Career Archives - Frugaling

The Perfect Job For Me

Her office was scattered with boxes, papers, and knickknacks. I’d never seen it this way. Here she was, packing up everything after a three to four-decade career. As she gingerly removed the last remaining photographs from the corkboard, I could see sun-soaked squares – leaving an outline of the past.

With a gigantic smartphone in hand, she pulled me aside to take a selfie. I laughed – not used to this cordiality. I felt the baton passing. Here was this transitional moment between generations. And with a sweet tenderness in her voice, she said goodbye.

Nearly her whole life was spent working in one place. The “best” years of her life were given to the cause of higher education. It had been a sacrifice. She fought with administrators and faculty, but always was an advocate for students. Now, she was leaving.

I knew I’d miss her presence in the halls. Her passion fundamentally pushed me to be a better writer and academic. And frankly, it seemed like she was struggling to say goodbye to all the colleagues, staff members, students, and friends.

All I could think was, “I’d like to have this moment.” I’d love to be at the end of a long career and struggling to leave. I’d love to leave fulfilled.

As a fourth-year doctoral student, I’m not in my career, but I’ve sort of started it. It’s strange. I’m not an undergraduate, but I’m also not a faculty member. I don’t pay tuition (any more), but I’m also not making much. And in this quasi-career state, I can’t help but wonder what motivates someone to put 30 to 40 years into a career – to stay at one employer.

At 26 (almost 27), I wonder how to find flow – that love in a career and life. The recipe is different for everyone, but I think I know what I need. A life with my girlfriend, maintaining friendships, being challenged intellectually at work, getting paid a wage that allows me to live in comfort (everyone’s different, I just want a roof, a few books, and Internet access), and having opportunities to collaborate all come to mind. Likely, I’ll discover more over time.

Becoming more frugal and minimal, I’ve realized how little I need beyond social connection and work satisfaction. I’m not picturing Ferraris and McMansions. Instead, I envision small homes and public transit. I don’t see $300 bottles of red wine at lavish steak restaurants. I think about healthy, tasty meals with those I care about. And these dreams influence what I’ll need and where I’ll want to be.

I want a job where I work hard, but never look at the clock. I want a job where my start time isn’t used as a character judgement, but rather my productivity. I want a job where I can make a difference in people’s lives, but still maintain my own.

I’m nearing the end of graduate school and full of questions. I want to ask people what attracted them to their employer. What made them stay? How did salaries influence their decision to stay at one employer? What made someone struggle to leave after decades of employment?

There’s a secret in those years of service. What’s yours?

Lose Track Of Time To Find Your Career

By Frugaling 6 Comments

Graduate school consists of a series of races – from place to place, hour to hour. Today, I was a student, counselor, teacher, and technical assistant. Every day requires a series of hats, as I run from activity to activity. Sometimes my mind feels like it’s in a million different places at once. It’s hard to slow down.

Thankfully, I’m nearing the end of my tenure as a doctoral student, and ready to think about next steps. I’ve segued to future-oriented questions. The most important one has been: How can I make the greatest contribution to society, while continuing to be excited to work each day? This question propelled me in the first place to study counseling psychology and acquire a Ph.D. But next steps beget a reevaluation of how I can best make a difference. I can’t stay in graduate school forever!

As a counseling psychology student, I have the privilege of multiple career paths. Some go directly into private practice (seeing clients), hospitals, teaching at universities, researching psychological concerns, and/or informing public policy. Alone, any one would be nightmarish; I’d get itchy, looking for diversity in my daily routine. Doing a sole activity all the time scares me. I don’t want to become an automaton. Frankly, I’ve envisioned being most happy with a blend of research, teaching, and counseling.

Questions abound: Would I like to be a university professor? How about a counseling psychologist at a VA? Will I work at a community college or research institution? How much of the job will include teaching, practice, or research? Where will I find a new home – East, West, Central, another country?

Answers are nearly impossible to find, as the job market is constantly in flux and increasingly competitive. I won’t magically be handed a career because of my advanced degree. Surprising as it may be, having a Ph.D. only gets you into an interview – not in the door.

Future career prospects are also tempered by concerns of stress and overwork. In this field, I’d venture to say many academics put in 60 to 80-hour weeks. There are numerous employers that work people mercilessly. Too many treat their employees as replaceable “human capital.” These practices leave individuals prone to burnout and contribute to this country’s greatest killer: heart disease.

