buffalofan wrote:
> Having been to Windhoek, I don't think it scores very high on the
> "things to entertain you" criteria from the OP.
>
> Johannesburg expats all live in dreary gated communities located in equally
> dreary suburbs full of depressing strip malls. Doesn't sound like the OP
> wants this.
>
> Cape Town is still the best bet, despite the crap salaries. Unless perhaps
> you intend to live in Mitchell's Plain or the area near the airport, it is
> relatively safe. I would also take any comments from South African (white)
> expats with a huge grain of salt, some of them are severely deluded and
> still bitter that it isn't 1993 anymore.

Dreary and depressing? Maybe your last trip was in the 90s...

The suburbs expat live in are beautiful spacious houses, nice pools, green huge backyards. The suburbs are equally pleasant with parks with people havinf picnics with their kids and dogs, people going for runs, etc. There are tons of community events happening all the time from major concerts, plays, cinema, and sporting events. Weekends have incredible markets with the best food, wine and live music. Joburg has the best climate in the world with blue skies over 300 days a year. If that doesn’t define “pleasant”, I’m not sure what does...

@Heliotrope

4200 before or after taxes? What’s the max step you can come in on?

PsyGuy wrote:
> @snowphantom
>
> The average rate of global inflation from 2014 to present is 3.1%
> (2015=2.75%, 2016=2.75%, 2017=3.2%, 2018=3.78%), regardless the growth of
> IE has not been linear across all tiers and all salary points, theres
> simply much more growth below the mean, thats pulling don the average.
> Though I should start reporting the average is 31K/yr, since its now over
> that.

You clearly don't understand how numbers or research work, specifically compound interest. Even if we use your first hit lazy google research stats, 30K @3.1% compounded over 5 years is $34,957, not $31,000.

>
> Do your own research, I have my data, if you have counter data wheres your research and citations.

Again, I challenged you on how you came up with this data (which is clearly out of your a$$), not the other way around. Nice feeble try at deflection though.

So I guess we can now conclude that PsyGuy again should not be relied on as a reliable source of accurate information. Next time, stop trying to state your opinions as facts.

Apologies to the OP for derailing this thread but he needs to be kept in check.

PsyGuy wrote:
> @snowphantom
>
> The average rate of global inflation from 2014 to present is 3.1%
> (2015=2.75%, 2016=2.75%, 2017=3.2%, 2018=3.78%), regardless the growth of
> IE has not been linear across all tiers and all salary points, theres
> simply much more growth below the mean, thats pulling don the average.
> Though I should start reporting the average is 31K/yr, since its now over
> that.

Again, no cites to back up your "alternative facts"? You have the same response whenever anyone challenges you and you choose to ignore questions. Even my 6th grades know the difference between and opinion and fact and how to present sound arguments with research.

You are more like Trump living in your pseudo reality and try to pretend you are an expert in everything.

PsyGuy wrote:
> @snowphantom
>
> You dont know what an average is, its not half makes under 30K and half
> makes more than 30K, the unit of measure isnt people, its coin. We already
> settled this several years ago, and again several years before that, its a
> very pervasive statistic. Your error is there are a lot of ISs, its not
> just the 800 or so ISs repped by the premium agencies. The third tier and
> lower third tier particularly as well as regions like the LCSA push the
> average down.

Great, since you are the "expert" on this data, care to cite a source? Or care to explain how you surveyed the thousands of schools not listed on SA or ISS for their average salary? Or explain what your methodology was for classifying these as international schools? Or care to explain that how global inflation doesn't affect these schools and salaries haven't adjusted by the global inflation rate of 3.5% over the last 5 years which would be now nearly 34K since you last stated this statistic in 2014?

PsyGuy wrote:
> The
> average salary in IE (globally) is about USD$30K/yr, and thats average and
> your spouse again isnt around the average they are below the average


You love to throw around this number but this seems extremely low. I challenge you to share actual data to backup this claim. That would require half IE to make less than 30K and half to make more. Care to provide relevant statistics to this claim? I know of no international school that pays less than 30K per year for a teacher, let alone half of the schools in the world (or roughly half the number of international teachers).

@Heliotrope Well, I normally side with anyone who disagrees with Psyguy, I'm not sure how you possibly came up with your list of "tier 1" schools. I would like to see your definition cause all of these below are tier 2 or below and you left many tier 1s on your list.

Non tier 1 schools on your list: Angola, Argentina, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Chile, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ghana, Israel, Malaysia (the other one), Myanamar (ha!), Italy, Pakistan (double ha!), Philippines (the other one), Senegal, Switzerland (only 2), Taiwan (other one), Venezuela, Vietnam (only 2).

> HOLY SMOKES! Given I'm seeing people on here cite salaries of ~$30-40K, I didn't
> think that level of savings was doable, especially since many cite the benefits of IT
> as including convenience of travel. If you started at age 26 with $400/month invested
> at 11% return, you'd have $2MM by age 62. That'd be nice. But saving $20K annually,
> starting at age 26 at a more conservative estimate of 8% return, would make you a
> poor in 20 years, and worth $5MM by the time you're Medicare eligible. Are IS
> teachers, broadly speaking, actually pulling this off? Or is Caesar the exception to
> the trend?

