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Simply Onion Soup
This onion soup recipe is very simple but requires love for flavour to fully flourish.
This is YOUR soup, you can make this soup to your preference. Don’t worry about the recipe too much. Bring time, patience and attention to detail when prepping the onions and your taste buds will be impressed.
What you need to buy:
Onions, lots of them. I am sure some onions are better than others but work with what you have. 1kg minimum
Almost everything else is optional.
What you need to do:
Shortform instructions
- Slice your onions finely
- Add oil to pot
- Take time to caramelise onions
- Chardonnay splashes
- Add spice
- Add garlic
- Add stock cubes
- Add water
- Simmer & stir frequently
- Add more chardonnay and/or water
- Add potatoes cut into cubes
- Stir, simmer,
- Serve
Longform instructions:
- Slice your onions as finely as you find the patience and endurance to.
The thinner your onion slices the better the final result in my opinion. - Add some olive oil and heat in a heavy base pot. Add your onion slices and bring up the temperature to a low medium, sweat your onions, stir them lovingly while you keep chopping and slicing and adding more onion slices to the pot and watch your onions become translucent and don’t stop until they start to take on a caramel golden colour. Keep tabs on the heat: It mustn’t be too high or you will burn the onions and that’s NOT the flavour you are going for. The more care you take in caramelising your onions the sweeter and deeper the final onion soup flavour will become.
- The more time you take at this stage the more impressive the final result will be. This part of your cooking process could take 30 to 90 minutes, depending on your onion amount and pot size and your patience.
- Add a splash of chardonnay once in a while to cool down the pot in case the heat is a little high and your onions are getting a little dry. Chardonnay will add extra flavour, you can use a budget bottle, but the nicer the wine the better it will support your soup. If you don’t have wine use warm water straight from the kettle. That’s ok.
During this stage you can also add your bay leaf and other spices you are using. (clove, juniper berry, black pepper) - Add garlic and sweat it into the caramelly onions. Stir regularly until the garlic has softened.
- When you are ready, ready is when YOU choose that you think those onions are finally caramelised. You add warm or hot water from the kettle. Add a fair amount. Submerge your onions with an inch or so of water above them.
- Add more black pepper
- Simmer & stir
- Simmer
- Simmer & stir
- Repeat as long as it takes for the soup to develop a nice consistency and the flavour to become rich.
Ingredients:
| 1kg Onions (minimum) | essential | slice then finely, infinite patience is needed |
| water | essential | Measurement by eye, start with 1 liter and reduce by simmering. Add more water towards the later stage of the cooking cycle, to meet your consistency preference. |
| Stock cube(s), onion flavoured if possible | useful | It helps to have a couple but you can make soup without |
| garlic | Optional, but nice (as much as you like, 5 -8 sections is good, use more or less to match your preference) | |
| salt | essential | Your stock cubes will do much of the saliness lifting but in case you don’t have a stock cube, just salt and pepper will get you there. |
| Black pepper | important | important |
| Chardonnay white wine | useful | optional but oh soooo good |
| 1-2 Bay leaf | nice | optional |
| 3-5 cloves | nice | optional |
| juniper berries | nice | optional |
| standard potato or japanese sweet potato (the purple one with white core is my favouite) | stretch your soup without diluting it | Optional. Add when you think it will take another 20 / 30 minutes for your onions to become so soft that they almost melt into the soup. |
Take care of your onion soup like you would take care of a risotto and you will be rewarded.
Stir, add a little more water, keep checking and stirring every so often. Check the onion consistency, they should melt in your mouth without chewing and you know they are ready.
Serve:
With fresh or toasted bread
Optional fine tune serving options:
Add a heap of grated cheddar cheese and/ or single or double creme.
You can even experiment with non dairy creme replacement options (but at this point I would opt for chardonnay over vegan cheese/creme)
Soup Shelf-Life
This soup keeps GREAT for a few days in the fridge.
You can prepare it 2 days before a special occasion and it will taste fabulous.
Journal
Food is life and making your own food makes for a better life. Sometimes I feel a little bothered by being the main chef in the family. I sometimes find it burdensome to cook on most days. But whenever I stop and reflect I remember what a privilege it is to HAVE food to cook and to have the skill to make food taste amazing with simple ingredients.
I don’t want to cast a shadow but there is a possibility that the best times in our collective experience of life are behind us. It is possible that during our lifetime we will get used to having less than we had just 5 years ago. That possibility is always there for everyone, anywhere. I think we should celebrate the food we have today and give it some time, love, spice and probably a lot of garlic.
