I know when I was first accepted into TAPIF, I had a lot of questions about what it might look like once I got to France. My biggest questions were about finding housing (especially housing that was affordable on the assistant salary), and what my schedule would look like. There’s no one answer for that question, as budget and schedules will look different for every assistant, but I figured I’d contributed to the wealth of literature out there with my own experience, in case it might be of some assistance!

Budget for TAPIF in Dijon

I’ll admit, the salary for TAPIF is less than ideal. It hasn’t changed in years, which is a reflection of the lack of pay raises for teachers in general, and it also doesn’t really reflect how much things cost now. Moreover, the estimate you’re given is just that as some academies tax differently than others (heaven forbid things work in a universal manner). You receive your salary once a month, at the end of the month. I’ve mentioned in other posts that the first month will only be 70% of your salary, and in order to receive October’s salary at the end of October, you usually need to submit your bank details by the 10/15th of October. Starting in December, your pay will be normal with no adjustments from that point. With my transportation reimbursement, I received 800€ a month, meaning my pay before the reimbursement was 785€. Be sure when looking at the salary for your budget to use the net value, as tax rates are higher in France, resulting in a decent difference between your brut (gross) salary, and your net salary.

Expenditures

I lucked out in Dijon when it comes to housing and rent. I live at the lycée where I work, which means that my rent is very affordable. I pay 90€ a month, which includes my water, electricity, and heat. It’s not a luxurious space, and doesn’t really have a kitchen area, but it’s worth it for the money I save. I want to point out that rent this low, and rent including all those utilities is very rare outside of living at your school. I found nothing lower than 300€ a month in Dijon when I was initially unhappy with my living situation and looking to move elsewhere. I know that my monthly expenditures are lower than the average assistant because my rent is so low, for which I am eternally grateful. [As a quick comparison, my rent in Angers at a FJT was 468€ a month before CAF.] My living situation was also eligible for CAF (housing assistance, which I’ll touch on in a bit), so I saved even more money in the months where I qualified for that assistance. Living at your school is typically only an option at the secondary level, but is always worth inquiring about once you get your school placements. I am responsible for purchasing my own food, so I make a weekly trip to Carrefour, as well as my own laundry, which involves a trip to a laverie. The latter wasn’t something I had budgeted for as when I lived in a foyer in Angers, the laundry was heavily subsidized, and added to my rent at the end of the month. I have to pay for my laundry in cash immediately when I do it in Dijon, and it is not nearly as cheap as it was in Angers. The laverie where I go has five washers and three drum sizes. The bigger the drum, the more expensive the cycle. I use the 10kg washer, and to run a wash cycle, and a 12 minute dry (which isn’t enough for heavier items, but is fine for most of my clothes), it costs 9,50€ from start to finish. I do my laundry every other week to cut down on costs, and am lucky to have my linens (sheets + duvet cover) laundered and provided by the school where I live.

I mentioned a transport reimbursement earlier, and I am eligible for this as I work in another school to which I can take public transport. If you opt to live at your school where you also work, and are only contracted in that school, you are unfortunately not eligible for the transport reimbursement. If you need a travel subscription for work, you can get 50% reimbursed, which is added to your paycheck every month. You have to purchase either a weekly or a monthly subscription, and then of course submit paperwork for it every month, but it’s pretty efficient as a system. The monthly plan for 18-25 year olds in Dijon costs 30€, so with the reimbursement, I only pay 15€ a month.

In addition to rent, laundry, groceries, and transport, there’s also your monthly phone bill. Before you leave for France, make sure your phone is unlocked (you can check with your provider at home if this is the case, and if not, what you need to do to make it so). Once your phone is unlocked, you can easily swap out the SIM card with one in France, meaning you don’t need to get yourself a whole new phone. I initially started with a Free Mobile plan, which was 19,99€ a month for 100GB of data, unlimited texts, and unlimited minutes. I had chosen this plan because my accommodation at the lycée didn’t have internet so I wanted as much as possible. When I opened my bank account, however, my bank had a promotion for cell plans, with a six month plan identical to the one I had with Free for only 4,99€ a month. Since those six months would cover my remaining time in France, it seemed like a no brainer, so after one month, I switched over to the plan provided by my bank to save some money. In my first month living in France, I realized that 100GB was unfortunately not enough for me to stream Netflix, do the work I needed to do for school, and surf social media. Due to living at my school, I wasn’t able to get an internet box from Free, or any other mobile provider, but once again, my bank swooped in to save the day! They had a wifi box plan for 29,99€ a month that comes with 300GB of internet, and can be used on multiple devices. It’s worked perfectly, and it just plugs into my extension cord, so there were little issues with setting it up. Between my phone and wifi plan, I haven’t run out of data, and it’s been a pretty good system.

In case it’s hard to visualize my monthly expenditures from that huge block of text (apologies), here they are written out in a handy table format! I have only included the guaranteed costs I incur every month, and haven’t added casual expenditures like travel (of which I did little this time around), treats at the boulangerie, pharmacy visits, or any other small expenditures during the month.

Income

In addition to the ~800€ salary I received as part of my job, I was able to find some tutoring opportunities for some additional pocket money. If you are on a visa to be an assistant, it’s important to note that you cannot officially hold any other employment, but many assistants do work like tutoring under the table. We were told at orientation that as long as there’s no paper trail and they can’t prove that you’re doing it, you should be fine (and note that you can’t advertise your services at your school. Other teachers can do it for you, but you yourself can’t). Through teachers at my collège, I was connected with two opportunities to tutor weekly. Through those two weekly one hour sessions, I was able to earn a little bit of money (we’re not talking big amounts here) to help justify some pastry expenditures.

