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Full-Time Online Stuff = Hard I’m going to get real in this post and talk about what it’s actually like doing the online thing full-time and why I don’t think it’s for me. Let me go a bit back in the past and explain how this whole thing came to be. I lived in South Korea for 10 years, teaching English at two different universities. For the last year or so, I wasn’t really happy…
Buying a Website: I (Finally) did it! If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you will know this. But for those who haven’t and are just finding their way here now, I’ll give you the brief update. I taught English in South Korean universities for 10 years. A couple of months ago, I returned to Canada. I wavered back and forth about what to do upon my return, but eventually decided to go…
Moving to Canada: I’m Now in Vancouver, the Farm was a Bust! I’ve talked for a whole lot of months about moving to Canada, after teaching English in South Korea for 1o years. A few of the things previously mentioned include: What to Do With My Pool of Money The Plan to Never Get a Full-Time Job Ever Again Anyway, a little update after moving to Canada a month and a half ago. Here are…
After an entire year and a half of back and forth and then back again, I finally made a decision about what I’d do when I moved to Canada. Despite being a little bit crazy, perhaps, I decided to go all-in on the digital entrepreneur and make my living off of Amazon Affiliate niche sites and self-publishing books. I got my last paycheque from my university in South Korea about a week ago and now…
An Update on What to Do With My Pool of Money A couple months ago, I talked about a few different options for what I was going to do with the pool of money I’d accumulated from teaching English abroad in South Korea (for all the details about teaching in Korea, see my other blog: My Life! Teaching in a Korean University). For the original post, see: What Would you Do With $80,000? In the blog…
2015: In the Books 2015 is in the books and it’s time to turn my thoughts towards 2016. This will be a particularly interesting year for me because after living in Korea for a decade, I’ll be moving to Canada. The plan is to kick the online business into full-time mode (See: All-In on the Digital Entrepreneur) from what I can currently squeeze in when I’m not busy at my day-job teaching in a university.…
Expat Finance: How Working Abroad Set Me Up for Awesome I’ll be going back to Canada in less than two months after ten years teaching English in South Korea. There are various reasons, but mostly I’m just tired of teaching and tired of living abroad. I need a change, in a serious way. What I’m going to talk about today is money, and how you can turn your time teaching abroad into some financial awesome…
What Would you do With $80,000? I talked recently about how I have quite a large amount of money coming my way soon as I’m finishing up my time teaching abroad in Korea. Pension payouts, housing deposit, etc, combined with the best exchange rate for Korean Won—>Canadian Dollars in a decade means that I’ll have roughly $90,000 come March 2016. Since I’m ridiculously frugal, and am living for free on a farm when I move…
It’s Really Time to Go Home I’ve decided to move back home to Canada after teaching abroad for 10 years in South Korea. It’s not without some trepidation, as I do certainly know that things in Canada are ridiculously expensive and that employment is not that easy to come by. However, it really, really is time to go and the thought of signing another 2-year contract at my university was making me feel sick to…
Passive income for 2015 could best be characterized as “holding steady.” I earned $1713, a little bit less than the month before of $1752. It’s mostly because September is traditionally a much better month than October for dividends as it’s the end of the quarter. For the second month in a row, I earned more than $400 on my ebooks on Amazon, and I also saw some early sales from a few new affiliates that I added:…
Jackie’s Big Life Question, Answered If you follow this blog, you’ll know that I’m moving to Canada in a few months (Feb. 2016) and the big, big question was what I was going to do for work. I wavered, here and there and there and back again but eventually I decided to just go all-in on the digital entrepreneur and write more books and get a whole lot more content out there into the world…
Korea: I’m Kinda Over You These days, I am totally and completely burnt out on the teaching in Korean universities, as perhaps demonstrated by some recent posts over on my other blog, My Life! Teaching in a Korean University: Korean University Jobs: The Golden Handcuffs Some Less than Exciting Work Options Anyway, not to worry since it is my last semester and I’ll be leaving the land of the kimchi in February or March of…
Maybe I’ll Live in a Station-Wagon? Maybe you’ve seen some of my posts from a while back about how I’m moving to Canada, after living for 10 years in Korea, in a few months from now (March 2016)? The plan for how I’m going to avoid living out of the back of a station-wagon and going surfing in Tofino every day is kind of up in the air for now. Wait, that plans doesn’t…
It’s all Coming Together! Another book is up on Amazon, bringing the total to 4. One more is in the editing stages and I have lots of ideas, but this summer is going to be all about getting my websites up to speed and focusing on promoting the content that I already have, instead of creating more stuff. The empire is building, not so slowly at this point and I kind of feel like everything…
Turning Bad into Good-Work Style What Happened I’ve been working at South Korean universities for the past decade or so and during that time, I’ve always taught extra classes for more money. My contract currently is only for 9 teaching hours/week, so I’ve usually added on another 10-15 to substantially raise my pay. However, this past semester all the extra work seemed to dry up and I was left with almost nothing in terms of…
In less than a year, I plan to return to Canada and try to make a living off of my online ventures. With that in mind, I’ve stopped wasting my time with less than useful things and have become really focused on expanding my Internet empire so that it won’t be such a big leap to start doing it full-time. A small, but growing way that I’m making money online is through self-published books. I…
A Reader Question: Ideal Retirement Plan at 65 A reader asked me what my ideal retirement plan at 65 would be. Let me start off by saying that my thinking is perhaps a little different than the normal person. I in no way envision myself working a 9-5 job for the next 30 years and then “retiring.” An Alternative Plan Instead, I hope to live a life that is characterized by non-traditional work opportunities. Perhaps…
Last week, I met a guy who had been working for quite a few years in the Canadian financial industry, but had had enough of it. He quit, gave up a lucrative job and moved to Korea to teach English. Give me the Information! I naturally pumped him for all the information I could get, since it’s one of the options I’m considering for my move back to Canada (although by far the strongest possibility…
Seth Godin is a big guy in the Internet world and someone that I totally respect. He shares his wisdom in short snippets over on his blog and one that I read the other day was “But How Can You be Sure?” The quote I liked best was at the end, “All the good stuff comes from leaping. From doing the things that might now work.” That made me think about my life and how…
An interesting article I ran across over at Life Advancer- Humans Why Do We Have to Work? Basically, we’re brainwashed by the media into thinking the current system we have of work, work, work–consume, consume, consume is the only choice. It’s not. Living in Korea, working a kind of part-time job for the past 10 years or so has been ideal. Now, I’m ready to take it a step further when I go to Canada…
Thinking about Life If you’ve been following the blog for a while, you’ll know that I’m leaving South Korea after 10 years to move to Canada which is certainly a big move. And as I ride my bike through the beautiful Korean countryside, or paddle my board in the ocean surrounding my city, I think a lot about how life here is good. Like really good. But, then I also think about how it is…
Disturbing Happenings in My Life Money Diet March opened up my eyes to just how much money I spend on drinking and eating out. It was kind of staggering, and drinking and hanging out in expat bars a lot is really not how I want to live my life. Sure, it’s fun to see all your friends and talk and get loud and happy, but waking up the next morning with a hangover, $50 lighter…
Canada: What to Do I’ve talked about moving to Canada in previous blog posts, and it’s now less than a year away (March 2016). I’ve started preparing in numerous ways such as gathering information about how to get the cats and my stuff back to Canada and also giving away/selling lots of my stuff that I wasn’t really using that much. How Can I Make Money in the Great White North? But, the really big…
