Where your daily spending becomes earning

I came back to South Korea in 2020 thinking I'd feel like I belonged again. I was wrong. The plane touched down and I stepped out as an American citizen—my passport now foreign to my own country. It sounds dramatic, but it's the only way to describe that feeling. Everything looked familiar. The language was mine. The streets, the food, the culture—I grew up here. But the moment I tried to exist in this place, everything turned bureaucratic and unwelcoming. Six months. That's how long I had to wait for health insurance. Six months of being sick without coverage, of not knowing what would happen if something serious occurred. I needed a bank account—couldn't do it without jumping through hoops. An ID? More documentation, more waiting, more proving that I deserved to be here, even though I was born here. As a foreigner on paper, I wasn't quite welcome. The anxiety started small and then grew into this constant hum in my chest. I was a single mom. I needed to work....

Growing up, nobody ever taught me about money. Not my parents, not my teachers, not the people around me. Money was just something that existed—or didn't—and you either had it or you didn't. There was no in-between conversation. No "here's how to build wealth" talk. No dreams about creating multiple income streams. It just... wasn't a thing. My childhood was simple. Really simple. The kind of simple where the kitchen and bathroom were the same room. Where the toilet was outside the house. Where luxuries weren't even concepts—they were things other people had in movies. I thought that was just... normal life. Everyone around me lived the same way. Same small space. Same tight budget. Same acceptance that this was just how things were. When you're surrounded by people in the same situation, you don't question it. You don't even know there's another option. You think the whole world lives like this. Then came the big change: an opportunity...