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The real problem here is who the hell in McLean is paying so little!
Anyways, the guy from PA his story is spot on, don't do it your income is too little and with a car note and student loans NO, if you didn't have those perhaps you can pull it off. Search for work in other cheaper areas of the US for better oppertunities. It's not going to be big city fun when you can't afford to eat. When I seen your title I thought WHOA atlanta is cheap, hope she makes good money, no dice stay put.
This area has so much opportunity and if you find that you are unhappy in your job, there will likely be others. I think you absolutely should take the leap. Life is short and it will be a wonderful adventure. In addition, there are a lot free things to do in your spare time- Museums, community events, etc… It's even fun to just go hang out on the National Mall on a beautiful day. MLS# FA8016455 is a nice little apartment in Falls Church City which is quite near to Mclean. $1600/ would cover everything- mortgage, insurance, taxes, HOA, utilities, pool, parking. A great investment also. BTW, I do not know the owners nor their agent- I just noticed that it is the leas expensive place in a neat and up and coming area. Go for it- this is the land of opportunity if ever there was one!
The real problem here is who the hell in McLean is paying so little!
Anyways, the guy from PA his story is spot on, don't do it your income is too little and with a car note and student loans NO, if you didn't have those perhaps you can pull it off. Search for work in other cheaper areas of the US for better oppertunities. It's not going to be big city fun when you can't afford to eat. When I seen your title I thought WHOA atlanta is cheap, hope she makes good money, no dice stay put.
Sadly many employers in NoVA haven't raised their starting salaries commensurate with the cost-of-living increase in that area over the years. If I had stayed with my Federal employer and transferred to Pittsburgh I'd only be taking a ~$2,000 cut in salary to live in an area with a dramatically lower cost-of-living, which would translate to an instant pay and corresponding quality-of-life increase overall. I don't know who is in charge of determining locality pay adjustment for the Feds (OMB, perhaps?), but they're obviously very out-of-touch to think NoVA and Pittsburgh have cost-of-living ratios that are that close. When I initially put my transfer in for Pittsburgh I was told there was a huge waiting list ahead of me because many others were also looking to flee NoVA for Pittsburgh for this very same reason of the "instant pay boost". I decided my health was more important than my job and quit to expedite my move. I'm happy I did.
Look, there are a ton of things I personally DO miss about living in NoVA. With that being said it's NOT a good area to reside within if you're an entry-level worker unless you are being offered a decent starting salary (not $40,000) OR have family in NoVA to help you become established. I had neither. The OP had neither. I just feel as if she'll be at risk of falling into the same trap I did. $40,000-$45,000 looks like a LOT on paper if you live in Atlanta or Scranton. Guess what? It's nothing in DC, especially when you have a car note (Fairfax County isn't exactly friendly to those who want to live sans car due to its history of poor urban planning) and student loans (not all of us qualified for a full-ride or had parents wealthy enough to finance our educations).
$45,000 - taxes - deductions (health insurance, which will be mandatory in January no matter what, retirement?, etc.) - rent - utilities - car payment - car insurance - gasoline - student loan payment - groceries/hygiene products - cell phone =
This area has so much opportunity and if you find that you are unhappy in your job, there will likely be others. I think you absolutely should take the leap. Life is short and it will be a wonderful adventure. In addition, there are a lot free things to do in your spare time- Museums, community events, etc… It's even fun to just go hang out on the National Mall on a beautiful day. MLS# FA8016455 is a nice little apartment in Falls Church City which is quite near to Mclean. $1600/ would cover everything- mortgage, insurance, taxes, HOA, utilities, pool, parking. A great investment also. BTW, I do not know the owners nor their agent- I just noticed that it is the leas expensive place in a neat and up and coming area. Go for it- this is the land of opportunity if ever there was one!
Eh. I sort of agree and disagree. Despite all of my problems and personal financial struggles I don't regret my initial decision to move to Northern Virginia at all. It was a fresh opportunity. It was exciting. It was a new adventure. Life IS short, and, as such, I do agree it's great to move around while you're still young and not tied down by family to test the waters in various areas and to see as much as you can of this beautiful world. If I had moved to Pittsburgh straight out of college I'd probably already be in the process of paying off my own home right now, but I would have always wondered "What if I took that job offer near DC?".