Add food to your gratitude list.
Even if your food is simple or basic. (Rub some garlic on it.)
Maybe you can’t afford to splash some wine on your onions, you can compensate by taking more time and you may have black pepper to add with enthusiasm (use as much as you like but try using a LOT).
Let me know how your soup turns out.
(If you are feeling adventurous you can share and tag me on instagram #birgitsonionsoup )
2023 – I am a little late to arrive
But here I am. It is February 1st and the Chinese Lunar New year already started, too. Year of the Wood Rabbit. I want to say that I am not really an astrology person but then again: This is MY year! I was born in the year of the Wood rabbit and I feel like this is my once in a lifetime opportunity to have a really great year.
Welcome to MY great year.
I was thinking about what to share on my blog this year and aside from a definitely necessary focus on financial health I want to give my physical health more attention. One of my plans is to walk more and to bring YOU along every once in a while by sharing what I see on my walks. Since I live in San Francisco I figured that this might be something you, too, might enjoy.
Let’s declare Bohemia alive (sorry to my friend who so rationally declared it dead) and let’s see if we can’t find a few small things to enjoy this year. (I am thinking of finding a secret coffee society of Bohemians who survived the great drought of capitalism having made life rather tough on the average day dreamer.) But also: let’s declare making financial health a major mission for this year.
(This may mean you’ll see more posts where I share what has saved me money or in some other form been of benefit to me. I hope that once in a while you’ll find something as useful as I do and will use my links to sign up to whatever it is.)
Today is February 1st:
I have an acupuncture appointment in 11 hours. That probably means I should go to sleep first! Yes, it is 3am. I will try and take a photo on my way. But here are a few photos from the last time I was in San Francisco Chinatown for my acupuncture.
San Francisco China Town and Union Square, January 4th 2022
A list of writing job platforms – For my friends
Let’s make some money with writing
Have you spent hours looking through job postings getting depressed, too? Have you spent months looking for job listings sites and not found the one right for you? That’s been my problem.
That’s why I am starting this side project of building a collection of job boards for writing gigs and full writing jobs. It’s starting a little rough and tumble. I’ll update this as I find more and as I test a few out. If YOU also want to test if you can get some writing work then please DO and report back the success stories.
None of these links are affiliate links at time of writing. I will update if I find a recommendation that also pays me for sharing it.
Anyway, you clicked to get the goods. Here are the goods (job listing sites) that I was able to find so far. Please at least tap the like button and maybe leave a comment below. Then it would feel like sharing was rewarded with something.
I would try the platforms below myself but can not yet vouch for them because I, too, am only at the start of this writing-for-money-experience:
- https://www.ndash.com
- https://www.skyword.com
- https://contently.com
- https://www.clearvoice.com
- whopayswriters.com/#/results
- problogger.com/jobs/
- freelancewritersden.com –
- bestwriting.com/jobs this actually looked promising when I just checked it.
- Behance.com there was only one single listing for ‘writer’ and 3 for ‘writing’ .
Useful tips:
1) I haven’t closely checked everything yet. If platforms require you to pay a membership: DON’T do it. Check if you can find a job for free first.
2) DON’T provide free custom written articles as part of your application. That is working for free. Don’t get disillusioned. Just don’t do it. Have writing samples in a Google Doc folder and you can share this (view only, not edit)
3) ‘writer’ & ‘writing’: use both search terms, you may get slightly different results on whatever platform you are searching.
Seems more professional than I currently feel:
Not sure about the ones below this line at but sharing to complete the list.
Requires a membership, I don’t like to pay before I earn, so it’s a no from me:
Affiliate income platforms, I think they are a valid option:
One way that you can support my website and my work is by using my affiliate links when you see them. I have several in a tab called recommendations and I share referral links throughout my blog posts, usually they are marked. There are NONE on this page. I think this year I would like to focus on my financial AND physical health more. So I hope you are ok with that direction.
You could also read: Do affiliate links make you cynical? it’s. bit long and very unedited. But you could.
Do affiliate and referral programs and people who share links make you cynical?
