tefl or T-Salt certified. So you know what it's all about. But if you're just kind of stumbling upon this live and you're like, what is going on? So a Tefl or T-Salt 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 you check that out in the comment section? Oh, I think update is on YouTube. So you probably can't see that on Facebook, but this is Amitava's tip for learning English vocabulary. So when I was a child studying in an English medium school, I used to read quite a few English story books 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. 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 the full amount for the course, you can also pay an installment. 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, subscribe to our YouTube, check us out on Instagram. We're also on TikTok. And just give us a like and subscribe and a follow and all that. So you stay up to date. These are weekly live sessions that we do. They always happen every week at the same time, yeah, at the same time like today, same day, usually a Friday or maybe it's a Thursday where you are at. But usually around this time, sometimes we might switch it up. But yeah, so you stay up to date. You know which topic is coming. If you like and subscribe, you know beforehand and you can decide to join. So, yeah. And of course on our Facebook page, I always say this, we also share a lot of interesting content on there. Teaching material you can use in your classes or job offers also, other just taffle, t-cell information, links to our blog. A lot of people actually don't know that we have an ITTT blog, all of those things. So if you follow and you subscribe, you don't miss any of it. And of course, sometimes discounts. We had a Valentine's discount. So, yeah, but we always share this 30% discount here during the live, which is actually the most, the biggest discount we ever share. So, and 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 this 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 going to check it out. The first topic here. Okay. So for, in order to determine how much you can save and how much you can 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 any other, your phone plan, all of these things. And then your saving goals, right? So these are your 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's really depends, but we're going to look at each of these points. So we're going to first going to 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 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 going to do. All right. Then we have also Laban here. Hi, Laban from QC Kenya. Do we have two Labans? Oh, no, different account. Oh, you're watching on Facebook now. I see first YouTube, then Facebook. I thought we have two Labans. Good. Great. Thank you so much, Laban. All right. So we're going to look at these three things. These are the most important 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 Teflor T-SOL certificate helping me save money? I need to spend money to get a Teflor certificate. I know, of course, but actually there are many advantages of getting Teflor T-SOL certified that are going to help you reach your savings goal. Okay. So it will really maximize your earning potential if you get a Teflor T-SOL certificate. You have access to the best salaries and best working conditions. That means additional bonuses and all of those things. Your end bonuses, contract and end-of-contract bonuses, 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, et cetera, in better places, cities, all of that. So a Teflor T-SOL certificate will really boost your earning potential. And then we can take it one more step. If you get a regular, just a standard 120-hour Teflor certificate, which is great, you can take that a step further and also get additional specialized Teflor certifications like teaching English to young learners or teaching business English. And this can further increase your salary as well. So these are things to keep in mind. So this should be your first thought. Getting a Teflor T-SOL certificate is really the, 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 Teflor certificate is not a requirement, especially at the time it was 2015. Now definitely more and more schools are going to even put it in their job description that you need to be Teflor certified. But at that time it wasn't still that, yeah, that required at the time. 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 Teflor certificate my chances of landing a good job in this specific city would be higher. And so I got Teflor certified and then actually I had other colleagues of course who were not Teflor certified and I found out that I actually had a higher salary compared to those people without a Teflor 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 Teflor certificate is really going to help you with that. And you're going to spend a little bit of money. It's a couple hundred dollars that you're going to get back in your first and second paycheck. So it really is super valuable to get Teflor certified. So that's just first up. And again we have a 30% off discount, right? If you are not yet Teflor certified, Teflor certified, you want to get that 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. 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. I think when we start this journey we all kind of have an idea of where we want to teach English ultimately. 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 an idea of where we want to teach. Some of us might want to go to 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. I call them here the great European capitals. So like I said, Paris, Rome, London, all of the big cities 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 going to 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's 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 make as much money as possible and save pay off student loans, for example. So where should you then go? 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, China, Taiwan, Japan are good. Sometimes even Hong Kong, even though sometimes you don't get housing in Hong Kong, depends. And of course Middle East, Middle Eastern countries, Saudi Arabia, 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 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 a lot of people actually start out in Asia. And then after a couple of years, once they have this teaching experience, they decide to move over to the Middle East, which is a possibility. So but anyway, these are the two areas with the highest earning potential for teaching English as a foreign language. If you're all about the money, basically. And here just a really 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. I shared this in a previous live session. So some of you might know this, but just want to share this again. I put it 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, so we're going to pick a city. So for example, we're going to pick Seoul, in Korea. We're not going to log in. Okay. 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 US dollars. Where's US dollar? Oh, up top US dollars. So let's change that. So family four. Of course, if you teach English alone, this is going to be a lot less. Oh, here's a single person. A single person estimated monthly costs are 1.1. 1,129, et cetera without rent. Okay. And this is actually a very good example because it says without rent for most teaching positions, I would say really 99% they provide free housing. So you don't have any, you don't have any, you don't have to worry about rent at all. So you can be like, okay, to just live, I'm going to need like $1,100. So 1.4. And then the rest I have at my disposal. And then of course you need to know how much is the salary 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 for, this is quite a big apartment actually in Korea. This is a big apartment. So your apartment will be a lot smaller, a school apartment, but still. 