Post: #1

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I was inspired to make this post/thread from a different thread I just posted on related to someone having turmoil in his personal life at home and being burdened by student loan debt.

In this blueprint I'm going to discuss two things.

1. Discuss case studies of paying off 20K or less of student loan debt in two years or less as a teacher in Korea/Asia

2. Discuss using oil sands as a hack to pay off debt quickly

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TEACHING ENGLISH ABROAD

There are many Catch 22 situations involved in working abroad and teaching English abroad. In this context, the problem is usually that teaching English abroad does not result in gaining the types of real job skills and private sector experience you'd want to grow your career. That is, the only thing you are going to learn from English teaching is how to teach English.

Thus, ESL should be viewed ONLY as a means of securing a work visa and salary in a foreign country.

Currently if you graduated from Mediocre State University with a GPA of 2.9 in Philosophy/English/Lit/Polisci/Useless then you are undoubtedly facing a lot of grief in the job market. Especially if you are in your twenties and have not had the ability to gain some job experience before the market crash.

*CAVEAT* I have not done this myself. But I have consulted and helped friends and clients out to follow this precise path and they have found success in doing so.

1. Choose Destination

The first step is to choose what country you want to go to. If your priority is mostly paying off debt as fast as possible then you should go for Korea. There is really no other spot where it is as easy to find a position and where you can make a salary of 3K monthly while keeping your living costs very low. While it's not as cheap as Bangkok, China, or Vietnam, the ultimate amount of cash you're saving at the end of the month is probably greater than it would be in any of those other spots.

Countries to consider:

-Korea
-Taiwan
-Vietnam
-China
-Thailand

By the end of this stage you want to have made a decision on where you will go based on your current financial situation and the countries that are most attractive to you. You also should have done a lot of research about that spot.

2. Get certified and secure teaching job

As a rule of thumb with starting a career or venture abroad, showing up is 90% of the battle. This is also true with getting a teaching job. However, in more developed countries like Korea you can secure a teaching job before you hit the ground. If you are comfortable with the idea of coming to one of these Asian destinations before you are certified then that is probably a better route. You'll be able to feel out the different places and know what you are getting yourself into. You can also get certified for TESOL/TEFL (or equivalent) locally and get brokered into your first position. Being on the ground will also obviously give you better leverage in negotiating your salary.

I'm not going to go into too much detail about getting certified here as the process of getting hired varies widely by country.

By the end of this stage you should have researched and determined your plan of attack for entering this country and securing your teaching job.

3. Set up a budgeting system based on your salary and living expenses

Your goal is to pay off your student loan debt partially or fully, depending on the lifestyle you want to live and how much debt you have. If you are 20K or under in debt you can realistically pay them off in their entirety in 2 years. If it's higher it might not be very realistic.

Anyway, figure out how to baseline your expenses down to the lowest possible number so that you can take home more of your pay and use that to pay off your student loan debt. You are going to have to get creative in terms of how to hack your budget and really save money. Live with roommates, only eat local food at cheap places, don't party at expensive clubs, minimize international travel, etc etc

In general you can achieve the highest amount of savings in second tier Korean cities like Daejeon/Daegu/Pusan/Gwangju.

4. Side Hustles and Work Experience

Depending on who you are and your goals, you should either look for business opportunities to run on the side or secure a part time internship in your local city.

If you are interested in launching a full time career in that country (or in that region) then you should look around in the private sector, chamber of commerce, consulate, startups etc - to see if you can get a part time internship somewhere. This way you dont have to spend that period of time only gaining teaching skills. You can build a network and gain work experience in a new country.

If your timeline is one year then you can put in two different 6-month internships and explore different opportunities in the private sector.

In terms of entrepreneurship there is really no limit on what you can do. I would suggest entrepreneurship over internships, particularly if you are living in a second tier Korean city (or Thai/Viet city etc) because the work experience you will gain in these cities might not be that great.

Fiverr hustles and arbitrage are really easy to start out with. Target either people back home and the virtual market or target locals who might be interested in the services that the foreigner has to offer. You might not make tons of cash from it but it'll get you moving in the right direction and give you a low-pressure and low-risk way to get some startup experience.