Moving to NoVA delayed my financial life, but I still do have some nice memories. I'll always remember one date where I went kayaking with another guy, and he decided to show off by swimming in the Potomac River, proving it wasn't as "icky" as everyone said it was. I'll always remember organizing a nice surprise night out for one of my friends on the anniversary of her ex-husband's suicide so she'd be surrounded by friends instead of being alone. I'll always remember how my heart would beat faster when I was around one guy at my church I had a huge crush on. I'll always remember hiking in Great Falls and running to the Loudoun County line and back on the Washington & Old Dominion Trail. I'll always remember getting a bonus at work for singing karaoke and motivating my colleagues at an otherwise dull Christmas party. I'll always remember dancing in The District. I'll always remember finishing around 30th in my first 5K race at Wolf Trap and running another 5K past the U.S. Capitol. Lots of good memories I'll take with me when I die, despite being overshadowed by the bad ones.
This is really a tough call for the OP. She'll undoubtedly struggle financially, but she will also enjoy a great new experience. My tenure there went up in flames after a couple of years, but even if hers does, too, at least she'll have a lot of fond memories to reflect upon and tear up about.
With that being said it's NOT a good area to reside within if you're an entry-level worker unless you are being offered a decent starting salary (not $40,000) OR have family in NoVA to help you become established.
I'll point out, again, that there are many recent college graduates in the DC area who are living on entry-level salaries. They live with roommates, they drive old cars, and they eventually get better jobs and earn higher salaries. Some of them move on to other cities with lower costs of living, but lots of them stay. They don't seem to be suffering from high rates of clinical depression or envy of their peers who came from more affluent families. The DC area has been a magnet for educated young people for decades. It's not for everyone, as SCR makes clear, but you won't know if it's for you unless you give it a try.
A company in NOVA can offer $45k because there are plenty of people willing to work for that low of a salary, especially in marketing where there is an ocean of candidates fighting for the mere handful of promising positions (I got my BS in Business Admin with a Marketing concentration and looked for marketing jobs for quite some time).
I moved here in 2004 working in Chantilly for about $32k. I got my own apartment in Manassas (despite being in my 20s and would have liked to live in Arlington or Alexandria or whatever, the financial reality pushed me out to PWC). Even then, with my rent of less than $1000 per month, I picked up a restaurant job four nights a week. I had no car payment at first, but after putting $600 into my car 3 months in a row, I traded it for a Civic with a $255/month payment. I had (still have, actually) a pretty meager student loan monthly payment and was, at the time, still paying off some credit card debt I'd accumulated in college. I survived.
Quote:
Originally Posted by atlien2010
Its in marketing, with more of a role focusing on writing and graphic design.
If you are a good writer/editor and also have a good handle on marketing and desktop publishing, seriously consider looking into proposal work if you want to be in the DC area and make more money. It is absolutely not for the lazy nor impatient, but there is a LOT of opportunity in this area, and you'll likely climb up in salary relatively quickly if you keep an eye out for the right opportunities. Most people don't intentionally go into proposal work, but once you're there, it can pay off. Just don't expect to have much of a social life outside of work because it can demand many evenings/weekends at times (but you said you're more of a homebody; I wouldn't have brought it up if you'd said you were moving here for the social scene).
Quote:
Originally Posted by tstwiford
This area has so much opportunity and if you find that you are unhappy in your job, there will likely be others.
I have found this to be absolutely true, BUT it really does depend on your field/area of expertise and qualifications. I have no real difficulty finding a new job when I want one in my profession, but my husband has a much more difficult time and can easily search for months on end without finding much to even apply for.
Laughing at SteelCityRising's first post in this thread since I thought it was meant to be humorous. Then I realized that she was being very serious.
Plenty of people live in NoVA and indeed in Reston on $40k income. Even though they don't live as well as someone making much higher income, it doesn't drive them into therapy. No doubt she was unhappy but people are generally unhappy about the specific particulars of their situation rather than the metropolitan area that they live in. In other words, I would look more towards her work, her co-workers, and her out-of-work social circle to spot the problem. It is indeed a good recommendation to get a change of scenery when one simply feels suffocated and depressed by their surroundings. But I would suggest that changing jobs, moving from Reston to a different city like Falls Church, Vienna, Alexandria, or even across the river into Maryland would have produced a similar effect than moving to a different city.
