Special edition of my monthly finance review as it has been 2 years since I started keeping records of my net worth 😎
I thought about going with a more click-baity title like “You’d be amazed at how I saved $100k in 2 years!”, but I do believe honesty is the best policy in this case.
Tl;dr go where the jobs are and take time to think about what really makes you happy.
For an objective view of how I stack up, check out this post by Freedom35 that lists various net worths by age and year.
Don’t read this blog post as a guide of any sort, I’m only qualified to teach math (and biology if bribed). This is a reflection on the opportunities I found or stumbled into, the lessons I learned, and where I’m gonna go from here.
Being able to go where the jobs are.
My hometown has a big large enormous gigantic surplus of teachers, and the estimate for getting a full-time job in a public or reputable private school is somewhere between 5 to 8 years. Unless you were also decent at French, which je suis pas. Luckily, my university was known for hosting the largest international teaching fair in Canada so you bet I took advantage of it.
I probably did not have to move to another continent and could have settled for moving a few provinces over but in for a penny, in for a British Pound. The stars aligned in such a way that I had relatively little responsibilities tying me down in Canada so I figured, why not.
Your life circumstances won’t be the same as mine, but if you are able to move countries with relative ease, I encourage you to consider it. Somewhere in the world, your particular skillset (or fluency with English) is a valued commodity.
Make sure to live like the locals though, a Western lifestyle will have Western costs.
Buying happiness for cheap
The cheapest happiness I can not buy is actually just financial security. Losing one’s income or job has got to be one of the top stressors out there, but it ceased to be one the moment I got a 6-month emergency fund. It’s enabled me to make career decisions based on good judgement instead of a need to ensure I can still afford rent, leave work at work, and spending the rest of my time free to build strong relationships.
However, money can totally buy happiness and anyone who says otherwise is a lying liar. Depending on how you choose to measure happiness though, you can either spend a little or a lot.
The happiest people I’ve met are those who spend the time to build strong relationships with friends or family. Either that’s the way to live happily or it’s a massive coincidence across the 18 countries I’ve been to.
I teach children of incredible wealth whose parents rarely spend time with them, yet will spend a lot of money on their education and material goods. These are not happy, well-adjusted kids. Think about that when you attempt to make up for loneliness with shiny stuff.
Accidentally quitting social media
When I first came to China my VPN didn’t quite work right so I lost all access to Facebook and Instagram. After the first month or so I got used to not using them and just…continued to not use them 😂
I’ve got nothing to compare myself to or have any idea what’s popular so I remain blissfully frugal. I do keep the messaging apps but no endlessly scrolling past posts and feeling jealous of other people.
An incidental side-effect is that since I don’t see other people’s posts I also rarely post any of my own, and thus don’t care how I present myself online, which translates to giving less fucks in real life.
It’s very freeing.
Where to go from here
Other than continue to live what I feel is a decently good life, I have no flipping clue lol. Prior to crossing $100k I put off making a decision thinking “oh I don’t have enough money yet” but that’s no longer a valid excuse. I still don’t quite feel like I have enough saved up but it’s now become glaringly obvious that I don’t really know what I want to do with the next 5 years of my life either.
Feel free to post suggestions of what you’d do if you had $120k net worth, $35k of which is in cash and I’ll take it into consideration 🙂