Money

First of all I would like to say what a fucking cunt Dave and all the MODs are at the ESL cafe. I hope you all die from an incredibly bad herpes infection.

Second of all I think I will post a funny translation of products from Icoop by babble fish every day from now on. Today's is 토종가시오가피 and this product translates as "The toe head family city comes and goes, the blood" sounds good, I think I will order some.

The main reason I packed up the family and moved to Korea was to make money. Back in the states I was one of the few employed. In fact I had two jobs. I worked full time as a Carpenter and part time as a Building Coordinator.

Even though I worked around 60 hours a week, we were not able to save any money. I actually made between 3,500-4,200 dollars per month, had health insurance but still could not save a fucking dime.

The government took about 1/3 of my check each month, I had to pay rent, car insurance, for gas, food, etc. Anything that was left from my check went to our credit card bills, which at that time had grown to over 10K from periods of time when I was unemployed (as a union carpenter after a job was finished, so was I). My back was constantly in pain, I began suffering from carpel tunnel syndrome, my job was fucking dangerous, and I was stressed out of my mind.

As a carpenter I got a half hour lunch, that did not count towards my work hour, so I had to work from 6am to 3:30pm. My boss expected me to be at the job site about 15-30 minutes early each day. I would wake up at about 4:50am just to have enough time to take a shit, grab some breakfast and head out while eating.

Living in the ROK, I don't have to pay rent, insurance, gas, etc. My main bills are food and for heat. My wife, who could not get/keep a job to save her life in the US is working too. I only have to actual "work" at the most 4 hours a day. About 100,000 won(about $100) is taken from my check each month for pension and insurance. I have a 1 hour lunch break, which counts towards my 8 hour day. I dont have to be at work until 8:30 and since I dont have class until after 9am, its OK if I am a little late. I am not suffering from back pain all the time, I am less stressed, I have more free time, I actually make less money ( about $2,000 per month), but it goes much further.

Each month, even though we spend my entire paycheck we are able to save my wife's entire paycheck (also about $2,000) each month. At the end of the year, with our pension, deposit (900,000 won each), bonuses (entire months salary each) all other things remaining the same, we will walk away with around $30,000(US) in savings. There was no way I could save that much back in the US.

We go to Seoul almost every other weekend, even though we have 5 mouths to feed (we brought my sister in law to watch/home school our kids) we have money to spend, and frankly our quality of life is better than that in the US. In the US we might have gone out to eat once maybe every other month, but here almost every week.

There are a lot of shitty things about living in Korea, but it is a great place for us right now. We don't want to spend the rest of our lives here of course, but we might spend another year here.
If we can do the same for second year, and leave with about $60,000 that should be enough to achive out goal of opening a restaurant somewhere like Argentina or Spain. We want to live where it doesn't get so fucking cold in the winter!