You can move onto bigger things once you are more familiar with outsourcing, automation, customer service, meeting deadlines/deliverables, marketing, sales, etc - all on a smaller scale. People rarely find great success with the first thing they try so go into it with the expectation that you will fail but learn a lot and then eventually succeed with something.

Import/export is obviously a proven route. Case studies:

http://www.theelevatorlife.com

http://www.originalgrain.com

5. Transitions

Ideally by the 1-2 year mark you have accomplished some or all of the following:

-Paid off student loan debts

-Launched a successful hustle that will eventually replace your English teaching income

-Secured a full time job offer that meets or exceeds your current teaching salary

Your goal is thus not ONLY to become a teacher and pay off debt but to be able to replace your teaching occupation in a 6-12-24 month timeline with entrepreneurship or with an international career.

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I was going to discuss Oil Sands but I don't know enough about it to give any advice - besides the fact that it definitely seems to work in terms of paying off MASSIVE amounts of student loan debt.

It would be very useful if the Oil Sands guys such as Scotian and guys working there could give us an idea of how much monthly savings are possible (a range), especially given that one's living costs are often paid for.

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Post: #2

Great breakdown on a macro-level view, YMG. I'd add a few things I observed from my time working in Korea as many of my friends were in the industry.

1. Be very judicious in picking your place of employment. Tutoring institutions are wildly across the board in quality and the way they treat their employees. Several people I know worked for really high end tutoring joints in ritzy areas. Pay was commensurately better (45-50k year starting), hours were decent, and classroom sizes manageable. However, there are other smaller places where they crammed 50 kids into classrooms, gave shitty 200 sq ft. "apartments" as housing and made teachers do "split shifts" where they would work from 8am-1pm and then from 6pm-11pm which counted as one day. Lots of scandalous stories about tutoring centers also pulling employment contracts in the 11th month so as not to have to buy plane tickets for teachers back home. Limit yourself to applying to large, well established schools like Pagoda, Wall Street and Chung Dahm Institute and this should limit most of the scammers out there. Of course, these places are harder to get into, so make a good impression.

2. Seoul is a mix of cheap and expensive. If you want to mimic your life in the US or Western Europe, your teacher's salary isn't going to cut it... Bottles of single malt whisky are $500 US, western food is expensive, imported goods have huge taxes and duties which bump up the price 30-100%... but if you're cool with eating a lot of local food, drinking the insanely cheap local liquor and beer, you can definitely squirrel away at least 50% of your income. This is largely due to getting free housing from the tutoring institute and not having a car.

3. I'm going to have to disagree with YMG's take on getting an internship while you're teaching. Having seen many friends go through the teaching route, you're going to be working a minimum of 50 hours a week in addition to some take home work. There really isn't a very well established intern culture in a lot of companies, at least when I worked for a multinational in Korea, and even if they did have an internship, it'd likely be for a local Korean speaker and they'd invariably demand 40-50 hours a week. Having said that, your best bet to make extra scratch is to try and get private tutoring gigs on the down low so as not to violate your contract with your 9-5 job. More on that later...

4. Be careful that you don't fall into the wrong crowd. It seems like English teaching is easy enough for anybody to get into, so you tend to get the dregs of Europe, South Africa, Oceania and the US come to Korea to teach. Lots of these idiots have no ambition and just bring you down with their constant drunkenness and coasting through life.

5. White is right... most of the time. By that, I mean that you are going to have a huge advantage getting hired if you are Caucasian. A distant second is Korean American, even if you speak perfect American English without a Korean accent, they're going to think you somehow have flawed English. Other Asians, Blacks, Latinos, Middle Easterners and the disparate groups I've left off are left with an uphill climb in not looking white (again even if they speak perfect English) and not being Korean. This is why you see so many white Scottish teachers there, although their brogue is extremely hard to decipher, even for a native English speaker. Side note: the only time being a Korean/American teacher is advantageous to being white is picking up private tutoring jobs that pay north of $50/hr. Parents would prefer to have some sort of linguistic dialogue with their teachers after they instruct their children. Plus, a lot of them would probably feel uncomfortable letting a barbarian foreigner into their homes, no matter how well mannered. Yes, Koreans are racist as fuck...

