I Did What I Was Told and Now I Can't Find a Job

0:00Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. I am calling in. It's really just focused on this affordability crisis we're all dealing with. It's no secret. But I'm a young adult and I just feel stuck in so many different aspects of having to navigate it. And I just kind of wanted to maybe touch on some things with you guys and see what you think. Yeah, let's zoom in. The crisis is like a great headline for the news, but it doesn't speak to the daily reality. Are we talking I can't afford door dash or I'm going to be evicted from my apartment? There's a big difference. No, no, no, no, so I live at home still and I am trying to navigate the next steps of a relationship, moving out into my own place. Do I rent? Do I buy next steps of my career? It hasn't expanded as fast as I thought it would having degrees that I do. I graduated with my bachelor's in 21 and then my master's in 22.

1:03What's your master's in? I have my MBA and I work in human resources and I did that as a concentration in school and every job that I apply to, it's like, oh, this is an entry level position and then they want three to five years of experience. And it just boggles my mind. It's like, what are we doing? I don't want to be an old guy because the affordability crisis, things are very much more expensive. There's no question about it. Right. But what I'll tell you is as a guy who got a master's degree and then got my first PhD, I had the exact same experience. What I think that has shifted is I went in knowing I've got to have worked this job and I did it at university. I got to go get this associate dean of students job and I got to add junk to three different colleges in the evenings and on Saturdays and I got to work on a PhD at the same time. That was just what I knew to be true. What I hear now is I don't want to do the other stuff.

2:08I thought that when I got this thing, it would just like the gravy trim and roll out. And I think that's new. And so telling you like telling you like, dude, as a, I've never not lived with a roommate ever. Yeah. Even before I got married. That was just what we did. And even we had a nice apartment. There were several of us living there. And so it's you saying, okay, I had this dream and maybe somebody told you this and they did. I will say this, you were sold to build a goods. If you just get NBA, you're going to make $250,000 and you can do whatever you want. And you'll buy a house as soon as you're out. That's not true. Right. Yeah. It was much easier for me. Don't wait for the interest rate to be perfect before buying or refinancing a home. Talk to Churchill Mortgage. Smart buyers buy the home they can afford now and then refinance later if rates improve. Churchill helps you make decisions with confidence instead of guessing. And Churchill Mortgage has a web page with special offers just for our audience.

3:09So to Churchill Mortgage dot com slash Ramsey offer. This is a paid advertisement in the MSID 1591 in the MS Consumer Access dot org equal housing lender. It was much easier for me relatively speaking to go by house. No question. The math was in John's favor. Correct. A little more. But the work ethic and the I got to get roommates. I got to get friends. I'm going to live in an apartment. I'm going to have a good life and I'm going to have to work in the evenings in the weekend so that when I get my three or five years. I'm going to be super far ahead of the next person in the interview line. Right. So it's both. Yeah. I wouldn't even necessarily disagree with you. I definitely think that where my head space was at like I have certain expectations for myself and I had expectations for myself at that time. I don't know if it was just with the way that the pandemic rolled out in the timing of when I did it. It was awful. It was awful. Absolutely. I mean, I fortunately I was commuting to a school that was right down the street from

4:09me and I don't have any student loan debt. I was able to work through school and pay my way through it. I paid my way through my masters. So what are you looking at? What are you unable to do right this second? Besides go buy a big nice house, right? Yeah. And by the way, I didn't have a house without a for Micah countertops until just like a house or two ago, right? So what are you not able to do right this second that not that you realize? I wish I could do it. I just can't. What are you not able to do right now that you think you're getting ripped off? That isn't fair. You know, I do get the difference of the question a little bit. Yeah. For sure. And I'm glad you can kind of renavigate me here. I've got notes here and all these things I wanted to talk about. But for me, it definitely feels more like I'm feeling stuck in what I'm doing. Maybe I'm not making enough to start my life.