Saving 20K a year is fairly easy as long as you are at a top tier school. As a teaching couple with kids, we save about 55K a year without much trouble and take 3 big trips a year. However, we have been overseas for 20 years so if you are just starting out and don't have Masters, etc, it may be more challenging.

@psyguy There are many inaccuracies about your posts but I'll address this one: "Bond-based ETFs don't pay dividends, you just sell them and that's how you realize your return" You are plain wrong here. They do. I've owned them for years and I get a dividend payment each month for the last 10 years through my brokerage account which I manage. You can look up any bond fund (including ETFs) on Morningstar, Vanguard or Yahoo for example and see their "distributions" which for bond funds are paid monthly. Stock ETFS are usually paid out quarterly. The difference between bond ETFs and bonds is that yes bond prices fluctuate and long-term bond prices can go down if interest rates go up but as long as you hold the bond fund to it's yield to maturity, your investments do not lose money. They will at the very least, hold up to inflation rates.

The other inaccuracy of your post is suggesting that @cms989 is that just because you open a brokerage account, you are careless and reckless (akin to Wolf of Wallstreet). DIY investors are a very large and growing community of responsible and frugal investors that are fed up with the financial industry taking advantage of people with high fees or bad investment advice. I pay less than 0.25 fees (MER) on all my investments and spend less than 30 minutes a year making any transactions. I do not buy and sell at the end of the market day. I buy and hold and rebalance a couple times a year ensuring I have an percentage of fixed income to roughly by age (bond ETFs) and stocks ETFs. DIY takes a bit of research initially but I believe, pays off in the long run.

My wife and I hold no physical real-estate (aside from a small portion of real estate funds in our portfolio) maintain a DIY investment fund, contribute regularly and should be able to retire in our early 50s. You can pay someone a small amount to manage your portfolio if you are not comfortable doing the DIY approach but ensure they are not financial managers and accept fee-based amounts. Also, Vanguard has tons of low-cost funds that they will do for you.

@Psyguy

Actually, that's the exact definition of a anecdotal logical fallacy which is "using personal experiences as an isolated example to make general claims". You employ Trumpish logical fallacies in your arguments like when he says "it's freezing and snowing in New York, there is no such thing as Global Warming"

You made a claim that " ITs mostly drink bottled water and their housing also have storage tanks.." based on your one isolated experience to make it appear as a true statement or fact. You do this over and over in threads and its exhausting.

Yes you can buy bottled water for cheap (now) but there simply won't be any water left in grocery stores once the taps are turned off. I've seen water turned off for 2 days in SA and every store is out of bottled water so you'll need to queue up like everyone else for your allotted 20L of water each day.

@psyguy "The ISs worth working at have water storage systems. As for ITs they mostly drink bottled water anyway and their housing also have water storage tanks and vacuum flask water delivered. The problem isnt a problem if you have coin."

So from your own personal travel experience, you deduce that all ITs drink bottled water and all their housing has water tanks just from your own experience or did you do a survey of all ITs in the area to confirm this claim? A standard logical fallacy at its finest.

Everyone in Cape Town is limited to 50 L per person per day and there is heavy pressure put on everyone to conform to this. This means that showers are limited to a couple minutes and many homes recycle their grey water or some homes may have rain collection tanks if you are lucky. Anyone going over this limit is fined huge amounts or if caught irrigating their lawns, washing their cars, etc. Most people, including expats normally drink tap water (it is extremely clean and safe). The crisis is forcing everyone to be much more environmentally aware. Once taps are turned off in May, it will be extreme chaos where everyone needs to queue up for water each day. Expats will not be immune to this.

Psyguy likes to respond to all threads but has no clue..

Most (top) international schools do offer retirement plans where they generally match between 5-17% of employee contribution. This generally isn't enough to fully retire on so we usually save and invest one full salary each year (we are an experienced teaching couple with kids) in addition to this in vanguard index fund ETFs and should comfortably retire by the time I am 55 with a nest egg of 1.5 million to 2.5 million depending on rate of return and continued savings. I can't say the same for Americans/Canadians back home. I see many of my friends and relatives with very little of a nest egg saved up (CPP and social security will not pick up the slack). So yes, international teaching can be worth it from a financial perspective. We find the advantage of a relatively low cost of living combined with the fact that schools generally pay for housing to allow for a high savings rate.

We have a Vanguard account in addition to an offshore brokerage account and were able to do this as expats although you need to put in a US residence. Don't forget that capital gains are subject to tax from the US government unless they are protected in a 401K/ROTH IRA, etc.

You could easily save that at ISKL as long as you have a Masters and 10+ years. We used to work there and saved a salary (plus EPF) each year. So around 40-50,000 USD + EPF but that was a few years ago when the ringgit was stronger. You could get a 4 bedroom house in Ampang and travel quite a bit as well.

I'll just put this here and walk away: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorris ... 7284e270e3