6. Look out for arbitrage opportunities. My Korean American friend that lives there survives by banking on new trends. In the early 2000's snowboarding got huge in Seoul, with people paying upwards of $1200-$1500 for entry level boards. My buddy seeing this booked a $800 ticket to LA, attended the Ski-dazzle show at the convention center and bought $5000 worth of Burton gear there with huge volume discounts on already low prices. Got it all through customs duty free by saying that he was a professional snowboarder and sold the gear within a week for nearly 10 times the money. Clothing, car parts and electronics (going both ways) are good things to keep your eye on, although some may be more scaleable than other things.

Having said that, I worked 55 hours a week at my corporate job, but made an extra $1500 - $2000 a month teaching kids and businessmen English on the side, cash money. Lots of these sessions involved meeting at cafes for conversational practice where the students would always pay. I still have a few friends who annually clear $150k cash just doing private lessons, and although there's no job future in it, and they're in the minority, it's a definite possibility.

Post: #3

Hilarious. You're gonna have trouble teaching English around Asia if you're not white. Which countries aren't retarded like this?

Post: #4

The white american guy I know working for an international company, really hate to be called as a English teacher. Most of them goes there because they can't get jobs in the states, are not really a 'teacher' like person. he doesn't hangout with this kind of crowd.
But I say it's better to teach English abroad than working as a TSA Officer or Mcdonalds manager.

Post: #5

Awesome idea. I was working on a very similar plan until I got a job here in Canada (except I'd be saving 20 k instead of paying off debt)

I think the most important part about your idea is to make sure you don't get complacent. I guess having a contract job in another country would help with that.

For me I've relaxed for the first 2 days of work but right now I'm scheming about side hustles and thinking about how I can use the cash and experience from this job to get more income with less work.

Post: #6

(06-19-2013 07:40 PM)booshala Wrote:  Great breakdown on a macro-level view, YMG. I'd add a few things I observed from my time working in Korea as many of my friends were in the industry.

Booshala, if you don't mind, what industry did you work in?

I'm on the M.A. in TESOL route here in the states, plan on teaching in Universities possibly in Korea. But view it not as an end goal but rather a way into a new market where I can expand my career. Interested in what other options are out there for foreigners.

Considering taking another Masters while teaching English at the University level in Asia. Some more practical skill, perhaps an MBA.

Post: #7

(06-19-2013 09:28 PM)Sonsowey Wrote:  

(06-19-2013 07:40 PM)booshala Wrote:  Great breakdown on a macro-level view, YMG. I'd add a few things I observed from my time working in Korea as many of my friends were in the industry.

Booshala, if you don't mind, what industry did you work in?

I'm on the M.A. in TESOL route here in the states, plan on teaching in Universities possibly in Korea. But view it not as an end goal but rather a way into a new market where I can expand my career. Interested in what other options are out there for foreigners.

Considering taking another Masters while teaching English at the University level in Asia. Some more practical skill, perhaps an MBA.

I worked for a multinational in marketing and brand management. I headed a lot of focus groups with expats and foreigners so consequently, met quite a few English teachers during my time there.

You're leagues beyond the normal scrubby English teacher who spends every weekend in Hongdae or Itaewon, sonsowey. I don't understand your intent though, you're going to start in academia but move on to the business sector? Seems needlessly convoluted.

Post: #8

(06-19-2013 09:57 PM)booshala Wrote:  

(06-19-2013 09:28 PM)Sonsowey Wrote:  

(06-19-2013 07:40 PM)booshala Wrote:  Great breakdown on a macro-level view, YMG. I'd add a few things I observed from my time working in Korea as many of my friends were in the industry.

Booshala, if you don't mind, what industry did you work in?

I'm on the M.A. in TESOL route here in the states, plan on teaching in Universities possibly in Korea. But view it not as an end goal but rather a way into a new market where I can expand my career. Interested in what other options are out there for foreigners.

Considering taking another Masters while teaching English at the University level in Asia. Some more practical skill, perhaps an MBA.

I worked for a multinational in marketing and brand management. I headed a lot of focus groups with expats and foreigners so consequently, met quite a few English teachers during my time there.

You're leagues beyond the normal scrubby English teacher who spends every weekend in Hongdae or Itaewon, sonsowey. I don't understand your intent though, you're going to start in academia but move on to the business sector? Seems needlessly convoluted.

