I Moved to China to Pay Off $50,000 Worth of Debt and it Was One of the Best Decisions I’ve Ever Mad

[nahtanbob]

Sounds like you are having a fulfilling experience and on the gateway to riches. Good for you.

chinese salary for english teachers is not a gateway to material wealth
maybe spirtual riches and mental happiness

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

do you know a foreign language?

hmm...apparently not anymore as I'm having serious trouble following what she's saying.

Edit: I don't feel so bad because even the auto-translator can't figure her out. LOL!

 

[beijingwalker]

I see teaching English in China to be a fulfilling experience for some people. teaching is never meant to be a gateway to riches

New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. (Simplified Chinese 新东方教育科技集团, NYSE: EDU),The company's market capitalization was approximately USD 14 billion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Oriental


This guy started it with nothing 20 years ago, handing out brochures and pasting ads on ourdoor bulletineboards trying to find students.

 

[Placemat]

What works for him will not work for everyone ?

He ang moh... skin has high residual value in these parts. U fact is a good idea.come to these parts.and quivkly get to managerial position.and pay off college debts and make some more. Maybe get a spg wife who will be overjoy with trophy hubbie. Life set oh.

 

[nahtanbob]

New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. (Simplified Chinese 新东方教育科技集团, NYSE: EDU),The company's market capitalization was approximately USD 14 billion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Oriental


This guy started it with nothing 20 years ago, handing out brochures and pasting ads on ourdoor bulletineboards trying to find students.

take my word. this company will be trading at a fraction of current value
his only bet is that a bigger fool purchases him

 

[beijingwalker]

take my word. this company will be trading at a fraction of current value
his only bet is that a bigger fool purchases him

I actually agree, this company has no substance at all, ripping off people big time for years.

 

[oprih]

China is truly the present and the future, so many opportunities there thanks to the huge and healthy Chinese economy. Meanwhile murica has no future, only destined to be shitty like india.

 

[beijingwalker]

The point is how much they can actually save after all expense. I bet the guy making $3500 per month in Beijing will save more than the kindergarten teacher making $6,000 here.

Exactly.

I moved to China and saved $10K in 7 months
In September 2008, I had less than $400 in my savings account. I was a sad statistic.

A recent Bankrate survey found that six out of 10 Americans would not have enough savingsto pay an unexpected $1,000 expense, such as a car repair or emergency room visit — and the same was true for me.

https://www.bankrate.com/personal-finance/move-to-china-save-money/

 

[Feng Leng]

Xi Jinping needs to crack down on the whole industry. Chinese people should speak Chinese not English. The moment you propagate the view that English is some kind of lingua franca is the moment the West will sanction you and you just wasted all your time.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Exactly.
.com/personal-finance/move-to-china-save-money/

Ah so now the truth comes out. The title is:

I moved to China and saved $10K in 7 months — but you can follow my strategy anywhere

My goal of paying off debt quickly had taken priority over saving to my detriment. I live and teach English in China, so having such scant savings left me in a precarious position. What if I needed to book an emergency flight back to the U.S.? What if I got hurt or became sick and needed to take time off from work?

To be honest, I felt dumb and disappointed in myself for not having a better cushion between me and an emergency, knowing that I could have saved more.

So I set my sights on saving $10,000 in seven months. Here’s how I did it.

To start, I assigned real numbers to worst-case scenarios.
With just $400 in my bank account, I risked getting deeper into debt or becoming a burden to my family if an expensive emergency was to arise.

To fix this, I asked myself some tough questions. “If I had to pay three months’ worth of bills in the States, how much would that cost? If I lost my job, how much money would I need to live comfortably in China based on my current expenses?

I came up with amounts for the following scenarios:

1. $1,500 – Three months of my current bills in the U.S. (This includes my student loan minimum payment, insurance premiums and a few monthly subscriptions.)
2. $1,500 – An emergency flight from China to the U.S.
3. $2,000 – Starter savings for miscellaneous, unexpected expenses
4. $2,200 – Three months of Chinese rent
5. $2,300 – Three months of Chinese expenses

The total: $10,000! Having concrete numbers gave the goal some heft and created clear milestones to hit.

