September 2012 Volume 8
BE SMART -CHOOSE WISLY
SUCKS TO BE US COLLAGE GRADUATE LOOKING FOR THERE
FUTURE
A PUSH START WITH
YOUR CAREER
0NLY 4 STEPS
TO BECOME RICH
10 THINGS TO MAKE A DIFFRENCE FOR YOUR FUTURE
LIFE SEVEN DATE IDEAS FOR THE POOR MAN
CONTENTS
/ SEPTEMBER 2012
September 2012 Volume 8
Features 12
SUCKS TO BE US
The reality that faces today’s college graduates:
They’re screwed, coddled, self-absorbed, stressed, mocked and a surprisingly resilient generation. 6
WHO ARE YOU?
Whos stopping you from becoming who you are? and who you are; make the right choice. the truth of what you can become and who you are; make the right choice.
15
RELAXE
The best time to just step back and take a trip. theres always times when you cant just stress and focuse on the bad things in the world. You need to take a breack and see whats out there.
20
SUCK IT UP
In order to be successful you need to work hard. Work hard to get what you want, you need to suck it up and not blane the world for your lazzyness and lack of modervation, there is a lot of oppertunitys in the world.
ON THE COVER
SUCKS TO BE US-------------------Pg. 12 TEN THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ---Pg. 6 WHAT MAKES YOU DESPERATE----Pg. 12
CONTENTS
/ VOLUME 8
SEPTEMBER 2012
Departments 5
CAREER
FAT WALLET
7 Great Tips For Your Preperation for a Job Interview to make money.
7. How would you know what a good job is when you
6. Check out the age of the furnace. An old heating or
8. We’re done with that kind of engagement, for now:
cooling system can run you thousands if you have to replace it immediately, and should impact the price you’re
come accross and what job will bring you great success
While this is by some measures the most politically progressive generation ever, young people have never been.
7. An old heating or cooling system can run you thou-
9. Dialing your way through spreadsheets of get-out-
sands if you have to replace it immediately, and should impact the price you’re willing to bid on the house.
the-vote phone numbers is something you can add to a résumé; getting escorted off the Brooklyn Bridge.
10
HOMESTEAD
GET SHELTER Things you will want to know when your
13. Check out the age of the furnace. An old heating
buying your first house.
or cooling system can run you thousands if you have to replace it willing to bid on the house.
11. How would you know what a good job is when you
14. How would you know what a good job is when you
come accross and what job will bring you great success
come accross and what job will bring you great success
12. While this is by some measures the most politically
15. Mark for twentysomething political involvement. The
progressive generation ever, young people have never been more disillusioned.
7
activism it entailed felt like work—not a turnoff for us. Dialing your way through spreadsheets of get-out-the-vote
KICK START
TWO TO THREE
When is the best time to for you to kick start 11. Allow enough time to get there and anticipate traffic. It’s ok to be up to 10 minutes early, but no more than to the next phase, and start your family? that. Otherwise, the interviewer may not be ready for you. By Guest Contributor 12. How would you know what a good job is when you 12. The activism it entailed felt like work—not a turnoff for us. Dialing your way through spreadsheets of get-outthe-vote phone numbers is something you.
come accross and what job will bring you great success
4 Thrive / Feburary 2012
CAREER
/ GET A JOB “ Remember: You are being sized up in every way from the minute you step into the office, so be quick-witted and don’t let your guard down. ”
3
STUDY YOUR RESUME AND KNOW EVERYTHING ON IT. Any work experience or skills you have listed on your resume are fair game to talk about during the interview.
4
PRACTICE YOUR ANSWERS TO THE COMMON INTERVIEW QUESTIONS. If you don’t know what these are, do your research and find out or see one of my other articles. You’ll want to have your answers ready and practice them. You should always be able to answer “Tell me about yourself” and “Why do you think you would be great for this job?”
FAT WALLET 7 Great Tips For Your Preperation
5
RESEARCH THE DUTES AND JOB POSITION YOU ARE APPLYING FOR. Write down any questions you may have about either so you can ask during the interview. If there any requirement of the job that you are unsure of, you should definitely ask at the job.