Not everything is a ponzy scheme designed to rob us. I see sharing affiliate links as something positive that is sharing what works for me and getting rewarded for it. Sometimes I make lists of things that might be of interest to someone even if I haven’t tried them myself yet. Some of those lists don’t contain any affiliate links. I once spent 2 full days collating a YouTubers in Thailand list. Effectively promoting them and making it easy for Thailand Youtube fans to find so many new creators. I made nothing from this work. But a lot of people clicked on it and used the links
Right now I have a great offer from an online payment card that works borderless and has a string of perks, but I can’t for the life of me find a friend to sign up. If they did I could get $90 referral bonus. You have no idea how helpful that would be right now. I have phantasies of 10 people or 100 signing up and how much that would lift me up financially without costing anyone anything extra that they don’t already spend. Except for a little time to follow through with the steps to complete the signup. But people end up doing it anyway, years later, just not with my recommendation.
(I may be slightly disgruntled. It doesn’t make sense to me to NOT sign up. It’s useful, practical, 21st century and you’d be helping a friend. And in the future YOU could get referral bonuses like this, too for inviting a friend or imagine if you invited 10!) Well.. I am not putting the link here because I need people who will really follow through with the signup process and take the steps needed to activate the digital card. There is a short time window for this and I only get a referral bonus offer between $70 to $90 once or twice a year. The rest of the time it’s much lower.
Always use affiliate links when you can find them! It makes such a difference to the person whose link you are using!
In case affiliate and referral links make you cynical, don’t be. Why shouldn’t we (you, too) get a referral bonus for sharing something that could be useful for someone else?
It takes time to type to share, it even costs money to keep this website hosted year after year. I have never made anything from this website. But wouldn’t it be nice if I did?
It would be comparable to you inviting me for lunch but NOT having to spend your own money and instead you might be saving or making money if one of the recommendations that I found turn out to be right for you.
If you are ever in doubt:
JUST ask me in the comments or if we know each other then ask me directly about the recommendation that you aren’t sure about.
My personal feeling is that the future is here and we need to move on with the times. It’s no use if us 70’s born generation get left behind because we are spooked by change. I agree with your concerns, I can hear them inside my head (I hear a series of friends right now!) but I also disagree that you should let those valid concerns influence you to end up with less than you deserve.
I remember trying to convince people to give Airbnb a try. I just couldn’t get people to believe in it. At that time I could have gotten amazing referral perks, but my friends all said no. Years later they signed up one way or another but not with my code, so I got nothing for it. It’s a shame.
Below are a couple of recommendations that I genuinely recommended. I use both.
Wise, for borderless banking, lowest cost money transfers. This has saved me hundreds of £ and $ when I had to send money to myself across borders and when I received payment in foreign currencies.
I often use it to receive payments for photography sessions and language lesson packages. I lose less money to fees using Wise than if I use Paypal. It also works like a normal local bank and can receive salaries. But I tend to use a different account for that for the time being.
Revolut – this is the card I would need you to be 100% on board signing up for because the time window is very tight. Reach out to me via the comments if you want to go for it but need help to navigate. Even better: reach out to me and wait until I get a great referral offer. That would be the most amazing!
I will compare Revolut and Wise some time soon. They are different. But some Youtube travellers I follow use Revolut on a daily basis to pay for their coffees in cafes and make their supermarket purchases around the world. That won me over. I use Wise on the other hand more for larger transfers of money ($200+) and to hold international currency.
Let’s say I received $200, I might just leave them in my Wise account until I need $. The same goes for other currencies. I wouldn’t exchange Euro to Dollar because why pay the exchange rate when I know I’ll soon be able to make a Euro purchase.
This is possibly a little more interesting when you have a slightly more international life and have potential clients and students from around the world. Living in San Francisco I am more likely to run into a a European client for a photoshoot who might be happy to be able to pay me in Euro without losing money to money exchange fees. I can accept 50 currencies. Not that I think I’ll ever need to but it just feels so flexible and freeing to have the options.
I have a whole tab for recommendations with multiple referral links and some that don’t pay a bonus. I think I am pretty clear about which services I personally use and which I would consider. Sometimes I just make lists for things I found but haven’t used myself, but that is currently rare and I am clear about it when that is the case.
(Bear in mind that if you do click on one there is a limited time in which you need to activate your account whatever it is. For some referrals I only get 7 days, for others 30 and only very few have longer time periods. If the person I refer doesn’t complete sign up within a given time frame then the perk to me expires. You will still get a good recommendation but I won’t get the reward for sharing it with you. So you could invite me for lunch..)
Before I forget: I want to tell you about Wise
Just some rough notes from me. When instead of typing and procrastinating I should be packing to get back to Jason as soon as possible!
