Export thread

I need to make approximately seven grand above and beyond what my wife and I make from our regular full-time jobs, in order to move half way across the country, to a place where our $70k/yr combined income is above the regional average instead of far below it. We suck at saving money, and truth be told, even if we rocked at it, we don't have enough discretionary income to not have to lower our standard of living from moderately shitty to really, really shitty. We can create some additional discretionary income by turning off the cable TV, but she occasionally works from home (saves gas money) and needs the cable internet connection.

We already eat on a pretty strict budget. We've stopped going out to eat almost entirely. Once every two or three months we may go out for sushi, and we keep the bill below $50. Usually what we'll do is buy a couple of big, cheap, cost effective cuts of meat that I cook on Sunday and dole out into various soups/stews/salads/sandwiches throughout the week. This has cut our monthly food budget in half, down to about $200 (there's only so much you can scrimp on veggies when they make up the bulk of your nutrient intake).

Gas is the biggest issue. She works about 19 miles from home, and can only work from home once a week. I work about 30 miles from home, and cannot work from home. I've started working 10-6 instead of any earlier shifts because traffic is lighter and I waste less gas sitting in one spot on the freeway, but even that's starting to be less effective as more and more other people start to do the same. Combined, we pay about $400/month on gas. Her office isn't on a public transit route, and while mine is, it would take twice as long for me to get to and from work, each direction (making it a total of 4 hours round trip) and cost $15.50 per day, or about $50 more per month than I pay in gas.

We both have WoW subs, which comes to $33 a month, which would offer a little more in savings, but when you can't afford to get out of the house and do anything else fun, it's hard to rationalize cutting off a good fun diversion in order to save less than $40 a month. Our total discretionary income right now is less than $500/mo and that's not really "discretionary" in that we keep having to pay off collections accounts from when we were both unemployed. We're nowhere near done paying off those bills (most of which are medical bills), but they're too small to actually declare bankruptcy and I've managed to get my credit score up to just under 700, so I'm not about to blow it now.

Part-time jobs likely wouldn't pay what we need in the time frame we have, and with my commuting schedule would be hard as hell to get anyway. So, all of this being said, does anyone here have any experience with Freelancer.com or other, similar sites?

Gared said:

does anyone here have any experience with Freelancer.com or other, similar sites?

Click to expand...

No, but what I've heard from those that have is that generally it's strictly about lowest price, and you are competing with college students, hobbyists, and people outside the US, so it's not going to make a lot of money, but if you've got the time it's more money than you'd make watching TV.

I would really like to help, but...uh, we're currently raising a child on just over half that much income (and carrying more than $200k in debt), so we're pretty much in the same boat. We might be able to give you tips on efficiency (keeping one parent at home will save you about $20,000/yr in child care expenses, for instance), but honestly I look forward to feedback in this thread more as a means of remedying our own situation than anything else.

--Patrick

My gf and I eat on about $100-$150 per month, which we accomplish by buying the absolute cheapest stuff (68 cent cans, etc) from Wal-Mart, getting bulk meats ($10 for a shitload of chicken, yes please), etc., and buying veggies. From there we just cook whatever. Something that helps a lot in terms of efficiency for food is a site we use called supercook.com. You put in all your ingredients in your kitchen and it tells you what you can make with those things. This way when you're sitting there with a carrot, one pork chop, a packet of ketchup, a can of peaches, and a chocolate bar, it'll tell you what amazing dish you can make with it. This makes your ingredients go as far as they can, instead of sitting there for a long time.

Plus, cooking for yourself is fun (at least for me, I LOVE cookinng) and it seems to be healthier-- I've lost a lot of weight just cooking for myself-- granted, not eating that second helping because you want the food to last longer helps too.

