Its been a year since I was on here: How bad is the job market? (Dallas: buy, high school)

[jobert]

The key is to not bring the kids with you on vacation. We're going to Kauai in a little over a week, and we're leaving the kids here. It's not cold hearted though - I took one of the kids to Portland last month. You don't have to take them everywhere, you know.

[hoffdano]

My kids are teenagers/in college now. They work during the summer. They want/need money to spend! No easy time to schedule a vacation.

[riaelise]

Originally Posted by inthecut

You have 1.5 kids? I don't mean to bring that up, but I really had to laugh there...thanks for bringing some sorely needed humor to this post Riaelise!

yes, and the half kid is kicking the pants out of me right now.

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by sliverbox

I don't want to sound like a total A-hole, but if you're someone like me and lived and worked in Silicon Valley for years, It means you've dealt with working in an extremely competitive, sometimes brutal working environment. So I'm "battle-tested". That means we might bring a lot of experience to the table when it comes to moving to another city that might not be as tech-centric. I am in no way trying to put Austin down since it is where I want to move someday. But bringing a lot of experience from somewhere else might be a good thing. Flame away...

I agree strongly with this. austin is severely lacking in good senior managers, any kind of business to consumer marketing, PR etc.

We are still a backwater and Im glad to get people from the bay area who have worked at very successful high tech companies.

It is cutthroat in the bay area. Our friends who live out there routinely work 10-12 hour days 6 days a week.

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by atxcio

Yeah, I've heard things like that about the salary. You aren't going to keep up with your private-sector colleagues in salary, that's for sure. But benefits-wise, even just the 1-2 extra days of paid holidays state workers get can take months to earn as an entry-level private sector employee (2 weeks pd vaca per year, or 10 days, or a little less than 1 day earned per month).



Definitely not as secure as it once was, especially with budget cuts... but still, if you are the type who comes in late a lot, wants to leave right at 5:00pm on the dot (or earlier), calls in sick a bunch... or just generally slacks... you're probably likely to keep your state job.

In tech most of the companies I am aware of (even IBM) have official or unofficial unlimited vacation day policies. Meaning they dont track them and as long as you get your work done they dont really care.

We get 20 days of PTO + 1 day per year of service and 8 holidays.

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by Jennibc

We'll, being that I've actually had one for almost the last nine years, I will tell you that I won't spend anywhere near 250K on him by his 18th birthday and we are just about half way there. I don't feel like we scrimp, we just don't indulge and know how to say "no" to our son.

I know lots of families here in Austin that are making due with a one income. We started homeschooling our kid last year and as a result now associate with many other homeschooling families - typically those families are relying on one income and while some have incomes that meet the six figure mark, many others don't and they still manage to survive. If a family doesn't get caught up in "only the best for junior!" they won't be racking up a quarter of million in expenses by the time he's 18. Nor will they be raising an entitled child (as an added bonus for the rest of society!)

But I guess we are really taking this off topic, so I will climb down from my soapbox now.

I can tell you that it wouldnt surprise me if we did. Private universities are 40-50k/year or more so 160K just for that. We have 150/month in our budget for our child but my wife routinely exceeds that. food is pretty marginal at this point, as she is a toddler and eats a fraction of what we eat. We do pay for daycare, music classes, gymboree, swimming lessons, dance lessons and they definitely add up.

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by hoffdano

Yes - raising kids is an expensive business. But it isn't as expensive as ITC seems to think. Our kids don't have to have the best of everything for me to feel I have done my job as a parent.
.

In fact I would argue if your kids have the best of everything then you specifically havent done your job as a parent. Probably the most important thing I want to teach my child is to not need any material goods. This is one reason why I like austin vs. southern california and do not want to live in westlake.

My parents bought almost nothing for me as a kid and I feel that I am a better person for it. birthday parties were at the house, had a cake, games and small party favors. When I graduated from high school and college. I didnt get any gifts. When I graduated from grad school I got 10K.

My parents used to say the only thing they were obligated to give me was an education. They never bought me a car, we never had a computer, video game system, remote control cars etc. As a kid I really wanted them, but as an adult it makes no difference that I didnt have them except Ive learned to be very frugal. When I was single I saved about 60% of my take home pay.

I like the neighborhood we live in because even though the houses are 500K plus, there is zero pressure to keep up with the joneses or to buy fancy stuff.

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by Jennibc

Exactly! I think it all comes down to what people's expectations are. I won't be spending a quarter of million on my kid by the time he's 18 in part because I don't think an annual week at Disneyworld is some necessary rite of passage. But there are lot of parents that do. We've been to Disneyland with the kid twice and both times we went after Labor Day so hotels were cheaper, spent one day at the park and got discount airfares.

I read a book back in the early nineties called "Your Money or Your Life," and it had a profound effect on how I viewed money and spending (See Amazon.com: Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century (9780143115762): Vicki Robin, Joe Dominguez, Monique Tilford: Books) I am not as hardcore or as disciplined as the authors but seriously, if people just wrote down what they spent their money on they would realize how much they are spending on little things that they really wouldn't miss if they gave them up. I was really surprised that so many of the kids at my son's old school bought lunch. That's several dollars a day for each kid (and there were less than 5% subsidized lunch kids at the school so that wasn't what was going on).

.

There is also the millionaire next door which describes how most millionaires do not make a ton of money, save a lot and dont spend.

[Jennibc]

Originally Posted by Austin97

There is also the millionaire next door which describes how most millionaires do not make a ton of money, save a lot and dont spend.

Yep, I read that one about a decade ago.

[Jennibc]

Originally Posted by Austin97

I can tell you that it wouldnt surprise me if we did. Private universities are 40-50k/year or more so 160K just for that. We have 150/month in our budget for our child but my wife routinely exceeds that. food is pretty marginal at this point, as she is a toddler and eats a fraction of what we eat. We do pay for daycare, music classes, gymboree, swimming lessons, dance lessons and they definitely add up.

Yes, because you are going with all the enrichment experiences. I think I spent a total of under $200 on my son to learn to swim. We will never have to pay that again. But we aren't paying for music or dance or gymboree. Yesterday, I was talking to another parent who has a boy in Ballet Austin on a scholarship and she told me that the regular tuition there is almost $800 a semester. Stuff like that is really expensive, so yes, if you have your kid in something like that, it will really add up over the years, but that is a luxury and not a necessity of raising kids.

BTW, I don't count college costs into the figure because those costs are incurred after the kid turns 18, but I would concede to the quarter of a million if I were factoring in college. However, the number that calculator someone else linked to didn't factor in college at 250K mark.