Well out of College I went to South America and taught for a while, came back to the U.S. and enrolled in the M.A. in TESOL. I'll be done with it next year, and do genuinely enjoy teaching English and find it more rewarding and enjoyable than office work (which I'm currently doing). I enjoy the whole process of learning languages, am multi-lingual, and excited to pick up other languages in the future as I travel the world more.

I'm not doing the M.A. as a way to get a business degree at all. But the thought has crossed my mind to live in Asia, teach at a University, and complete a business degree there. I have also just thought of doing independent import/export type business, but am admittedly a novice.

Post: #9

(06-19-2013 07:40 PM)booshala Wrote:  Great breakdown on a macro-level view, YMG. I'd add a few things I observed from my time working in Korea as many of my friends were in the industry.

1. Be very judicious in picking your place of employment. Tutoring institutions are wildly across the board in quality and the way they treat their employees. Several people I know worked for really high end tutoring joints in ritzy areas. Pay was commensurately better (45-50k year starting), hours were decent, and classroom sizes manageable. However, there are other smaller places where they crammed 50 kids into classrooms, gave shitty 200 sq ft. "apartments" as housing and made teachers do "split shifts" where they would work from 8am-1pm and then from 6pm-11pm which counted as one day. Lots of scandalous stories about tutoring centers also pulling employment contracts in the 11th month so as not to have to buy plane tickets for teachers back home. Limit yourself to applying to large, well established schools like Pagoda, Wall Street and Chung Dahm Institute and this should limit most of the scammers out there. Of course, these places are harder to get into, so make a good impression.

2. Seoul is a mix of cheap and expensive. If you want to mimic your life in the US or Western Europe, your teacher's salary isn't going to cut it... Bottles of single malt whisky are $500 US, western food is expensive, imported goods have huge taxes and duties which bump up the price 30-100%... but if you're cool with eating a lot of local food, drinking the insanely cheap local liquor and beer, you can definitely squirrel away at least 50% of your income. This is largely due to getting free housing from the tutoring institute and not having a car.

3. I'm going to have to disagree with YMG's take on getting an internship while you're teaching. Having seen many friends go through the teaching route, you're going to be working a minimum of 50 hours a week in addition to some take home work. There really isn't a very well established intern culture in a lot of companies, at least when I worked for a multinational in Korea, and even if they did have an internship, it'd likely be for a local Korean speaker and they'd invariably demand 40-50 hours a week. Having said that, your best bet to make extra scratch is to try and get private tutoring gigs on the down low so as not to violate your contract with your 9-5 job. More on that later...

4. Be careful that you don't fall into the wrong crowd. It seems like English teaching is easy enough for anybody to get into, so you tend to get the dregs of Europe, South Africa, Oceania and the US come to Korea to teach. Lots of these idiots have no ambition and just bring you down with their constant drunkenness and coasting through life.

5. White is right... most of the time. By that, I mean that you are going to have a huge advantage getting hired if you are Caucasian. A distant second is Korean American, even if you speak perfect American English without a Korean accent, they're going to think you somehow have flawed English. Other Asians, Blacks, Latinos, Middle Easterners and the disparate groups I've left off are left with an uphill climb in not looking white (again even if they speak perfect English) and not being Korean. This is why you see so many white Scottish teachers there, although their brogue is extremely hard to decipher, even for a native English speaker. Side note: the only time being a Korean/American teacher is advantageous to being white is picking up private tutoring jobs that pay north of $50/hr. Parents would prefer to have some sort of linguistic dialogue with their teachers after they instruct their children. Plus, a lot of them would probably feel uncomfortable letting a barbarian foreigner into their homes, no matter how well mannered. Yes, Koreans are racist as fuck...

6. Look out for arbitrage opportunities. My Korean American friend that lives there survives by banking on new trends. In the early 2000's snowboarding got huge in Seoul, with people paying upwards of $1200-$1500 for entry level boards. My buddy seeing this booked a $800 ticket to LA, attended the Ski-dazzle show at the convention center and bought $5000 worth of Burton gear there with huge volume discounts on already low prices. Got it all through customs duty free by saying that he was a professional snowboarder and sold the gear within a week for nearly 10 times the money. Clothing, car parts and electronics (going both ways) are good things to keep your eye on, although some may be more scaleable than other things.

