this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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Naive in the sense that it doesn't adequately account for the situation of many people. Not everyone has the circumstances where they can do this. I can't help but feel there's some survivorship bias influencing your position.
I'm curious, though, if you're up to illustrating (if not, totally fine): You are a single mother of two sons, ages 7 and 8, living in Generic State, USA. You have a high school degree and no post-secondary education. You have limited support, solely in the form of limited childcare, from family/the wider community. You make about $1600.00 USD per month, after taxes, working 50 hours a week at a physical workplace. You're finding yourself with $10 left at the end of each month, after all legitimately necessary expenses (rent, food, basic utilities) are paid for. Let's make it easy and say you have no debt.
What are you doing, and where are you going, if following your advice? It should be noted these circumstances are actually quite a bit better than other folks in the U.S. To be clear, I don't think this is a gotcha, nor is it intended to be - I just want to see your approach here.
Edit: Monthly wage should be after taxes, not before, and changed $900 to $1600 (based roughly on monthly takehome pay at Ohio's minimum wage rate, and I calculated for 1 pay period rather than 2 per month)
"Naive in the sense that it doesn't adequately account for the situation of many people."
this is not my naivety but projection your own: another example of you not believing in something you have no experience in.
as I've made note of: families can travel, disabled people can travel, minorities of all walks of life can travel, what are these circumstances you're imagining?
some other theoretical esoteric scenario?
"..if following your advice"
Don't worry, this is definitely not a gotcha, I have hired this person before.
TLDR: get tefl certificate, get job, buy plane tickets, sell stuff.
details below.
if we imagine that your troubled lady can only save 0.6% of her income, with zero savings, possessions, skills, experience, or motivation to leave the status quo but is forced to out of necessity, it could take them up to half a year to become financially independent the easiest and stablest way that I know the ins and outs of.
in real life, the destitute people I know got the certificate, sold everything and started teaching online or abroad in under a month, the abroad ones paid off $2,000 of their debt a month in the states within a few months while living very comfortably,, and kept traveling and saving money.
but for the make-believe person:
right now, a full internationally accredited TEFL certificate for life is $30.
40 hour course, works out to about 8 hours of tests.
I've never seen anyone take longer than 12 hours with this course, but if we pretend they took the full amount of time with the limitation of $10 extra a month and 15 minutes of free time a day, she can either charge the course to a credit card and pay off the course and finish the course at the same time, or save up for 3 months until she has $30, then take the course and add on another 2 months.
I knew someone with zero savings, kids, and "literally no free time", and they got the certification (which was 40 at the time, not 30 like it is now) and completed this course in a week and a half.
once you have that certificate, Google TEFL teaching apps and TEFL teaching platforms, there are dozens of places you can teach online with only a phone or a laptop if you have one, with the TEFL certificate she's making $20 an hour pretty easily, If she's terrible at technology and teaching and everything, that she's making $12 an hour.
to get to the highest paying jobs in Asia, we'll assume she'll need the most expensive ticket, $300 per person.
at the lowest pay, she'll need to work about 75 hours to make that amount of money to relocate her family, subtracting the costs of what she's going to sell before she leaves and any assets she has, the sale of which which are probably enough to cover the entire cost.
so she works 1 hour a day, 2 months later she has enough to leave.
half an hour a day, 4 months later she has enough to leave the states with her kids.
The lady with two kids I mentioned was in Thailand maybe 3 weeks later, their international schools are great for expats.
another single mom I know just stayed in the states and kept teaching online, because at $20 an hour you're making you're making closer to $4,000 a month if you work 50 hours a week.
she makes closer to $30 an hour now, It's been a few years.