With the last couple of years having been so relatively stationary I almost forgot my account that I have with Wise. As I am inching closer to leaving the UK for another longer period of time, I am going through my bank cards and credit cards and stumbled across my card from Wise that expired over a year ago. That shows you how forgotten this account was. I didn’t even notice.
But for the rest of the year I want to test it out more. I want to see if my students and clients will pay me either through Wise or in Etherium (another side project). Why? Well. I have at least 8 regular students and clients whoa re resident in as many countries. Currently they all go through PayPal, but that is expensive for them.
I am using Calendly to schedule my lessons and meetings and it offers only Stripe and Paypal as a payment processing service. This means that my first job will be to check if Stripe lets me link to Wise. I feel that I have read in multiple places that it won’t allow this. Let’s see.
My next project will then probably be to figure out a better payment and booking interface for my students to be able to pay for a package of lessons.
I’ll report back how I get on using Wise to accept payment from my international clients. I wonder if it has an invoicing template / option. I could swear that PayPal has one.
2 minutes later – after browsing Wise the website:
I just found out that through an additional app I can allow clients to pay in instalments over a 6 week period. That’s quite cool.
There is also a cash back app? I need to investigate that. It seems SO spammy, but that’s how I felt when Airbnb started and sent me personal emails wayyy back when… And what is Fruugo? An app that helps businesses find customers? I love deep diving into the connectable apps tabs of SAAS companies. Is Wise a SAAS? This just goes to show you how ignorant I sometimes still am.
Well, from what I can see so far Wise doesn’t seem to offer an invoice option. That’s a shame. I would have liked that. It would make it easy to send an invoice to my clients that acts as invoice AND invitation to sign up to Wise. Wise, are you snoozing on the job?
update 5 minutes later: I found it! It’s under the Manage tab on the right side. It currently sits under Manage and then is the 5th option: Payment Requests is what you are looking for.
I am learning the Wise User Interface layout in real time. So bear with me. It takes time to learn to navigate a new platform (or one you forgot to use for a few years..) and that is ok. There are people who get really flustered because Wise isn’t a traditional account and they get scared that they could lose their money. I think Wise could maybe work a little more on building trust. It certainly was an obstacle for me at the start. One that I overcame when my friend stood in front of me in tears because her traditional bank had charged her an incredibly high fee for transferring her savings from the UK to Spain. A few phone calls later and we managed to stop the transaction (giving LOTS of credit to the banks involved!) and she received her money back into her account.
We then tried Wise for the first time. You wouldn’t believe how happy she was the next day when everything had been resolved and Wise saved her hundreds and hundreds of pound! £££ If she hadn’t used Wise in front of me then I wouldn’t have dared to trust it myself.
It just would have seemed too scary when I very first considered them. Even after seeing her safe transaction I used the transfer option cautiously at first until I eventually became bolder and signed up for a borderless account. Now I hold 3 currencies simultaneously in 3 digital pockets that allow me to not lose money to currency conversions. I can send the money to myself when the exchange rate is very favourably or leave it in my digital, brick-and-mortar free bank.
I wonder how the future of banking will affect Wise. Will they allow me to hold Crypto, too? It’s probably too volatile to be a consideration.
I also just realised that I am only ONE person short to receive a referral bonus of £75. (When 3 people take up my recommendation to sign up with Wise and send money across currencies then I receive a referral gift of £75. I have referred 5 friends so far. This means I am just 1 short.)
Do you want to sign up and see how much money you could save sending money across borders?
For example: To your own account abroad, or perhaps you are a customer and need to send a payment. This service is SO perfect for expats, immigrants sending money back home, digital nomads, remote workers, parents of students abroad.
All you have to do is sign up to Wise using my link: https://wise.com/invite/u/birgitd7 and make a money transfer for £200 or more.
I am already thinking about how to benefit from this referral bonus offer. I am getting lots of ideas: I can combine existing service offers to create one that costs £200 or above. Then invite my clients to use Wise to pay me. Perfect.
I think this is going to be the best way for me to benefit from the referral bonus offer. My students and clients would pay me regardless, but by using this service I get a little extra and they save a percentage compared to using traditional payment services like PayPal, bank transfers or even Stripe, that still applies a currency exchange fee that will be more than that of Wise.
Quote to spark action
That which we can be
I heard this today and I think it was mis-attributed. So I don’t know whose wise thought this is.
we must be.
Artist Progress Report of clearing the storage of the Past : Sept 27th
1) Choosing between 2 book page sizes today. – It’s taking careful consideration of available data storage & necessity AND available print sizes with print-on-demand company. Probably going with 8×10 but I really like 8.5×11. The difference seems negligible but is significant.