Having said that, I worked 55 hours a week at my corporate job, but made an extra $1500 - $2000 a month teaching kids and businessmen English on the side, cash money. Lots of these sessions involved meeting at cafes for conversational practice where the students would always pay. I still have a few friends who annually clear $150k cash just doing private lessons, and although there's no job future in it, and they're in the minority, it's a definite possibility.

Repped +1

Thank you for your contribution

Could you go into more detail about

1. import/export opportunities

2. private tutoring for cash

It would be very useful.

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Post: #10

(06-19-2013 11:33 PM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  Repped +1

Thank you for your contribution

Could you go into more detail about

1. import/export opportunities

2. private tutoring for cash

It would be very useful.

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Koreans and especially Seoulites are extremely trend-centric. It's widely joked about that there's a particular type of female that eats instant noodles all week long at home just so she can save up $15 to go to the trendy café and order the $6 latte and the $8 lemon chiffon cake. Whatever your thoughts on the group-think, the best way to approach it is to try and take advantage of it.

1. I don't think I can get into the particulars in a meaningful way on this site... but to give one example: there are certain clothing brands that Koreans thirst for. The trick is to buy them at a discount in the States, get them through customs somehow and then find an outlet to sell it to. Last time around, I bought 10 pairs of True Religion jeans from a family friend who's in the apparel industry for $600 total... got them through customs because it only took up one checked bag and had my friend (size 0) sell them for $400 each to her equally skinny coworkers and friends. Again, not going to get rich doing this because customs restrictions keep the scale to a micro-scale, but it's nice getting around money.

Researched several legitimate import-export ventures but Korea is way past the third world bribe level, and my friend who's a big freight forwarder shocked me by telling me how expensive some of these payoffs to crooked customs agents were. Still haven't found an actionable way to get past the customs barriers.

2. Just like it's way easier to get a 9-5 teaching job if you're white, it's vastly easier to get private tutoring jobs if you're Korean American. I've only met one white guy who did private tutoring and it was strictly with business contacts he met as a legal consultant there. The guy didn't need the money, just wanted to meet more natives. I really don't know what else to say about that... for the few KA's that are reading this thread, just use your family or native friends network to put the word out. Guaranteed that there will be moms who think their child deserves special tutoring and pay you to essentially have 1 hour conversations with them. You should've seen some of the bullshit lesson plans I drew up, hungover the morning of our session.

Student: "Teacher, why do I have to read the lyrics out loud to 50 Cent songs?"

Me: "What, you think you can't learn from a black man? Are you racist?"

Post: #11

I was serious about my question.

Post: #12

(06-20-2013 07:08 PM)houston Wrote:  I was serious about my question.

Yes Asians can be racist as f***, lol. Societies that can be very rude & politically incorrect to the max.

Post: #13

I would go as far as to say that racism is built into Asian institutions and language. They all share a deep sense of xenophobia and healthy hatred of each other.

They are ambivalent about foreigners. Ultimately, like anything in life, it boils down to the individual you are facing and who you are as an individual.

Post: #14

*Caveat* - Thailand and Vietnam are not destinations where you can hack your debt.

China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan ARE destinations where you can do that.

I would choose Korea or Taiwan personally.

Post: #15

Another great debt hacking region is the Middle East and the Gulf countries. The salaries are the highest, the perks among the best in the world. However, it's not a very pleasant environment to work. But it's a very central and strategic location with both Europe and Asia a short plane ride. Europe anywhere from 3 to 6 hours and Asia about 6-8 hours.

But the requirements are higher in the ME than say in Asia.

Post: #16

i'm from uk so not sure if this is the same but why do you want to pay off your student loan? it's cheap money, it isn't recognised on any credit scores/ systems, no pressure to pay it back. I've set my pension from the government so they contribute into my fund the exact same amount they take out for my loan every month (which is the min). - job done.

Post: #17

(08-21-2013 01:12 AM)Pinocchio Wrote:  i'm from uk so not sure if this is the same but why do you want to pay off your student loan? it's cheap money, it isn't recognised on any credit scores/ systems, no pressure to pay it back. I've set my pension from the government so they contribute into my fund the exact same amount they take out for my loan every month (which is the min). - job done.

The system is different in the US and it can affect your credit score.

Post: #18

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This is the second step of this process.

