Income Risk
As an update from last week, I have begun to prewrite my blog posts a bit as I stated from my last post. I think this has proven quite beneficial as I find it easier to write now than getting stuck at writer’s block and was able to write a bit more than the 600 word limit. Now on to this week’s blog.
There is a lot of potential income risk when it comes to making important decisions in my future, and it's imperative I make the right ones. I am currently majoring in Econometrics & Quantitative Economics. I think that this is a good field that will hopefully find me a good job working in data science and related areas like that. I thought this major would be more beneficial than a sole Economics field as more and more companies demand data analysts, as I also particularly enjoy working with numbers.
After graduation, I would like to stay in the Chicago land area, as this is where my parents live and where I grew up. I think living with them for a few years while commuting to and from work would save a lot of money for me otherwise where I would spend quite a lot in unnecessary rent. I am not sure if I make the right decisions as there are also downsides to that, however. I would be trading of the cost in terms of having a proper social life where I can invite guests over where I cannot do that often at my parent's home. It is something that I need to think about it in the near future. I also would be spending roughly $250 month on a monthly train ticket pass in order to commute as parking is rather difficult to find in the city. This would still be much cheaper than a monthly rent and utilities which can be an upwards of $600 dollars. Groceries will also be much cheaper in a suburban area rather than in an urban sprawling city.
During the summer I have been teaching myself several coding languages such as Python and R. When looking at job prospects, I noticed that a lot of companies have been looking for candidates who are proficient with these languages so hopefully I can stand out. I haven’t necessarily learned this with my degree, but I think having them will be quite beneficial as this is a verifiable skill to show to employers what I can do rather than just having an Economics degree listed on my resume.
My older brother actually graduated from the University of Illinois, also majoring in Economics a few years back. However, he stayed a 5th year which costed another year in tuition and housing but landed a job at Deloitte working in consulting. He seems to be doing fine for himself as he moved later on to various other consulting jobs. I saw that he would quit his job after a year or so in order to find a better one. I was baffled as to why he would take these risks but I noticed it paid off as he's making more money than he was at his previous jobs. That is something that I also need to think about. I also noticed that by him staying an extra year, it gave him some time to find more job prospects out of college so he would not need to be frantically searching while trying to finish up a lot of classes. It did however cost my parents an extra $30000 in fees. .Our parents had actually both saved up for our college education since we were very young, so we have not really accumulated much debt at all. We are very lucky and more than grateful to our parents in that regards as we can save more of our income in the future rather than paying off student loans and the high interest rates on those. In the future however, when they grow older, I will take care of them so I will bear those expenses along with my brother. That is probably the least that him and I can do for them.
Later down the road, if I want to move someplace else though, I have to figure out all the costs of relocating. I don’t expect that I will stay with my parents in the next 5 years, so I will probably want to venture out into a new city, but it will cost quite a bit as I’ll have to pay for flights, renting out an apartment and furnishing it. So I have to weigh these all against what I will earn to make a smart decision.
To be quite honest, I am not sure of my future and very uncertain what I want to do with my life. My dad pointed me towards a computer science related field and while I am grateful for his counsel, I am not sure if I want to be spending the rest of my life behind a computer and code. It might sound cliché, but the future is in solely my hands, and I want to be somewhere can I be successful personally not just simply financially. So I will have income risk if I choose to follow something else rather than having a secure 9-5 job.
Let me respond by picking and choosing on what you have said. First, on teaching yourself programming languages, that is commendable. The question is how (or if) you convince potential future employers that you have these capabilities. It seems to me there are two ways to do this. One would be by writing some scripts that are executable and demonstrate your skills. The other would be by earning a certificate from some place that can assess your abilities with these languages. The details of this are beyond me, but I suspect it wouldn't be too hard to find out about this sort of thing on campus. So I encourage you to investigate it. In accord with the prompt, that would be a way to reduce some of your job risk.
ReplyDeleteNow let me switch to some comments about location. Chicagoland is a big area and it may be that the type of jobs you are looking for are more concentrated geographically. What I say next is out of date, but there are a lot of tech jobs along the I-88 corridor. You said something about commuting costs, but I didn't understand whether that was under the assumption you'd work downtown. I know that both of my sons had their first jobs in the suburbs (though not on the I-88 corridor). In any event, if you are more precise in your geographic requirements, that might simplify some of your other decision making.
In your last paragraph, however, you mentioned trying a new city. If this is any help, part of reason I went to Northwestern for graduate school is that I would be far from my parents (in NYC). This desire for separation I can identify with, though I think the issue is largely not about economics. But returning to economics, major urban areas have an extremely high cost of living and/or a very long commute to work. So, if not the Chicago area, it is conceivable you might find a decent balance in Austin, Texas or Madison, Wisconsin state capitols that also have the flagship university or the research triangle in North Carolina or even staying in Champaign-Urbana.
One additional advantage of these alternatives is to consider the following. I think it reasonable to work a few years after the bachelors degree, but then it may occur to you that more formal education is needed to get further along in your field. Many people do a masters either over the weekends or in an online program. If that represents a likelihood, anticipating it may be another risk reducing step.
I liked that you said you are pre-writing, but on this particular topic I suspect you've been thinking about the issues already without the prompt. Let's see if you can continue with the pre-writing when that no longer is the case.
Yeah that is true, I have to try and demonstrate that I have these skills to employers. I am working and planning on getting certificates in a few areas so it is a good suggestion.
DeleteTo clarify, I did mean that I would work downtown as I think there are more job prospects in that area.
I don't think I could stay in university towns personally but there are a lot of prospects so it's worth considering.