1.2) I may start with page designs for 8.5×11 because they CAN be downsized. Whereas upsizing isn’t possible.
2) Currently scanning the last 3 negatives of my Art Foundation negatives. They have never been digitised and are the most irreplaceable.
3) Wrote down the steps to create the portfolio book. (This keeps the head clear)
4) Putting together the first Art Foundation portfolio pages. (Will add sketchbook notes in the future – they are now in storage)
5) THEN the most important and IMPACTFUL step:
Create digital portfolio pages of the physical portfolio I have here.
That will begin to show progress in clearing boxes. (I have 2 boxes of physical portfolios that are 50% duplicates and 90% can be discarded once I have the digital portfolio saved into the cloud & on the print-on-demand site – using Blurb)
THAT is what is going to start clearing the path to returning home to you!
Artist Progress Report of clearing the storage of the Past : Sept 26th
Sharing my daily progress
Good morning. All good here. Tired and not enough sleep but good.
I finally bit the bullet and ordered the silica packets for safer storage for my books (£30 total). Hopefully I ordered enough. 😊 Am very happy with myself. I also pooped 3x this morning and feel much better for it.
My neck / shoulder is worse again than last night. But slightly better than yesterday morning.
Sitting at the desk now to make a MOVE. – I measured the size book I would like for my portfolio. I will use that as a template size in photoshop + 10% (to give me sizing wriggle room when printing. In case the print format available is a little larger than what my ideal size is.)
I also ordered an SSDsd drive to back up just this project. I got a super-budget Chinese one. Because it will only be my 2nd back-up.
For the nerds among you:
The way I usually store files is:
• 1x on the computer,
• 1x on external drive #1, and
• 1x on external drive #2.
The external drive #1 and #2 are mirrored, this means they are identical. If I delete the file on the computer I will have 2 identical copies on 2 separate storage devices.
I bought an ‘internal drive’ with a separate cheap plastic case to convert it into an external drive. This lets me plug it into the USB port of my computer. It was the cheapest option and because it’s just the 2nd backup drive it is ok if this doesn’t work out. This entire project really just needs temporary storage until I create my portfolio book. The drive I bought has 1000 positive reviews, I am not worried about it failing. If this ‘turning internal drive to external drive’ works then this is how we will back up in the future = It saves 20-30%+ on the price compared to buying ready to plug external hard drives.
Having the drive will give me a safer workflow and will allow me to delete the files from my computer, where they are taking up significantly too much space. I can then keep only the final project files and curated choice of images on it.
;;;;;;
I also figured out my digital file storage backup system. (this is another nerdy exposition on Dropbox, iCloud, Google One backup comparisons. I will spare you this – for now). Next I need to write down my plan for file organising (so that I don’t forget and stay consistent as long as it takes to finish this portfolio backup.)
Tomorrow I will set up a first file template in photoshop and start my first project archive. (Each art project will be ‘one step of backing up’. First I will work on Foundation & Undergraduate degree projects.)
Also today’s plan:
• Exercise before 7pm. (update: I did it later but I did twice as much as I set myself as minimum.)
• Go for a walk to the shop between 3-5pm (get greens, vitamin D and fish). update: I did that and it was SO cold. How do people in the UK survive this? Brrr. I am so glad that I now live in California. We have fires and crime but at least not frosty fingers.
• Go to bed at 2.30am NOT 5.30am. update: I failed at this. I went to bed at 4:30am. What on earth is this night owl mode?
Sharing Korean Youtube Channels that I really like
LOTS of categories for Videos set in & around Korea, the Korean language, music, culture, aesthetic, fitness, skincare and more.
American YouTube Content Creator in Seoul: Cari Cakes
Over the years I keep coming back to watch all of her videos. I like her choice of music and her video creation style. I like the diaristic aspect of how she shares about her experience. She likes books, Art, cafes, flaneuring around South Korea and sometimes the world. I find her content accessible and relaxing. She is one of the Youtube Content Creators who purposely ‘Romanticises Life’ and I like this. It is obvious that she does share some personal aspects of life but also that is a very curated experience. I don’t get FOMO from watching her content. The Aesthetic Youtubers that I also share in this post are a little too polished for me, but sometimes I find them relaxing. I think language barrier is also a consideration and may explain why some of the Korean creators choose to go for ambient sound aesthetica that doesn’t require translation..