NoVA being part of a top-tier metropolitan area, is a battleground for young people as this area offers some of the best chances for career advancement. As I mentioned previously my wife moved to this area almost 10 years ago as a staff accountant making about a $40k salary. Flip forward 10 years, she is the controller at a large company making multiple times what she started out with in this area. In that same time, she got married (yay for me), had two wonderful kids (yay for me again), and made no sacrifices in her personal life except for the 80-hour weeks when she was working public accounting during tax season in the very early part of her career. I am not saying these types of growth opportunities don't exist elsewhere, but NoVA has more of them.
Not everyone is looking to push them selves hard, and NoVA is certainly a great area for those who just want to have a stable and comfortable life. The statistics don't lie, with Fairfax and Loudoun boasting some of the highest median household incomes in the nation. This area is not without its problems, the traffic being one, and the high cost of living is definitely a strain on the budgets of those who are on the lower end of the income scale. But overall, NoVA is such an attractive place to live that population growth has been at a brisk pace and is expected to continue indefinitely. Just Fairfax county alone has over 3x the population of the city of Pittsburg, a place where the population is less than half of its peak and now stagnant.
Not really. I net $40,000 in Pittsburgh (my gross salary wouldn't be all that much higher than $45,000) and live quite comfortably. People in NoVA have just become so conditioned to everything being so "bubble-priced" that they feel like a $45,000 salary makes one borderline impoverished.
Huh.
Even a decent one bedroom here is easily a grand a month.
Location: Huntersville/Charlotte, NC and Washington, DC
26,700 posts, read 41,718,665 times
Reputation: 41376
Quote:
Originally Posted by NovaOne
Laughing at SteelCityRising's first post in this thread since I thought it was meant to be humorous. Then I realized that she was being very serious.
Plenty of people live in NoVA and indeed in Reston on $40k income. Even though they don't live as well as someone making much higher income, it doesn't drive them into therapy. No doubt she was unhappy but people are generally unhappy about the specific particulars of their situation rather than the metropolitan area that they live in. In other words, I would look more towards her work, her co-workers, and her out-of-work social circle to spot the problem. It is indeed a good recommendation to get a change of scenery when one simply feels suffocated and depressed by their surroundings. But I would suggest that changing jobs, moving from Reston to a different city like Falls Church, Vienna, Alexandria, or even across the river into Maryland would have produced a similar effect than moving to a different city.
NoVA being part of a top-tier metropolitan area, is a battleground for young people as this area offers some of the best chances for career advancement. As I mentioned previously my wife moved to this area almost 10 years ago as a staff accountant making about a $40k salary. Flip forward 10 years, she is the controller at a large company making multiple times what she started out with in this area. In that same time, she got married (yay for me), had two wonderful kids (yay for me again), and made no sacrifices in her personal life except for the 80-hour weeks when she was working public accounting during tax season in the very early part of her career. I am not saying these types of growth opportunities don't exist elsewhere, but NoVA has more of them.
Not everyone is looking to push them selves hard, and NoVA is certainly a great area for those who just want to have a stable and comfortable life. The statistics don't lie, with Fairfax and Loudoun boasting some of the highest median household incomes in the nation. This area is not without its problems, the traffic being one, and the high cost of living is definitely a strain on the budgets of those who are on the lower end of the income scale. But overall, NoVA is such an attractive place to live that population growth has been at a brisk pace and is expected to continue indefinitely. Just Fairfax county alone has over 3x the population of the city of Pittsburg, a place where the population is less than half of its peak and now stagnant.
First off, SteelCityRising is a male. I've seen him in person, trust me on this.
Second, as someone who works in banking, financial stress can definitely be valid for needing therapy, never mind working having a first post-college job and adapting to a "unique" area like Northern VA on your plate as well.
At the end of the day, we have to do what helps us sleep at night. For some, it would be moving to NoVA for a chance to advance your career (like I'm doing and the OP is considering) for some it is leaving NoVA for a less-stress slower pace of life. Stories like SCR can help some make the decision.
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