I was born in Hong Kong, moved out and am back now. Skip the next two-three paragraphs to get to the main part
I'm currently living with my family until the housing allowance of my mother expires when she retire. We're expats if that wasn't obvious. Upon retirement, my mother currently plans to go back to our country as the rent here in Hong Kong is too expensive unless of course my (younger) siblings and I are come up with a way to afford all of us living here in Hong Kong.
My siblings and I were born in and studied in Hong Kong until I was early secondary school because my parents ran into some financial troubles because my father f***ed up and then could not afford the tuition in Hong Kong at the time. So my siblings and I lived with our father and some relatives in our (technically our parents') country of origin, which is a third world country, though my mother was and still is thankfully working in Hong Kong (She and my father eventually divorced. He's working in our country). I obtained two bachelor's degrees and a master's degree from our country. The master's and one of the bachelor's is something science-related while the other bachelor's is business/finance-related. About a few months before I graduated from my master's degree, my siblings were able to move back to Hong Kong to study not so much because my mother slightly improved on our financial condition (no thanks to my lazy arrogant f***ing father), which she did but more thanks to cheaper English schools in Hong Kong popping up .
After almost two years of loan repayments, I followed my mother and my siblings to Hong Kong and am now working part time in an learning centre while applying for postgraduate degrees in Hong Kong and internationally (just not in my country). My goal is to become a university professor ideally in a university in Hong Kong but I would be glad for any university in a first world country. [See footnote below] If I don't get accepted into one, I do have a fall back [See footnote below]:
I want to become part of the managing team in a learning centre or be a secondary school teacher. [See footnote below]
Currently, I'm working only part time because work is so hard to come by. Most schools don't have many openings. Most centres are looking for people familiar with IB or A Levels (click to see my other thread).
My salary is only around $3,000 per month. My boss says I can expect full time work next year when we have more students. I'm sort of offered a full time job in another centre (see the other thread. There are some problems in the centre and so the offer is put aside for now).
1. Even if I got full time, it seems like the starting salary for full time work in the education industry is around $10,000-$18,000 per month. How much can I expect to earn after 2-3 years of experience? After 5-6 years? Can this afford the cost of living in Hong Kong? My mother says the rent in the flats in the building which we live is around $15,000 per month (My mother pays about $3,000 per month while the remaining $12,000 is covered by her company).
My mother is retiring in 5-6 years. I don't quite know what I'm going to do after that if I don't get accepted into a program (with funding of course) supposing I remain single and without a job that has housing allowance aside from going back to our country, and I don't want to
She said that the ways to afford living in Hong Kong are:
- Marry
- Find a job that has housing allowance
- Live in public housing
- Get a roommate
- Get a roommate while living in public housing.
It seems that there are plenty of alternatives, and I shouldn't be stressing out over something that's 5-6 years from now and thus should get back to my graduate program applications (something far more urgent), but I just wanna know for my peace of mind. Even if I get into a graduate program, I'll probably encounter the same problems.
2. Is there private housing that's less than $10,000?
3. Actually, is rent the only difficulty here? It seems like the only expensive parts about living in Hong Kong are rent and children's education. Thanks to schools like the ones my siblings are in, I guess that's not really an issue.
Additional questions which are sort of related to the main questions.
- What can you tell me about finding a roommate in Hong Kong? Is it hard?
- What can you tell me about public housing? How can I apply for that? How much is public housing?
- Should I as early as now start dating in order to find someone to split the rent? It sounds unromantic to look for someone to marry for money, but this is the reality of Hong Kong right?
- Also, what about retirement? What can MPF do for me? I still don't understand that, but my boss says something like the centre pays this for me every month. I overheard my boss telling another teacher something like it's paid by the company because I am below a certain salary. What's going to happen once I'm full time? I have to pay to MPF every month? What about taxes?
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Footnotes:
Footnote: I don't really want to work in my alma mater or live in my country of origin, but I suppose technically that's an option. Sure there wouldn't be much problems apart from the low standard of living, but why dream so little right? And another thing, even though the cost of living is low, about the opportunity cost? I am very lucky to be a Hong Kong resident so I'm going to make the most out of it.
Footnote: I'm not sure if I'm good enough for Hong Kong so instead of working on my statement of purpose, studying for graduate school related exams or researching on university faculty, my anxiety has led me here.
Footnote: Aside from education, another industry I can go to is business/finance, but I'm not really interested in this.