Whats YOUR $ reason/plans for here? How much wish save 1 yr total?

[waldron1983]

Focused more towards anyone, especially married, with spouse/family back home.

what is your financial goal from korea?  open business? just spend? world vacation? go back to school?

how much you hope to save total in 1 year (inc pension etc)

I personally want to go home and tak a few months of schooling to get licensed to teach for real. And taking my wife on our first real honeymoon ever. get an apt, outsit it as well, and maybe a little bit for a small savings acct.

but i wonder...where the hell did all my $ go? i spend nothing here. perhaps it has something to do with credit cards, vacations to the philippines, and saying "I DO" a few years back. maybe

[Frozencat99]

I've saved up $3900 over four months so far, planning to send home continuously to help pay off my student loan. My eventual goal is to move in with my significant other back home, though that'll likely be in 2013. I also want to go back to grad school to continue criminology, so I should probably save for that too.

I've made myself promise that I won't travel to another country for a vacation until I see everything I want to see in South Korea first. That said, I'll probably be popping in on Russia, Thailand, Cambodia, or the Philippines come summer (unless I go home for a week or two instead).

[waldron1983]

not too bad. i feel bad, in a little over a yr only leaving with $10,600 total money. but thats after some cards paid, 2 vacations, a future vacation cruise paid off, 2 laptops and supporting family to a degree.

[Mountain Crocodile]

I bought property.  The value increased substantially and I managed to save around $400,000 after 8 years.

MC

[Squire]

I'm 24 and have no spouse or dependants, but my main goal with this was to support myself, travel and then save if there's anything left over. I'm not compromising travel goals to save, but I reckon after my first year of a 2m won salary I'll have about £4-5000 in my various accounts. I also paid off a £1000 overdraft

[Lububbles]

I want to buy property this year.
Buy a car.
With my income here, I started a business back home last year.
This year I want to invest more in the business so that I have some start up capital when I go back.
I'm using part of my income to study and acquire skills necessary for the job market

[DWAEDGIMORIGUKBAP]

This is a poignant topic for me.

I'll start off by saying I have now been in Korea for 7.5 years and originally my goal was to save 10k GBP so I could afford to stop working full time for a year and concentrate on some personal projects.

I now have paid off around 5k gbp in credit card and overdraft debts and have half of my goal saved up also.

I know a lot of people are going to LOL at that (especially as during 2009 - 2010 I was clearing 3.4 mil a month after deductions lol,) but first year I had a gf and we ate out a lot and travelled a lot.  Second and third year I drank way too much.  Fourth, fifth and sixth years, I plumbed the murky depths of compulsive gambling.

I quit all that (a few hiccups aside) around  half a year ago and already have 5k gbp (just over 9mil won with current exchange rates) saved up.

The key to it and my advice to other teachers having problems saving?  Open a secure deposit account and send a mil or more a month to it as soon as you get your salary.  You can get ones that don't have an atm card and seeing as banks are open only during work hours, you can't touch it even if you want to.  Plus it earns interest.  Now I didn't do this as I wasn't very well organasized but I have a friend I can trust with anything and he let me pay money into his spare account every month and we made a deal that if I gambled the 800k I kept for living for the month, he could only wire me weekly ammounts of 100k for food and essentials. So I'd still only be spending 1.2mil - luckilly that didn't happen.

Or send it home but to an account that you cut up the card for so you can't use it.  Just put the cash somewhere you cannot get to it and do you know what - even on 600k - 800k a month you'll find that you're still living very well and you'll wonder where the hell all the extra money you spent went (okay during my years where I was a regular frequenter of 'the tables' it was very obvious where it was going, but you catch my drift.)

Finally, I say that even though it took me this long to get my act together, I wouldn't have it any other way and I only now feel like I'm mature enough and truly ready to follow through with my plan anyhow. Plus I wouldn't have met people here who are some of my very best friends.  Now way I'd take it back.

Life is what happens when you sit around making other plans, springs to mind ha ha.

Yeah anyhow, put the money somewhere you can't get to it (preferably earning you interest) and you'll be amazed how soon it builds up. 

