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As we all know, home ownership is a money-pit of never ending proportions. Maintenance, mortgage payments, insurance, taxes, major repairs, etc, etc, etc. At this point in my life, I could certainly afford to buy a small house with cash, or a much larger one with a significant down-payment. Except I’ve chosen not to. You might wonder why I’ve chosen not to do this because home ownership has traditionally been thought of an the cornerstone…
5 years ago, I was just finishing up my third decade on the Earth, and had been working for a couple years at my first “real” job at a Korean university. I lived in the beautiful Korean countryside and life was good. Here’s some advice for my 30 year old self: 1. Your student loans should be paid off by now. If not, get on that. And unless you have a house mortgage, all your…
When I was 23, I was just graduating from university with a semi-useless degree in the humanities and making some big decisions about my future. And, similar to when I was 18, I actually had no idea what I was going to do with my life. Here’s some advice for those who are just graduating from college: 1. Student loans are evil. If you were unfortunate enough to accrue them, pay them off as fast…
Thanks to my friend “S” for the heads up about this article over on Get Rich Slowly about becoming friends with your future self and resisting splurges today. What this makes me think of is delayed gratification and how important it is in life and with regards to personal finance. It’s a sign of emotional maturity to make long-term goals and to not give into all our short-terms wants that are most often not really…
My old English teaching friend and I have been talking about various options for where to move after Korea. I really could move to literally almost any country in the world because everyone seems to want a reasonably well-qualified and experienced English teacher. Except the only problem is that the places that are the most fabulous to live (ie: Thailand, Costa Rica, Eastern Europe) pay the least and are pretty weak on the benefits. While…
I used to the queen of the frugalistas when I was paying off my student loans. These days though, I’ve been toning it down a little bit because I have a substantial amount of money in the bank, and I actually make a lot more money than I did compared to say 5 years ago (almost double). So this means that I am willing to have things that increase my enjoyment of life (2 cats,…
One of the podcasts that I listen to for inspiration and practical tips related to passive income is, “The Smart Passive Income” podcast by Pat Flynn. Pat is an upbeat kind of guy and extremely savvy about the Internet business world. I’ve already learned a lot from him including the importance of podcasting (I’d like to start my own!), and why you can’t do everything by yourself (I’d like eventually get big enough to hire…
Back in another lifetime, I hiked (most of) the Appalachian Trail, which is a 4000km or so hike across the USA. I fell into the ultralight category, which was strongly influenced the Ray Jardine’s book, Beyond Backpacking. Essentially, it’s carrying as little as possible in order to move long-distances with as little effort as possible. And this has carried over into my “real-life” these days. I have a few comforts, but really am okay living…
If you want to be a digital nomad and build up passive income streams, ESL Teaching might seem kind of like an attractive gig to get into. You get paid to live overseas. And you often get a free plane ticket (Middle East /Korea) as well as paid for, or subsidized housing. And you’ll have so much time to get your online ventures up and running. Sounds fabulous! Except the thing that many people forget…
Dave Ramsey is all about the emergency fund and I would most definitely agree with him. He advocates having $1000 in the bank until you pay off all your debts, excluding the mortgage. And then once that is done, build it up to 3-6 months of living expenses. These past few years, I’ve been really focused on making and saving my income from the day-job to invest in Dividend Paying Stocks and must admit to…
At this point in my life and career, I feel like I’m being pulled in many directions. A large part of it is that I’m actually quite good at organizing things like groups of people and arranging big events, as well an online stuff like blogging/social media which are skills that many people don’t have. Plus, I can teach quite literally anything that would possibly be offered in the realm of “English” at Korean unis.…
I’ve lived in South Korea, working as an English teacher for almost 10 years. For the first 7 years or so, I lived extremely frugally. Like, I always rode public transport and tried to avoid taxis, didn’t have a smart-phone, stayed in the school provided housing and had no pets. And like I would really consider it seriously any time that I spent more than about $5. My weakness was travel, but I almost always…
One of the big debates that I have in my head all the time is whether to work more at my day-job, or whether to spend more time building up my passive income streams through things like building niche websites, self-publishing books and HubPages. My job at a Korean university is kind of ideal actually because according to my contract, I only have 9 teaching hours, although I usually get forced to do 11 or…
For my February report, please see this post. But, onwards to March. You can see all the details here, but the total minus interest paid to my broker was $466.44 US. The large majority of it was in Dividends, and a big portion of that was NPK (National Presto Industries), which paid a special dividend of over $100. Compared to previous years: March 2013: 251.97 March 2012: 455.72 March 2011: 156.86 March 2010: 7.02 Similar…
I know a big part of frugal living is most definitely not having too large of a house. It costs more to maintain/heat/cool/light/clean and it’s really quite easy to just fill your space with more stuff. Here in Korea, space is at a premium because there are so many people crammed into a country with 70% mountains and the average house sizes are far, far smaller than what you’d see in Canada or the USA.…
I’ve been a faithful Blogger user for years and have had this very popular blog on that platform since 2008. My Life: Teaching in a Korean University. So, it goes without saying that I definitely know the ins and outs of blogger and that I generally like it. It’s extremely easy to add Amazon and other affiliate links (with the widgets: add HTML option), and of course, they support Google Adsense (Blogger is owned by…
