"SUCH AS THEY ARE WISEST"
Photo by Kellen M. Henry
My friend Rob Story and I live in opposite-land. He’s tall and I’m short. He took serious classes for an engineering degree, while I… took wine tasting and played newspaper.
Consequently, he graduated with a master’s degree from Virginia Tech, got a job and moved to D.C. with his girlfriend Sheri. I, on the other hand, am moving to D.C. first, then graduating with my master’s degree and probably never finding a job.
I called him up for some free advice on life after school in the District of Columbia during the dog days of the financial crisis.
Have a listen:
Read the transcript below.
Rob: Hello?
Hank: Hello.
Rob: Why’s this number say “unknown?”
Hank: Because I’m calling from an unknown location in a bunker of journalism.
Rob: Really?
Hank: Are you ready to be famous on the Internet?
Rob: No. Wait a second. I’m already famous on the internet.
Hank: Why don’t you introduce yourself for the people of the Internet?
Rob: I’m Rob. I like to bike and I like to ski and occasionally I go to work.
Hank: Tell me about graduating and going out into the job market, as horrible as it was in May. You got a job pretty easily, it seemed like.
Rob: Yeah, I’m in a really small field. With ocean engineering and naval architecture, the workforce is in their 50s and 60s for the most part. So there’s this huge, top-heavy workforce of really smart people that didn’t really transfer their knowledge to anybody. So, yeah, it wasn’t too bad for me. I was just kind of pigeonholed as to where I could work. Even if it’s a private job, it’s government related, so you’re stuck in D.C.
Hank: Did the people you graduated with, did they find themselves in pretty much the same situation or were they scrambling a little bit more?
Rob: I was pretty much the only person I knew, of my group of friends, coming out. The undergrads that I knew that were coming out, they were finding jobs pretty easily, so I don’t think they had any issues. Like I said, if you’re willing to move to somewhere like D.C. or Houston or Norfolk, then it’s really not a problem finding a job.
Hank:Is that at all a function of the recession or is that pretty much just the field?
Rob: Well, actually so, I almost got a job in Boulder [Colorado] and I had an interview in Seattle [Washington] and in both cases, both companies had hiring freezes. They basically said, ‘Alright, we don’t know when our contracts are coming in. Basically, our re-contracting happens in the summer, so it’s not just that we can’t afford to hire you, we don’t want to hire you and then not have anything for you to do, literally sitting there twiddling your thumbs because we have no work for you to do.’ So, I was directly affected in that way.
Hank: So, you just made a big move to D.C. from Roanoke, Va. Has that impacted your life in any significant way as far as your finances and what you’re paying attention to?
Rob: You know, I was operating on a graduate student budget in Roanoke, so I didn’t really have that much money down there. And coming up here, yeah, it’s really expensive to live. Our rent has tripled? Yeah, I think we’ve tripled our rent. But as far as costs go, I mean, we spend a lot of money on food because food is more expensive and we spend a lot of money to live but I’m also getting paid a lot more, so it doesn’t feel like it’s been a really awful change.
Hank: Now, you’re into some pretty expensive, gear heavy sports as well. How do you balance that with your necessities and how does that play into your planning for finances?
Rob: Well, the travel part is the hard part. I basically put myself in debt buying all sorts of fun things and now I’m paying some of that off, but the issue really is saving up money to travel. You’ve kind of got to keep your eye on the goal because if you don’t continue saving, if you keep spending and spending and spending, then you realize, oh man, I’ve had this goal, but I’m not getting any closer to it. So, we’re trying to put some money away, so hopefully we can move out west and maybe I can spend a winter skiing or some such thing.
Hank: Do you think that’s a pitfall that a lot of young people make, kind of working paycheck to paycheck and not really thinking about the long term?
Rob: Not just young people. There are a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck these days because you get older and you’re like, oh man, I’m going to save money, but as you get older, you incur more costs. You have kids, you have houses, you have cars. We’re doing pretty well. We’re trying to stay budgeted and I’m trying not to buy a lot of random gear-y crap that I probably don’t need. And really, Sheri [his girlfriend] is the big financial person around here. She keeps a lot of the budget.
Hank: Do you guys have a formal budget or do you just kind of try to eyeball things?
Rob: No, Sheri just keeps a big spreadsheet and she actually keeps a formal budget month to month of what’s going out, what’s coming in and then how much. We haven’t split it down into specific costs. We just kind of keep a running tally of how much “extra” money we have. Really, we’re paying… I’m really dumping money into paying off my car and that sort of thing, and eventually, student loans are coming up here in November, so I’m really dumping money into any debt that I have to try to get it paid off within a year or two so that when I’m ready to get out of D.C., I don’t have anything looming over my head.
The issue is, if you just pay minimum credit card payments, I forget what the numbers are, but if you pay minimum payments, it’ll take you years and years to get it paid off. So, if you ever realistically want to get that kind of thing paid off, your really just have to start dumping money into those things. Finance charges will kill you and you don’t realize it because it’s just tacking on a little bit month by month, but at the end of the year you’re like, holy crap. I’ve lost so much money, you know, just straight to the bank. Right out of my pocket.
Hank: Any other thoughts about that transition from student-dom to real-world life? That’s what I’m grappling with.
Rob: Well, I’ve only been out for two months. And it helps that I really like my job. I really like what I do and I really like my boss and the people I work with, so that’s making a huge difference. You know, as a graduate student, it was: sit down and work all day on research, and now it’s sit down and work all day on a different thing. Except now I get a sweet office. Oh, and free coffee. I have a company that provides both coffee and office supplies. That’s a pretty new thing, so, that’s been the biggest thing. Coffee and office supplies. Let your readers know.
Hank: Coffee and office supplies. If you want to be an ocean engineer, you will have coffee and office supplies in Washington D.C. That sounds worth it.
Rob: Yup, indeed.
Hankincents is a blog about life and money by Kellen Henry. It's the spare change dish of my life post-grad school in a lousy economy, in a struggling industry.
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