The Teacher Trap - Going Abroad and Getting Stuck as an ESL Teacher

I've been on both sides of the coin; a broke AF English teacher in Thailand making $1K a month to now being a self employed guy making a very good income while living abroad.

It took years to make it happen, it was stressful (at my worst I was $7K in credit card debt while only making $2k a month) but in retrospect it's totally worth it if you can pull it off.

Going abroad and teaching English literally changed my life and for that I'm forever thankful. I used to work as an internal auditor for Price Waterhouse Coopers in Hartford Connecticut. It was your typical "good job" that you're supposed to want.

But all I ended up with was a high paying job working 12+ hour days, 2 weeks vacation and no time for myself at all. I was getting fat, did not have a GF and no real social life. Just work, work, work, sleep.

It was not uncommon to get to the client site at 8:15 am (waking up at 6:30 am to shower and put on my khakis, tie and dress shirt) and work till 8:30 pm. 12+ hours in an office room auditing documents and filling out spreadsheets - a personal hell for sure.

So I quit and eventually went abroad to teach English in Thailand which was a transformative experience. However, there is no denying what I call "the teacher trap."

It's where you go from being 26 and "exploring the world" to all of a sudden you're 34 and you're still doing the same thing - no personal or professional growth, literally just bumming it in South East Asia.

Making a low salary as an under paid English teacher, drinking cheap beer, going out with 4/10 girls you think are 8's and in general having no options because you've been abroad so long you're now stuck.

Lack of options as you stay abroad

I know I can be harsh, but I know people like this. The longer you stay abroad teaching the harder it is to adjust back to your home country because it becomes more and more difficult to land a job with a good income.

Maybe you're a creative guy like me with a degree in finance and accounting which I only got because I wanted to get a job. I hate numbers and have no real talent for math, but no one ever advised young me (I just followed the awful boomer advice that any degree is a good degree).

So imagine yourself in my situation, I just spent the last 5 years as an English teacher in Thailand and I have a degree I have no real talent for an my previous work experience was years ago.

Literally what would someone like me do going back to the United States after being abroad for so long? No company would hire me for a reasonable wage because my work experience was in teaching, not finance.

So what?

Work for minimum wage in a warehouse or go into massive debt to get a different degree while working a crap job again in the states so I can land another job I did not like or just stay abroad where things?

This is what I mean by stuck.