August 1, 2011
It’s been over a year since my big move: the new job, the new home, the new life.
And I’m reflecting on the career part of it now that we’ve passed the big milestone: the performance evaluation.
Having to pull together a comprehensive report of my own accomplishments was a chore. I hated it. I shouldn’t. It’s my opportunity to toot my horn because I work incredibly hard, well and above my job description with three times the number of people to manage and many more times the amount of work to shoulder than most, so I should have been jumping at the chance to rectify the salary situation.
You see, when I accepted the job, I wasn’t offered an amount that was commensurate with my level of experience and history of performance. While peeved, I wasn’t terribly surprised because HR doesn’t make offers based on performance unless you’re long on obvious achievements and come highly recommended by people they know. At least not this HR, as far as I can tell. While I’m a high-performer, it’s not obvious on paper, nor does my youthful appearance do me many favors in this department. As well, the industry, the role and the company I was dealing with isn’t known for a generous offer at this level. I did negotiate and came away with a single concession, but they wouldn’t budge anywhere else.
In such a situation, I used some of the following variables to figure whether I should stay or go:
Leave it:
– You’re confident you can close the deal elsewhere in a short enough period of time that giving up this offer won’t hurt you (financially, reputation/burning bridges)
– The offer is below your baseline (you should always know your baseline lest you take an offer below that and find that it hurts you more than it helps you)
– You have a competitive counter/other offer on the table instead
– The culture is a poor fit
Take it:
– Decent alternate offers aren’t forthcoming and the money is enough to live on
– You know there is room for growth (financially, the people you’d make connections with)
– The culture is a good enough fit that it’s a good stepping stone for the time being
– It’s a good company to work for and the experience will be valuable on your career path (in combination with the money not being so bad that you can’t live on it)
My considerations: it was near PiC, the offer wasn’t so low that I couldn’t knock their socks off and bring it up to my standard fairly quickly (I thought it’d be sooner), the job was bound to be interesting and blow the rust off my skills so I could more easily find something else if I weren’t happy there, and from my read of the economy, I was still looking at a prolonged job hunt over several thousand dollars a year if I was at all unsure about moving to the East Coast.
So I took it. (Little realizing the angst those dollars would cause my psyche.)
Several months ago, my boss and I had a conversation where we reviewed my goals, achievements and expectations, and performance to date. I broached the topic of an increase at that point and while they weren’t willing to budge at the six-month mark, they were on notice that I wasn’t letting the salary matter lie. That was Step One.
Throughout the year, I carried more than my weight and became the go-to person on several fronts. Aside from the incredible challenges within my own team, and there were oh-so-many, I worked across departments and with upper management on a regular basis. After several months, my role expanded far beyond the original scope and I’m now active at a higher level than any of my peer group who have been with the organization as long as or longer than I. None of this was easy, of course, and very little of it was fun, but I was bound and determined to win back my salary.
At judgment time: the value of recordkeeping
With that in mind, when my annual review came around, I drafted a self evaluation that laid out the expansion of my assumed responsibilities. It took weeks to get it right (the price of doing a stellar job here is you never have personal time) but that was critical. That was Step Two.
We had a conversation about my performance over the year after my boss reviewed and responded to my write-up and no surprise, was very positive about everything. Step Three: Boss then wanted to know my expectations with regard to salary. Because of Step One: On notice.
The end result of that conversation was that, on the basis of my performance and my initiative throughout the year, using my write-up which was fully Boss-endorsed and the assurance that I expect them to Make Right, Boss secured a very healthy raise for me bringing my salary up to a less embarrassing, and more liveable level.
I still can’t afford to indulge, I’m still budgeting carefully and half that increase will be going to bills, the other half will be going to savings but it’s a step.
