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Travel, Teach, Live in Korea

How Much Money Can You Save Teaching English in Korea for One Year?
By:Peterson Goodwyn

Individuals who come to Korea as English teachers are typically serious about growing their savings and/or paying off debts. And for good reason: South Korea provides the most prospects to earn a lot of money and survive on a little of any nation hiring foreign English teachers.

Income
Let's take a look first at potential earnings. Wages for full-time positions usually are around 2.1-2.5 million won. We are going to use 2.3 million four our reference because it is a quite normal salary. Along with your paycheck, your net profit should include a few additional payouts:
An end-of-the-year incentive corresponding to one month's wages.
Your employer's contribution for your federal pension (4.5% of the monthly wage)
How about we add it all together:
Monthly income x 12 27.6 million
End-of-contract bonus 2.3 million
Pension payout x 12 1.24 million
Total:31.14 million

Moreover, just about all full-time agreements have housing provided along with round trip travel to South Korea. Though these items aren't really part of your income, they bring us to the next component of conserving money...

Living Expenses
Rent
Unless of course you get a part time job or choose a special program that uses an hourly rate, your apartment in Korea is going to be free. You will have to pay for your own utilities, which vary depending on where you reside. I was located in a somewhat costly high-rise apartment within down-town Seoul, and my utility bill was about 150,000 won. We will employ that for the calculations, although most can count on paying a lot less.

Food
Dining out throughout Korea can be very affordable, specifically if you enjoy Korean food (I really like it!). Cooking at your home is even more inexpensive. Food staples like eggs, rice, and specific meats normally are cheaper than what you would spend back home: by way of example, eggs tend to be 3,500 (≈$3USD) for a package of thirty from the grocery store across the street from us. In-season fruits and vegetables can be found in marketplaces (and in all likelihood from the gentleman with his truck parked down your block) for extremely affordable prices. My grocery bill is usually 30,000 each week. Just in the interests of creating a generous estimate, we will employ 50,000 as our estimation for one person.

The only way to really blow your budget on meals in Korea would be to eat out too frequently at Western eateries. But fundamentally, as long as you keep your On the Border trips to a minimum, your dining expenditures should really be nicely under 300,000 won per month.

Health insurance coverage and Tax
These kinds of bills are automatically taken off from your paycheck. Pension payments are deducted, as well, however I have not listed them here as you get them back 100 % at the end of the 12 months (together with your employer's identical payments!). During my initial year, I paid out 30,000 won in income tax and 60,000 won for health insurance coverage every month.

Getting Around
One good thing about getting your apartment put in place by your company is you will not need to commute to work. A lot of people, though, may wish to travel to different parts of the city several times per week. A half an hour ride on the Seoul Metro (normal coming from nearly all areas of the city to the downtown area) costs 1,000 won (≈90¢USD). Do a comparison of that with New York City's flat rate of $2.25 or Tokyo's 190 yen (≈$2.25) for the same journey! Taxi cabs start off at 2,400 won and tend to be about half as expensive as NYC or Tokyo (rough approximation alert!). I am quite active--I ride the metro five-or-so times per week and take a couple of cabs during the weekend. All this results in around 80,000 a month on transportation.

How much can you save?
The costs we have added up so far make 620,000, which subtracted from 2.3 million leaves 1.68 million of extra income each and every month. The quantity of that you decide to invest in traveling, shopping, going out, etc. is needless to say your responsibility, but it really is quite simple to save at a minimum one million from just about every paycheck. Include your year-end bonus plus government pension pay out of 3.5 million, and you will be able to put away 15.5 million or higher by the close of your year. Check out XE.com's currency converter to see what that means in your home currency!

For everything you need to know about how to get a great job teaching English in South Korea, visit http://www.teachkoreatips.com.






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