Some cheap and high-yield (long-lasting) foods we make are:
- Red Beans and Rice : Rice, Kidney Beans, a Sausage, and Salt : This tastes great (though not high end by any means), is super cheap, and gives a lot of servings. (You're looking at about $4-5 [Bag of rice, 2 cans of beans, 1 sausage] for about 6 servings.]
- Tacos : 2 tubes of ground beef, some seasoning, plus tortillas, refried beans, lettuce, cheese, tomatoes, salsa : This is more of a "luxury meal" as it costs more, but you can get all that for about $20 at Wal-Mart, and it'll make a buttload of tacos, around 10-12. More if you buy more meat, as the other stuff lasts a long time.
- Pasta : Pasta will make you fat, but it hands down is the cheapest-for-amount food out there. I made some delicious-ass spaghetti for $1.75 that lasted about 6 servings. Any pasta is really easy to make, especially if you look for recipes or use supercook. Again, it's not super-healthy, but if you need to crunch your food money, it's the way to go.
- Soup/Stew/Curry : The leftovers meal. Basically, look up a recipe for soup/stew/curry with whatever vegetables and meat you have left over, and make it. The type of curry we made is SO DELICIOUS. We've eaten about 6 bowls worth and I'd say there's enough for 10 more. This can be pricy if you buy stuff specifically for it, but again, this is kind of your leftover ingredients meal.

There are some other ideas, but if you go for "filling" foods you can eat roughly the same for less money.

And as always, look for the 60-70 cent cans at wal-mart. It's not that shitty, and they work great as sides or ingredients. One can used purely as a side will last you about 3 servings, so that like 20 cents a serving.

I know it's hard to change how you eat, but you could potentially drop your grocery bill by $50-$70.

Also, $500 discretionary seems high. I know you said a good bit of it is for bills, but BEYOND bills I would set discretionary at no higher than $100. That's $25 of entertainment per week, and that's easy to do. That's a movie a week (hint: save money and don't go to movies. Download older movies or get Netflix.) If you buy a new game, congrats, you've only got $40 more for the month. To me, $100 "misc." money per month is easily enough. I would put your WoW money into this, btw. Quite frankly, WoW should eat up so much time that you shouldn't even have to worry about other random expenses.

No impulse purchases. Maybe I just have insane self-restraint, but I see people buying things they TELL ME they don't need. I rarely buy anything for myself, and if anything, I make a grocery purchase as an impulse buy.

Don't buy convenience items, like $1.50 bottled sodas. Restrain yourself and just get the off-brand 2 liter for 80 cents. The best way to restrain yourself is to think about how outrageous the price is for a cold drink. Is it convenient? Hell yes. Is it worth it? Hell no. I decided to buy convenience drinks as little as possble about 6 months ago, and since then I've bought 2, and was mad at myself for one of them.

The number one problem I have with money is my GF, and that's because I hate to say no to her. I feel she deserves nice things sometimes, so most of my unnecessary expenses go towards her.

All the above being said, I've saved up $3,000 in about 5 months from a minimum wage job. Do I have as mch debt as you? No. I doubt I have as many bills as you. So I can't be a great comparison-- BUT! You both are bringing in money (My GF brings in just barely enough to pay her bills) so you should be able to save up your $7k within a few months, I believe.

I hope this has been in the slightest bit helpful.

Still waiting for Dave to weigh in. This all sounds like it is right up his alley.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

I would really like to help, but...uh, we're currently raising a child on just over half that much income (and carrying more than $200k in debt), so we're pretty much in the same boat. We might be able to give you tips on efficiency (keeping one parent at home will save you about $20,000/yr in child care expenses, for instance), but honestly I look forward to feedback in this thread more as a means of remedying our own situation than anything else.

--Patrick

Click to expand...

We're putting off having kids until we can get out of here, because we don't want to raise kids in this shitty neighborhood, in a rundown apartment that's falling apart at the seams. But good luck.

doomdragon6 Our food budget really isn't the big issue that we have, it's our car payments and car insurance - though we recently managed to cut our car insurance payment nearly in half by switching to Geico from Progressive, where I'd had a policy for 4 years and my customer loyalty and multi-car discount came to a grand total of not a hell of a lot. And yeah, I love to cook. I cook every meal I can at home. Believe me when I say that even on the strictest budget, making absolutely no impulse purchases, and paying the minimum amount on all of our bills, we have a total monthly savings, after paying for everything we have to pay, of almost $300. At that rate it'll take us almost 2 years to be able to afford to move, and that's only if the price of gas doesn't go higher and if my contract is extended. Even my $3500 tax refund is almost gone (exclusively from paying current bills and collections accounts).

