and now the bad news

My financial picture looks a little less rosy since I got the bad news during orientation today: one of my classes has been canceled because of low enrollment. I'd originally had fifteen class hours plus two unpaid clinic/zone hours, but that now drops to twelve class hours (the class I lost would have been three hours a week). Twelve hours is the minimum sanctioned amount that I'm contractually obligated to teach; anything above that amount counts as overtime, compensated at the somewhat miserly rate of W22,000 per hour (less than what I'd earned at YB, two jobs ago). So originally, with fifteen hours a week, that would have been three hours a week of overtime, times four weeks. W22,000 times twelve equals W264,000, times 0.8 for the net figure, equals W211,200 for take-home pay. So that's money I'll be missing.

As I hide little to nothing on this blog, let me lay out my financial picture now that I'm at a new place of work and also working at the Golden Goose:

Gross monthly pay from Dongguk = W2,900,000
Gross monthly pay from Golden Goose = W1,000,000
Monthly gross, subtotal = W3,900,000
Monthly net (x 0.8) = W3,120,000

Amount going to housing fund = W1,000,000 (ten months = W10 million)

Amount going to yeogwan rent = W400,000

Amount going to US to service debt = W1,300,000

Remainder = W420,000

Of that remainder, most is spoken for: phone bill, food, and transportation will whittle that figure down to under W100,000 unless I adhere religiously to the kimbap diet (which I haven't done up to now). So if I go kimbap, I might have between W100,000 and W200,000 to play with per month, and much of that will have to go to paying off personal debts. Since I need only ten months' work to accumulate W10 million, I'm thinking I might sacrifice the first W2 million I receive from the Golden Goose to pay off a raft of personal debts that have been dogging me—some for years. It'll be nice to get those out of the way.

The wild card in all this is KMA, which might give me a Saturday gig or two. Such gigs have been few and far between, and as much as I love working at KMA, it's painful not to get more gigs on a more frequent basis. Let's assume one gig per three months. Depending on how many students I have per class, my hourly pay can vary between W50,000/hour and W70,000/hour (I had originally been quoted an "ideal" figure of W75,000, but I've never been paid at that rate). So for a seven-hour course, I could earn anywhere from W350,000 to W490,000, gross, or W280,000 to W392,000, net. Spread over three months, that comes to anywhere from W93,333/month to W130,667/month. Not nearly the same as overtime pay from Dongguk would have been, but still something. Alas, I'm not sure I should even figure KMA into my budget, given the scarcity of gigs.

In any event, a single cancelled class at Dongguk puts a serious dent in my monthly budget and leaves me with very little disposable income. It's astounding to me how the money disappears. So for the first two months, I might not bother to save money for housing at all: instead, I'll use the extra million won a month to pay off personal debts and to have some cash in reserve so I can live like a proper human being. At least for a while.


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