6
Now that you have an interview, there are certain things you will want to do in advance to prepare for it. This article will provide practical tips on how to prepare for a job interview. Remember, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, so you’ll want to do you best on preparing for your interview in advance.
FIND OUT THE TYPE OF INTERVIEW YOU WILL BE GOING ON. There are several common types of interviews such as one on one, group, and behavioral. You shouldn’t assume you will get a certain one. Don’t be afraid to ask your recruiter what kind of interview will have if you don’t know. The interview will be more beneficial to both parties if you are prepared.
1
7
for a Job Interview to make money.
PICK OUT NICE CLOTHES TO WEAR FOR YOUR JOB INTERVIEW GOOD IMPRESSION. What you wear on your interview is an absolutely crucial part of how to prepare for a job interview. After you choose your outfit, make sure it is cleaned and pressed and you have the appropriate accessories and shoes to go with it. It doesn’t hurt to try the outfit on ahead of time, just to make sure everything fits and you look great. Then put your outfit aside for day of your interview and have it ready to go. Now that you have this crucial step out of the way, you can concentrate on the rest.
2
PRACTICE GREETING YOUR INTERVIEW TO BE READY FOR ANYTHING. You should always greet your interview with friendly smile and firm handshake. If you do this right, you will set off the right energy and the chances of the interview going well will increase. This is a small and simple step that you should always to do to prepare for your interview. Follow these tips and you will successfully know how to prepare for a job interview. Interviewers can tell whether or not a candidate has prepared for it or not and they will appreciate it if you did what need to for greatnes.
PRINT OUT THE DIRECTIONS TO THE INTERVIEW AND BE ON TIME. Allow enough time to get there and anticipate traffic. It’s ok to be up to 10 minutes early, but no more than that. Otherwise, the interviewer may not be ready for you. Bring the phone
Follow these tips and you will be verysuccessfully know how to prepare for a job interview everytime.
6 Thrive / Feburary 2012
HOMESTEAD
/ NEW HOUSE
GET SHELTER
Things you will want to know when your buying your first house.
W
ith the extension of the first-time home buyer tax credit, many homebuyers are back in the market. The low interest rates, tax credit, and low property values make this the ideal time to buy a home. But with the added number of foreclosures, the homes currently for sale also have a greater range of physical conditions. For the first time home buyer, this process can easily be overwhelming, but these 5 tips should help you in your search.
1 2 3 4 5
“ A good rule of thumb is to focus
on structural rather than décor ”
CHOOSE WISELY For the first time home buyer, this process can easily be overwhelmining what kind of house are you .
6 Thrive / Feburary 2012
BIG HOUSE
Live life on the high road but if lower income be indeat for life. be smart your houses can be a goodnvestment choose right. and dont care to much about how you live at this.
Check for water damage If water is leaking in from outside, then you’ll usually see mold alongside the basement walls. Be sure to walk around outside to see what’s causing this. It’s important to be aware of these issues. Check out the age of the furnace. An old heating or cooling system can run you thousands if you have to replace it immediately, and should impact the price you’re willing to bid on the house. Before you even walk into the house, check out the roof? Is it caving in? Or is it relatively new? This is a major item that you don’t want to pay for once you move in, plus a caving roof could mean water damage. Don’t be fooled by pretty wall colors Instead, try to envision the house painted white, and focus on the age of appliances, condition of floors, and any signs of mold or structural damage. Are the windows newer or older? This is a major plus if they are newer, as it will help you on the heating and cooling bills. which helps your wallet.
SMALL HOUSE
If your wanting to save more and dont care to much about how you live at this time of life small is better. and dont care to much about how you live at this time of.