I've considered getting a new job here, rather than waiting until I've moved, but the issue is that Amazon has a tendency to set the standard for hiring requirements around here. I've got about 7 years of business intelligence experience, which in Louisville, where we want to move, is enough to get a mid-level job. In the Seattle area it isn't even enough to get an entry level interview. Amazon's standard for getting an interview for an entry level BI job is to have a Masters Degree in Computer Science and 3 - 5 years of experience in BI. If you want to interview for a mid-level job, they require a PhD and 5 - 7 years of experience. And every other company in the area, from T-Mobile to Adobe to a garage door manufacturing company is using the same standards - because Amazon is using them, they must be good. Hell, half the places that were hiring a couple weeks back for BI didn't even get most of the jargon right in their own ads, but they wanted Masters Degrees or PhDs. It's ridiculous. Meanwhile, in Louisville, working for a major company like UPS (they have a huge shipping hub there), or some of the big healthcare networks, the most strenuous requirement I've seen, for a mid-level BI job is "Microsoft SQL Server certification preferred, but not required."

That's odd. I would not take a Ph.D. for a dev position unless they'd demonstrated that they were willing to take on relatively menial development tasks and were willing to follow a leader. The problem with Ph.D.s is that they got to be Ph.D.s by free thinking and thinking outside of the order of things, which is great for R&D, not so great for devs. This is all from experience hiring scientific programmers and programmers.

fade said:

That's odd. I would not take a Ph.D. for a dev position unless they'd demonstrated that they were willing to take on relatively menial development tasks and were willing to follow a leader. The problem with Ph.D.s is that they got to be Ph.D.s by free thinking and thinking outside of the order of things, which is great for R&D, not so great for devs. This is all from experience hiring scientific programmers and programmers.

Click to expand...

Believe me, it's not working out well for them. I've got one friend who works there right now, and one who just left the company. The guy who just left was heavily involved in the hiring process for mid-to-senior level programmers, and they spent 2 years trying to fill some positions and never managed to get anyone to interview beyond the phone screenings, because the people they were interviewing had PhD's, most of them were right out of school and had never programmed in a less than ideal environment, and could never get through the practical application portion of the phone screen if they were thrown even the slightest curve ball. The company as a whole has been trying to fill about 1,000 positions in Seattle for the past 3 years, and haven't managed to fill any of them, because their requirements are keeping the kinds of people that they want to hire out of the interview process, and their needs are keeping the people in the interview process from making it through.

That's because PHD comp sci is filled with idiots with their heads in the clouds.

Yep. If I had a dollar for every time my buddy would come over and complain about the people he was interviewing, who couldn't put two and two together even if he led them through all of the steps, to solve a problem; I wouldn't have needed to post this thread. He'd be asking a general question about object oriented programming, to see if his interviewee really did understand the concept, and one of his go-to questions was always "Describe to me how you would build a parking garage." Seems pretty obvious to me. I know that in order to build a parking garage, there are several types of objects that I'm going to need multiple instances of. Support columns, ramps, elevators, stairs, those little concrete bumps that prevent your tires from moving forward any further, etc. Each of those would be an object that you define once and call multiple times per level, and then you could define a level as being X number of each of those items and call the "level" object multiple times, with a couple of unique level items for the first and last floors. Nine out of ten of his interviewees failed the question, and half of the people who failed would argue that the question was stupid because it had nothing to do with programming or even to do with computers at all.

To be fair, a Comp Sci degree isn't necessarily about a particular coding paradigm, though. Take someone like Y. Saad for instance. You could probably code circles around him, but he knows the science of how to solve something like a 2nd order PDE within the constraints that a computer imposes. That being said, a phd in cs should be able to define OO for you.

fade said:

To be fair, a Comp Sci degree isn't necessarily about a particular coding paradigm, though. Take someone like Y. Saad for instance. You could probably code circles around him, but he knows the science of how to solve something like a 2nd order PDE within the constraints that a computer imposes. That being said, a phd in cs should be able to define OO for you.

Click to expand...

Which is exactly why their requirement of a PhD in Comp Sci isn't directing the appropriate job candidates to the interviewers. They don't need someone like Y. Saad, they need someone who has experience with multiple programming languages and with the principles of those languages, who can think on their feet and problem solve in less-than-ideal situations. You could have a B.S. or less and just have an ass-ton of real world programming experience and sail through the interview process and then actually be able to do the job with no problem, but those candidates are being turned away before their resumes even make it to the interviewers.

It gets even more ridiculous when you take into account that I wasn't even applying for a programming position, I was applying for Business Intelligence/Data Analysis. I've been doing BI for 7 years and the only "programming" I've ever had to do was setting up and running SQL queries, and the most difficult thing I've had to do with that is to build a database. I don't need a B.S. in Comp Sci to do that, let alone a PhD.