*****
I’ll admit that I still have been second-guessing myself a bit ever since, thinking that I should have stated a number or pushed harder for a better increase. I feel like I dropped the ball when asked what my expectations were. I didn’t give a number and I should have. I know why I didn’t; I was asked but it was phrased as “will you quit if you don’t get [insert outrageous number here] raise” and so my response wasn’t to set an expectation as a number, it was to say that I expect I will get a better than average raise but I’m not a hostage taker. (After discussing with a mentor, this was somewhat close what I was advised to say.) Still, second-guessing a bit. Also, I do wonder if that careful phrasing works differently coming from a male to a male VS. from a female to a male VS. from a female to a female VS. from a male to a female boss.
And part of that second-guessing is an emotional reaction because I’ve gone a year on a lowballed salary.
I’ve been alternately angry and embarrassed all year about accepting that original number even though I thought I had made my peace with it in the first place. In feeling the pinch, I felt like it reflected poorly on me in so many ways: that it diminished me as a breadwinner, that it prevented me from carrying my weight in this household, that I was a poor negotiator, that I’ve failed in my career aspirations and taken steps backwards. That has been a difficult cycle to handle this year on top of my health spiraling and needing to prove myself at work. I’ve kept it to myself until now, but I’ve not liked feeling this way one bit.
Objectively, what played out is not poor at all and in this economy, really good, in fact, and I’m appreciative of the effort Boss must have gone to in order to make that happen. And I have my sights set on the next goal.
So that’s Year One down. Hello, Year Two.
February 10, 2009
MSN Money’s 6 financial milestones before 30 seem a little…. well …. blah. They really don’t light up the fire of my imagination, really.
1. Scale back the credit cards.
2. Own a home — or have a plan.
3. Have skills.
4. Give money away.
5. Know thyself.
6. Know smart people.
It’s not bad advice, it’s just kind of vague and run of the mill.
Then again, who am I to complain in this economy, right? Let’s see what we can do to personalize it a little, instead.
1. I don’t have credit card debt, and have canceled a number of cards that I don’t use. Where possible, the credit lines were transferred to the remaining cards to preserve the illusion of higher credit available. This inadvertently messed up my insurance premium refund, unfortunately, because they credited an account that no longer exists! We’ll see if I can get the insurance company to cut a check.
2. Um, I have a whole hundred dollars put away in lieu of a plan. So a plan might be a good idea. In fact, this will regain line item status on my next budget whenever I land a new job. More concretely, I would like to have my down payment (20% of course) and house maintenance saved, apart from my emergency fund. That’s a lot of cash!
3. Oh, I have skills. They’re good ones, too. But they could use some flair and I do have a plan for that. Girlfriend of mine has the Adobe Creative Suite with extra downloads and she offered one set to me when the new laptop was up and running. It is, now, so it’s time to take her up on that offer and start learning how to Photoshop and maybe even InDesign. And a friend’s friend is a web designer who might be willing to teach me some of his awesome designer skills; that would come in handy in any number of ways. Can you say (watch out, corporate speak!) value-add?
4. I’m guessing that giving money to the landlord, the electric company, the city, and gas companies don’t count, huh. Nor does feeding my family. I could and must do better here. In the past, the NYC medics were recipients of my generosity, as best as I could afford, as well as my extended family. My goal is to comfortably afford to give an average of $50/month. I know it’s not much, but it’s a start and y’know, family to feed and house. Another budgetary line item.
5. Ok, this one is a little tougher than it sounds. For me, anyway. It’s easier to know my goals, my challenges, and my shortcomings than myself as a whole person. It’s been years since I’ve asked myself what I wanted or dreamed, and I’ve only just begun to explore that area this year. Turns out that I’m a bit more complex than my finances: I am not my money, nor am I my family or my job. So what am I?? This could take a while ….
6. Yep, I know all of you smarties, and my high school friends are no mental slouches either. I like being surrounded by smart people, and sometimes even smart people who disagree with me. 😉 This is great advice because I firmly believe that you rise and fall to the levels of the people around you; so you can only rise naturally if you’re learning from wise people in a learning environment. It’s a tough climb, and lonely to boot, otherwise.
Items 3-6 are all actions I can begin now and should continue well past my thirties. I’d love to be well on my way to achieving Item 2 in the next three years, and have a more developed career plan on the table by that time as well.
