Advice on Cost of Living (Baltimore, Laurel: contractor, salary, price)

[swedishsnooze]

Hello all,
I've received a job offer starting at $80k for the Fort Meade area.

Is this salary viable for that area for living comfortably? Or do I have to get a roommate and stock up on ramen noodles?

Is this entry level for that area?

I do not have any dependents nor extraordinary expenditures.

Thank you!

[Pilgrim21784]

$80 K will do you just fine in the Fort Meade area. You're above most entry level salaries, but that is impacted by what your field is.

[swedishsnooze]

Thank you for the reply. Any suggestions on a good place to live? I am currently perusing via the search function, too. The job is a government contractor one involving intelligence & security.

[Pilgrim21784]

Sorry, I'm not real familiar with the FM housing situation. I'd suggest you ask your employer about that issue.

[jayman1981]

Well it depends on what type of area you would prefer. Fort meade is situated in between laurel and Baltimore. If you want city living than Baltimore is probably about 25 mins away, with traffic maybe 45 mins. Laurel is the closes to Fort Meade. It's a Historic town, and it's a decent location. Of course there are plenty of spots in Howard County, Anne Arundel and P.G. county to choose from. Tell us your criteria and we can better advise. Rent/Own, Urban, Suburban or Rural locations, Price range just some examples. Congratulations on the job and hope you enjoy the area.

Originally Posted by swedishsnooze

Thank you for the reply. Any suggestions on a good place to live? I am currently perusing via the search function, too. The job is a government contractor one involving intelligence & security.

[Jadedea Jade]

I liked laurel, the laurel town center has a lot of good shops like best buy, petsmart, wendys. and down the street is another town center with more shops, its right on baltimore ave.

if your doing some IT job and the starting offer is 80k i would ask for higher. ask for relocation help as well and overtime policy. the reason why i say you should ask for more is because a lot of jobs (at least in this area) are offering minmum salary ranges. so for example. as an IT a sysadmin range could be 60k-70k. most companies will offer 60k and others will offer less. i would go for 5k-10k higher range. there was this one website you could google salary by location and job title. i think it started with an I but i cant remember.

some good advice that was given to me was to not accept the first offer, always try and negotiate a higher salary range with or without benefits. as long as your offer is reasonable any reputable contracting company will accept or attempt to get you close to that price. one of my friends applied for a job that only had a 50k-55k salary range. she was able to negotiate to 62k. whenever i was offered jobs and the pay was low i told them what my price range was, all of the crappy contracting companies walked away, some of them sent me nasty letters. the job i am in now 4 bad contracting companies wouldnt even give me my minmum salary range and walked away. my company was happy to. you have to look out for those bad contracting companies, they are looking for people that dont think, research and ask for what they want. those companies were asking for 40k-45k salary when clearly this job is 75k easy.

i can explain more if you need me to.