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on the hold in the sense that I am still living at home with the folks- which never in my wildest dreams I expected. However I am finishing up my nursing degree (2 years to go can I really call that finishing lol...) and once I have the BSN i will move out. Idk i will go anywhere the job is, cross country, the heart land, wherever I just want independence.
Barring some terrible turn of luck, lets say I fail out of the nursing (not planning to, will not happen but i take it one day at a time) my immediate future would be to hit the local stores the Target, the Khols etc... Can i afford an apartment working at Khols, Target, Staples? I doubt it, i very much doubt it and that terrifies me. But what can one do? Its better to work than to mope at home.
Sure. For us, it was the plunge in house values. When we bought in 2007, we planned to be in the house 3 years. Hah. Nearly 6 years later, and it will be a minimum of 2 more before we can afford to sell and get the frack out of the city. I ache to wake up in the midst of open fields, not a brick jungle.
Yes, I can't sell my property due to my area real estate being hit really hard. So I'm stuck in an area that has a still high unemployment rate and at 62 it's hard to start all over again. I pretty much lost everything and now I'm working as a "perma-temp" I thought a job I had been working at for the last 6 months would convert but they had a cattle call and I didn't get the job I'd been working at for the last 6 months. Pretty hard to deal with.
I struggle to stay positive and keep on keeping on, I had hoped to hang on till I'm 65 before I start drawing SS but now I might not be able to.
Whether its unemployment , underemployment, college loan debt or some other cause anyone feel like their life is on hold or becoming more difficult to move forward . Like once I thought about having kids but if I can't afford them by time my bio clock is up I'm probably not going to have them.
It almost put me finding a new place on hold but I got lucky at the end of the year and was able to find a job. Far as other things the economy has put on hold is
New Laptop
New Clothes for weekend
New Clothes for work
And all of that is because of moving to a new place which will take as much money as possible. Hopefully I can get a new laptop before the year is over.
It has put our retirement savings on hold. We moved to a new state for a job, and still have the house in the old state. It's been rented out now for at least five years, hoping to finally sell it off in another year or two and spend a decade dumping cash into our Roth IRAs to make up for these lean years.
To some extent, it is. I graduated almost three years ago, did not find a job in my major, and have completely given up on that. I took a job in an unrelated field, and while I have made various amounts of money in it from very poor to better than average at my career level, it feels like I'm not progressing as I should be.
The positions I've held used to be springboards (truly entry level or trainee roles) into more professional industry positions before the economy tanked - now they are essentially dead-ends. The sad thing is that most positions require the candidate to already have experience in that exact same position and because I've never held a different type of position, I'll never be able to get another type of position. I hold a BS and some certifications, and while I'm confident that I can increase my income from its current trough ($12/hr - have made $22/hr), I'm doubtful that I will be able to progress very far. My current job is the lowest paying, but the only one where I'm really hands-on doing things as opposed to working at two pure call centers.
I'm 26 and feel completely stalled. An MS doesn't seem like it would open any additional doors. Unless I majored in nursing or teaching, I'm not sure changing my major (had I still planned to live in TN) would have helped. More certifications MIGHT help should I move to where there are more jobs, but even then it's expensive as the current employer doesn't pay for it. At least getting certified is essentially a pay-as-you-go model and much cheaper than formal academic education. What's truly scary is that I don't know what I could have done differently that would have resulted in a better outcome. My university had few internship opportunities, even though it's a school of 15k, because the economy collapsed in the area and there aren't any opportunities outside of medical/education.
I want to be able to live reasonably close (hopefully four hour drive, but no more than eight) from my family in east TN, not live in a huge metro (no Atlanta/DC), and be able to have a decent apartment/car/etc, but that is looking increasingly unlikely. I'm going to either have to relocate further away, as I've done once before, or just accept a low standard of living close to home.
It has put our retirement savings on hold. We moved to a new state for a job, and still have the house in the old state. It's been rented out now for at least five years, hoping to finally sell it off in another year or two and spend a decade dumping cash into our Roth IRAs to make up for these lean years.
Same here! Any extra cash goes into savings, for when unemployment runs out and I need to pay the mortgage. But nothing's gone into my retirement accounts for over a year. Not good.