Let’s not limit this to your thirties: what’s on the horizon for you? What does your five or ten year plan include?
January 28, 2009
Things I wish I’d done in the last five years:
1. Started a CD ladder. Even if it were just a little thing with a few hundred per step, I wish I’d realized that I wouldn’t need everything in the e-fund immediately.
2. Contributed more to the Roth: it’s the only investment I have that’s doing well in this market.
3. Applied for a job in San Diego in the comic book industry two years ago. I was afraid to take the leap and it would been really cool to have a foot in that door.
Conversely, I’m glad that I did not:
1. Go straight into grad school out of college. Not only would I be in debt, I wouldn’t have known what my professional strengths and likes/dislikes were.
2. Continue to bail out my brother. Telling my brother that his free ride was OVER might have been painful for me to say, unbelievable for him to hear, and shocking for fellow bloggers to read, but it was past time that he started to grow up. Of course, my decision alone didn’t matter until he’d hit rock bottom, but it was the right thing to do at the right time.
3. Let go of my responsibilities before I was ready, as some friends encouraged me to do. They just worried about me, but my OCD attachment to PF over the years has been a blessing in this blog, the friends I’ve made through the community and the knowledge I’m able to use and share.
While washing my hands this morning, I had two long term goals occur to me:
1. In the job after next, I would like to be earning a six figure income.
2. And I want to save half of that income. My portfolio/net worth would be SO awesome!! Muahahha…..
Anybody else reflecting on their dids and didn’ts lately? Care to share?
August 14, 2008
Living under a rock, as usual, I’ve only just discovered Google Docs. I’m now using it regularly to update my resumes and track my PayPerPost posts and the accounts the money goes into. It’s awesome! I kept thinking that I needed to keep tabs on how much money went into each account since I’m rotating in increments of 100/100/50, but hadn’t bothered to set up a system beforehand. Turns out keeping track in your head? Not really a great method of accounting. You’d think I’d know that by now, right?
Besides a modicum of laziness, my pessimism decided PPP would take as long as Google Adsense to build up any significant amount (2 years and counting!!) but I’ve actually broken the $100 mark with PPP so far, and hope to continue full steam ahead.
So, knowing that the amounts in my accounts (especially the Travel Fund) would constantly fluctuate, I started an Excel sheet listing the date of the post, the post number, the approval date, the payout date, the payout amount, the running balance, the account that the payout would go to, the balance in the specific account, and a tranfer date so I’d know when the funds went from PayPal to my bank account. Whew!
So far, the only thing that bothers me is that they only give the post number in the actual PayPal transaction. It doesn’t appear in the post history, the email notification of approval or payout, or anywhere else. That’s a little aggravating, so I added a post title column just so to clear up identification issues.
May 6, 2008
Each month, I round up all my expenses and work out the total of what I grandly call my net worth. A lot of bloggers do it, in one form or another. Actually, I call mine “snapshots” because they’re just a quick glimpse at my ever-fluctuating expense and income sheets. In a way, I like that the numbers continually change, especially since I get bored so easily. Activity isn’t always a good thing, though, as noted by the massive reductions in net worth during the BroDucky debacle. Let me emphasize how I never want to spend so much for so little again. 😛
Every month, I put together these snapshots, but I don’t actually have a net worth goal. And keeping track of numbers without an actual goal seems rather halfhearted. I do have annual savings goals, as you can see by my sidebars, but I don’t have an overall net worth goal. Part of this is because the savings goals are both saving and spending goals. A good half of my goals pertain to a future purchase or expenditure: car maintenance, home ownership, auto payoff. The other half are for retirement (completely untouchable), emergencies (almost always untouchable), and mistakes (only if it’s serious).