KICK START / TWO TO THREE
TWO TO THREE
When is the best time to for you to kick start to the next phase, and start your family? By Guest Contributor re you in a relatively stable place in your life? This is a basic question, but it’s the big one. While nothing can be perfect, bringing home a baby can create unimaginable upheaval, and ideally, there will be as little to stress you out as possible. That means you’ll have a stable job situation, a roof over your heads that’s not going anywhere, and the ability to provide for the necessities (food, water and shelter) for your family Can you afford the “unnecessary necessities”? Technically, the only necessities in life are food, water and shelter. But in our society, things like life insurance, disability insurance, and health insurance are also necessities. Once you have another, helpless person depending on you to provide them with everything they need, you realize that you need to have various forms of insurance in case you can no longer provide for them. What stage is your career at? Assuming you’ve got the basics covered, you can go on to consider other less fundamental but yet important things like your career goals and whether they are compatible with having children. If, for instance, you want to be a super litigator, you’re probably not going to be available much. Is that okay with you and your spouse? I know many attorneys who see their children for an hour or less per day during the week, and not much more on weekends. Keep in mind
that your goals will quite possibly change before or after your child arrives. Personally, I discovered that I cared less about being a great attorney and much more about being a great mom. How old are you? A woman’s fertility is greatly affected by age, and at 35, her chances of getting pregnant and having a healthy baby start to decrease substantially. Men aren’t immune either – studies have shown that children of older men are more likely to be autistic. And, a lot of fertility problems aren’t discovered until you start trying to have a baby. I had two miscarriages before my oldest was born, so we became parents a whole year later than we expected, and now that I know what some of my friends have been through, I consider myself lucky. Also, fertility treatments are expensive and often not covered by insurance.How much time will you be able to take off from work? If you intend to keep working after your baby is born, then you’ll want to consider the leave
The most important thing to consider when deciding whether to have a child is simply, do you want a child, and do you want a child now? If the answer is yes, then you’re in for a wild, fun ride!
ARE YOU READY FOR ME MOMMY?
How Could You Ever Pass Up One Of These? 7 Thrive / Feburary 2012
SUCKS TO BE US By NoreenW Malone
The reality that faces today’s college graduates: they’re screwed, coddled, self-absorbed, stressed, mocked and a surprisingly resilient generation.
B
Being young is supposed to mean you have the luxury of time. But in hard times, a few fallow years can become a lifetime drag on what you earn, sort of the opposite of compound interest. Because the average person grabs 70 percent of their total pay bumps during their first ten years in the workforce, according to a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, having stagnant or nonexistent wages during that period means you hit that springboard at a crawl. Economist Lisa Kahn explained to The Atlantic in 2010 that those who graduate into a recession are still earning an average of 10 percent less nearly two decades into their careers. In hard, paycheckshrinking numbers, the salary lost over that stretch
totals around $100,000. That works out to $490 or so less a month, money that could go, say, toward repaying student loans, which for the class of 2009 average $24,000. Those student loans (the responsible borrowing option!) have reportedly passed credit cards as the nation’s largest source of debt. This is not just a rotten moment to be young. It’s a putrid, stinking, several-months-old-stringy-goatmeat moment to be young. Earlier generations have weathered recessions, of course; this stall we’re in has the look of something nastier. Social Security and Medicare are going to be diminished, at best. Hours worked are up even as hiring staggers along: Blood from a stone looks to be the normal order of things “going forward,” to borrow the business-speak. Economists are
THESE ARE THE FACTS:
NEARLY 14% Of College Graduates
FromThe Classes Of 2006 Through 2010
CAN’T FIND FULL-TIME WORK,
ONLY 55.3%
OF PEOPLE AGES 16-29 HAVE JOBS.
That’s the lowest since
WORLD WAR II
Sam blames himself for his predicament, not the economy, mostly. But other people in similar straits are coming to see their personal hardships as the product of broad inequalities. How many young people will put themselves into that category is a big test for Occupy Wall Street. One of its advocates created a Tumblr, “We Are the 99 Percent,” to collect accounts of being screwed by the recession. The posts from twentysomethings take stories that sound something like Lael’s—“I worked hard (40 hours a week during most of my education), for what? Tell me what I need to do to get ahead, because I did everything right!”—and make them a call to arms to the world i love. The unions, we know, are heeding that call, but a broader youth movement has yet to materialize.* The Obama 2008 campaign was the high-water mark for twentysomething political involvement. The activism it entailed felt like work—not a turnoff for us. Dialing your way through spreadsheets of get-out-the-vote phone numbers is something you can add to a résumé; getting escorted off the Brooklyn Bridge in those plastic handcuffs is not. But we’re done with that kind of engagement, for now: While this is by some measures the most politically progressive generation ever, young people have never been more disillusioned, as a group, about their ability to bring about meaningful change through the electoral process. Sam Graham-Felsen was the Obama campaign’s chief blogger last cycle and now lectures about youth activism all over the world. When we spoke during
Ages 16 to 29 People Who have Jobs
Only 55.3%
What’s not clear is exactly what that might look like. It’s not that this is a generation that doesn’t want to improve the world—been to a college activity fair lately?—but ours is a fractured involvement. The Cold War sort of settled which was the superior economic and political system, leaving youthful calls for revolution to be shouted in the context of gay rights and women’s rights and pro-Palestinianhummus-in-the-campus-cafeteria demonstrations, which are really about improvements to the status quo, not a wholesale overthrow. In the sixties, that generation’s protesters wanted a blank slate, economic and political chaos out of which they could build something new. We’ve got that chaos, and all we want is a way to get back to the structured prosperity that preceded their marching. It’s hard to build a potent counterculture when some of the people it’s meant to appeal to are just hoping for the chance to put on a tie and report to their cubes.
