Earning money while living abroad.

Once we decided to just start living abroad several things immediately became more relevant.  We are not rich and in any case, fifty is a relatively young age for complete retirement.  What if we were incorrect in our budget expectations?  What if our savings did not last?  What if the economy continues to do things no one seems to expect?

To add to the issue is the fact that it is complicated at best, almost impossible in other countries to obtain a work visa.  General rule: start the visa process at the embassy or consulate nearest you while in the US.  Retirement residency is available many places but generally requires an investment within a country or that you have a certain amount of proven income, the calculation of which varies from country to country and from bureaucrat to bureaucrat.  In some cases, this amount is expected to grow annually by a given percentage.  You can’t just go plop yourself down in another country and do as you wish; well like everything else that isn’t totally true either but it’s best to be legal.

It turns out that you can earn money while on any type of visa in most countries; you just can’t hold a job in that country that could be filled by a citizen.  Confused?  Don’t be.  One way to do this is to contract your services on the internet and be paid into your account in the US.  This way you are not taking jobs from the local population which is the main concern anyway.  There are many ways to earn money on the internet even if you aren’t an expert Ebay trader or specialize in computer programming.

Another way to earn money abroad is to teach English.  There is a seemingly endless market for English teachers all over the world and teaching English is a skill that travels well.  We had already taken the first steps towards having this internationally marketable skill set by becoming certified TEFL teachers.  A work visa to teach English is fairly easy to obtain in many countries except in the EU which is where we wish to spend quite a bit of time.  EU regulations state that if an EU citizen can perform the job, no work visa will be granted to a non-EU citizen and the EU includes those damned Brits who speak a language tolerably close enough to English that they can obtain employment as teachers.  So we needed something else.

One day, while reading International Living, we came across an article from a man who calls himself and his company “The Barefoot Consultant” and who claims to be able to teach anybody how to find ways to earn money by contracting services over the internet.  We were intrigued and signed one of us up.  Winton Churchill (that is really his name) really did provide a lot of information and recommendations, geared directly at people who have never operated in this type of environment before.  If you stay with his program he will walk you through the entire process although you can work at your own speed if you wish.  

Through this process we became aware of the multitude of internet based contract work websites beginning with the largest, multi-purpose site; Elance.  The work available is incredible in volume if not in reimbursement but there is a trick to all of this.  Once you are established, usually by working cheaply, you will generate demand for your quality services and many times, the employer will not wish to return to the Elance auction process and pay a commission which will allow you to gradually raise your prices over time.  The sheer volume and types of projects out for bid astounded us and in addition, we discovered quite a number of additional websites, some of which specialize in certain work categories like creative writing, copy writing, computer programming and translation.

One word of caution, we found that when we started to look at work that could be obtained and managed over the internet we got tons of email advertising “Work from home and make $$$$ per hour on your computer”.  The vast majority of this is scam stuff offering for you to take surveys for a penny a piece or solicit all your friends and acquaintances for pyramid type schemes.  Being new to the whole concept of working on-line we actually read through a lot of it, and even tried a few things that were offered.  In every case it was absolute garbage.

You can make money through a large number of legitimate websites by writing articles, short stories or books, proofreading or editing books and academic papers, selling your photographs, blogging, designing web sites, providing artwork; you get the idea.  It’s endless.  Better yet, for us, we have a modest budget and any money we make simply makes our savings last that much longer.  We have watched our daughter, in her spare time; take this concept to some of the more specialized websites and starting with ghost writing work herself into an ebook deal.  She now can support herself wherever she is in the world as long as she has access to the internet periodically.  Neat huh?

As for us, we are just beginning to fully explore the processes so stay tuned.  A short list of sites that we have researched and are very reputable is provided below to get you started if you are interested.  The rest is up to you.

Elance.com

Freelancer.com

Odesk.com

The TEFL Experience

We have both been away from a structured educational system for many, many years.  Starting formal classes Monday morning was a mixed bag of emotions: some excitement, tempered by some apprehension and a lot of curiosity.  Being naturally early risers, we had plenty of time to kill.  We discovered that the one coffee shop that we were aware of near the school did not open its doors ‘til after the owner dropped his daughter off at school, sometime between nine and nine thirty, too late for a quick cup before class.  We were stuck with Nescafe.

On day one of the TEFL course we were given course books with detailed narrative about the requirements and expectations, essentially a book length syllabus.  If you are in a university program this course is worth 6 hours of graduate level credit.  Can you imagine 6 hours of graduate level classes, homework, projects and exams, plus student teaching in just 4 weeks?  The schedule was grueling to say the least, and by the end of the first day we knew it was going to be a challenge.