Where does that leave a soon-to-be Ph.D.? Like much in life, I’m seeking a balance between my wants and needs. The 30-hour workweek for an academic probably doesn’t exist unless you’re near the end of your career. But 80 hours per week for years frightens me to the core.

The secret for me is pursuing passions, which can often result in “flow.” This psychological concept centers on how “just-manageable challenges” tend to make employees feel purposeful and needed — in between anxiety and boredom. When this state occurs, people become hyper-focused, productive, and generally happy. It’s a mutually beneficial state for employers and their underlings, but not often made possible due to overscheduled weeks or monotonous responsibilities.

Researchers have presented six symptoms of flow:

“Intense and focused concentration on what one is doing in the present moment.”
“Merging of action and awareness.”
“Loss of reflective self-consciousness”
“A sense that one can control one’s actions…”
“Distortion of temporal experience.”
“Experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding…”

Essentially, people are focused, active, forget their struggles, feel autonomous, lose track of time, and are internally motivated. From artists to scholars to writers to mathematicians, flow is an incredible place for creativity and excellence.

The greatest moments of my life have been here, when I lose track of time and become engrossed in an activity. For instance, when I started an endowment, Frugaling.org, and wrote my dissertation proposal, each were madly written, advocated for, and created. Despite the time to establish each, the pleasure of feeling purposeful made the hours fly by. They didn’t feel like work. I lost “reflective self-consciousness” and became the activity at hand.

While constrained by a society that values money over health (again, look at our health costs associated with being overworked and underpaid), I have the opportunity and privilege to pursue my own route. As I envision my “perfect” career, I imagine a series of part-time style gigs. I want a sprinkle of supervising counselors’ work, seeing clients, conducting research, and teaching future generations. The hours might become irrelevant when I’m tested, pushed, and encouraged to focus on helping others.

Two Novembers from now, applications will be due. I have time to find the right home, but I’m eager to fulfill the values gained over 26 years of my life. Right now, it feels like a professorship, but I’m open to change. I need to find my flow; without it, any job would be unbearable long term. Additionally, I need to be able to shape ideas, work, and daily activities in a manner that helps others directly.

How will you find your flow? What activities make you lose track of time? When do you feel purposeful, action-oriented, and passionate? Could these activities ever become a part of your work?

Income Power Parity Rules Everything Around Me

By Frugaling 6 Comments

How does your dollar in Colorado equal another in South Carolina? Will your dollar always be a dollar? What does a dollar equal in Russia? What will that dollar afford you in one place, but not another?

These questions are at the center of something called “purchasing power parity” or PPP. This theory allows economists to compare different currencies, along with changing relative costs. Your dollar tends to go further in more economically disenfranchised countries, and shorter in the higher economic zones. To put it simply, prepare for a tiny dollar in Europe, and a hefty one in sub-Saharan Africa.

With this statistic, we can actually understand purchasing power. Whenever we change locations, our power changes. Our relative expenditures fluctuate in tow. Sometimes it’s in our favor – other times we aren’t so lucky.

Purchasing power emphasizes the potential of a dollar spent, but what about a dollar earned?

Let me explain.

In 2015, the average American college student will graduate with more than $35,000 in loans. A horrific 71% of students will graduate with loans, too. These statistics are just the beginning for many hopeful grads.

Bankers and shockingly, the federal government, line up their coffers and wait for that beautiful “cha-ching” sound. Those students will pay for years; heck, likely decades. The interest-bearing loans will build more and more debt over time. And if they pursue a higher education – say a masters, Ph.D., M.D., or J.D. – it’ll mean thousands more.

Here’s an example: pretend “Benny” goes to undergrad for four years, and graduates with $35,000 in debt. He was a good student – some even called him great. His grades were strong, and he decided to apply to counseling psychology Ph.D. programs. Benny researched all the ins and outs about psychology. He decided that it was right for him. Benny would be able to study topics that interest him, practice counseling, and develop a teaching ability. It seemed like a win-win-win.

Years go by, and Benny has been going further into debt. By now, four years into his Ph.D. program, he has about $150,000 in student loans. But Benny has also settled on what he wants to do: practice counseling psychology as a clinician.

This much in the hole, the world appears rather bleak. But for Benny, he self-soothes by calmly reciting, “This is an investment in my future.” At least, that’s what everyone keeps telling him.