“ Maybe I don’t have to make a splash. Maybe I’ll be okay with just keeping afloat.” If you look at the people on the left who have painted the darkest picture of what the economic downturn means, they’re a generation ahead: Matt Taibbi, for one, or Ken Layne, the publisher of Wonkette, whose ironized blog prose mixes strangely with his incredibly bleak reading of the economy
and culture. (Layne told me, in an e-mail of ambiguous sincerity, that the main advice he would give a recent graduate was to own only what would fit in a backpack and keep a current passport always on hand.) They are unabashedly, feverishly upset. Their words practically sweat clammily. Our generation tends to prefer our dystopian news delivered with the impish smile of a Jon Stewart. (I turn the channel when it’s time for scowling, ranting Lewis Black.) Reared to sponge up positive reinforcement that requires only a positive attitude as a buy-in, we are just not that into anger. I spent the summer listening to Helplessness Blues, an album by Fleet Foxes. It is sweet and comforting and hated by a certain kind of music snob, and it was unexpectedly popular. The band, fronted by a 25-year-old, owes much to the sounds of groups like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, but if such a thing is possible, Fleet Foxes makes those older acts sound hard-edged. The folk music of the sixties was protest music, but there is nothing remotely political about this. Instead, the preoccupations are inward-turning, the title track serving as a gentle generational anthem: “I was raised up believing / I was somehow unique / Like a snowflake, distinct among snowflakes / Unique in each way you can see,” it begins. “But, now, after some thinking, I’d say I’d rather be / A functioning cog in some great machinery / Serving something beyond me.” It’s not just the bearded dudes in flannel; some of our angry-sounding musicians, it turns out, are just seeking affirmation. On the song “Radicals,”
College Graduates can’t find full-time jobs.
14%
Leaves to many People who dont have Jobs.
The Rest 14 Thrive / Feburary 2012
That was the point in my life where I was like, I need to get a career, I need to make that move,” he told me over the phone, in the mellowed-out East Bay patois that had crept into his voice since I last spoke with him. These days, he’s going to netwo
And so we find ourselves living among the scattered ashes and spilled red wine and broken glass from a party we watched in our pajamas, peering down the stairs at the grown-ups. This is not a morning after we are prepared for, to judge by the composite sketch sociologists have drawn of us. (Generation-naming is an inexact science, but generally we’re talking here about the first half of the Millennials, the terrible New Agey label we were saddled with in the eighties.) Clare has us pegged pretty well: We are self-centered and convinced of our specialness and unaccustomed to being denied. “I am sad, jaded, disillusioned, frustrated, and worried,” said one girl I talked to who feels “stuck” in a finance job she took as a stepping-stone to more-fulfilling work she now cannot find. Ours isn’t
a generation that will give you just one adjective to describe our hurt. It might be hard, in fact, to create a generation more metaphysically ill-equipped to adjust to this new tough-shit world. Yet some of us, somehow, are dealing pretty well. Our generation is the product of two long-term social experiments conducted by our parents. The first sought to create little hyperachievers encouraged to explore our interests and talents, so long as that could be spun for maximum effect on a college application. (I would like to take this forum to at last admit that my co-secretaryship of the math club had nothing to do with any passion for numbers and much to do with the extra-credit points.) In the second experiment, which was a reaction to their own distant moms and dads, our parents tried to see how much self-confidence they could pack into us, like so many overstuffed microfiber love seats, and accordingly we were awarded clip-art Certificates of Participation just for showing up. The finite supply of actual brass rings meant that the first experiment would never pan out, but the second was a runaway success. Self-esteem among young people in America has been rising since the seventies, but it’s now so dramatically