My collège also offered me the opportunity to work some extra hours between November and January. That was a process that required approval from the rectorat, and some additional paperwork, but I was able to earn some additional money in those few months by working extra hours. This is, unfortunately, not an option for non EU citizens as the visa restricts your hours, but can potentially be an option for those who are allowed to work more than 12 hours a week (there are some visas that will allow this, but not the specific visa given to assistants).

As an EU citizen, I am extremely lucky to benefit from the prime d’activité. This is aid for EU citizens aged 18-25 to help support themselves. If you are an EU citizen, you can apply for this after you have worked in France for three months (if you start in October, you are eligible in January). This aid is through CAF so you must already have an account through that system, but even if you are receiving CAF, you have to apply for the prime separately. You will provide your monthly income for October – December, which will determine the monthly aid you receive January – March. You can continue to fill in your ressources trimestrielles every three months for as long as you have income in France for the three previous months. You must file every three months to continue to receive the aid, and it is paid to you at the same time as housing assistance (if you qualify for that).

Speaking of CAF, let’s get into that! As soon as you have a permanent living situation, start your application for housing assistance through CAF. The first step is getting a numero allocataire, which will of course, come to you by post. If you have a CAF account already and have switched départements, you will need to go in and change your address in the system, which will send you a new numero allocataire (naturally, you can’t have one number for the whole country). Once you have a numero allocataire, and your passcode, you can log in and start filling out a dossier for the housing assistance. The reason to do this ASAP is that the aid you receive is based off the date you submit your dossier, not the date you moved into your housing. Even if it takes several months to receive your first payment (and believe me, it most likely will), you will be back paid from the date you submitted. The amount of aid you receive is based off a combination of your income, your rent, and the amount of money you earned in the last two years. If you haven’t earned anything in France in that time, you can put 0€ as income because let’s face it, they can’t check. If you’re a renewing assistant, or have income in France for whatever reason in that time, you must declare it. You can keep track of your dossier on your CAF account online, and that is also where they will alert you if any documents are missing. Once you’re approved, you don’t need to do anything else until you leave France. I was initially eligible for housing assistance (for the months of November and December, I received 68€/month in assistance towards my rent), but because of my slightly unique situation in having had an account before with a massive time gap in it, I had to declare my situation from back home during the year and a half I wasn’t in France. My income disqualified me from housing assistance, but luckily, I’m in a situation to not need it as much this year. For a timeline of my CAF journey this year, I applied in November 2020, and received my first payment in February 2021. Every département works on their own timeline so some will be more backlogged than others.

Schedule for TAPIF in Dijon

What your schedule as a teaching assistant will look like is going to vary based on so many things. Some schools are more willing to work with you to have an “ideal” schedule, where others will have less flexibility due to how the classes are scheduled. While you do only work 12 hours a week, that is purely the amount of hours you spend in front of a class. That is not the number of hours you’ll spend in the school during the week. Many schools will do their best to ensure you don’t have horrendously long gaps between classes, but sometimes it can’t be helped. You can talk to your prof ref/conseillier(e) pedagogique to see if they can accommodate certain things in your schedule (i.e. a preference for no early mornings, or not five days a week), but at the end of the day, you can’t dictate your schedule. It’s sometimes just crossing your fingers and hoping it’s not too inconvenient. I had no say in my schedule, although my prof refs did do their best to make it workable. Since I work in two schools, I know there were initially some issues with deciding what days I would work at each school to ensure that they both got the hours they had been allotted with the English assistant.

My schedule at the lycée varies from week to week because they have A weeks and B weeks (I’m not even addressing the never ending changes in relation to hybrid models). I still work my given six hours, but how that looks varies slightly based on the week. My collège schedule never changes from week to week (barring class cancellations). Since I live at my lycée, I can usually spend downtime in my room, but when I have it at the collège, I’ll spend it in the Salle des profs. I work Monday/Tuesday at my lycée, and Thursday/Friday at my collège with no classes Wednesday. Side note: the last time I was an assistant in Angers, I also only had Wednesday off, and my schedule was far less forgiving in terms of breaks because my commute was so long to my schools. As such, I spent all day on my work days at my primary schools, which is quite different to my experience this time around in Dijon. Compared to when I worked at the primary level, I also have later days this year, due to the fact that secondary schedules go later in the day, and that is when some of the English classes I have been assigned to assist are. Here’s what my schedule looks like on paper!

That’s what my schedule and expenditures have looked like this year as an assistant in Dijon! Some things are a bit different this year given the pandemic, but I thought it still might be useful to see it mapped out (hopefully for at least one person!). I’ve saved some money by not traveling during the breaks (which wasn’t the case when I was an assistant in Angers), but I do want to point out that every assistants’ budget AND schedule will be unique to their combination of living situation, city, schooling level, and in how many schools they work. There’s no way to predict exactly how things will pan out, but getting in contact with previous assistants in your academie, and later on with the previous assistant for your schools (if there was one), is a great way to start mapping things out. I found my living situation in Angers through a previous assistant, and this year’s through my prof ref, but speaking with previous assistants is a great way to get first hand information about your schools, and the city where you’ve been placed!