This is the main reason I don't apply for these sorts of jobs, even though they pay well. I have the talent, but no schooling nor experience, so I can't even qualify for the interview without spending another $60k for the credentials and training.

There's always the shareware market to make a name for myself, I guess.

--Patrick

Man, threads like this just make me wonder about the Cognitive Surplus around this place. With the right melding of talent and energy, some awesome stuff would happen.

MindDetective said:

Man, threads like this just make me wonder about the Cognitive Surplus around this place. With the right melding of talent and energy, some awesome stuff would happen.

Click to expand...

I'd be carrying babies around. Allen would be flipping tables all the time. Shego would keep the fridge stocked with fresh meats.

Awesome stuff.

You guys make me really scared about all this money I'm borrowing for college and whether or not it will be worth it.

Halco Inc.

Gared said:

I've considered getting a new job here, rather than waiting until I've moved, but the issue is that Amazon has a tendency to set the standard for hiring requirements around here. I've got about 7 years of business intelligence experience, which in Louisville, where we want to move, is enough to get a mid-level job. In the Seattle area it isn't even enough to get an entry level interview. Amazon's standard for getting an interview for an entry level BI job is to have a Masters Degree in Computer Science and 3 - 5 years of experience in BI. If you want to interview for a mid-level job, they require a PhD and 5 - 7 years of experience. And every other company in the area, from T-Mobile to Adobe to a garage door manufacturing company is using the same standards - because Amazon is using them, they must be good. Hell, half the places that were hiring a couple weeks back for BI didn't even get most of the jargon right in their own ads, but they wanted Masters Degrees or PhDs. It's ridiculous. Meanwhile, in Louisville, working for a major company like UPS (they have a huge shipping hub there), or some of the big healthcare networks, the most strenuous requirement I've seen, for a mid-level BI job is "Microsoft SQL Server certification preferred, but not required."

Click to expand...

But you wouldn't be completely immune from the influence of Amazon. Between Lexington, Cincy & Indy you have some 15-20 facilities that comprise roughly 50% of the North American order fulfillment capacity. It's just that there are other large companies that offer alternatives, like UPS & to some extent FedEx.

Speaking from the inside, Amazon currently is emphasizing their "high hiring bar", which is one of their core values. But sometimes it just doesn't make sense. I have a "critical role" position, which comes with added responsibility & expectation (as well as added income). I've had the position for 6 years now, but if I were applying for my position today, I wouldn't be qualified. In fact, of the 8 people who have my job title, only 1 of us would be qualified to apply. They have started a push where they want to promote from within, so today's critical roles will become tomorrow's management. So now they want critical roles to have degrees.

But for the most part, the job is factory/industrial production. Unskilled labor. If I had a degree, chances are I wouldn't be in a job that is little more than a glorified box monkey. So sometimes you just have to accept what you have.

2 things for Amazon job seekers - 1) Have military experience. They seem to have a hard-on for military jocks that can run a department like a DI & produce results. 2) If all else fails, just start at the bottom. Nothing seems to give them more of a raging boner as when they can point to someone in senior management that started as a entry level associate or, God forbid, a seasonal temp.

I do wish you luck Gared. Cost of living in the area is very agreeable. A roommate of mine some 10+ years ago left to go to SanFran for 3 months to do some contract work with ILM. He made in those 3 months what I made that year. But had he stayed in California he would have been barely above the poverty line, mainly because $2k a month got him a flat in Marin county, where the same back home gets you a mansion on a horse farm.

Bowielee said:

You guys make me really scared about all this money I'm borrowing for college and whether or not it will be worth it.

Click to expand...

The money is totally worth it. The challenge comes (as always) in picking the right thing to study that will be relevant in 4 years' time.

--Patrick

Bowielee said:

You guys make me really scared about all this money I'm borrowing for college and whether or not it will be worth it.

Click to expand...

Are you academe-bound? If so, it is a bit like swimming upstream. Something like 60% of faculty members at 2 and 4 year institutions are part-time instructors. This is a recent trend, and it is likely to continue. That said, if you take the right steps, you can be in a position that makes all of that debt worth it. I racked up a fair amount of debt myself, but it is steadily decreasing, and I have a stable job that pays the bills (as the sole wage-earner for my family, so its not too bad). In short, publish as often as you can in grad school and teach a couple of classes along the way (but not right away, teaching is very distracting!!)

mr_thehun said:

I completely agree with that. I know manufacturing and sourcing, so if we need to get something made, I can help you guys out with that.