YMG Hacks You Back into the Workforce

Great, so you've decided to move to Taiwan/Korea/China/Japan and eliminate your student loan debt burden. You've set up your budgeting system so that you can live a certain comfortable standard of living while also saving money or reducing your debt burden.

However, you don't want to be pigeonholed into being a teacher forever. Maybe you are not the entrepreneurial type.

You want to someday come back to the US/UK/CAN/AUS and live in a metropolitan center and have a real career. Maybe you are willing to do this job in a city abroad, such as Singapore (lots of developer positions available here!).

What do you do?

Well if you are following this blueprint then you have decided to take the path of independent skill acquisition. That's not good enough. You are going to have to build a portfolio that will prove to employers that you are qualified and worthy.

1. Compile Positions

First, compile a list of very specific positions that you want to break into when you get back home.

If you want to become a proficient developer in 3 years while living in Taiwan, you might build a list like this:

https://teamtreehouse.com/jobs/at-treeho...528d32d301

https://teamtreehouse.com/jobs/at-http-i...f5e5852061

https://teamtreehouse.com/jobs/at-lights...8a914138d6

http://www.alphasights.com/positions/rub...r-new-york

2. Analyze Skills and Character Traits

Look at the previous work experience required.

Look at the personal traits they are looking for.

Look at the hard technical skill sets they want you to have built and also utilized in a real work environment.

Your goal is to look at each bullet point that is required and turn yourself into the specific candidate they are looking for.

You can do this by compiling a portfolio and list of clientele who can vouch for the specific tangible qualities they want. Your portfolio of work can also be proof positive of your technical prowess, assuming you have the discipline to teach yourself these digital skill sets.

If you compile this list and you know where you want to go, you can reverse engineer what kind of person they want.

You can even email them and ASK them - what kind of person do you want? If someone were coming from a freelance background, what kinds of things would you have wanted this person to do? Work with SMEs? Work on long term projects with big companies? Contribute to open source projects?

Employers will tell you specifically what they are looking for. You have a timeline of 2-3 years to save money and teach yourself how to become proficient in these things.

Call it an "Independent Masters in Practical Digital Skill Acquisition"

A lot of these jobs that require digital skill sets will not necessarily require you to have a bachelors degree in the field - as long as you have the work experience and portfolio to prove that you are technically qualified.

3. Freelance / Build Portfolio / Gain Credibility

Over the 3 years when you are saving money or hacking debt while teaching yourself these skills, you will have to be diligent in your practice.

You will slowly get better and begin to take on more and more complex projects.

This is no longer specific to being a developer, per se.

Scour sites like oDesk, elance, fiverr - whatever it takes to get practical work. It will be lonely and difficult. Find other people who are good at this stuff and hang out with them and pick their brain.

Over time you will become better and better. You will launch your own projects and you will possibly begin to make money from them. Your portfolio will build up.

Get credible positive reviews from your elance profile as well as on Linkedin. Connect to your clients on Linkedin as someone you did business with and request a recommendation. Everyone that they are connected to will see that you did good work for them and, if they need your services, will inquire about you.

4. Hack into the Workforce

The long march is over. We are assuming you are three years in now and have become proficient at whatever digital skill set or skill sets you have committed to.

Assuming you didn't go to Vassar or Emory or NYU and did a degree in French Literature that drove you $150,000 USD into debt, hopefully you've paid off your student loan debt and are free of that burden.

You've traveled Asia and experienced the world while you were still young. You saw the strange, exotic, and beautiful. You dated beautiful women and learn to speak their language.

You've been diligent. You are battle hardened and no longer need to survive off of English teaching paychecks. You are now making more money as a freelancer for your digital skill sets.

Perhaps you've even set up your own design company incorporated in Hong Kong and are a bona fide entrepreneur.

Now you look back into positions in those cities and begin applying for them again, if you want to. Ideally you are making enough money freelancing that you can launch your own business or just continue traveling.

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If you started this as useless humanities graduate at age 21/22 you would finish it at 24/25 having saved $30K or paid off a large chunk of your debt and built yourself a bulletproof skill set and career that will be indispensable in the 21st century economy.

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*CAVEAT* - yes, I am 100% sure this is totally filled with holes and contradictions and problems - as usual, I am not writing this for the trolls - I am writing this for the silent majority who have 3 posts on RVF who stumble upon this thread because they feel like they are totally fucked and want some ideas on what to do next.

