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By now, you’ve probably noticed that there’s a lot to personal finance and money management! After all, here we are — only on Lesson 6. Look how much ground we’ve already covered and there’s a lot more to come. If anything has been difcult for you to understand, or if you are having any problems with any part of the curriculum and would like to discuss it, please feel free to contact me at financialliteracylessons@gmail.com or 949-723-5131.
In this podcast, we’re exploring Lesson 6, “The Global Employee.” This topic falls within our Unit 1 theme of Earning an Income because it involves earning an income overseas. In this lesson, we explore pursuing a career outside the US. You will not find these objectives in the NSFL, which I think is unfortunate because your students live in a very global age so there’s a real possibility that one day, they may consider earning their income overseas. Knowing a bit about pursuing a career overseas is a true 21st century skill. In this lesson we are teaching students ways to do this, pointing out some of the challenges and ways to make themselves more appealing to an overseas employer. In the very least, we want to expand their career consciousness to the global realm.
This lesson begins on page 96 of the instructor’s guide, so let’s go there now.
The first thing I direct your attention to is under Supplemental Resources. The instructional resource for this lesson — that is the website you’ll use for some portion of the instruction —is usajobs.gov. The United States government is the largest employer of Americans overseas, so it makes sense that if your students are thinking about working overseas, they might end up seeking employment with the federal government. Usajobs.gov is the resource for learning about U.S. government jobs, domestic and foreign. If you have never been on this site, it’s really fun to explore. It lists all sorts of jobs with the federal government. Even some CIA jobs are on there. I recommend taking a look at it while preparing instruction so you can demonstrate the overseas search for students. You can actually explore by country so that makes it easy. For example, you can search what jobs in the United States government are open in China and you’ll see that there are foreign service jobs with the American embassy and consulates. In other countries, where we have military bases such as Japan, Germany and Italy, there are a lot of civilian jobs on the bases. As I said, a lot about this lesson is expanding your students’ awareness, because part of being financially literate is knowing not just how to earn an income, but where you can earn an income.
Another Supplemental Resource is Rockstar Finance. This is popular personal finance site with lots of forms, discussions on financial issues, motivational topics, short and informative articles and weekly money challenges which are designed to develop good financial habits.
Another resource is Buzzfeed’s American vs Brit and Euro Cross-cultural Map Labeling Challenge. In it, Europeans were asked to complete a map of America and Americans were asked to place European countries on a map. It just shows how people can be geographically clueless but very funny at the same time. The link is on page 97 and it’s long but you can also find it by searching “Buzzfeed It’s Thanksgiving.” I think your students will get a couple of laughs after this, but caution – one of the maps contains an F-bomb.”
Moving over to page 97, What Does That Mean?, there are 14 vocabulary words for this lesson. They’re relatively easy. In fact, students have probably been exposed to many of these terms in their Social Studies or History class. A note, however, on anything to do with the European Union/Schengen area and Schengen visa, keep abreast of developments in the EU because things are changing. The UK’s recent withdrawal from the EU will eventually reduce the number of countries in the EU and it’s possible that there will be more countries exiting the EU in the future so that’s a bit of a moving target.
Moving over to page 98 Gaining Attention. This is just a fun exercise getting students engaged in the conversation about if they worked overseas, where would they like to work and what kind of work do they think they would be doing. And would they want to be overseas permanently or just temporarily, so you can really get an classroom dialogue going here and it’ll be interesting to hear what your students think about working overseas.
Moving to Presentation of Content. We discussed that the U.S. government employs the most Americans overseas and that is a potential source of employment and a potential career pathway that your students might be interested in.
Other ways that people work overseas is working for an American company and its overseas ofce or on its overseas job site such as oil field, working for a foreign company in its home country, or for a foreign company in one of its overseas ofces or job sites. There are many ways that working overseas can happen. Freelancing is also a possibility although that is a bit more difcult a prospect for reasons we’ll discuss later.
Let’s look at some of the Challenges of Working Overseas. I’m on page 98. Students should understand that they can’t just pick up and move to another country to look for a job. That’s because most countries are protective of their own citizens’ right to make a living. They do not let foreigners come in and take jobs that they want to go to their citizens. That’s why a work visa is almost always required and that can take a lot of time and planning to get. You can read about work visas on pages 98 and 99, but the general rule is that there is no general rule: There is no one size fits all for all work visas. Each country has its own rules about who gets a work visa and how long it can take to get one. The rules are also subject to frequent change. Also, people with diferent nationalities can be treated diferently, it all depends on the relationship between the two countries – the country where the worker is coming from and the country where they’re applying for their work visa. Whether and how fast you can obtain a work visa from another country can also depend on whether you’ve been ofered a job already or whether you’re a worker whose skills are in demand in the target country. In those cases, a work visa may be easier to get.
Just as an aside, if you have any students who are considering going to university outside of the US, they should know that once they’re a student, a student work visa is not that hard to get. Two of my kids go to college outside the US have part-time jobs, one in Tokyo and one in London, but the hours are restricted. They can work no more than 20 hours per week.