Cari Cake’s second channel: Cari can Read
Super Sweet Korean-Australian Couple, please support
현 Hyun (with English subtitles)
Same couple again below but now on her channel: 호주사라 HojuSara
(Korean & English, with subtitle options). Please watch a few of their videos, especially the newest ones. You will see why that would be very kind of you to support Hyun, who I hope will receive the royalties for the watch minutes that you put in. He deserves is so much. x Share some love.
Korean – Canadian Youtube Couple: 2hearts1seoul
Korean-American Youtube Couple (Korea & America)
레이진 [Raye & Jin]
Domestic-Aesthetic
If you can’t quite get enough of this relaxing aesthetic content then check out HamiMommy’s instagram, too! https://www.instagram.com/hami.mommy/
Korean Singer – John Park 존박
Korean Singer – 성시경 SUNG SI KYUNG
Beautiful voice – relaxing
Not to forget The Boss of K-Kop
You may need to watch it on his Youtube Channel on Youtube. The privacy settings can change at any time later: Some of his videos have a privacy setting that doesn’t allow embedding.: RAIN (비) , Rainism (레이니즘)
After watching Rain’s Rainism Dance Routine are you Inspired to get fit? Here is your personal trainer:
Jae-ho – Trainer & Physical Therapist unfortunately I can’t embed his video. But click on the link and you can watch it on YT. Get ready to get fit. : 9 Minute workout that is possible to do at home
Korean Music Playlists Channel – sort of Cafe style (better music is linked above)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3q6ETGnbbeQ9F_3G04_2ug/featured
K-pop Dance Lessons
Kpop Dance Lessons with an English speaker in Melbourne Australia. Each Choreography is broken down into several videos.
Now are you ready to Learn Korean?:
With a Native speakers: Talk To Me In Korean
One of the very, very best and most enjoyable resources available. Lots of structure, learning materials, free and paid options. Totally recommended. (I also really like Billy Go for how he breaks down the language learning process = link below as well.)
Korean with Korean Unnie 한국언니
Korean Travel Phrases with Mina Oh, an old video but she is SO nice, while you are here: watch ALL her travel videos:
Learn Korean with a fluent linguist – Native English speaker and GREAT information (beginner to advanced):
A WHOLE course for free on Youtube:
Billy Go’s Beginner Korean Course | #2: Intro to 한글
With a language learners:
Korean Skincare with: Sara Vi
Korean Comedy (shorts)
Two white guys living in Korea, fluent in Korean, interviewing others:
In Korean with English subtitles, sometimes in English with Korean subtitles.
Dear Fanchon Fröhlich
Dear Fanchon, I continue to think about you long after you have gone. Your company, art, book collection, inspiration and soirees won’t ever be forgotten. Neither will my first experience of opera and La Traviata.
I wish time could, for just a day, be a-linear and allow me to skip back to June 10th 2016. I’d choose differently.
I would take a taxi to the distant part of town to see you before I left. My poor choice of not saying goodbye is something that forever haunts me. I hope you knew how much you mean to me, still.
When to withdraw my payment from Preply or iTalki?
Q:
What’s the highest amount of $$ you’ve had in your Preply or Italki account before withdrawing it to your PayPal, Stripe, Payoneer or bank account? I’m asking because I always let it accumulate before withdrawing my payment. I wonder if anyone has ever had any issues with ‘saving money’ in their Preply or iTalki account?
The most I have ever stored on a teaching platform is $1600. In hindsight I wouldn’t do that again. I now ALWAYS schedule to transferring money out sooner because Preply and iTalki are teaching platform service providers not insured banking institutions.
In the event that any teaching platform will abruptly cease business there isn’t a guarantee that they would still be able to pay out all outstanding payments. Teaching platforms aren’t an insured bank. Your money is always going to be safer stored in a bank. Don’t even leave it on a platform or on PayPal or Venmo or other payment service provider either: bank it where it is insured. Borderless banks without brick and mortar are also an option. I use three Transferwise / Wise, Revolut and N26. I have another article comparing them and why I currently regularly use Wise to receive payments in multiple currencies and to save money on transfer fees. And why I use Revolut for daily purchases and how Revolut compares to using my credit card for purchases.
In summary: transfer your money out of the teaching platform and to your bank (traditional or borderless) at the end of a set period of time that you decide. Every 10 lessons, every week, every 2 weeks, monthly. It depends on your income as well as risk tolerance.
Only store on Preply (or elsewhere) what you can afford to lose.
Birgit Over 7 Seas 