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Side Gigs for Teachers: Ways to Actually Make Money

Side-gigs-teachers

Are you Ready to Change your Life? Get your Side Gigs On! It’s a fact that teachers around the world are underpaid. Maybe you’re one of them, and feel like you just can’t get ahead financially. You have bills to pay and you’re not sure where the money is coming from. Or, you just can’t seem to save for retirement, or your children’s education. It’s time to get your side hustle going on. You can…

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What Would you Do With $80,000, Updated!

buy-website

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…

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September 2015: Killing it on the Passive Income

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…

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What is Passive Income?

An Overview: What is Passive Income? Passive income is earnings received on a consistent basis without investing effort for each and every dollar earned. Most people think that passive income is ‘easy money’ but this isn’t really the case. In reality, it demands a lot of hard work. Things in life don’t happen magically overnight and passive income is not an exception to this. Once you understand the fundamentals of generating passive income, you can be on track…

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The Stock Market Crashes-Here’s What I Did

Stock Market Crashes-Time to Get Greedy Investing is all about fear and greed. When the stock market crashes, people get fearful and start selling. This leads to even lower stock prices because there is less demand, which leads to more selling, and then the stock prices drop even further. When the stock market is going up, people get greedy. They keep buying and buying, even when it’s apparent that the top is near which forces…

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Is it too Late to Start Investing?

I answer the question of whether or not it’s ever too late to start investing in this short video. For everything expat finance, check out Andrew Hallam’s excellent book, The Global Expatriate’s Guide to Investing: From Millionaire Teacher to Millionaire Expat.

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The Minimum Amount to Begin Investing

A short video about why I recommend people save up at least $10,000 in order to get started with ETF or dividend stock investing. For some solid investing advice, check out Steve Peasley’s book: Above Average Investing for the Average Investor. It’s one of my favorites for giving you the goods about investing, minus all the hype and fluff.

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Swap Based ETFs Explained

swap

A reader question asking about Swap-Based ETFs and whether they are a smart move for Canadians. With a bit of searching around on the Internet, the simplest explanation for what they are and their advantages is here: Canadian Couch Potato- Understanding Swap-Based ETFs. They are basically a vehicle to reduce taxes within an investment portfolio. I myself do not hold any of them, but they seem like potentially a good idea and I plan to…

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ETFs and Dividend Paying Stocks in a Single Portfolio

etf stock

Another reader question today: “Do you combine the 70:30 approach with dividend stocks (I mention a 70-30 approach for investing in my book, The Wealthy English Teacher, where I refer to something like having 70% of your portfolio in stocks and 30% in bonds)? Is it sensible to have a portfolio like the following: 10% HXT Horisons S&P/TSX 60 index 25% Vanguard FTSE Developed Index ETF 30% S&P 500 index 30% Horison’s Canadian Select Bond…

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Why doesn’t Andrew Hallam like Dividend Paying Stocks?

andrew hallam

A reader question: “After reading your book (The Wealthy English Teacher: Teach, Travel, and Secure Your Financial Future) and being on the Dividend Monk’s site I was excited to see what Hallam would say about quality dividend stocks (strong fundamentals, history of increasing dividends, etc) in The Global Expatriate’s Guide to Investing: From Millionaire Teacher to Millionaire Expat. However it seems like Hallam dismissed them quite quickly, saying that they didn’t earn as well as…

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Expat Brokerage Options

A common question that I get from my friends who are teaching English abroad is what brokerage I use to invest in the stock market. It can be quite complicated and a brokerage in your home country might not necessarily be the best choice for tax-related reasons. Andrew Hallam and Expat Brokerage Options The best information out there on this topic is from Andrew Hallam, in The Global Expatriate’s Guide to Investing: From Millionaire Teacher…

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What I’m Buying: VDY (Canadian High Dividend Yield ETF)

The problem that’s not really a problem I’ve talked a bit about how I’ve been sitting on almost $10,000 of cash, waiting for the market to crash so I can buy. I actually like to have all my cash invested, along with around $30,000 on the margin, so that was $40,000 I didn’t have put to good use. Now, I do realize that having too much cash isn’t really a real problem, but it was…

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February 2015 Passive Income Report

February 2015 came in with a total passive income of $471.03. Check out the February 2015 Passive Income Report for all the details. Everything was pretty much normal except for a $150 sponsored blog post that I did over on my other site, My Life! Teaching in a Korean University for a car insurance company offering English service to foreigners. Sales of my eBooks which came in at an impressive $85.38. February is a slow…

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Top 3 Reasons to Ignore Professional Stock Pickers

I continue on with a series on personal finance rules inspired by this post over at The Simple Dollar. The first three parts in this series were: Keep It Simple Stupid, Spend Less Than You Earn, and Pay Per Hour Worked in case you missed them. Today, some good advice from The Simple Dollar, which is to ignore professional stock pickers. You know, the ones you see on TV (Jim Cramer at Mad Money) and…

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January 2015 Passive Income Report

Better late than never! I was traveling around Vietnam for the past few weeks and wanted to take a technology break, which is why this report is only happening in the middle of February. I earned a total of $272.92 this month-for all the details you can check out: January 2015 Passive Income Report. While not a huge number, I’m pretty optimistic about it for the following reasons: 1. Ebook sales of How to Get…

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What I’m Selling: Wal-Mart Stock

With the recent run-up in stocks over the past year, I’ve been slowly exiting positions in my portfolio that I wasn’t 100% confident in and reducing the money I’ve borrowed on the margin and going to cash in anticipation of a medium-large drop within the next year (hopefully!). Wal-Mart stock is one of them. Why I’m Selling Wal-Mart Stock Retail is Ultra-Competitive Retail is an extremely competitive space as consumers are pretty fickle. It’s just…

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Why I Don’t Like Mutual Funds

I was happy to see that Andrew Hallam in his book, The Global Expatriate’s Guide to Investing: From Millionaire Teacher to Millionaire Expat dislikes mutual funds as much as I do. It actually surprises me that more financial gurus, such as Dave Ramsey (from The Total Money Makeover) don’t jump off the mutual fund bandwagon and onto the index investing or dividend stock investing one. Anyway, mutual funds are a pretty terrible investment choice especially…

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Am I Worried About Losing All My Money in a Stock Market Crash?

I was talking with a friend yesterday and she was asking how much money I can gain or lose in a single day and if I was worried about a stock market crash, or not. Short Answer: I can gain or lose $3000 or $4000 or even more in a single day and I’m not worried about it. Here’s why: the gains or losses in my portfolio are not actually real gains or losses because…

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