Personal Finance for English Teachers Abroad
Many language teachers already know how important it is to have interactive lessons that get students involved from the first class, such as this example. But what can you do in a Low-Tech Classroom? Today we have the honor of a guest post from Raven, a former Language Assistant in Caceres, Spain, who will address the important topic of the low-tech first class.
According to my WordPress statistics, in about a week it will have been a year since my last post. What have I been doing from summer 2018 until now? As the title suggests, I’ve been working on my own self-advancement in EFL teaching. But what exactly does that look like?
Ever since I was old enough to be in school, I’ve looked forward to that glorious time of year when the last bell rings and I’m finally free. Now, as a teacher, I feel the same yearly excitement. The freedom to kick back and do absolutely nothing has arrived.
But then something inevitably happens partway through the summer. That something is called the Summer Slump. According to Urban Dictionary, the Summer Slump is “A period during summer in which a person performs inefficiently due to the excessive amount of free time on there hands.”
The truth is, an abundance of free time can become overwhelming. Maybe there’s nothing you specifically have to do, so you don’t feel bad bingeing on your favorite television programs. That’s fine. I feed my addiction through ORORO TV (Note: if you subscribe through my link, you and I will both receive a discount). But when you come up for air, you often find yourself feeling disoriented, and maybe even a little unmotivated to do anything about it.
When you find yourself slipping into the Slump, and you’re so bored that you can’t even bother to do anything about it, it’s good to have a plan in place to pull you back out. Here’s my plan:
Before moving to Spain to teach English with the Auxiliares de Conversacion program, I did a lot of research to try to figure out what my living expenses would be. There are some really great resources with sample budgets from different cities, like this series by COMO Consulting. Obviously, there won’t be information for every possible city. Neither of my two cities (Huelva, Andalusia and Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque Country) were included, but you can still use them as a benchmark to get a pretty good idea.
Something to keep in mind when looking at other people’s living expenses is that even though you see WHAT they spend, you don’t often get a glimpse into HOW they spend. That is what I intend to do with this post. I’m going to use examples of my living expenses from Huelva and from Vitoria-Gasteiz, but the techniques for cutting costs should be applicable in any city.
Rent: 225
Groceries: 65
Phone: 10
Electricity: 25
Internet: 16
TOTAL: 341 euros
This is my share of required monthly living expenses in northern Spain. Everything else is variable. If you can keep your core living expenses at around half of your income, you’ll have a lot more flexibility for some of the other things you’d like to do, such as traveling, shopping, and saving.
But how do you keep your expenses so low? The cost of living difference does most of the work for you. The north of Spain is considered an expensive region in comparison to other communities in Spain, but with a little planning, you can make it work. Here is a breakdown of my living expenses in the north and the south, and how different choices affect the price.