Next, I set a deadline.
Setting a deadline just seven months away kept the $10,000 goal top of mind and pushed me to make big deposits consistently. The tight deadline also made me look for more ways to get paid and cut expenses. Seven months seemed doable based on my teaching income, expected side hustle money and spending cuts.

I broke down my large goal into smaller chunks.
Ten thousand dollars is a big number. Daunting, frankly.

I needed to tackle a smaller goal first, much like marathon runners who try to take it one mile at a time instead of the whole 26.

Each of those five worst-case scenarios became markers along my savings journey. I first saved $1,500 to cover three months of bills in the U.S. Then I saved another $1,500 for the China-to-U.S. flight.

Each subgoal had a purpose and motivated me to keep going. When I reached a milestone, I celebrated having more security and being one step closer to the big, scary goal.

I separated my savings and spending money.
Before my paycheck hit my account, I budgeted what would go into savings. On payday, I quickly put savings into accounts separate from my spending money. This reduced temptation to dip into my savings for impulsive purchases.

I even put a sticky note on the debit card connected my savings account to remind myself not to spend cash on non-emergencies.

I cut expenses and worked extra jobs.
My expenses are quite low in China because my school provides free housing and reliable, public transportation is available. But I still cut back on eating out and unnecessary spending to shift money toward savings. I even turned down a trip to Bali for my birthday!

I named my savings goal and told my friends about the mission.
I shared my “Sock away 10K” goal with close friends and Instagram followers to get support. Knowing I’d have to share my goals every month fueled the fire to keep going. Every time I posted a big number, the much-needed support rolled in.

Lastly, I tracked my progress visually.
I updated and shared a savings chart each month. The chart included 100 squares. Coloring each $100 box helped me evaluate my current progress and get excited about shading in some more boxes. I colored the 100th and final box a few weeks before my April 30 deadline.

Within weeks of crushing the savings goal, the floodgates opened. My mom asked me for $150 to cover bills. I thought I’d have to spend $200 to replace my battery-powered bike. And the bank didn’t shell out my salary on time.

Even though I had $40,000 left in graduate school loans when I paused extra debt payments to save, I know I made the right decision — and I have the peace of mind to show for it.

 

[Mista]

Ah so now the truth comes out. The title is:

I moved to China and saved $10K in 7 months — but you can follow my strategy anywhere

Lol...

 

[beijingwalker]

It's all about how much you can save, even you make 1 million dollars but if you also have to pay 1 million dollars, you still end up being very poor, many Americans have little savings.

63% Of Americans Don't Have Enough Savings To Cover A $500 Emergency
Jan 6, 2016, 06:42pm
The car brakes go on the fritz. The refrigerator stops refrigerating. The dog gets his paws on a batch of chocolate chip cookies and earns himself a trip to the vet ER.

These are just three of any number of things that could go wrong during the course of the year. Recovering from any one will set you back about $500, which means these scenarios fall closer to the "undesirable inconvenience" category than they do the "massive calamity" one. And yet, nearly two-thirds of Americans do not have enough money in savings to cover the cost of a single one of these unplanned expenses.

According to a brand new survey from Bankrate.com, just 37% of Americans have enough savings to pay for a $500 or $1,000 emergency. The other 63% would have to resort to measures like cutting back spending in other areas (23%), charging to a credit card (15%) or borrowing funds from friends and family (15%) in order to meet the cost of the unexpected event.

It's not news that Americans are terrible savers. In November, Pew Charitable Trusts reported that one in three American families have no savings at all. In December, Magnify Money released the results of a study that found that 56.3% of people have less than $1,000 in their checking and savings accounts combined. Sensing a trend? You should: America's saving struggle has been a problem year after year after year.


But this latest survey is particularly striking because of the implications it carries.

"Five-hundred dollars is enough money that it could be catastrophic if you’re really living on the edge and don’t have enough money" to cover that unplanned cost, Bankrate senior investing analyst Sheyna Steiner said in a phone interview. "I did wonder what would happen if it was $10,000, what would the answer have been then?"

