5 Ways YOU Can Finance Your Year Overseas!

Hi,

I'm Xiongmao and I spent most of 2013 living overseas.

I quit my job and spent 4 months living in China, followed by 6 months in Thailand.
In those 10 months I:

• Experienced an Earthquake.
• Learned to read and speak Chinese.
• Dated over 40 Asian women from 6 different countries.
• Did some great sightseeing in Malaysia.
• Partied hard in Bangkok and Pattaya!

When I ask why other guys don't do what I did, the main problem is usually down to MONEY.
So if you want to travel abroad for a year or more, here's 5 ways of financing it...

1. Build a Warchest of Cash

I dated my first Asian woman back in 2009. Back then I realised the best way of finding an Asian wife was to go and live in Asia for a while. So I started a plan of saving every single penny I could, and build a massive warchest of cash.

How did I do it? By maximising income, and minimising expenditure.

The main mantra was to live well within my means. In other words, living frugally. The main thing I did was to stop buying anything other than the essentials. So no DVD's, no cigarettes (I don't smoke anyway), no lottery tickets, no $50 T-Shirts and definitely no visiting StarBucks.

The result was that after 3 years I'd saved enough money to live in Asia for... a long time!
Keep watching those pennies. If you save just $5 a day, after three years you'll have $5475. That's enough money to live in Bangkok for four months.

2. Keep Your Job

Why quit your job and go overseas? If you love your job, or your boss loves you, then try to keep your job!

If you work in an industry where you can work remotely, then see if you can work from the other side of the world. There's pretty good Internet access everywhere these days.

Alternatively, arrange for a sabbatical and agree to come back after 3, 6 or 12 months. If you're intending to go to an emerging economy like Brazil, China or Russia, impress on your employers the advantage they have of having a man on the ground there!

Want to go to somewhere like China?
Then why not convince your employers that they need to be there as well!

I did try to arrange to work remotely and/or have a sabbatical, but my pain in the ass boss turned down my request. Luckily I had f*ck off money, which allowed me to just quit and walk away.

3. Find a Job Overseas

If you want to travel but don't have the means to save up a warchest of cash, then it is possible to work overseas.

By far the easiest way to get a job in another country is to become a language teacher. Get a teaching certificate like a TESOL or CELTA and you shouldn't have too many problems finding a job in China, Korea, Japan or in South America. Here's some information about getting your CELTA certification in Thailand.

Most teaching jobs pay enough to have a pretty good lifestyle in any of these countries.

Incidentally, if you're not a native English speaker then you can also work abroad teaching any other language. For example, Mandarin Chinese courses are in big demand in Thailand due to the vast numbers of Chinese vacationing there these days. I'd expect to see similar demands for Russian.

There are other opportunities out there that don't involve teaching though. I nearly got an IT job in Bangkok, and a Japanese guy I knew there found an IT job there in about 2 weeks.

4. Find a High Paying On/Off Job

While I was in Thailand, I heard stories of guys who work hard for 3-4 months, then spend a couple of months chilling/partying in somewhere like Pattaya.

In the UK we have a lot of guys who do the whole work for a month/rest for a month thing. They usually work in the North Sea Oil fields. When I was a kid, my neighbour used to work in Saudi Arabia.

These jobs are often highly skilled, but there's also a lot of "grunt work" for less skilled guys.

Seek out these jobs if you need cash and want to have plenty of time off as well. Good areas for these jobs include oil, mining, security and IT. For example, here's a list of mining jobs that are in demand in Australia.

If you know more about how to find these types of jobs, then leave your suggestions in the comments section below.

5. Start a Small Business

Most countries are pretty strict about foreigners working there, so to get round this you can start your own business.

Having your own business also means you become LOCATION INDEPENDENT - particularly useful if you don't want to stay in the same place.

I've been making money online for over 10 years now. It's hard work, but if you have a good IDEA and the means to MARKET that idea, you can easily make enough to live overseas.

My first online business involved writing and selling some business software products. I sold them for $49.95 a go, and sold 2000+ copies over the years.

The downside to online businesses is that they're HARD WORK and a LONG TERM INVESTMENT.

I wrote my software in 2002, but my best week for sales didn't come until 2008.

Incidentally, if you're short of IDEAS, then look around your day job (if you have one). My own idea was to create a version of some software we used in my day job, but it was too specialised and too small-fry for my company to package up and sell. But it was a brilliant idea for a micro-business working off a kitchen table!

So there you have it - 5 ways of financing YOUR time abroad. If you've got any more tips and suggestions, then leave them in the comments section below.

About the Author

I am Xiongmao, a regular member of the Happier Abroad Forum. In 2013 I quit my job for a life of hustling and living in Asia. You can read about my travel catastrophes here.

One of the reasons for living in Asia are the sexy beautiful ladies you can meet. If you also want to find some wonderous Asian ladies, then check out my dating site at AsianLoveConnections.com.