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% 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, like, oh, maybe I should go to Japan instead. It seems to be cheaper. Or we can compare 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 compare, you can compare, you know, where you currently live with the destination where you want to go to kind of get an idea of 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 and Tokyo and compare those. So you can get an idea. And also here what's really interesting, you can get actually more indexes here. So 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. 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 low 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. Yeah. Other things. So this website, I just really recommend. So you can get kind of an idea of what things cost. Araymo. Hi, Araymo. How are you doing? Araymo says awesome. And 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 that. It's very important. Okay. Good. So then 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. You'll also get an idea of what things are, 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 at this cost of living calculator in Seoul, you're going to need $1,100. Without the rent. So how much do you actually make there? Oh, it doesn't actually say the salary. But 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 $1,100 that we just found out from the cost of living calculator in Seoul. You're going to need $1,100. The 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, 2,200. It depends between 2,200 and 2,500 us dollars. So that is very accurate that you can then save. You can probably easily save $1,000 a month, which is great in China. Same in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates. We talked about the Middle East, which is really the highest paying teaching region in the world. You can save as much as $2,000 per month or even more. Again, this all depends on your personal lifestyle as well. If you like to go out 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 if you live a different lifestyle, 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 and 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. 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, not for your 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 how you can minimize these costs. So if you're not going to China or Korea, I also hear 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. 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? A lot of times what many schools will do, they will actually put you in a shared house or apartment with other teachers from the school, for example. 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, if you're the only teacher at the school and they don't have the system set up, you can find house sharing on Facebook, Facebook groups. I always mention Facebook groups in every live session, but they're great. 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, there are also house share or shared house, not house share, but shared apartment websites that you can use to find rooms, roommates and stuff. But if you don't want to do that, you could look for housing on the outskirts of the city rather than in the center if your school is really in the center. Of course, we all know this. And every city, the center is usually the most expensive in terms of rent. So you can move further outside of the city. So the further you move outside of the city, the less expensive. So this is just some tips. Of course, also then get a smaller apartment. Smaller apartments are usually cheaper. All of these things. 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. Then living expenses, we need to further reduce those if we want to save more money. What can we do? And usually for foreigners living abroad. So for example, in Korea, English teachers from Western countries, foreign countries, we live here. 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 expert workers, at foreigners. And these are usually the most expensive, right? They're more expensive than local restaurants, local markets, et cetera, if you want to. So if you eat there at foreign restaurants all the time, if you visit foreigner bars all the time, it's just going to 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, as foreigners living abroad, we also want to connect with other foreigners. 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? 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 shopped at a local market. So that's on scene. 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 that's just my advice and 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? 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, depending on where you live in Asia and many countries, it's actually cheaper to eat outside than 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 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 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 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. All right. Okay. Now we're at the point where we know our 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've 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, 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 need to 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 and there. You go to the latest cafes and that adds up. Those coffees are like $5 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? So, yeah. It can be very eye-opening. Okay. So hold on. Okay. Nice. And then we can have a look at this budget planner. And I already put this here on my screen. I'm going to 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 I'm going to share that. Okay. Like this. I think will work. So I'm going to paste this here. Sorry. In the comments. And 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 shared a sheet with you, you click on file and you can click on make a copy. And then you can 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. The anonymous mink is 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 this is actually for the first three months specifically. This is for people who take a in-class TEFL course in a different country and then stay in this country and do job surge 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 generally actually skip to month three basically. This is the first month teaching, but I'm just going to 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, blah. So this could look like this here. TEFL course. This is the price. Depends of course where you go. The prices range between 1,000 to 1,600, 700, 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 housing there for the TEFL course 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 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 month two. 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 $3,000. 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. So this is month two. And then we factored in a visa run 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. No one knows how long it might take to get a job. So you factor in this whole 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, et cetera. 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. And yeah. So your first month teaching, you just need to be aware that you will, you don't have any salary yet, right? You work 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, 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 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 put rent here. If you don't have any rent, great. And then internet food, transportation, miscellaneous living costs. And then the savings. That's what, and this is actually very important, right? That we put the savings onto our sheet. So we are treating the savings. As a fixed cost, fixed, what is it? Fixed expense. We're 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 all mine is 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 put the savings onto 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 the app. Of course. Yeah. So just wanted to show you this. That we have here that you can use, but of course any app would work too. Just make sure 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 sent their children for additional instruction outside of school hours. And especially if you are a foreign teacher living in an Asian country, people might even talk to you on the street. Or if you're like ordering coffee at a coffee shop, they're like, oh, excuse me. Can you teach English to my kid? Stuff like that. 