A $10,000 emergency is a somewhat rare occurrence for families of moderate income -- but it's hardly unheard of. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts analysis, the median size of a family's most expensive financial "shock" (as they call it) in a year is $2,000. But Pew also found that the cost of emergencies actually varies by income: for households with an income of $25,000 or less, the median cost of the most expensive financial shock is $1,000, a figure that equates to 31 days' worth of income. As you move up the income spectrum, the median cost of unplanned expenses goes up, but the days' worth of income necessary to pay for that expense goes down. So for families making between $50,000 and $85,000, for instance, the median financial shock was $2,500 -- or 13 days' worth of income. Families who reported $85,000 or more in household income were the ones most likely to see that $10,000 emergency, 26 days' worth of income:

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

It's all about how much you can save, even you make 1 million dollars but if you also have to pay 1 million dollars, you still end up being very poor, many Americans have little savings.

63% Of Americans Don't Have Enough Savings To Cover A $500 Emergency
Jan 6, 2016, 06:42pm
The car brakes go on the fritz. The refrigerator stops refrigerating. The dog gets his paws on a batch of chocolate chip cookies and earns himself a trip to the vet ER.

These are just three of any number of things that could go wrong during the course of the year. Recovering from any one will set you back about $500, which means these scenarios fall closer to the "undesirable inconvenience" category than they do the "massive calamity" one. And yet, nearly two-thirds of Americans do not have enough money in savings to cover the cost of a single one of these unplanned expenses.

According to a brand new survey from Bankrate.com, just 37% of Americans have enough savings to pay for a $500 or $1,000 emergency. The other 63% would have to resort to measures like cutting back spending in other areas (23%), charging to a credit card (15%) or borrowing funds from friends and family (15%) in order to meet the cost of the unexpected event.

It's not news that Americans are terrible savers. In November, Pew Charitable Trusts reported that one in three American families have no savings at all. In December, Magnify Money released the results of a study that found that 56.3% of people have less than $1,000 in their checking and savings accounts combined. Sensing a trend? You should: America's saving struggle has been a problem year after year after year.


But this latest survey is particularly striking because of the implications it carries.

"Five-hundred dollars is enough money that it could be catastrophic if you’re really living on the edge and don’t have enough money" to cover that unplanned cost, Bankrate senior investing analyst Sheyna Steiner said in a phone interview. "I did wonder what would happen if it was $10,000, what would the answer have been then?"

A $10,000 emergency is a somewhat rare occurrence for families of moderate income -- but it's hardly unheard of. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts analysis, the median size of a family's most expensive financial "shock" (as they call it) in a year is $2,000. But Pew also found that the cost of emergencies actually varies by income: for households with an income of $25,000 or less, the median cost of the most expensive financial shock is $1,000, a figure that equates to 31 days' worth of income. As you move up the income spectrum, the median cost of unplanned expenses goes up, but the days' worth of income necessary to pay for that expense goes down. So for families making between $50,000 and $85,000, for instance, the median financial shock was $2,500 -- or 13 days' worth of income. Families who reported $85,000 or more in household income were the ones most likely to see that $10,000 emergency, 26 days' worth of income:

This is not shocking since most Americans don’t have any sense of what poverty is {nor any fear of it).

You lose your job and the government pays you unemployment benefits every week.

Retire from working with zero in the bank well you’ve been paying into Social Security so the government will pay you monthly for the rest of your life. Worried that retirement amount doesn’t cover it? No problem, they’ll stick old people into elderly government housing with one free meal a day and will pay their rent, electricity, heating, and water bills from a portion of that Social Security money. No worry when you are old here.

So with no real financial worry looming many people simply live paycheck to paycheck (even those who make over $100k a year) They’ll spend $300/mo on cable tv, $200/ticket to go to a football game, $50/mo on a gym membership, own two new $40,000+cars, put in a swimming pool, remodel their kitchen, and add an addition onto their house.

Hit with a $500 bill with no money in the bank...they’ll just cut back on some frivolous expense to pay it.

 

[Mista]

It's all about how much you can save, even you make 1 million dollars but if you also have to pay 1 million dollars, you still end up being very poor, many Americans have little savings.

63% Of Americans Don't Have Enough Savings To Cover A $500 Emergency
Jan 6, 2016, 06:42pm
The car brakes go on the fritz. The refrigerator stops refrigerating. The dog gets his paws on a batch of chocolate chip cookies and earns himself a trip to the vet ER.

