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Hawaii enjoys some of the lowest unemployment in the US. It also has a record number of people in the workforce despite historic low population growth. It also has one of the highest per capital millionaire households in the US excluding primary home and retirement funds.
My major is in IT and currently do "IT-like" work for the military. I would definitely not come to Hawaii as a civilian looking for a job in IT for reasons already posted. The cost of living versus the salary you get compared to that of the mainland.
My major is in IT and currently do "IT-like" work for the military. I would definitely not come to Hawaii as a civilian looking for a job in IT for reasons already posted. The cost of living versus the salary you get compared to that of the mainland.
Are you a DoD contractor? They can make good money. Snowden was making a comfortable salary, for example.
Since the IT wages are so low in Hawaii, you'd probably have to work for a mainland based company that allows you to telecommute full time. There are a lot of risks changing jobs, if you already have a good job with a good working environment. Working is a two-way street. There are some companies that you would never want to work for, that have absolutely horrible management, creating a high-stress working environment. I know people who left our company, worked for more money for a company that had absolutely rotten management. Management screamed at the IT workers on a daily basis, and the people that left our company came back because the stress was so high that they would need to be put on medications, really screwing up their health. You need to be very careful that you don't work for a 'bad' company, even if they pay you a lot of money.
Your manager might be perfectly happy with you telecommuting full time, until a higher level manager, who is a bozo, decides that telecommuting is bad, and cuts everyone down to only 1 day a week telecommuting, even if the same, or even more work gets done when working remotely. When you're working remotely, there's less 'resistance' to doing extra work, because you don't have to drive into the office to do some extra work, that you might do without being compensated for the extra work. If you're in that situation where your telecommuting is suddenly cut, and stuck on an island thousand of miles from the mainland, have a lease, or own a home, that will really screw up your life. You need to have enough of a financial buffer that you can overcome that problem. You might be stuck flying back and forth every week, which is probably unsustainable financially. You might have to find another remote job that is hopefully stable, and allows you to work remotely full-time.
You also need a reliable, probably redundant Internet connection. Without the Internet connection, you can't work. You can't generate income. There are places in Hawaii where the Internet 'should' be available, but all the ports are full, and the Internet provider doesn't want to add more ports. You might have to call once a day to get a port, when someone else quits paying their bill or moves. Apparently those companies are too stupid to create a 'waiting list' for new customers, so those people have to call the Internet provider once a day, wasting the time of both the new potential customer and the Internet company paying their employees to answer more phone calls every day.
The best time to start saving for retirement is in your younger years. The impact to your saving is dramatically increased if you can start early. However, if you live in a high cost of living area, possible working for less money, it makes it much harder to save much. Maybe you won't be able to save anything. I know people who have been working in IT for more than 20 years, making $100K, and haven't saved a dime in their retirement account. I also know people who save a lot of money. If you and your spouse both have high income IT jobs, you can live below your means, living off of part of one job, saving a lot of money from that income. The income from the other high paying jobs is all saved. Of course, when you have a couple with two high paying IT jobs, the Federal and State income taxes are horrendous.
If you can save a lot of money, eventually your net worth will be more than a million dollars. The first million is the toughest, just like people say. After you become a millionaire, you don't feel 'rich', you feel 'comfortable'. I think you'd need much more wealth to feel 'rich', probably enough wealth that you wouldn't ever have to fly commercial. After you accumulate enough wealth, the investment income increases at a faster rate. If you can save enough money, that money buys you the freedom where work becomes an option, not a requirement. The investment income is like having another high paying job, but you might only have to a work a few hours a week managing your investments.
You could move to Hawaii and accept the low wages, assuming you have the 'connections' where you can land the job, instead of a vastly less qualified person who has the 'connections'. Or, you could work remotely for a higher income, dependent on that company allowing full time remote workers in the future. But you're still living in a high cost of living place, which makes it a lot tougher to save for the future, so you can become financially independent.
You gain living in a great climate, but you might lose your financial freedom in your retirement years if you stay in Hawaii for a long time, saving little to nothing. Most people only last a year or two in Hawaii before they have to return to the mainland, so the odds are against you staying there long term. It's tough to save enough if you start saving at age 40, which is what I did. Before age 40, I worked customer service jobs for peanuts. I know how poor people live their lives. Starting to save after age 50, it's probably impossible to save enough money. After age 60, if you haven't saved enough, you're locked into a retirement in poverty.
IT wages are not "so low in Hawaii". They are lower than most places on the mainland.
There also isn't a lot of IT jobs with the bulk of them outsourced.
You're not making any sense! IT jobs are paying very low wages in Hawaii. Just look at your statement:
"System Administrators come in a wide variety of flavors but I'd peg the salary in the $60's give or take $10K".
With about 5 to 10 years experience, system administrator jobs can be found that pay $100K, sometimes more. In my case, using your numbers, I'd take about a 50% pay cut if I was paid as little as you mentioned. There are DBA's that were offered $140K at my wife's company. They turned down the job offer, not enough money.
You're talking about working very cheap, in a very high cost of living area. The sacrifice is huge! If you're income is that low, in a very high cost of living place, it is simply not possible to save much money at all. If a person stayed in Hawaii, saving nothing for decades, they simply could not accumulate enough assets for financial freedom, unless they severely lower their standard of living.
