Summer Reading List: Millionaire Teacher by Andrew Hallam

Summer Reading List: Millionaire Teacher by Andrew Hallam

by | Jun 8, 2012 | Leadership News, Summer Reading List

One of Hollywood’s favorite portrayals of teachers is of the dedicated, stern, and often second career professional who decides to give up a high-paying gig in the corporate world to make a difference in the classroom.  If this is the case for you and you’re independently wealthy, then the financial challenges some teachers face might seem hard to fathom.  As a personal example, in my last position before moving overseas, I made only $1550/month after taxes, despite working about 12 hours a day.  Plus if you add in the fact that many teachers spend some of their own cash on classroom supplies, take home pay becomes less and less.  Of course this is the case for many teachers and even in international education there are many challenges teachers must overcome.  Combined with cutbacks in school funding and rising student-teacher ratios, it doesn’t seem like teaching is the best place to maintain a finically secure life.  For many, the words millionaire and teacher may seem more like an antonym then any form of reality.  Andrew Hallam, an English Teacher at Singapore American School and author of Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School, argues otherwise. In his book, Hallam reveals nine important lessons he sticks to that has helped him create a large nest egg and live a great life now too.  Without giving too much away, he argues a few simple principles, which include, save more then you spend, invest that money into three low-cost  index funds (including a broad based US index fund, a international fund, and a global bond fund), and...
Introducing the Learn[ed]Leadership Summer Reading List

Introducing the Learn[ed]Leadership Summer Reading List

by | May 30, 2012 | Leadership News, Summer Reading List

Why is it that the longest month of the year also happens to be the last month of the school year?  Of course there are a number of months with 31 days (7 to be exact), but August is the only month without any major school holidays.  Now don’t get all pious as you read this and say you don’t need a break.  After all if you’re like most teachers or administrators I know (at least the good ones), you’ve been working 50-60 hr work weeks all year anyway. So now that summer is finally upon us, it’s time to reflect on the year and learn something new.  Sounds like a nice vague summer goal to me.  So in an attempt to keep myself accountable and not let the summer drip through my fingers like a quickly melting ice cream cone on the 4th of July (I am from the US after all), I’m going to use the following weeks to review a few books for the Learn[ed]Leadership Summer Reading List. Similar to the book reviews in TIME Magazine, I’ll make a quick a cutting judgement of the book; either READ, SKIM, or SKIP. The first book for the Learn[ed]Leadership Summer Reading List is Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School.  Yes, I know it has little to do with leadership, but it was written by a fellow international teacher, Andrew Hallam, an English teacher at Singapore American School.  Learn more about his book and how to download a copy here.  Watch for the review in the coming...