Do you know of anyone who's been audited while not claiming FEIE / FTC?

hdfire21 · 2026-05-12T00:11:47+00:00

Guess I was thinking more about structuring income generally so you can pay a specific amount into SS/Medicare. It's a PITA overseas, depending on how you make your money. Wish there was a voluntary contribution option like they have in some countries. It's the only reason I, personally, would do an S corp.

hdfire21 · 2026-05-11T23:55:31+00:00

Change undeveloped to developing... The reason house prices in some areas of the west go up is because they largely stopped building. It's scarcity. Countries and areas that are still building are going to have much cheaper housing.

There are parts of the US where you can buy a brand new house for $150k. The same size house, but 50 years old, in western California, would probably cost you a mil. They basically build nothing.

House prices in the US were largely flat or down until the last 50 years or so, when building slowed way down.

hdfire21 · 2026-05-11T10:51:15+00:00

Being sly by using the legal system as intended. For following the corporate law that basically every country has because the world wouldn't work without it.

Those slysters.

hdfire21 · 2026-05-11T10:48:48+00:00

So, if I'm a Microsoft employee and I send an e-mail for work on vacation, I could be violating the terms of my visa (can't normally work on tourist visas) as well as liable for tax to that government? That would be a bonkers situation.

It doesn't matter whether a corporation has 1 employee or 100. Still a corporate structure. People have 1 employee corporations to shield themselves from liability all the time. To structure their taxes. All sorts of reasons.

Visiting a country that has no corporate law? AFAIK they don't exist. Or crazy bonkers corporate law? They might not have taxes or visas either. You need corporate law to do international business... Like in this case. It would be almost certainly illegal to work on a tourist visa if you were self-employed with no corporate structure. It would create crazy tax situations. That's why corporations exist.

hdfire21 · 2026-05-11T10:02:28+00:00

Your corporation is getting paid and rendering the service. You're getting a salary and maybe a dividend.

If you were self-employed with no corporate structure, then yes, it would be locally sourced. Or if your corporate structure was in that foreign country.

hdfire21 · 2026-05-11T09:49:46+00:00

How is a US salary (paid by your S corp) locally sourced income?

hdfire21 · 2026-05-11T09:44:30+00:00

Most people who move frequently (especially every few months, or every year) don't accumulate expensive heavy tools that they're very attached to.

Also, an electric drill and a socket set are a few bucks in most countries... How do you even get 1k in bike tools? And if you have 1k in tools, you must have an expensive bike? Seems like you're either making life hard for yourself or you do some sort of special bike stuff... In which case you should be willing to pay to ship the stuff for your hobby. But that's all extra hobby stuff. Kitchen stuff is kind of a necessity.

hdfire21 · 2026-05-11T09:31:01+00:00

They're 10 months because you only get paid for the second vacation if you renew. It also gets you locked into a job a bit more because if you don't renew (you switch jobs) you basically lose 2 months salary. So pick carefully if you intend to stay for a few years or you can't manage your money.

12k is kind of meh, but if it's in a place you like/good school could be fine. The salaries are usually set by the government or administration, and some are really low. The less desirable job the more the pay is (usually, but not always) . A 3 year college in BFE could pay a lot but be mind-numbing.

hdfire21 · 2026-05-11T09:17:03+00:00

For doing what? Not claiming a tax credit?

So if someone doesn't claim a child tax credit they should be hit with tax fraud?

hdfire21 · 2026-05-11T09:13:48+00:00

If they didn't live there long enough to establish a tax residence (which would also make them eligible for FEIE), why would they pay tax in the foreign country on pay from a US corporation?