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Opportunities multiply as they are seized.

-Sun Tzu, The Art of War

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Post: #19

What's the deal on importing alcohol into Korea? What customs restrictions apply? On the retail end, I see single-malt scotch is expensive, but what about American whiskeys or tequilas?

Post: #20

(08-22-2013 01:13 AM)lurker Wrote:  What's the deal on importing alcohol into Korea? What customs restrictions apply? On the retail end, I see single-malt scotch is expensive, but what about American whiskeys or tequilas?

Single malt is slowly making inroads into the Korean market, but it's still dominated by "high end" blends. The marketing for Johnny Walker Blue and Ballantines 30 is something fierce, which baffles me considering that a decent 15 year Islay (Lagavulin, Laphroaig, Talisker) beats them by a mile, in my humble opinion.

Jack Daniels is somewhat known throughout Seoul, but you kind of find it more at expat joints. If you really want to get esoteric, I've actually seen a bottle of Pappy van Winkle 23 at a skeezy bar in Shinchon of all places. I asked the owner how he got his hands on it and he broke out a perfect Robert De Niro shrug.

Tequila on the other hand is poised to blow up because of the recent trend towards Mexican and Korean/Messican fusion foods. I bring a bottle of 1942 Don Julio with me each time, but customs is not going to allow you to bring in more than a few and if you don't have a lot of contacts in import/export, you can't even get in the game.

Try and talk to some bar owners and see if they'll bite at very high end super anejo's and the hard to find bourbons and whiskys. Might make enough to pay for the trip over, but not much more.

Post: #21

^^^ YMG

I'm not quoting your text but will just repost this link right here as it takes up less space:
/thread-24989-...#pid517395

Again great analysis of hypothetical situations for those that have been abroad saving money & how they can potentially develop secondary technical skills, learning languages, seeing new places, and dating exotic women outside of teaching English. It's true many employers out there will just need a bachelor's degree in something (doesn't have to be relevant), but showing that you have "relevant" side work experience, some side educational background, or side training in a technical field on top of that first undergrad completion could suffice. That's what one of my IT friends told me with regards to a personal lead back home.

Another good option would be online IT courses at say a nearby local community college while living abroad. If you are living abroad for a year or two, I'd recommend buying books off amazon.com before your trip for multiple semesters though lol. Enrolling in these community college classes while speaking to an advisor beforehand would mean the delay in student loan payments. Let's say you want to work abroad saving money yet would rather save money for a big chunk payment instead of minimum monthly ones. Well taking computer science classes from a local community college over a period of time would allow for that instead of a delayed forbearance payment, which capitalizes interest on top of interest. Yes interest would build up while your payments are being delayed being enrolled in an online academic program abroad, but it's still better than a forbearance really.

There are holes in my little suggestion too, but just another thought I'd add in for those looking to build their portfolio while abroad

Post: #22

Great post. I think this an ideal way of getting out of debt while having an amazing experience of life in Asia and building skills.

(08-21-2013 12:10 AM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  *Caveat* - Thailand and Vietnam are not destinations where you can hack your debt.

China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan ARE destinations where you can do that.

I would choose Korea or Taiwan personally.

Japan is far too expensive to save any meaningful money as an English teacher. Hell, I work in business here as a full timer and even I struggle to send money home each month. Prices in Japan are 2x more than in Korea. Also your apartment/flights won't be paid for.

Japan is a great country for the experience (think hot, thin girls everywhere you go and definitely hotter than the average Koreans) but not for saving money. You could save some money as a teacher I suppose but you would be miserable. This place is too fun.

Post: #23

(09-05-2013 01:14 AM)dreambig Wrote:  Great post. I think this an ideal way of getting out of debt while having an amazing experience of life in Asia and building skills.

(08-21-2013 12:10 AM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  *Caveat* - Thailand and Vietnam are not destinations where you can hack your debt.

China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan ARE destinations where you can do that.

I would choose Korea or Taiwan personally.

Japan is far too expensive to save any meaningful money as an English teacher. Hell, I work in business here as a full timer and even I struggle to send money home each month. Prices in Japan are 2x more than in Korea. Also your apartment/flights won't be paid for.