high that social scientists are considering whether they need to find a different measurement system— we’ve broken the scale. Since we are not in fact all perfect, this means that the endless praise we got growing up, win or lose, must have really sunk in. (Meanwhile, it’s this characteristic that our parents’ generation—which instilled it in us!—so delights in interpreting as “entitled means that the we got. I’ve got a working theory about what’s happening as our self-esteem surpluses collide with a contracting world. A big chunk of our generation, the part David Brooks a decade ago collectively labeled the
She does technically have a job, for now, filling in for a woman on maternity leave at a D.C. nonprofit, but it’s not one that prevents all her go-getting from seeming for naught. Lael feels like she’s stranded on the wrong rung. “All the articles in the newspaper say that investing in an IRA now means I’ll have hundreds of thousands of extra dollars down the road, so I should just scrimp and save,” she says. “But I can’t scrimp and save because I’m doing that just to afford housing and groceries. So I’m screwed now, unable to enjoy young adulthood in the way that I feel I was promised, and screwed for the future. Now, unable to enjoy young ”
“I can’t scrimp and save because I’m doing that just to afford housing and groceries. So I’m screwed now, unable to enjoy young adulthood in the way that I feel I was promised, and screwed for the future.” Organization Kid, more or less happily embraced very hard work within the system. (Brooks was focused on elite students, but I think the term applies equally well to your typical first- and secondhonor-roll strivers.) If you were an Organization Kid and have prospered despite the economy, landing one of those jobs that come with an embroidered gym bag, you’re obviously fine. The big change is that when you describe yourself as lucky—a word that comes up a lot with friends I know like this—you may actually mean it more than you would have before. (Before, it would have just been codespeak for “privileged.”) If, though, you set track records and made summa cum laude—if you earned praise not just for effort but real achievements—only to land back in the same bedroom where you drilled for the SATs, then you are unmoored. Your less-decorated peers, feeling the love regardless of results, came to believe they’ll always be appreciated. Whereas you have had your worldview kicked in. You become a little like my friend Lael Goodman. “The worst thing is that I’ve always gotten selfworth from performance, especially good grades. But now that I can’t get a job, I feel worthless,” she says. Lael, who is 27, was the valedictorian of her high school and did very well in college too. Unable to find a position that paid a decent wage using her English degree, she got a master’s at the University of Michigan in environmental studies.
In high school, my friend Sam was the sports captain who set all the curves in calculus. I used to call him up the night before physics tests to figure out what I should know. Sam went to the best college he got into, for which he took out $50,000 in loans. He signed up for some abstractmath courses, was cowed by classmates who worked theorems for kicks, and majored in poetry writing rather than fall short in the subject he’d built so much of his identity on. After graduating, he took a job as a woodworker’s apprentice, not the expected outcome for a grade-grubbing gunner, but also not all that unusual back in the days before every decision about which major to sign up for or job to take started to feel make-or-break. One thing about being the boomers’ heirs growing up in boom times was that it used to be okay to take a lifeenriching sabbatical. There was no reason to think you wouldn’t eventually be able to get back. Sam found out that woodworking turned out to be mostly vacuuming up wood chips, and so after a few months, he moved on to a series of other gigs, none of them exactly a career. When he finally got sick of bouncing around in his broken-down $200 car and living with his parents—who kept pressure him to revisit his math-and-science aptitude—he got himself a $25,000 bank loan, which he used to cover expenses while enrolled in continuing-ed classes in engineering at one of the U.C. schools.
Expenses we have in our everyday life days
Home Repair
If ever you find something in your house falling apart
Grocoreys
If ever you find something in your house falling apart
Emergency
If ever you find something in your house falling apart
Housing Rent
If ever you find something in your house falling apart
16 Thrive / Feburary 2012