I understand what you mean. But my concern is that by the time its perfectly comfortable for me to pursue this dream, I'll already be in a position where I cant live the dream. If that makes any sense.

Like yes, I could wait another 5 years until I am settled and have decent savings. But then I'll be settled, and just be left to wonder at what could have been.

yes, they almost certainly would cover living expenses and debt, and id probably be able to save on top of that. I've already done some number crunching along those lines.

Yeah, honestly I was already thinking about teaching english as a means of full-time pay, and then doing ML freelance work to build my skills and portfolio

Well to be fair, they are both paying jobs, one would just pay significantly less. As for pursuing dreams, my concern is that by the time I am financially stable, I will not be willing to drop the entire life I have created at that point. Whereas right now I'm in a transitory phase in my life, where I am not particularly tied down.

Does that make sense?

You're only 25 years old. Even if you spent 5 years at your ML job, you'd only be 30. Contrary to popular belief, your life isn't over at 30! If you still have the desire to teach overseas then, it's not going to be too late. And by then, you'd probably be in a stronger position financially to make that switch.

Think about the reverse situation. You go overseas, and you realize things are not as rosy as you'd hope. What are your options then? Because I can tell you from first-hand experience, moving to another country is a lot costlier than you'd think. Especially to a country where you don't even speak the language.

If you want to take a big risk at life, that's great. Don't let a random Internet stranger stop you. Please just make sure the odds are stacked in your favour.

I definitely appreciate the input. After all, thats what I came here for. As for moving expenses, the sort of teaching jobs I'm looking at usually come with compensation specifically for moving. And I've also studied the language for about a year and a half, so although I'm a bit rusty right now, I'm pretty sure I could get some pretty simplistic communication done, even if I didn't decide to go back to studying it full-force as I almost certainly would.

My concern with waiting is that I will be a different person then, and I'll be less able to experience it in the way that I want to. That is, if I am even able to go. For example, if I am in a relationship at that point, most people dont take well to their partner up and telling them that they want to go live on the other side of the world for a year or two.

All that said, I really am taking all of this advice to heart. I'm just arguing my side because well....I cant get to intimately know the strengths and weaknesses of both sides unless theres a lively debate. I hope you know what I mean. I appreciate the input.

Random internet stranger here

A relationship, a mortgage and even kids happen if you take the job route. As someone who took the job route and now have a mortgage, I vote Japan, though you prolly wanna talk with some folks who have done it first just for confirmation...or have a backup plan if for some reason it actually did suck.

On the flip side my girlfriend would be stoked if I said I wanted to move to Japan, so you never know who you might end up with if you stick around and pay down some debt.

Routines and inertia are hard to fight tho once you get on a path.

Edit-spelling

As for support, I do have some from my family in case of an emergency, but its certainly not infinite. I feel like in life, I've consistently taken the safe route. Now, I'm really tempted to take a huge chance. I know that taking a year or two off to teach English would generally detract from my career, but I also am very self-motivated, and I would probably spend a good amount of that time building my programming skills even more.

tl;dr: Should I take a mid-pay job with high potential for future salary, but be locked into a particular location, or pursue a life-long dream and teach abroad for a low salary with low potential for future salary?

Do you want to be happy? Don't settle, pursue your goals. Just don't fuck up your life.

Of course, who doesn't. But I suppose the question here is whether pursuing my goals would indeed fuck up my life or not.

There's also the option of trying to find a similar such ML position in japan also, but i still need to look into that.