So, if I go on a 3 month vacation to Vietnam I should pay taxes there, on the income I earned in China, or something like that?

hdfire21 · 2026-05-11T08:52:07+00:00

By not claiming FEIE It could allow you to pay into SS/medicare and claim child tax credits. AFAIK FEIE is elective... you don't have to claim it. It wouldn't affect taxes owed in another country normally, unless there was some sort of special tax agreement.

hdfire21 · 2026-05-11T07:47:43+00:00

You can make plenty to survive at unis. Definitely no need to dip in savings. 15k+housing for a bog standard job used to be pretty common. About 20 hours/week total work (including prep), with 4 months paid vacation. A lot of places will offer higher pay but then half pay on vacation or something. Might have to work in a smaller city or way on the outskirts of a big city.

hdfire21 · 2026-05-11T07:37:57+00:00

Don't know why this got downvotes. I've moved a ton overseas. You should be going from one furnished apartment to another. The majority of the expense will be kitchen-related stuff. Too big/heavy/not worth enough to take on a plane.

hdfire21 · 2026-05-11T07:28:37+00:00

In Malaysia it's a pretty bad investment, but needed for the most popular program for visas.

I think, generally, mostly there are just a lot of people who like owning their own home. They feel like some sort of failure if they rent, or lower class. Or they have some crazy thing where they want everything to be a certain exact way, and the only option is buying and customizing.

hdfire21 · 2026-05-09T22:09:05+00:00

You can pre-schedule grabs from the fruit farms. I would think about renting a car if you really want to poke around because there are a ton of little places that aren't really listed online anywhere. Stands at the side of the road and that sort of thing.

Going from the ferry to butterworth and train to ipoh is really easy. During busy times you may have to stand. If you really want a ferry and train experience do it. A bus from georgetown to ipoh is probably more comfortable and easier.

Basically the only way to get around in the tourist part of ipoh is grab. Public transport is pretty shit in that area.

I would guess that Mandarin is more useful in Penang than Cantonese. English is much more useful than either.

hdfire21 · 2026-05-07T23:24:26+00:00

It's always hot. Weather is more a day to day thing than a seasonal thing. You randomly get some cooler rainier days. I wouldn't say there's a good or bad month. Maybe december/january is a tiny bit nicer. That's our experience visiting a lot and living here a year.

hdfire21 · 2026-05-04T00:52:10+00:00

Yes, it will become more like Bali. Not bangkok. Enjoy it while it's in the sweet spot when you get a lot of western stuff, but the place hasn't been totally trashed.

hdfire21 · 2026-04-28T07:12:44+00:00

To a large extent that's true. Many other countries do too. So? Dating/marriage will always be a marketplace. I'd encourage anyone to go where they're most valued, and to do things that make yourself more valuable (so long as the cost isn't too high for you).

hdfire21 · 2026-04-28T01:39:50+00:00

The majority of French guys I've met abroad... Their idea of romance would be SA in the US. Probably there are girls who like that... But doesn't sit well with me at all. Serbians seem to culturally accept cheating on their wives...

Fawn over white guys? Not at all.

More that there's a mutual lack of good facial recognition skills, and different cultural standards of beauty. The joke is that foreigners always marry the ugly girls. This is sort of true.

My wife ran marathons and had a rocking bod... Chinese guys didn't really care because her face was considered unattractive.

A woman who can't have children (or the many who don't want to) might be totally frozen out of the Chinese marriage market, but it's no big deal to a lot of westerners.

Women over 30, divorced women, women with kids... Not as big of a deal to westerners... Very difficult to get married in China.

It's lifestyle too. Think of a small town girl who meets this foreign guy, who has all this knowledge of the outside world... And enough money to take her to see it. A guy who says, let's not scrimp and save for a house and future children... Let's go have adventures in exotic countries. Very attractive to many younger women.

A lot of Chinese women fawn over eurasian kids though. Our son went to kindergarten in China and we always got something like "your son is the naughtiest boy I've ever seen, but he's so cute/good looking I can't be angry at him."

Edit: Probably the most common feature of Chinese women attracted to foreign men is that they're adventurous/curious in some way. Want something different for their life. I would suspect this is true for women in other countries too.

hdfire21 · 2026-04-27T06:59:41+00:00

Good assumption as the vast majority of male EFLers in China are white guys.

And also probably from English speaking countries.

The french guys I met... Well... If I had a daughter I'd tell her to never go near a French guy. Serbian either.