Japan is a great country for the experience (think hot, thin girls everywhere you go and definitely hotter than the average Koreans) but not for saving money. You could save some money as a teacher I suppose but you would be miserable. This place is too fun.

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.

It's easier to pull this off in Korea - no question about it.

*CAVEAT* China has recently begun to crack down on people working there as teachers on business visas. This has been a gray area practice, particularly for younger people fresh out of college, and technically illegal. The government turned a blind eye to it for a long time but recently some kids in Shanghai got diddled by expat pedophiles (or somewhere in China) and now everyone is up in a storm about evil round eyed long nosed white devils.

As of July 2013 the visa rules dramatically changed.

In a nutshell - if you have 2+ years of work experience, speak Mandarin, and have useful technical skills of some kind - it is about to get WAY easier to work in China.

Alternatively, if you are a 22 year old fresh college grad whose only skills are being able to use the internet, microsoft word, and speak English and be Caucasian - you are shit out of luck.

Simultaneously, if you fit this profile you should seriously look into entrepreneurial opportunities in China.

Post: #24

(09-05-2013 12:39 AM)yb13 Wrote:  ^^^ YMG

I'm not quoting your text but will just repost this link right here as it takes up less space:
/thread-24989-...#pid517395

Again great analysis of hypothetical situations for those that have been abroad saving money & how they can potentially develop secondary technical skills, learning languages, seeing new places, and dating exotic women outside of teaching English. It's true many employers out there will just need a bachelor's degree in something (doesn't have to be relevant), but showing that you have "relevant" side work experience, some side educational background, or side training in a technical field on top of that first undergrad completion could suffice. That's what one of my IT friends told me with regards to a personal lead back home.

Another good option would be online IT courses at say a nearby local community college while living abroad. If you are living abroad for a year or two, I'd recommend buying books off amazon.com before your trip for multiple semesters though lol. Enrolling in these community college classes while speaking to an advisor beforehand would mean the delay in student loan payments. Let's say you want to work abroad saving money yet would rather save money for a big chunk payment instead of minimum monthly ones. Well taking computer science classes from a local community college over a period of time would allow for that instead of a delayed forbearance payment, which capitalizes interest on top of interest. Yes interest would build up while your payments are being delayed being enrolled in an online academic program abroad, but it's still better than a forbearance really.

There are holes in my little suggestion too, but just another thought I'd add in for those looking to build their portfolio while abroad

Very interesting hack. I did not think of this one myself.

Has anyone tried something like this?

The closest thing I can think of is someone who did undergraduate in the US and then did a masters abroad in Europe/Asia.

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Post: #25

Quote:Enrolling in these community college classes while speaking to an advisor beforehand would mean the delay in student loan payments.

I met an acquaintance who did this after getting some sort of business-based undergraduate degree. Afterwards, he had a good lead to get into entry level health informatics as he was always very adept with computers to begin with. In order to move up, he had to take community college IT classes while passing those tough certification tests (not always required but a major ++ in securing work entry without good connections). The guy was making loan payments after his undergrad days yet the payments stopped once he enrolled in "an academic" program even though it was for an Associates Degree at a community college.

If you don't get officially "enrolled" in a program with your advisors at a community college, then you will be stuck making loan payments during summers and the one month winter break. If you "are officially enrolled," then you will not have to make summer payments, which is advantageous because many of these IT classes are not offered summer time as the material is apparently too intense (which I find strange because chemistry/organic chem are usually options in summer sessions). All it takes is 6 hours (2 classes) of course work per Fall or Spring semesters.

Dude is making pretty stout money right now doing health informatics as he completed those classes along with those annoying cert tests though he was lucky to have the leads he did for his first position after college. For those wanting to follow his path while traveling, networking, learning new languages, or pursuing other gigs abroad however, it's best to take the online classes that allow for online testing with a reliable laptop. You can always finish the select few "on campus" courses upon arrival in the US again or perhaps before making the move abroad depending on your curriculum. That's something to figure out with your advisors.

(09-05-2013 02:27 AM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  Very interesting hack. I did not think of this one myself.

Has anyone tried something like this?

The closest thing I can think of is someone who did undergraduate in the US and then did a masters abroad in Europe/Asia.

Here's a question. Can federal student loan payments in the US be deferred while being enrolled in an academic program abroad?