Between the two, it seems like I’m just saving to spend. Oh, that’s not really the case, I’ll still have the savings at the end of a long hard day, but the half and half structure of my goals implies that this isn’t all about holding on to my putative wealth. In that light, “net worth” doesn’t seem applicable unless I have something more concrete than the employer retirement funds and cash in a savings account. Some things more like CDs, and savings bonds, and property. An actual stock portfolio, at some point. You know, grown-up things. So again, what’s the point of tracking my net worth?
After all, it can be very subjective. You can choose to include or exclude any number of possessions or holdings that you deem worthy or not of being considered. I leave out my automobiles entirely because it’s a bit too complicated to include them. I don’t plan to sell my personal vehicle ever, and the family sedan, which is not my financial responsibility, is still being paid off. Still, if something happened to it, you betcha I’ll be the one who has to figure out a replacement. Same goes for personal loans. I only started including those because I’m getting forgetful, and didn’t want to lose track of them entirely. One of the reasons I’m leery of including any possessions is the idea that possessions only have value to me. If I lose or break something, I have to replace it at a cost to myself. It’s highly unlikely, in the general scheme of things, that my possessions will be worth anything to anyone else. Barring selling large ticket items, of course. But my point is, things are primarily a liability. More often, I’ll have to replace things, not make money from them.
So, why track a seemingly artificial net worth? In part, accountability. As long as I see steady progress, or lack thereof, in the form of numbers from one time period to the next, I have to stay on track. Some kind of track. And if I keep the variables constant, then the change in amounts is a valid indicator of circumstances. Just because I don’t include my possessions doesn’t mean my financial holdings aren’t real.
The other part, motivation. Seeing the numbers makes the whole game of finances, bargain shopping, and frugality more real. It’s not just theory, it’s life in action. If I were to be completely objective, I’d be proud of myself for going from working to pay off my family’s debt (credit cards, car payments, personal loans), to actually building a cash cushion, putting a decent amount away for later, and generally making some progress. It’s harder to see that, though, on those bleak days when all I can think of is the $18,000 I foolishly lent and lost, the entire salary of my 4 college years going towards bills bill and more bills, and most of my post-college salary going towards not me. I can only see the other side of the coin if I actually keep track of it.
It’s all too easy to forget that the grind can actually produce results, and to keep going because we’re going to make it. I look at the accomplishments of fellow bloggers, and I’m A-M-A-Z-E-D. And you know what? Seeing my numbers keeps me honest. I can finally be happy for what I’ve done here these past two years, too. Combine that with the realizations that it’s ok to be free, that it’s ok to live, and I’m going to say, not too shabby, really!
So, let’s keep on with the net worth! It doesn’t define me, and it may not truly define my “wealth” but it’s a good way to keep me truckin’ from milestone to milestone.
January 3, 2008
I’ve been crunching the numbers for my 2008 financial goals all week, and every time I think I’m close to publication, they change. Usually this is a fun exercise that keeps me happily occupied for HOURS, but I’ve hit a series of walls and am frustrated.
RX: Crawl under the covers for a break and try again tomorrow!
October 23, 2007
My file maintenance leaves much to be desired. There are no regularly scheduled purges or reviews, I don’t have an actual plan for when papers are to be destroyed. I just go by the “I can’t fit any more in this old desk drawer” method.
I’ve been thinking that for the past several months as I winced pulling out the hefty 4 inch files, and again when I crammed them back in, hoping that the drawer rollers wouldn’t fail me each time. Finally the thought occurred to me that I still need to order my annual credit reports and that when I received them, it’d be a good time to go through the drawers and make some decisions about which credit cards to consolidate and kill. Also, which records to pull and shred.
That highly logical thought was followed by an OCD-like reaction: no, let’s just go through it now. Just a file or two. Just the ones you have to pull out anyway. An hour later, surrounded by piles of papers to shred, cards to shred, paper clips to reuse, and a few more files to go, I’m struck by reminiscences of my first forays into finance.
They’re all right here.
