“I'm struggling financially, it's getting harder.”

We love our jobs; we care for our students, we're passionate about teaching but is it enough? Financially things feel tougher than ever; many of us are struggling to get to the end of the month, and on top of that, Christmas is coming. Many TEFLers are in trouble. What can we do?

The TEFLer is a fortnightly companion for language teachers, written by Simon Pearlman and brought to you by Active Language Teacher Training www.activelanguage.net?

TEFLing is rarely well paid and we accept that. Until recently, most of us have received a living wage, meaning that we can live reasonably well on what we earn but there's never been much wiggle room, very few of us save at all. But now things feel tougher than ever. Why is that? Why do we feel poorer than ever?

It seems like there are several factors combining which is making things tougher than ever. The two big ones are the the increase in the cost of living and second is the squeeze on teaching hours language schools can offer. The first is a generalised problem affecting many parts of the world, the second is more localised and differs from country to country.

In parts of Spain, for example, the triple threat of falling birth rate, teenagers getting qualifications younger and adults choosing alternatives to language schools, means fewer students and fewer hours. The stable 24 hour teaching week working seems to have disappeared. Instead of working from about 4pm until 10pm Monday to Thursday, we’re often finished by 8 instead. While the hours are a little more sociable, pay packets are being affected. In this fairly common scenario we're down 8 hours a week, a third of previous hours and this is of course reflected in salaries.

The famous cost of living crisis seems to roll on and on with some basic items seeming to cost about double comparing to a few years ago. And added to this, pay seems largely to be the same as it was before and hadn't kept up with the cost of living.

All this means that many of us are struggling to get to the end of the month and many of us are dipping into savings or resorting to credit cards to make ends meet. It's a rather depressing situation and leaves many teachers feeling frustrated and insecure.?

Acceptance and action

We need to accept that the situation is as it is and we need to make a plan. We are not impotent in this situation, despite the frustration we might feel, and we need to make things happen. What are our choices? What can we do??

Firstly we need to assess quite how difficult the situation is for us on an individual basis, everyone's situation is different even though?our income might be similar. Some of us spend very little and seem to be able to manage on whatever they've got, others don't. How short are we at the end of the month? Are we dipping into savings or relying on credit? Do we have a plan to make that money back somewhere? How worried are we?

How much do we need?

Maybe it's time to shift from the moderately comfortable place of being full-time employees to something different. This could look and feel different for each of us but there are certain fundamental questions we need to consider. The first two questions are “How much do we need?” and “How much do we want?” We need to know these numbers to be able to think realistically about our next steps and to create some sort of plan over the short, medium and maybe even longer term. We need to know how much we spend a month and ideally on what, we need to budget.

We also need to think about the cycle of the year and times of greater or lesser income. If we're teaching in a language school for 9 months a year, what's the summer plan? Do we need to plan for even tighter months then or is it a time when we make more money, maybe teaching on summer courses around the world?

My Name Ltd

In some ways we need to think of ourselves as businesses and, just like any business, when we're not making enough money we have two levers; decrease spending and/or increase income. Simple.

Have a look through bank statements and check spending. We normally have quite a lot we could cut back on. For example, check out any subscriptions, some of us have lots without even realising and 5€ or 10€ a month here and there can mean hundreds of euros a year. And then there's the weekly shop. The price of so much seems to have shot up recently, how much is our weekly spend? This is one example of how we can reduce costs, we can all be more aware of these things. It can be cleansing and even enjoyable to make these changes and it will make a difference.

And, of course, we need to think about making more money, about increasing our income

Right here, right now…? and building for the future?

We might well be feeling the pinch now and need to act quickly. Teaching English is full of potential and there are huge numbers of people who need or want our help. There are always opportunities, both near and far.?

Traditionally teachers topped up income by teaching privately in someone's home or elsewhere and this is no different now, it can be local in-person classes or, of course, online too. The next question is probably “How can we find students?”

The old-school local approach is to put up posters in strategic places; near schools, universities, etc. (do be mindful of local law regarding this) and then wait for people to get in touch. Then, often, once we've got a few students, they'll tell their friends and hopefully quickly, we're full up and feeling more financially comfortable.

Whether we’re working locally or online, we also need to think about pricing. There are two ways to do this, either to find out what the going rate is locally or to think about how much you need to earn and divide that by the hours you're prepared to work and you'll have your price.?

And on to online teaching... The landscape here has changed massively over the last few years, there are lots of ways to increase your income teaching online, there is huge potential here. There are essentially three ways to go about this; working for online schools, placing teaching profile on online platforms or offering teaching independently. There are, as always, pros and cons to each option. For example, teaching for an online schools can give us regular hours, an element of security and students provided for us, but it's often poorly paid. Platforms allow us to set our own prices but take a not insignificant commission. Teaching independently gives us the potential for more money per hour but it can be more difficult to find students. In both independent and platform teaching we would be wise to think about what makes us stand out, what we're good at and who we'd like to work with; we need to consider our niche.

A recent episode of the excellent TESOL Pop podcast by Laura Wilkes, digs deeper into the idea of being a “teacherpreneur” and gives great advice and some useful links. Its only 15 minutes and could be just the thing.

https://tesolpop.com/listen-tesolpop-podcast/s10e8-from-teacher-to-teacherpreneur-with-shelynn-riel?

Whether you're thinking of going online or staying local, there's nothing to stop you getting started today. Go for it!

Do you have any advice or experiences to share? Please comment below to help other teachers.

Of course, the most pressing thing is here and now but we also need to look longer towards our medium and longer term.

We might ask ourselves bigger questions about what we want out of life, where we want to live, the work we want to do and how much we need or want to earn. If we're not earning enough, something has got to change, let's take control of it ourselves.

If you'd like to think more about how to shift into how to make your teaching really work for you financially, then I recommend checking out Rachael Roberts https://earnlearnthriveinelt.com/ and her social media. Rachael has huge amounts of experience both in teaching and in helping teachers develop their business ideas.

We also all need to think about how the money we do have can work better for us. Nicola Prentis, at https://chilledinvestor.com/ is another person who really understands our predicament and helps teachers make the most of our money.?

Life is financially tougher than ever for teachers and we do have some big questions to ask ourselves. We also are in a good place to make it work. Can we do it? Yes, we can!

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The TEFLer is brought to you by Active Language Teacher Training, www.activelanguage.net We offer Trinity DipTESOL, CertTESOL and Teaching Young Learners courses. Check out our website or contact us by email at [email protected]?

Wishing you the very best and happy TEFLing!