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!

Icoop

I had my co-teacher help me sign up for a website called Icoop. It is a online grocery store here in the ROK that sells organic local products and offers free home delivery.

The site is all in Korean, but they have pics of the products, and I either use a dictionary or babble fish to translate what the items are that I am buying. Although babble fish sometimes gives me some pretty weird translations. For example I wanted to know what this product was, and Babble fish told me "The mouse eye which stir-fries conga base". While that was amusing, it was not particularly helpful. One of them was "burning nose powder", another was "Seven music truths?", but usually I can at least get the gist of the product.

There are two prices for everything on the site, if you just get a normal enrollment, the price you see is what you pay, if you get a paid membership(13,000 won a month) you get 20% off. There is also a deposited of 30,000won which you get back whenever you quit the service. With a few exceptions, the prices as listed are about the same, or a little higher than the grocery stores in my town. With the 20% off all the prices are cheaper than what I have been paying.

We have been buying 5 Kilogram boxes of Asian pears, and on the website they are 13,500 won regular, I pay 11,600 with my discount, and we have been paying around 13,000+ at the store in town. My kids go through 5 kilograms of apples every 2-3 days and we have been paying 17,800 for a box (usually they have 3 kilo boxes for around 12,000), on the website they are 20,500 and I pay 16,200.

I am saving at least 1,000 won on pretty much everything I buy, and feeding 5 people it adds up. After buying 13 products it makes it worth it I figure.