Where could a person live?

[Ghost]

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[gnosis]

TEFL does have short-term advantages, but long-term, you are just kind of kicking the can down the road. There isn't really a future in it, and there is a lot of age discrimination in the industry, so even if you can do it well in your twenties and thirties, what are you going to do when you get older? Some teachers transition from Asia to the middle east and others work to get into proper international schools.

But isn't this true of almost everything, especially given how precarious job security is these days?

You are right, but what I meant to imply is that an online endeavor has the potential to get better with time. It is hard starting out, but in the future you can do better than you are doing now.

TEFL in Asia is the opposite. It is easy to make money in the beginning, but you are never really going to do much better. Yes, I know you can get paid more with time, I got pay bumps too, but you are never going to do substantially better. And when you get older, you will be passed over in favor of young, energetic types.

You are essentially treading water because the jobs never pay enough for you to achieve meaningful savings. This is all well and good when you are young and vigorous, but eventually you are going to have problems.

[Ghost]

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[gnosis]

I'm not sure what you consider good savings, but in China I can save about $10K a year. (I live frugally also, which helps.) Ideally, you'll need to hustle a bit, get some contacts and private students, moonlight on the side. The age limit - ostensibly - is about 55 or 60, although there are plenty of exceptions.

$10K a year sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. The money goes fast. The hard-coded age limit might be 55 or 60 but age discrimination kicks in much earlier for many jobs. The other aspect to consider is that Asian TEFL is kind of like digging ditches, you peak early in life and will not have the stamina you have now when you are older.

I agree one wouldn't want to do solely English teaching for all those years, though. Fortunately, TEFLing abroad makes is fairly easy to open up some other avenues of work and income: writing, photography, consulting, recruiting, etc.

Technically it does, but how many TEFL teachers actually do any of those things? You will probably just think to yourself that you have your teaching to fall back on and never make a serious effort. Even if you put a little energy into side projects, you will probably always hold back.

Then, when you start to age and begin to understand the nature of the TEFL trap, what will you do?