On pages 98 and 99, you can read about the additional challenges related to getting a work visa overseas. One of the things you might want to do with your students is explore shortage occupations. Workers who are able to fill a shortage occupation with a particular skill can find it easier to get a work visa. It’s fun to explore shortage occupations around the world. Just search “shortage occupation” and the name of the country. You can see the types of skills that are in demand in diferent countries.
I want to draw your attention to Currency, Pay and Taxes on page 99. We cover many of these concepts such as currency fluctuations and emerging markets in The 21st Century Students’ Guide To Financial Literacy – Going Global. With regard to working overseas, students should understand that currency values fluctuate which can afect the value of an overseas salary. The ideal arrangement, of course, is being an American working for an American Company overseas because you generally maintain pay scale and benefits that you would enjoy if you worked in America. Also note that the federal income tax rules for American citizens working overseas are complicated. Americans still pay U.S. income tax even if they are working outside of the country. They also pay taxes to their host country. There is an ability to ofset some of your host country taxes against your American income taxes but students should understand that if they aspire to a career overseas, they should seek the advice of an experienced tax accountant to minimize their income tax liability in both the US and their host country.
Let’s turn to page 100 roman numeral 2, Building Overseas Employee Competence. If you have any students who are interested in earning an income overseas, they should understand that moving and living overseas for an extended period of time is really diferent than vacationing in that country. Making a long-term transition to a country can be a difcult process because it requires cultural adaptation to a lot of diferent things. A diferent lifestyle, food, customs, belief and they may not even speak the language of the host country. Overseas employers are looking for cross-cultural competence. This refers to the knowledge, skills, and motivation that enable a person adapt to and work efectively among people whose beliefs, customs, values, and behaviors are diferent than theirs.
On page 100, we talk about ways of developing cross-cultural competence. These include learning the language, that’s always a good start, and learning the language of your profession. You’re not going to be talking only to landlords or people you make friends with. You’re going to have to communicate in the language of your profession and we all know that most professions have a language of their own — words and phrases specific to the skills. If you are interested in working overseas learn the language of your host country, and make an efort to also pick up some of the business language of the particular profession that you’ll be engaged in.
Another important cross cultural skill is know the business etiquette. We don’t have a lot of business etiquette in the United States, but boy do they overseas! In a lot of countries, they have very important rules, etiquette, formalities that should be followed and respected if you intend to work there.
The other thing students might consider is going to college overseas in their target country. It’s really a good way to acclimate yourself to another culture and to learn the language, make contacts, and to really settle into another country before you apply for a full-time career position there. Other ways of gaining cross-cultural competence are interning overseas and exploring some of the expat blogs and forums which pop up in every city in every country around the world. There are Americans living everywhere, and everywhere they live they create expats blogs and forums which provide useful of information about the local area, how to find restaurants or doctors and kind of the inside scoop on what it’s like to live in a particular country.
Moving over to page 101, Roman Numeral 3, The Overseas Job Search. What if you’re a student and you’re interested in pursuing a job overseas? Where would you even begin look to find a job? Well, here are some suggestions from experts. The first is to simply target the country or city you want to work in, find the companies in that area and contact their human resources department. We’ve already talked about the US government website. There are a lot of good jobs available through that website. Students should be encouraged to explore it.
Another way of exploring overseas career paths is going directly to a company website such as Apple or General Electric, who employ a lot of employees overseas. They usually post their jobs on their websites. You might want to send students out to explore some of these large corporations’ human resources webpage.
There are also overseas NGOs which are non-government organizations. These usually focus things like healthcare or sustainable development or human rights. They are located all over the world and it is a source of employment for students who are interested in working overseas.
Moving to The Big Picture which is our read aloud of some of the key points of the lesson and Let’s Practice. Activity A is a fun exercise where students do a bit of self-assessment of their potential cross-cultural competence, then identify things they can do to improve it. Activity B “Let’s Get a Job in ______” The “blank” is a country that either they pick themselves or can be randomly assigned. It could take students several hours to complete this, as it involves a bit of research. I think it’s a project they’ll enjoy. Students explore work visas, shortage occupations, employers or potential employers, cost of living, expat blogs or forums, a country’s holidays and all sorts of things like that for their target country.
The (optional) curated resource for Activity B is canva.com which is a drag and drop graphics design program. The use of the curated tech is optional — it’s up to you whether to require students to use it, of course. With Canva students can take information about their country and complete a design in an infographic or brochure which presents career opportunities and information about pursuing a career in their target country.
Activity C’s Debate, Persuade, Inform is the H1B Visa controversy. This is and will continue to be a hot political topic. Their job is to read about and research the H1B Visa controversy. What is the debate about? Take a side and be prepared to debate the benefits and drawbacks of the H1B Visa program.
This wraps up Unit 1’s theme of Earning an Income. In Unit 2, we move on to the theme of Building Wealth. Accordingly, the next lesson’s Ponder and Predict asks students to contemplate how debt and wealth can be compatible and whether there’s good debt and bad debt. The Blog Q asks students whether, if they are going to live and work in any country outside the US, which it would it be and what their ideal job would be?
Thank you for joining me. See you next time when we explore Lesson 7, “The Credit Conundrum.”