“DO NOT USE UNTIL PAID OFF.” Printed in large block letters on the paper that new credit cards come in, my first balance transfer was in 2004. I used a Citi Dividend Select Platinum card to pay off two Capital One balances for my mom. Back then, I only had a $5000 credit limit on that card, and it was only the first $5000 of many thousands of dollars worth of debt that I would ultimately pay off for them. I remember being nervous and excited, chock full of my discoveries on Fatwallet Finance, and so full of optimism and youth. Maybe I couldn’t save the world, but I was going to rescue my parents, dangit.
Careful records of credit card statements, with every single associated receipt clipped to each statement. Color coordinated highlighting to distinguish between household charges and personal charges.
An application to enroll in the Citi Driver’s Edge Drive Rebates program. One of my many failures to take advantage of a program that could have netted me a LOT of rebate cash. *sigh* I still feel stupid about letting that slide, month after month. It looks like I still have $78.94 worth of Driver’s Edge rebates to use. That’s good to know.
IngDirect, 2004. My first online savings account. Oh, how I loved it. The stack of orange statements eventually become intermingled with the white statements of Emigrant Direct, slowly, gradually. Now it’s mostly Emigrant Direct, even though I don’t think I’ve gotten a paper statement from them since 06/30/07. I can see when I started getting careless, too. May 31, 2006 was when I stopped hole punching and filing the pages. Just slipping them in atop the previous statements was good enough for this gov’ment’s work.
A Notice of Action or Payment from the dentist. ARGH! I still haven’t gone to the dentist this year! *ashamed* I have dental insurance, I’m payin’ for it, and haven’t used it once this year. Shame on me!
Cell Phone: I’ve had my 1000 minutes/month plan for at least 2.5 years. I’m spoiled, even though I haven’t paid more than $50/month at any point.
There’s also a page ripped out from an Entertainment Weekly 2000 Year-End Special featuring a 21-year-old Kate Hudson on one side, and 32-year-old Hugh Jackman as Wolverine on the other side. I love them both, so that’s staying in the drawer. ’til we meet again!
Trends: Credits to my accounts. I’ve flipped through about 4 files containing at least 8 credit cards’ worth of statements. Sure as the sky’s full of ash tonight, I’ve made some dumb mistakes but it appears that I’ve not really hesitated to ask for a credit on my account, deserved or not. The credit card companies, Citi, Chase, American Express, have all obliged.
I’m really selectively organized. I’ll update all these files from years and years ago without missing a single one, but keep small piles of things to file on my desktop for weeks. It annoys me, but there they stay, gathering dust, until I’m good and ready to put them away. And then there are times like now, when I can’t find my darned paperclip box to put away the pile of reclaimed paperclips.
It’s hard to believe that I started this crusade 3 years ago and many a harsh and bitter lesson has been learned. Some of the lessons are quantifiable: I’ve paid tens of thousands of dollars in rent. I’ve paid for just as much debt, not my own, but still, debt. I’ve finally learned to pull back and stop throwing money at the problems, especially since I never made that much, and started throwing it at my savings. At investing, and at the future. That’s resulted in a healthy sum of retirement funds, and a humble pile of emergency savings. That’s progress. Other lessons aren’t so measurable: don’t trust BroDucky farther than you can throw him. Don’t don’t don’t! lend money you can’t afford to lose. Stop blindly trusting your parents, when they’re out to protect you and you just need the truth: you will clash.
I’ve been scaling this edifice of familial duty for 7 years, and I still haven’t learned that I can’t save my family. To be honest, I have to laugh at myself for thinking that I could. How naive! Things have changed, yes, but more for the worse than the better. But, maybe it’s not a lesson I’m meant to learn. After all, families are messy. They’re demanding, they’re character building. Most compelling of all, they’ve been my motivation. Without them, I bet I wouldn’t have felt the call to explore financing, to cut bills down to the bone, to really bear up under all the needs of a family and find a way through. These are all skills that have contributed to my growing up. Like Reba McEntire said, “How was I to know I’d be ok?”
It’s been 3 years. I’m still doing alright. I’ll be ok. I think I have what it takes.
Oh, but I still haven’t ordered the dang credit reports. I’ll get right on that.