About Penny Pinching Expat
Howdy all! I’m Ineka, the mind behind Penny Pinching Expat. I started this blog to help people who found themselves in the same position I was– over fifty and heading out into the great unknown.
Before all this, I was a stay-at-home wife and mother in the United States. My husband took care of all the financial details, the investing and the retirement funds and all that sort of thing. I’d dreamed about moving overseas to teach English like my mother had done, but with the husband and kid it didn’t seem possible.
Then came the divorce. I realized i was going to have to take care of my own financial situation– I’d been a teacher and a librarian in the past, but the local school district was a nightmare to work with and librarian jobs are few and far between. It became clear I would have to move. At first, I was thinking about the nearby major cities. Then I realized I could go anywhere. I looked up the best places to teach English overseas and the Czech Republic was top of the list.
Now that the dust is settled, I live in Europe and teach English to private clients. I’m married to a Czech man and my son goes to a Czech university. (My son also takes care of the technical side of this blog for me!)
Financial Independence
People often think of moving abroad as something horribly expensive or unattainable. It’s my goal with this blog to show you how you can move overseas and still be on track to retire, even if you started a bit older.
We use the FIRE method a lot here– Financial Independence, Retire Early. Basically, it says to save a whole lot of your income so that you can build up savings and retire early. My take on it is a little different– you don’t necessarily have to retire early to benefit from it. Having a cushion that can protect you through layoffs or pandemics or other bad situations.
You also don’t have to be a millionaire in order to use the FIRE method. I’m a teacher and don’t make crazy money, but I save half of my paycheck each month by living frugally. I like that in addition to being a financial strategy, living frugally helps me reduce my consumption and consider the effects of how I live on the environment.