Our schedule essentially went from nine in the morning until 9 in the evening with one coffee break and two meal breaks.  Each individual had different times for teaching and class prep but if you were not teaching in the evening you would be evaluating the other students or prepping for your next class, so there really was almost no “down time”.  We had four instructors and they all made it clear that they were there to teach but that we had to do the work and be very self-directed, there would be no hand holding on this course!  Furthermore, you could not expect to pass just because you had paid a lot of money to be there.  You either passed based solely upon your own merit, or you didn’t.

The first week started out with a full schedule of classes during the day and with our evenings spent practicing our evaluation techniques while our instructors taught English classes to native Spanish speaking students.   Our DOS (Dorector of Studies) Dylan had many years of experience and is one of the best teachers we have had the pleasure of observing. The TEFL program is designed to put you in front of students, teaching, as soon as possible and to have you teach at each of five levels of classes offered from Beginners to Upper Intermediate.   Each class had two “trainee” teachers assigned, one for the first hour and one for the second.  The lessons were dovetailed to fit together and the two teachers were expected to work on the lesson prep together.  Because they put you in front of students so quickly, at times you will not yet have had all the classes that you need in order to know how to prepare a particular lesson or the classroom management tools you will use as a teacher, but ready or not, you teach.

The instructors are aware of this and so in your first teaching prep they are much more involved and give lots of assistance and advice, then they purposefully give less and less assistance with each subsequent lesson.  During the day when we were not teaching or prepping to teach, our days were filled with classes on teaching methodology, linguistics, phonology, classroom management, student assessment and a myriad of other related topics.  We were expected to complete three individual term projects simultaneously as well. 

The first project was a Foreign Language Journal.  During that first week we had three classes in the Hungarian language taught by a professor who never used a single word of English.  We had to evaluate how he taught and how we learned.  Evaluation sheets and a project paper were due the second week of class.  Our second project was to create at least two sets of materials for classes that we taught that could be scaled up or down depending on the level of the class being taught and used to illustrate at least two different possible lesson points.  The materials themselves and the papers written about each set describing the lesson points and scalebility were due in week three. 

The most difficult project was referred to as the ISP or Individual Student Project.  This consisted of securing a student from one of the classes and setting three outside of class times to meet with them.  We were required to find or design testing materials to test their reading, writing, listening and speaking skill sets; evaluate the results of each test and identify problem areas that could be facilitated with a private lesson.  We then had to design the lesson plan and all materials to be used, teach the lesson as a one-on-one tutoring session and write up an evaluation of the entire process, including a critique of our student’s performance and our own in all areas and suggest a future study program for the student.  The expectation was that this project would require around sixty pages to complete including all materials used, and would be turned in no later than the beginning of week four.

Needless to say, the very first weekend of the course was the only one we had any significant time away from homework and projects.  We took a day and went to visit the Alhambra, the most visited historic site in Spain, because we could not imagine being in Granada and not being able to see it.  So much for thinking that we could get to know the city!  The course was extremely demanding and our time was very focused on completing projects, teaching classes, and preparing for the final exams in Phonology, Grammar and Teaching Methodology. 

Many nights were spent with several students gathered in the salon or around the dining table as we worked on our projects, prepared for class or studied for exams.  This program should really be taught in a five week course and the instructors all agreed that four weeks is just too short a time to be able to accomplish everything required.  The issue is: people can find a way to take four weeks to do an international course but the threshold stops at that point; they just can’t sell a five week course, so they work with what they have. 

The fourth and final week began with exams and ended with course evaluations and reviews of our work with grades on Thursday.  There was time scheduled for a chance to retake of any test that was not passed on the original try.  Fortunately for us, we both passed them the first time through so it gave us a small window of time to see a bit more of the city for a couple of hours.

We spent Thursday night with our entire group going to dinner and a Flamenco show.  It was a wonderful evening in the Albaizyn at the restaurant Zoraya, and we all ended up at Hannigans of course.  There was good food, good Flamenco, lots of drinking and great company.

Friday morning there were scheduled a few follow up sessions and then a graduation ceremony with homemade Paella and Sangria.  We decided to skip the ceremony in order to take advantage of our last chance to visit the Nazrid Palaces at the Alhambra.  This was a justified trade-off in our opinion (sorry fellow trainees!). 

Friday evening we picked up our diplomas, had our “room check” to be sure that we were leaving our room in the same condition that we found it in, and then went out with all our fellow students to catch a few final drinks together.    We had lived, worked, studied and played with these people for a month and we knew we were going to miss all of them. 

Dylan has since written a great e-book, A Short Guide to TEFL if you are really interested in understanding the TEFL world. (Shameless plug for a good friend!)