To some extent, it is. I graduated almost three years ago, did not find a job in my major, and have completely given up on that. I took a job in an unrelated field, and while I have made various amounts of money in it from very poor to better than average at my career level, it feels like I'm not progressing as I should be.
The positions I've held used to be springboards (truly entry level or trainee roles) into more professional industry positions before the economy tanked - now they are essentially dead-ends. The sad thing is that most positions require the candidate to already have experience in that exact same position and because I've never held a different type of position, I'll never be able to get another type of position. I hold a BS and some certifications, and while I'm confident that I can increase my income from its current trough ($12/hr - have made $22/hr), I'm doubtful that I will be able to progress very far. My current job is the lowest paying, but the only one where I'm really hands-on doing things as opposed to working at two pure call centers.
I'm 26 and feel completely stalled. An MS doesn't seem like it would open any additional doors. Unless I majored in nursing or teaching, I'm not sure changing my major (had I still planned to live in TN) would have helped. More certifications MIGHT help should I move to where there are more jobs, but even then it's expensive as the current employer doesn't pay for it. At least getting certified is essentially a pay-as-you-go model and much cheaper than formal academic education. What's truly scary is that I don't know what I could have done differently that would have resulted in a better outcome. My university had few internship opportunities, even though it's a school of 15k, because the economy collapsed in the area and there aren't any opportunities outside of medical/education.
I want to be able to live reasonably close (hopefully four hour drive, but no more than eight) from my family in east TN, not live in a huge metro (no Atlanta/DC), and be able to have a decent apartment/car/etc, but that is looking increasingly unlikely. I'm going to either have to relocate further away, as I've done once before, or just accept a low standard of living close to home.
Heh i know that feeling, you study something for 4 years, your dedicated to it, you love it and you find out post grad that it means basically squat to the employer unless your major is x,y,z etc... The only thing differntly you could have done i think is major in one of the 'hot' fields right now- nursing, accounting, finance, computer science etc...
Good news is you did find work outside the major so at least the resume is not blank, having expereince whether major related or not is better than white space. At this point you are at a crossroads I suppose, go back to school and study one of the hot degrees (masters in accounatncy, 2nd degree BSN whatever) or go the certification route and make yourself more appealing to the employer. That is a hard choice and should not be made quickly.
I guess it will come down to: finiance and time. Do i have the money to back to school to get that degree in x, how long will it take, can I work while doing it etc...?-
Heh i know that feeling, you study something for 4 years, your dedicated to it, you love it and you find out post grad that it means basically squat to the employer unless your major is x,y,z etc... The only thing differntly you could have done i think is major in one of the 'hot' fields right now- nursing, accounting, finance, computer science etc...
Good news is you did find work outside the major so at least the resume is not blank, having expereince whether major related or not is better than white space. At this point you are at a crossroads I suppose, go back to school and study one of the hot degrees (masters in accounatncy, 2nd degree BSN whatever) or go the certification route and make yourself more appealing to the employer. That is a hard choice and should not be made quickly.
I guess it will come down to: finiance and time. Do i have the money to back to school to get that degree in x, how long will it take, can I work while doing it etc...?-
I actually *was* an economics/finance guy - it wasn't like I majored in something I thought to be completely useless. I was one class short of a political science double major, and also have a sociology minor. I have at least a minor's level of education in four different fields. A cousin of mine received her MAcc last year and cannot find accounting work, so she can't get her CPA, and the degree is useless. A friend of mine from elementary school just received his MS last May in computer science and can't find related work locally because there is no work in the field. Many of the "hot" majors are pretty icy unless you live in a major metro AND the school has quality connections with employers. If you went to school in an area where the economy is very depressed, the school isn't going to have the internships, co-ops, etc, that are needed to compete in today's labor market. You could get lucky and land a job in a better area, but it is likely there are equally as many qualified candidates where you're wanting to move to.
The problem with reeducating in this economy is that many academic programs assume a traditional structure - one where the student essentially drops out of life to go back to school full time. This isn't possible for me or almost anyone who has bills to pay. Yes, there are online options and evening classes, but the options are still limited.
One of the worst problems in this economy is how the good areas keep improving (SF, DC, many major regional metros, etc) while rural areas and small towns are contracting and are no longer viable options for college educated professionals.
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