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, 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. And in China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, this is very, very typical and you can get paid anywhere from 20 to over $50 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. And they have a lot of money to spend. You can really get your money's worth here. I actually know people who 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. So you need to be discreet, right? Don't put any advertisement up for yourself anywhere. Usually you need to do this kind of under the table, right? Because this is not, you don't pay any taxes on this. 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. 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, 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 and 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 boss before doing something like this, but it's very common practice and nobody really bets an eye. Like I said, as long as you don't take their students from them. And as long as it doesn't interfere with your work, it's no problem. Yeah. But that's a good question. 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 you can attract students from all over the world and teach location independently, right? So for example, me, 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 Japanese people living in other countries around the world. So really, really cool. And you can just increase your student pool so much more. And some online platforms that we recommend are, for example, Vibkit, Palfish, QKits, MagicEars, EF English First, say ABC, et cetera, et cetera. CafeTalk, for example, that's a good one. Many, many more. Preply, Preply. I think it's Preply. I always say Preply. I don't know. Preply. That's also, we are actually partnered with Preply. ICTT is. So that's a really good one. So that's another thing you can easily do in your free time. Online teaching. Super popular, super easy to do, and a good extra income stream if you're after even more money, even more savings. So good tip here. Yeah. And this is something I touched on when I talked about the budget planner just now. Remember this? How I said to put your savings onto your fixed 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 do your shopping, you know, do your trip and then what's left after that. Okay. Then 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 $1,000 every month. Sometimes it 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 going to also put that on top of it extra. Don't overdo yourself because if you're like, Oh, 1,000 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 going to save 500 and then everything I have left after all of my other fun expenses. Maybe that's just personally me. What I would do makes more sense. So maybe you also have some tips on how you can save. And, you know, everybody's different. Everybody has different like incentives. What makes them like save more money, for example. So figure that out for yourself. And like Daniel said, maybe you have a good app that can help you with that as well. Yeah. This is it. Now we are in Q and 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, maybe haven't heard. We have 30% off. So you can scan this code here or you can use the code that I'm going to share with you guys now in the comment section. It looks like this and you can get 30% off your TEFL or T soul 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 happened 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 coworkers who didn't have a TEFL. So there you go. All right. And then we are one hour in now, but I'm still going to take some time and to answer some of you guys's 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 we can get into it. 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. 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 and saving. So these are also a couple of 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 found with other teachers and 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 going to take that as a no, and I'm going to sign off. Oh, and yeah, I saw this earlier Lobo or Lobon who said, I sent you a message via Instagram, please when you get it reply. Yeah, I'm going to check that out later. Thank you. Okay, Danielle says, I just downloaded the Tefl budget planner spreadsheet. You shared it's very convenient. So yeah, please do, please do. All right, Sam's is firstly, good morning. It is nice to catch another live. Yeah, thanks for being here. I appreciate it. Secondly, how much does healthcare cost? So it actually depends on where you teach, what country you teach in. In many countries like South Korea where I am. It is part of, it's already deducted from your salary. So it's, yeah, 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. So it depends on the country. So usually, yeah, these countries, China to Japan, they already have public healthcare and you're part of the public healthcare system. So you don't have to pay extra for that. Then we have ICANN or ECON. Sorry if I'm saying that wrong. What are the requirements for the SELTA course? Okay, so let's have a look. We do offer a SELTA option. SELTA and I'm going to share that with you. Let's see. SELTA, SELTA. Because the SELTA is actually something that we partner with. I cannot find the information now because it's not so common on our website, the SELTA 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 SELTA because we at ITTT really focus on Teflon TESOL and up to 550 hours and SELTA. I know that we do also have a SELTA option, but it's not so common. We have more Teflon TESOL. So please email us courses at TESOL minus teflon.com and ask specifically about the SELTA course and they will give you all the information 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? Well, I know you get like a tax ID. I mean, again, this depends on the country where you go to. So it's all done automatically. I've never filed any taxes. It's all done automatically. So you don't actually have to worry about it. If you are a US citizen, you also need to file your taxes in the US. 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. So that's a whole another thing. And there are actually agencies that can help you with that. You can find a lot of information, how to do that. And also I believe the US embassy can also help you with that if you are a US 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 teaching English in Korea, the employer files all of that. And I remember my employer had a like a tax person. So a tax advisor and they did all that. I remember that. So you don't have to really worry about it. But there is help for anything's like that as well. You don't have to go through that alone. Let's see. I'm going to 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. 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, it was posted to me. I'm sorry. That was an accident here. Jobs at Tefal dot a C 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 life 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 it's a very calm term, but I'm glad I could teach you something new today. That 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? Daniela says, thank you, Linda. This was great. Thank you, Daniela 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 life 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. I'm a Tavases. Thanks a lot, Linda, for providing us with your ever helpful ideas and suggestions. Thank you. I appreciate that so much. 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 going to say goodbye now. And if there are any questions that you have after this life has finished, still drop them down below in the comments and we will get back to you still. Even after this life is finished, just 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 yeah, I think that's it. All right, guys, thank you so much. Bye.