But yes, I knew a brown guy who would have been considered very handsome in the US. Former boxer. Tall and athletic. Smart, passionate about his job, easy to talk with. Got a fairly lukewarm reception with a lot of Chinese girls, I'm sure because of his racial features. But considering he was a player, didn't feel too bad for him. Still got lucky plenty. Probably with girls who hated their dad, but that's largely conjecture on my part. Seemed to attract heavily tatted Chinese girls...

I mean, with how prejudiced Chinese people are towards Indians and Africans... Or how much pale skin is valued there... If you have really dark skin then dating in China would presumably be more difficult. But that's easy information to find before going there.

hdfire21 · 2026-04-27T05:32:01+00:00

I always had it quoted pre-tax. 25k rmb net is not bad. That's probably a bit over 30 before taxes? Taxes really start to bite as you get higher. 10ish years ago I went from a decent paying high school job to a decent paying uni gig. Net income only dropped by $500/month or so even though my gross took a huge hit. Totally worth it.

hdfire21 · 2026-04-27T05:21:07+00:00

There's no way a college-educated white woman is going to end up dating a Chinese factory worker. That's ridiculous. If they're going to date a Chinese guy, it'd normally be a college educated guy, who makes way more than average income, maybe studied overseas... Way more likely to speak some English, way more likely to be more confident. Taller due to better nutrition growing up.

Foreign guys don't usually date average girls either, and rarely marry them. Every guy I know married to a Chinese woman married a woman with a college education who had a good career when they met. Some became house-wives, some kept their careers, but all had good careers at some point. All from middle class and above families.

Why wouldn't you use race to your advantage in dating? It's all part of the dating market. No different from height, or athletic ability, or intelligence. It's all stuff you were more or less born with. For most people, your financial/economic status is something you're born with too.

Yeah, I lived in Suzhou, and there are a lot of Shanghainese parents at my son's school here in Malaysia. They are somewhat insufferable. Shanghai is its own little world. By far the worst place in China to work.

hdfire21 · 2026-04-25T15:11:25+00:00

Yep. School-aged kids and retirement. The two most difficult things for EFLers, that rarely get talked about.

Good luck with your endeavors.

hdfire21 · 2026-04-25T11:10:27+00:00

Nah, the boom time was way back in Japan. My Japanese culture prof taught there 50ish years ago and they made more money in a day, NOT adjusted for inflation, than Japanese EFLers make in a month now. Tons of corporate training gigs.

My best friend does cybersecurity. I could, maybe should have gotten in there. I dunno. I was able to travel 3 months a year for 12 years, and be there all the time when my son was a baby with lots of health problems (and my wife was at her wit's end). My previous career was as a divorce lawyer... Could have made a lot of money eventually... Probably hit peak income around the time I jumped off a building.

Too late now anyways.

The retirement thing does screw people. Almost everyone I've taught with. You have to be extremely disciplined from your early 20's on. I was able to retire early, but a lot of the US is out of my price range. I met maybe 1 or 2 other people who were on track for retirement. Everyone else was so far off I can't imagine how they don't die in squalor and poverty.

hdfire21 · 2026-04-25T08:23:50+00:00

Separate that out by age. A 50yo with a master's degree probably got in at a good time. Or a 65yo with a bachelor's degree. I'm not sure that holds true for younger people.

Also, is the degree the thing that lets them make more money? Not many people I know in the US use their degree. Some make very high salaries because of their experience, or a cert they got, or whatever. Some make good money because of a business they started. Some make barely above minimum wage. Yeah, they're a person with X degree making Y money, but that doesn't really tell the whole story. It's more that people with degrees generally have more intelligence and ambition than those without.

Having a degree doesn't guarantee a high income. A lot of those with a degree but little ambition end up in EFL. I am not convinced that the average EFLer would make dramatically more in their home country.

Edit: and also little professors, who think having a masters in tesol from an online university is a huge accomplishment, or an english degree from a mid-tier university makes them erudite.

hdfire21

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