Posted: July 13th, 2010 | Author: Joe | Filed under: Employment | Tags: Employment, money, new job, Perspective, Raise | 1 Comment »
Thoughts on getting a new job.
I finally got a new job!
Words alone cannot describe the sense of elation I feel. I’ve been stuck at a dead-end job now since 2008. I have had very mixed emotions about the whole situation for quite sometime. I have been extremely thankful to have a job in this recession, but I’ve also felt like my financial plans have been stuck in neutral. I knew I should be grateful that we weren’t falling behind financially, but it just felt so depressing to be getting nowhere after doing so well.
Like many who managed to avoid being laid off; I’ve had to take unpaid time off, lost my employer contribution to my 401k plan, had no raise bonus or similar salary increase.
But all that has changed.
I got a great new position at a new company in almost a new field, but it’s everything I wanted – and I know how lucky I am in this economy.
But there have been a lot of interesting remarks made by people when I tell them my news. I realized that I view things differently than others, and I thought I share some of those observations here.
Thoughts on money, benefits and what really matters.
But how much more are you making?
Believe it or not, I’m a pretty private person despite having a blog. And one of the things I’ve never felt comfortable talking about is income. It’s just one of those things that makes me feel awkward discussing with others. It’s like personal hygiene of the personal finance world.
So, I told my wife’s family about the job and her aunt asks me if I’ll be making more money. It’s a logical, common and completely expected question. It doesn’t bother me at all. But I also know she’s looking for more than a simple “yes”, but as I mentioned I don’t want to give her a dollar amount.
So, being the geek that I am, I give her a percentage.
“I’ll be making 12% more a year,” I tell her.
She just blinks and stares. “Yes, but how much is that?”
Now, I know her pretty well so I feel confident in saying that she wasn’t simply being nosey and trying to weasel my annual salary from me. She really just had no idea what to make of my response. 12% meant nothing to her.
But ask yourself, when was the last time you got a 12% raise?
The dollar amount isn’t important, it’s the percent that matters. It’s the percent that tells you how big, or how small a leap you’re taking relative to where you are, not compared to where someone else is.
How much does it pay?
I got this question from my younger cousin. Again, he wasn’t trying to be nosey, he’s just graduated high school and has no idea what real jobs pay. But the problem with this line of thinking is that salary is everything, and it’s not. It’s also about the bennies!
I support my family of four on my salary, so things like health insurance, time off and a decent 401k are important to me. More so than when I was my cousin’s age. But I think a lot of people just never get past the salary figure when considering jobs.
The other huge benefit to my new job is that I think I’m going to like it very much. And when you actually like what you do for a living, it’s a lot less like work and a lot more like living! And that’s something money can’t buy.
photo by kreg.steppe.
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Posted: September 25th, 2009 | Author: Joe | Filed under: Debt | Tags: celebrity, Debt, money | 8 Comments »
I stumbled on a news item today that I think illustrates what I was talking about yesterday, when I blogged that money can be a debt magnifier.
From Star Magazine:
“Pamela Anderson used to be the Baywatch babe with the million-dollar body! Now, she owes more than $1.2 million to creditors, including construction companies she stiffed after they remodeled her five-bedroom Malibu Colony home last year! “
The article goes on to talk about how Anderson owes $674,043 to the contractor, as well as $252,360 to California’s Franchise Tax Board in unpaid income tax from 2007. She might even lose her multi-million dollar home.
This just shows that having a lot of money, doesn’t solve your money problems if you don’t know how to manage it in the first place. In this case, being rich and famous was just a fast track to mega debt when Anderson’s poor decisions were amplified by her wealth.
Let this be a reminder that we should get our habits under control before we throw more money into the mix.
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Posted: September 23rd, 2009 | Author: Joe | Filed under: Debt | Tags: celebrity bankruptcy, dave ramsey, Debt, Income, money, Opinion | No Comments »
I don’t know if you are a Dave Ramsey fan or not, but I’ve been listening to him casually on the radio during my evening commute now for a few months and I had to write about something I noticed time and again on his shows. It seems like just about every person who gets on the air with Dave to ask for advice about a debt problem always answers with something in the 6-figure range when Dave asks what their salary is!
I swear that 85-90% of those callers say they make somewhere between $100,000-200,000 a year.
The first question I had for a while was, “How in the world can you have a problem with debt when you make 6 figures a year?!”
Then the answer gradually became clear to me – these people don’t have a problem with debt, they have a problem with spending! It’s a money management problem, made worse (magnified) by a large salary.
Think about it- we see it all the time with celebrities. They have multi-million (sometimes billion) dollar incomes and somehow lose it all. How does that happen?
The answer lies with the fact that money is a lubricant that greases your financial skids. But if you can’t steer the sled, you’re apt to fly off a cliff and the more money you have (lubricant) the faster (and farther) you’ll fly off that cliff.
The Dave Ramsey callers, like Ed McMahon, M.C. Hammer, Michael Jackson, and hundreds of other celebrities should serve as a reminder that more money alone will not solve your problems. In fact, it may make them worse! You should first get your financial house in order, then grow your income. Chances are, you’ll actually keep more of it that way. 
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Posted: July 5th, 2009 | Author: Joe | Filed under: Investing | Tags: Currency, Forex, FX, Investing, money | 4 Comments »
I see a lot of ads for Forex trading here and there, but I’ve never really known what it is. It’s clearly a hot topic on the web, and many blogs seem to be discussing various tips and techniques. But I still didn’t know what the hell ‘Forex’ meant.
Then I got an email from Investopedia titled: “Forex Training“.
Hmmm… I thought, this might give me a clue. But then again, maybe not. When I followed the link, this is what I got:
“What Does Forex Training Mean?
A form of instruction or mentorship that provides information on forex trading tactics, methods and successful practices. Forex training acts as a guide for the retail forex trader, providing insight into successful strategies, signals and systems as well as other general information on Forex trading.”
Wow! That seems more like a definition of training as it applies to Forex trading, but what is Forex Trading?
So, I did a little more digging, and eventually found this:
“What Does Forex – FX Mean?
The market in which currencies are traded. The forex market is the largest, most liquid market in the world with an average traded value that exceeds $1.9 trillion per day and includes all of the currencies in the world.”
It all makes sense to me now. It’s a bet on whether a given currency’s value will rise or fall. This is what George Soros made his billions in. I just don’t understand how it can be such a common term, and yet so narrow in its understanding. I guess if you don’t know what Forex means, you don’t need to know? 
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Words alone cannot describe the sense of elation I feel. I’ve been stuck at a dead-end job now since 2008. I have had very mixed emotions about the whole situation for quite sometime. I have been extremely thankful to have a job in this recession, but I’ve also felt like my financial plans have been stuck in neutral. I knew I should be grateful that we weren’t falling behind financially, but it just felt so depressing to be getting nowhere after doing so well.
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