Click to expand...

I keep on meaning to get with you about that, but I don't have any projects right now for it. On the other hand, if I can figure out what I can get cheaply, then I might have ideas I currently think are too expensive to implement.

Hmmm.... I'll have to think about this more seriously.

MindDetective said:

Are you academe-bound? If so, it is a bit like swimming upstream. Something like 60% of faculty members at 2 and 4 year institutions are part-time instructors. This is a recent trend, and it is likely to continue. That said, if you take the right steps, you can be in a position that makes all of that debt worth it. I racked up a fair amount of debt myself, but it is steadily decreasing, and I have a stable job that pays the bills (as the sole wage-earner for my family, so its not too bad). In short, publish as often as you can in grad school and teach a couple of classes along the way (but not right away, teaching is very distracting!!)

Click to expand...

My ultimate goal is to become a professor. I do have the advantage of being broke most my life, so I know how to stretch a dollar. When my professors tell me now "low" their salaries are, it's twice what I'm used to making. So I think that if I do get into the field and continue living all broke like I am now, I should have those loans paid off in no time.

I'm just worried that I'll sink all this money into college and end up working the same customer service jobs I've been working for the past 13 years.

Bowielee said:

My ultimate goal is to become a professor. I do have the advantage of being broke most my life, so I know how to stretch a dollar. When my professors tell me now "low" their salaries are, it's twice what I'm used to making. So I think that if I do get into the field and continue living all broke like I am now, I should have those loans paid off in no time.

I'm just worried that I'll sink all this money into college and end up working the same customer service jobs I've been working for the past 13 years.

Click to expand...

Probably not. Depending on your specialty, you'll be marketable to government research, the tech industry (like Google), and have the ability to consult or write textbooks. Lots of doors will be open for you. It will take some persistence, that is for sure.

Oh, I'm persistant. That's not an issue.

Though, I'm definitely starting to feel the pressure as I prepare for the GRE next year.

Are you presenting any research this year? I seem to recall you're working in a lab. Maybe APS or APA? MPA?

I'm attending MPA, but didn't get my research project done in time. The registration dates for stuff for this year kind of all fell within a week of each other and I had to decide which to pick and choose and unfortunately, I didn't get chosen for Posters on the Hill. I have done presentations of my reasearch from last stemester within the UW system, but nothing really official off-campus.

I'm currently doing a research project for the McNair Scholar's program which I'll actually be running subjects for next week. I'm extremely hopeful about this research, as I'm pretty sure that my theory will provide significant results (not that that partuclarly matters at an undergrad level). I've been running my own research projects, but next year, I'm hoping that my Prof has some openings in her labs so I can expand my CV a bit more.

By the time I get my BS, though, I should have 3 full research projects under my belt.

The Psychonomic Society meets in Minneapolis this November. It is mostly professionals and very few undergraduates. I took an undergraduate there one year and she made sure to meet one on one with profs she was interested in working with. Her GRE scores and GPA weren't competitive but attending Psychonomic got her in because she could demonstrate her competence and enthusiasm in person.

The main catch is that you need your prof (or one in the department) to sponsor your poster.

PS, I'm gonna be there, most likely!

Edit to add link.

My Professors and I get along very well, so I don't think that will be an issue. My McNair research should be done by then and I'm sure I could probably convince one of them to sponsor me.

From everything I'm hearing, Psychology on a doctoral level (and probably most PhD programs) is all about networking.

I find that to be in my favor as I'm really good at shmoozing.

at least you are not an environmental science major with a focus on policy and management, with a minor in hydro-geology. I am basically good for squat now according to my professors. that has been the most depressing part of the entire end of the process to finish up my undergrad schooling. Thus, now I am looking at law school as a plausible post-graduate option.

Whoa, there's another geologist here?

Bowielee said:

My Professors and I get along very well, so I don't think that will be an issue. My McNair research should be done by then and I'm sure I could probably convince one of them to sponsor me.

From everything I'm hearing, Psychology on a doctoral level (and probably most PhD programs) is all about networking.

I find that to be in my favor as I'm really good at shmoozing.

Click to expand...

They do have to be members, though!