I think that teachers have had a
bad rep in the United States and especially working for public schools in
terms of like low salaries and other negative bad conditions. But I think that it's totally possible
to be a professional teacher and to live a comfortable life
on a teacher's salary. You're in Texas. I'm Lani Huang, I'm 25 years old, I
make $58,400 a year and I live in Dallas, Texas. I'm a middle school math teacher. When I was working in Oklahoma, my
starting salary was one of the lowest starting salaries for teachers
in the nation. I actually participated in
the Oklahoma teacher walkout. The starting salary back then, I
believe, was like $32,400 or $32,900. And so moving to Texas, it
was definitely like a $10,000-$15,000 salary increase with the same
amount of experience. So I'm very satisfied
with my current salary. Growing up in Thailand and then coming
to the states, there's a different standard of living, but there's also
the expectation as like a second-generation immigrant for me, that I have
to do better than my mom. And so there was that pressure of
always like achieving, along with the Asian culture of the high expectations of
being a doctor, a lawyer, a pharmacist. So I think that my mom,
through all of her savings and just growing up with her frugal habits, definitely
affected who I am as a person, because if I can do anything myself,
I will learn how to do it myself. It's always been a dream
of mine to own my own home. In Chicago, I definitely wouldn't
be able to afford the houses there. But moving to Texas and
seeing how affordable houses still are, especially with the salary that I'm making as
a teacher here, I knew I had to jump on this opportunity. I didn't know about closing costs, so
I knew about the down payment, I knew I had to have a certain amount
to put down and I actually bought my home with the Teacher
Next Door program. So the realtor contributes part of
their commission to the closing costs, which was very, very helpful. So buying this house for myself, I
think a lot of people are surprised, especially because they know
I have a boyfriend. They're like, "Oh, did you guys buy
it together?" That's always one of their first questions. I definitely was paying for a majority of
things, and when he was able to, I started charging for rent
and utilities and so over time I've been
increasing that amount. But it's not quite half
as of right now. I think that there was some tension
over money during lockdown and because of coronavirus quarantine, just because I
felt like he was getting a little too comfortable. And so that's where I drew the line
of, I don't mind helping and paying for these things as long as you're
not getting comfortable and starting to take advantage of it and starting
to feel complacent, because it's important for me to make sure that
the people around me are building better saving habits themselves and not
just relying on one person. My insurance didn't cover that, because this
year I chose to have the cheapest insurance, not thinking that I was
going to need to get my wisdom teeth removed. And so the bill was close
to $2,000 and I had to pay for it, like upfront, all of it,
the day of my appointment. So because of that mindset on strict saving
habits I guess, I was able to do that. My mindset towards saving
is that everything that I'm putting into my savings, that's money
I don't have anymore. It's a little competition, our little game
with myself to try to be under my budget. During the week I meal
prep, so Monday through Friday, it's just easier because as a teacher, I
don't always come home at the same time every day. And so I don't
usually want to come home and cook. So I just have it prepared on Sunday. She's been with my mom first for a
while, but now that I've had her, we've taken a lot of road trips back
to Chicago and just around the country. After graduating college, I had
about $16,000 in student debt. Hi, welcome to my classroom. I'm Miss Huang, I'm going to
give you guys a quick tour. So this is what it looks
like from the student perspective. They have to sit behind the
Plexiglass with their masks on. It's definitely an interesting struggle
because with Zoom, behavior management is seemingly easier. If there's like a student who's
being disruptive or distracting, you can put them on mute or you can
kick them out of the classroom. But when you're trying to teach
and then there's an in-person situation that you need to take care of, it
kind of is like, you have to switch brains. It's a little early, but I had
some of my kids who did well on their quiz on Friday help set
up our class Christmas tree. I was excited to get back into
the classroom because I knew that that's where I could really be in
my element and decorate my classroom. It makes it feel a little bit more
normal to be able to play with kids, even with the social distancing guidelines of
having to be six feet apart, having to wear a mask,
having to sit behind Plexiglass. I would say I'm a good saver or I
would like to think I'm a good saver when I can be, but in terms of investing,
I'm still new at that and so.. Good with money, I feel like it's
relative, like, am I comfortable with where I am right now? If an emergency
were to happen, would I be OK? I think I would say yes. But I think that if I upward
compare, there's people doing way better and maybe have more knowledge about
financial literacy than I do. But with the knowledge that I do have,
I find it important with my role as a teacher, a math teacher teaching
low-income or high-risk students, I do feel like it's my responsibility to
show the knowledge that I have learned. Since I've increased my
salary, I don't think I'm as nit-picky about cutting costs. And I finally feel at the point where
I don't have to be so conscious and obsessed with my finances the way that
I used to feel, especially since buying my house. I think that was
like a really big goal for me. And so I really wanted to make
sure that I could do that. And now that I have that, I think
that, you know, I want to enjoy the moment because as much as I'm a
high achieving person, I also realize that there has to be a balance between
enjoying what I have, because if you're always looking towards the next thing, you're
never going to feel like you have enough.