These are just three of any number of things that could go wrong during the course of the year. Recovering from any one will set you back about $500, which means these scenarios fall closer to the "undesirable inconvenience" category than they do the "massive calamity" one. And yet, nearly two-thirds of Americans do not have enough money in savings to cover the cost of a single one of these unplanned expenses.

According to a brand new survey from Bankrate.com, just 37% of Americans have enough savings to pay for a $500 or $1,000 emergency. The other 63% would have to resort to measures like cutting back spending in other areas (23%), charging to a credit card (15%) or borrowing funds from friends and family (15%) in order to meet the cost of the unexpected event.

It's not news that Americans are terrible savers. In November, Pew Charitable Trusts reported that one in three American families have no savings at all. In December, Magnify Money released the results of a study that found that 56.3% of people have less than $1,000 in their checking and savings accounts combined. Sensing a trend? You should: America's saving struggle has been a problem year after year after year.


But this latest survey is particularly striking because of the implications it carries.

"Five-hundred dollars is enough money that it could be catastrophic if you’re really living on the edge and don’t have enough money" to cover that unplanned cost, Bankrate senior investing analyst Sheyna Steiner said in a phone interview. "I did wonder what would happen if it was $10,000, what would the answer have been then?"

A $10,000 emergency is a somewhat rare occurrence for families of moderate income -- but it's hardly unheard of. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts analysis, the median size of a family's most expensive financial "shock" (as they call it) in a year is $2,000. But Pew also found that the cost of emergencies actually varies by income: for households with an income of $25,000 or less, the median cost of the most expensive financial shock is $1,000, a figure that equates to 31 days' worth of income. As you move up the income spectrum, the median cost of unplanned expenses goes up, but the days' worth of income necessary to pay for that expense goes down. So for families making between $50,000 and $85,000, for instance, the median financial shock was $2,500 -- or 13 days' worth of income. Families who reported $85,000 or more in household income were the ones most likely to see that $10,000 emergency, 26 days' worth of income:

1) Spending $1 million is a choice, not a necessity. Earning $1 million is not a matter of choice.

2) It's a survey on 1000 Americans.

3) China's savings rate is 47% of GDP while the US is at 19%, which means to say the Americans still have a higher per capita aggregate savings than China despite spending so much more.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ny.gns.ictr.zs?most_recent_value_desc=true

4) Little money in the bank account doesn't mean that the Americans don't save. Like many people in other developed countries, many Americans sacrificed liquidity in the bank account to invest in financial assets which generate higher returns in the long term, such as stocks, bonds, insurance etc.

In contrast financial assets makes up only a fraction of total assets in China, and half of financial assets are liquid cash which generate little to no returns.

Google translate:

Financial assets account for only 11.8% of total urban household assets in China, compared with 42.6% in the United States, 61.1% in Japan, and over 50% in the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Switzerland. It is 48.6% and France is 39.8%.

Among the financial assets of urban households in China, bank deposits accounted for the most, accounting for 42.9%, followed by wealth management products, accounting for 13.4%, stocks accounting for 8.1%; funds being 3.2%; bonds only 0.7%.

Which means that only 0.96% of the total assets of Chinese urban households are allocated in Stocks, 0.38% of assets are allocated in mutual funds.

Diversification of assets
Left: China, Right: US

Almost 80% of the average Chinese assets are tied up in property. Unless you have more than 1 property or plan to immigrate, high property values look good only on paper because you can't liquidate it without going homeless. The higher the property value, the more you 'save' and the lower your standard of living is.

Interestingly, higher educated Chinese has a higher share of assets in shares/bonds like the Americans instead of in liquid cash.

低学历水平的家庭，其货币类资产的配置明显较高，而股票、基金资产的配置明显较低，初中及以下学历家庭货币类资产配置最高，达到了37.6%。

https://finance.sina.com.cn/china/gncj/2019-01-20/doc-ihrfqziz9287417.shtml

 

[beijingwalker]

This is not shocking since most Americans don’t have any sense of what poverty is {nor any fear of it).

I see way more homeless people in US than in China.