Real Estate

How I Saved £30k for my Housing Deposit in 1 year of Teaching English

Let’s face it, the prospects for getting on the UK housing ladder aren’t great at the moment.

Especially when your bank balance is permanently sitting at around £1500.

As a 24-year old graduate working as a freelance journalist and looking at buying a house in Manchester with my boyfriend, things were not looking positive.

So how did I go from £1500 to having the cash to put down a £30,000 deposit on a £150,000 house in just one year?

Well, like most good things, it started with what you might call a stroke of luck.

A friend told me about her experience teaching English overseas. But she hadn’t been working in a school. She had worked for a wealthy family in Abu Dhabi for a year, in a hybrid role somewhere between Au-Pair and homeschool teacher, and achieved an after-tax salary of £3500/ month. This opened my eyes, and I started looking online to see what I could find out about teaching English abroad.

Of course, there was an enormous variety of options, from schools in China and India or Universities in Korea right through to tutoring in Russia or South America. It does seem that everyone wants to learn English right now.

With a degree in English from the University of Manchester, I wasn’t entirely sure if I had the right qualifications to take on a job like this. Some research online told me that other candidates can take jobs like this with a CELTA, a TEFL, a degree in English, literature, phonetics, modern languages or similar, childcare, education or a PGCE. Childcare qualifications from college can be enough for nanny positions etc. In fact, conversations with industry experts told me that it’s more about personality – being positive, easygoing, flexible, friendly and ready for a challenge.

My friend also told me about the website she had used – www.jobsinchildcare.com – to find a selection of jobs from agencies. I applied to a number of private jobs with large salaries across the Emirates, Russia, China and even the USA.

I was surprised to be contacted by several agencies asking me to interview with them, and before long I had an actual work trial with a Dubai-based family. The salary was £250/ working day, totalling £1250/ week. I flew out for a 5-day trial (during which I stayed in their large family home) and met their two children, aged 5 and 6.

The daily working routine for the nanny job was actually quite enjoyable. Mornings consisted of getting the kids out of bed and down to breakfast, and then supervising them as they brushed their teeth, got changed and prepared their books for school. A driver for the family dropped the kids off at school, giving me free time during the day to relax.

At 4pm I would go with the driver to school to pick up the kids – check they’d collected all their books and say a quick ‘hello’ to their school English teacher before bringing them back home again.

Evenings were dedicated to doing English homework, some free time for board games or playing outside, reading in English and occasionally watching a movie. The kids were mostly on pretty good form so this wasn’t too taxing in general.

Life in Dubai was also more fun than I had expected. There were loads of expats going to restaurants and bars at the weekends. I could even go to the beach and swim in the sea, which made a nice change from Manchester! I discovered I had some friends of friends living out there already and they showed me around town and told me the dos and don’ts of a society which is quite different to the UK.

Saving was relatively easy, all things considered.

The family agreed to pay me £1,250/ week.

From this I was expected to contribute £250 per week towards the accommodation which the family provided for me when I started working full-time: a nearby apartment that was a 10-minute walk from their house. The apartment was modern and fully furnished with a small balcony.

I budgeted another £400 per week for expenses – I wanted to eat well and visit restaurants with my friends, to have nice nights out once in a while. I also bought some new clothes and travelled home twice during the year.

In this way I was able to save £2,600 of my salary per month – working out at £31,000 over the course of the year, and even more than my £25,000 target.

After one year of work I felt ready to return to the UK. I explained my decision to the family and we parted ways. After I left I learnt that they had hired a tutor to continue the children’s English studies part time, as their school schedules were getting busier as they grew up.

My boyfriend and I found a small but beautiful home in the outskirts of Manchester and put down a deposit in cash.

When I stop and think about it, the reality is that when I took this job I simply had no chance of saving for a deposit – salaries are just too low in the UK. But with a year of hard work and stepping outside my comfort zone a little, I had achieved what others can take 10 years to do in this economy. I felt great.

I’d recommend a route like this to those looking to escape the credit crunch. There is another way! So keep your chin up. Even if you aren’t already qualified in one of the above, a TEFL or CELTA can be studied online or part-time, and if you have a shining personality and a sense of adventure, that might just be enough.

Good luck!

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