Then, he graduates and steps out into the bustling world of career opportunities! Solid five-figure salaries shine, and he gets ready to start a new future, pay off his debt, and maybe buy a new car. He finds a starting counselor position at $55,000 a year and gets the job. Now, he thinks, the good life can begin.

Remember how I started talking about PPP? Well, there’s a parallel version for income, too. I’ve never read it anywhere, though. I’ll call it “income power parity” or IPP.

IPP would represent the relative value of a salary, when you account for student debt, car loans, and other regular financial obligations. For Benny, his $55,000 salary hardly equals $55,000. Between paying the tax man, loans (car and student debt), and potentially starting a new family, buying a house, etc., his money dwindles.

It will take years to pay off these atmospheric amounts of debt. And every day that goes by, the interest ticks on. More money will be owed and/or paid off over time.

Here’s where income parity comes into play. Benny is a counselor, getting paid an average starting salary for someone with his education. If he had gone a different route and become a social worker, he would’ve graduated faster; thus, lowering his amount of possible debt. While the average salary for a social worker is less than a counseling psychologist, would it have been worth it for Benny to choose this route instead?

Effectively, social workers and counseling psychologists (clinicians) do the same work. One gets paid less than the other. But if one has to collect more debt than the other in the educational process, who actually gets paid more? Who can save, invest, and collect more than the other in the long run?

These questions get at the heart of income parity concerns. With more than a trillion dollars in total debt, students are burdened with one of the toughest economic questions ever. They need to stare at salaries and ask, like no generation before them, “Yeah but, how much am I really going to make?”

Shatter Your Definition Of Success

By Frugaling 9 Comments

Tell me about successful people and you might be inclined to rattle off resumes. Perhaps these people work hard and make sizable sums of money. Maybe they are moving into multiple-thousand square foot homes with ample room. They could even have the prestigious title of doctor or chief executive.

In our highly individualistic society that hails “hard work” and “grit” and “responsibility” and “choice,” we learn early on what success looks like. Different cultures have variations of vocational prestigiousness, but many share in the desire to own land, property, and make more money than most. To be accomplished, one must follow this tattered path.

The ability to captivate through material possessions and titles is dangerous. Real success and accomplishment seems lost amidst this cavalcade of crap. Worse, these measures of success are not afforded to everyone. Minorities and those from disenfranchised backgrounds are not offered the same opportunities to “succeed” in these traditional ways. For example, faculty at institutions of higher learning are overwhelmingly white men, and that’s a problem for everyone.

Our ideas and definitions of success are decrepit. We need new measures, and we’re long overdue. If success cannot be afforded with greater equality, why do we continue to allow these narrow ideas to continue? What exactly are we doing with these antiquated ideals? Why do we trumpet individual achievement that only goes to consume and perpetuate inequities?

Society benefits in the propagation of materialism and consumption. And current measures of success conveniently fit this modality. Buy the home, buy a bigger one. Buy the car, buy a more luxurious one.

We need better, less financially dependent measures of successes. Education is out of reach for many. Material possessions are tired and tried methods of achievement. Income disparities are nearing Gilded Age levels again. Larger homes consume more fossil fuels to heat and cool. Luxury vehicles tend to burn through gasoline. And prestigious titles seem reserved for those born and ascribed status.

Just because “success” works for capitalism doesn’t mean it works for the collective. Let’s craft something a little different. Perhaps we can live in a world that defines success flexibly. Perhaps we can see success in the helping hand, time, and dollar given to anyone/someone in need. Perhaps we can see success in the mother that raises children who respect the planet and find ways to help others. Perhaps we need to break out from formal strictures that rule over our lives, and consider that consumption cannot equal achievement.

Disbanding this present thinking provides for a future with hope for the masses. Achievements needn’t be through prescribed methods and lists of prestigious professions. We need a world with janitors, plumbers, assistant to the assistant managers, and everything in between. We need a world where someone making $35,000 per year, retiring with little, but helping find foster homes for children is seen as a hero (and heck, would it hurt to pay that person a little more?).

Humans are incredibly creative; yet, we have allowed these to persist. We are flawed, but have great potential. It’s time to shed archaic messages. They were convenient for marketers, but harbored horrific messages to those who couldn’t meet the prescribed rules.

How would you define success? Who are your role models? What do you think about income, vocation, and education as measures of success?

The Perfect Job For Me

Lose Track Of Time To Find Your Career

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