As far as I'm concerned, I think the goal should be to accumulate enough assets so that the retirement income stream, in our case, we can replace the income generated by two high income workers in retirement. So, the retirement income stream is essentially the same as the income was when working when combining the pensions, social security payments, and retirement withdraws, at a reasonable rate of about 5%, which would slowly bring down the principle, if you believe in the 4% rule. However, in our case, over the past two decades, including the downturn years, we averaged about 8% gain per year. Not all years were gains. We had huge losses during the downturn, but held through the downturn, stayed the course, and those stocks all came back, plus more. Some years we had over 30% gain.
If you're working at such a low rate of income in Hawaii, compared to what you could earn on the mainland, it doesn't make much economic sense to take that kind of huge pay cut, in a high cost of living area, which absolutely kills your long term wealth accumulation, since you can't saving anything, or next to nothing. But some people say that money isn't everything, which is true to some degree, but money is a lot! I know what it's like to be poor, saving nothing, and I know what it's like to be able to save a lot and be comfortable, not rich, comfortable. Its much better to be in the top 5% or higher, than in the bottom 50%.
You're not making any sense! IT jobs are paying very low wages in Hawaii. Just look at your statement:
"System Administrators come in a wide variety of flavors but I'd peg the salary in the $60's give or take $10K".
That is considered a decent wage in Hawaii - you live in different reality. And besides, give me a break - a DBA is a mid-level IT job - not terribly difficult or in that high of demand. Breaking news - we don't need many DBA's in Hawaii - hence, wages reflect that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by davephan
There are DBA's that were offered $140K at my wife's company. They turned down the job offer, not enough money.
Baloney - a run of the mill DBA doesn't even make that kind of money in the Bay Area. To even get near $140K as a DBA in the Bay Area (with far higher cost of living than Hawaii) you'd be among the most senior DBA's at a consulting/software company doing billable hours with a lot of travel and they certainly aren't making that kind of money in Minnesota.
That is considered a decent wage in Hawaii - you live in different reality. And besides, give me a break - a DBA is a mid-level IT job - not terribly difficult or in that high of demand. Breaking news - we don't need many DBA's in Hawaii - hence, wages reflect that.
Baloney - a run of the mill DBA doesn't even make that kind of money in the Bay Area. To even get near $140K as a DBA in the Bay Area (with far higher cost of living than Hawaii) you'd be among the most senior DBA's at a consulting/software company doing billable hours with a lot of travel and they certainly aren't making that kind of money in Minnesota.
Sorry, you are simply wrong about the high income potential with certain jobs in IT, not average jobs. My wife made more than that before she recently retired doing DBA work and managing technology. They tried to hire DBAs and they DBAs rejected their offer, $140K wasn't enough money. I'm a system administrator and made nearly $140K last year. When your making a high income, and living below your means in an area that doesn't have a high cost of living, you can save a lot of money. That allows us to make even more money with the stock trading and long term stock holds with the accumulated assets. Managing the investments is like a part time job, only takes a few hours a week, and the investments made more money than I made doing my IT job last year.
To make that high income in IT, you need to work for the right company and the right position in that company. You can't just use the average position in an average company. There are specializations within IT that pay a lot of money. The really high end IT work is in specialization such as database security, and does involve the hassle of a lot of traveling, living out of hotels much of the time, and being exceptionally talented, which is very rare. That's they way you can break the $200K barrier in IT, which is tough to do, and very few people can do it, including me. I thought about transitioning to becoming a DBA to make a little more money, but being a DBA is a lot harder work than a system administrator. I only have 2-1/2 years left to work, although I could afford to retire tomorrow, so I don't have enough working years left to become a DBA.
If my wife and I worked for those 'low income' IT wages in Hawaii, living in a high cost of living area, we could have never accumulated a lot of retirement savings.
You can find the higher income wages within IT. Not everyone can break into six figures doing IT work. I know a lot of people who worked in IT for decades, and could break the $100K barrier, but usually they get close to a six figure income. It's surprising that a lot of the people I know that work in IT don't save much money, some spend it all, and save nothing! If you dig deeper, in the right companies, you'll find the high income IT jobs I'm talking about.
Interesting links. I was amazed how low those salaries are in your links. The lowest DBA income I saw in your links was $24K, which is a joke for someone to work that cheap. The highest was $102 an hour, which is $200K. Most of the incomes in your links were generally between $65K and $85K.
Those numbers are way too low, compared to what my wife made before she retired and what I currently make. Maybe what you're seeing is the median income, or maybe both my wife and I are both on the high end of the scale. If you compare those numbers to the income you stated earlier for IT workers in Hawaii, the pay cut in Hawaii doesn't look so bad. However if I compare what we actually make, that's about a 50% cut.
But I don't think we're alone, at the top end of the scale. There's a lot of DBAs at my wife's company that make about $130K, but she made more than that, and so did I, but she also made more than I made. One of my wife's co-workers had a son that graduated from a 4 year college with an IT degree. Fresh out of college, no experience, and started at $70K, which was a little high. Usually starting wages with zero experience are closer to $60K, but usually break $100K in about 10 years.
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