A heads up to newbs - you can honestly live very well and not even frugally on 600k a month plus utilities.  15k a day mon - fri (eat Korean, drink Korean, cut out the 5k lattes) and 75k for the weekend.  You wont be clubbing but that 75k will get you a lot of bottles of vino / mack / chongju / even soju - should you be brave enough - whilst hanging with friends outside stores and in parks during the spring and summer and round friend's apts during the colder months.  If you're not into boozing (for posters familliar with dwaedgi's drinking habbits of old - dwaedgi is proud to report he no longer drinks mon to fri and feels good from regular exercise instead) then it's even easier.

[SpaceRook]

I came here for the experience and not the money.  So my only goal was to have positive income over my time here, even if it was only $0.01.  Needless to say, that was pretty easy to achieve. 

I'll be done teaching within the next 2 months.  I got a job with a Korean company that has nothing to do with teaching. 

[naturegirl321]

save as much as possible. It's hard though if you have a family to support.

[Yegob]

I'm quite good about saving money not counting the months of August, January and part of Feb.

that's when I'm on vacation and I hate "saving" while on vacation. (though I am somewhat budget conscious).

since I need to get out of Korea during vacation (it's not a vacation unless you're outside of Korea), that slashes my annual savings by a third.. or more  :o

it seems like a  high price, but a small price to pay for my sanity.

[OogaBooga]

I've been here for a year. I've paid off my credit cards and I'm working on paying off my student loans (I'm paying about $500 a month.)
I have about $3,000 saved up aside from that.

[dannyshaw7]

I'm hoping to save £15,000 or ($25000) by next October. I'm already a third of the way there in the 5 months I have been here.

[erufiku]

Hoping to cash out with 30M at the end of my second year. Just eight months left and I'm only halfway there, but with the pension and bonus coming in at the end of my stay I should be able to pull it off.

[tfuller]

2 years and 9 months, i will have about $23,000 in the bank. Three trips to thailand, one to Taiwan, one to the Philippines, and two to Indonesia and one trip back home that was funded by myself and not included in the contract. Mind you, i have no debts back home at all, so that is probably why i have managed to save so much.

[gtrain83]

I've saved up $3900 over four months so far, planning to send home continuously to help pay off my student loan. My eventual goal is to move in with my significant other back home, though that'll likely be in 2013. I also want to go back to grad school to continue criminology, so I should probably save for that too.

I've made myself promise that I won't travel to another country for a vacation until I see everything I want to see in South Korea first. That said, I'll probably be popping in on Russia, Thailand, Cambodia, or the Philippines come summer (unless I go home for a week or two instead).

Just curious what you future goals are with an advanced degree in Criminology.

[Mezoti97]

I've saved up quite a lot. I originally came here for teaching/work experience, but since I am very frugal and have a frugal lifestyle, it's been relatively easy for me to save up a lot of money. The primary things I've mainly spent my money on since I've been in Korea are utility bills, food, and transportation -- just the necessary stuff. I don't really travel, drink, go shopping, etc., so not doing those things have helped me save quite a bit. Furthermore, the fact that I've been working here for a few years now and the raises I've gotten every year have also helped contribute to my savings. I'm pretty close to reaching the amount I've set as my personal goal, so I'm more or less satisfied with how it's coming along.

[unclefrank]

When I first got here I wanted to save $10,000 USD over the course of the year (not traveling til my contract was over with). I did my budgeting and was quick to realize that I could save waaaay more than this just by being a tad bit frugal with my money. I still drink like a fish, and do whatever I want...but I just think before making purchases. I'll  walk 15 minutes a couple times of week to get free water rather than buy it once a day.

Also one big key to my money savings has been limiting the amount of times I go out drinking. Thankfully there's a lot of chill waygooks in my town who don't like going to Seoul every weekend and would just assume have a house party, or drink in the park, what have you. A night out in Seoul can empty your wallet in no time. I also have stayed away from a lot of western food. My diet's kind of boring with little variation, but its cheap and I've lost a good amount of weight. Anyways, I'm hoping to finish the year with around $14,000USD. It's completely doable.

[Amandada6262000]

For me, I think $10,000 USD over the course of one year is a really good goal. It's something I would never be able to do back home, I have no debt and nothing to really save for.  I probably won't be back in Asia for a while, and while I'm here I would like to do as much traveling as possible. I don't really have any long term goals, or know what I'll be doing eight months from now- so having that 10k will be a nice cushion during those job searching months. Cheers to anyone who saves anything here! I'm really trying to be frugal but over 4 months I've only saved five million won. I feel like I could be doing much better!!