5:11Fortunately, I'm not in a debt situation. My parents are fortunately not charging me right now. So I'm able to save as much as I can and I have a nice little nest that going. But I can afford these rates. I can't afford to put a mortgage just by myself and my girlfriend has a lease until April. So there's a timeline here. But for me, it's like, is it smarter to rent by that time? Yes. If it's smarter to buy and be putting equity into an asset. Am I because I'm only making like $40,000 a year in my current job? Again, I'll do you? I'm 28 years old. Okay. Given my education background, given how motivated I am to grow in my career, am I in the right career? You know, I want a concentration in human resources, you said, right? Right. So you want to be a leadership in human resources.

6:12If I snap my fingers. Yeah. So that you still like to take it? It's going to take five years of doing what you're doing to get into the leadership role that gets you to the next leadership role. So just know they don't hand out leadership roles just because you got the MBA. It's going to take a grind, but it may not be as long as you think. If you, I mean, you're a sharp guy, this could happen a lot sooner for you than most people. But let's focus on a one year goal versus the, well, I really wanted to have the six figure job with a house tomorrow and be married. Let's just focus on one thing at a time. So you have no debt. You're making 40 grand a year and how much do you have in savings? My savings account right now is about 23. Great. So let's call that your emergency fund plus some. Maybe it's a future down payment. Maybe it's an engagement ring. Who knows? You got a lot going on in the next couple of years. So I would not be like, I gotta be investing and I need to be saving. I think you're trying to do a lot of good things at once and you're not making progress. And part of it is your income. You're right.

7:13You should be making more as a guy with a couple of degrees by 28. Yeah. Like the average college student doesn't help either. So then can you go, all right, is this company not paying me enough? What is the market rate for this kind of position? Should I try to be applying for other companies? Or do you have to have a heart? I just recently talked to a friend of mine who's a tenured professor and we're walking through their finances. This is just a personal call. And I said, I hate to break your heart here, but you would make more money if you became the manager of a local Starbucks. And if you end, you want to do this job, you want to talk about this particular subject with new students. It's fun. It's awesome. It's a great life. But you're making a choice to not go make more money and have a different kind of life because you want to do this thing. And so you kind of ironic because I, you know, like daily, I'm jumping on LinkedIn and indeed, and I'm looking up career advice coach. And here I am on the call with you guys, or I don't know if you've heard of like strawberry, it's like another, you know, web, or your career coach or something.

8:13Yeah, but I worked with a great career advisor and I'm connected with her and it's fantastic. So like, like the fulfillment that I get from having conversations, sometimes with people about their career aspirations and their finances and things like that, like, I would love to be in you guys' seat. You know what I mean? Like it's just like, it's just ironic that here I am in this like crisis, you know, I'm here with all these notes and I'm like, okay, well, what's my next step? And maybe it's just because I overthink everything, but it's like, yes, there's that. Most people in their 20s are on the struggle bus trying to figure it out. So just know you're not the only one going like, I'm not where I want to be yet. You shouldn't be. I'm in your 20s. Most people in my age are still trying to get where they're going. You're lucky you're figuring this out in your 20s and not in your 40s or 50s. Yes. So you're actually in a really good spot. If we just find a better job, half of your problems are solved. Or if you stay in that job and you do some adjacent things, like if you go, I went and ran with the crisis team and helped out police officers in the middle of the night.

9:14I got paid like seven bucks an hour to do that, right? And then on the side, I went and you have a master's degree. You could teach, you could add junk to business classes online for a company, for a university. And then when your three to five year window comes through and you've been working in human resources, then all of a sudden, you've got a really nice resume where you've sat with hurting people, like big time hurting people and you've been doing the thing day and and day out and you've got some education where you're back in the classroom. Now you got a wide portfolio, but some of this, like George, you just nailed it. No one is going to put you in charge of a thing unless you've done that thing for a while. They shouldn't at least. And so you can out degree your experience and you're just going to have to ride that out. But bro, you're in a way better position than you think you are. Create your free every dollar budget today, the simplest way to budget for your life.