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Fortune-Telling Yearly salary. Student loan bills. Rent. These concepts probably seem pretty foreign now, but soon they’ll be part of our daily lives. The trick to getting along financially is having an income that’s greater than all your expenses combined. Therefore, your career aspirations need to match up with what you’re hoping to own, rent, and experience in life. A penthouse and a Porsche might be possible if you plan to become a high-flying banker. If you dream of becoming a social worker, however, it’s not realistic to expect these material possessions. Three NYC writers researched average starting salaries in their chosen fields, and the expenses they might face as young adults starting out. We used calculators available online to estimate our monthly income after taxes, as well as our student loan repayments, utility bills (things like gas and electricity), and transportation costs; our editors helped us estimate some other expenses. I’d like to be an author of children’s books because I love children and I love to write. According to payscale.com, an author is likely to earn $20,000-$120,000 annually, depending on the success of your books and years of experience. I started with the $20,000 amount because I don’t have any experience. However, that may still be a high estimate since authors get paid per book and depending on how well their books sell. If I have a hard time selling my books, I’ll need a second job. I’d like to work at a beauty salon a few hours a week, which would bring my income to $23,000. With everything the government takes out, though, this still comes out to only $1,473 a month. Then I’ll have a lot of bills to pay, like college loans and utilities. One way I could save money would be to share a studio apartment with my cousin, which we’ve wanted to do since we were little girls. The Upper East Side apartment I found on rentbits.com is a good size, but it needs a female touch. My cousin and I could also share the cost of food and utilities. But there’s another expense I didn’t think about until my editor mentioned it: Without a full-time, salaried job, I’d have to buy my own health insurance. I hope that the new health care bill that just passed will make health insurance more affordable for me, so I will have some money to save. Saving a little money each month is important to me because I want to travel to my home country, Panama, to visit my family and friends at least once a year. Also, I don’t want to live on credit because that would mean my paycheck goes to a credit card company, and I’ll have nothing for myself. Overall, though, I feel good about living on a budget. I know if I put my all into my work then I can make it. —Madeline Legister Monthly Income $1,473 Total expenses = $1,301 What’s left at the end of the month: $172 I hope to be a magazine editor, which in New York usually means starting out as an editorial assistant with a modest salary (around $32,000). I was surprised to find a 2-bedroom apartment on rentbits.com for $800 a month—in New York, that’s a great deal. It was near the neighborhood I live in now. I’d planned to live downtown, but this research made me see it’s better to take small steps: I could find a good apartment in a not-so-pricey neighborhood instead. It was a relief to know my budget might be manageable without credit. My parents have gotten caught up in the credit card world and its trap of interest rates. They’ve said credit cards can be addictive and get you further into debt, so I should avoid them for as long as I can. I estimate I’d have a little spending money, which I’d like to use for clothes and going out sometimes. I’d definitely save some, too. You never know when you might need emergency money in this expensive world. To me, having enough money means never having to worry about paying your bills, and being able to buy a last-minute present or treat yourself to a little something extra now and then. Though this budget is just an estimate, it adds to my confidence because I feel I can have the life I want. —Chantel Morel Monthly Income= $1,976 Total expenses = $1,910 What’s left at the end of the month: $66 I’m not looking forward to working my butt off as a chef to pay for everything I want. I had a general concept of how much things cost in life (apartments in Brooklyn, cars, utilities, etc.) but doing this research made me realize that I’m eventually going to have to deal with those costs. One thing that surprised me was the amount of money I’d actually get paid. After taxes, my salary went from $35,000 a year to less than $26,000. Meanwhile, I was saddened but not surprised by how much a nice car costs: I’d have to pay about $950 a month for four years to pay off the Lexus convertible I really want, not to mention gas, insurance, and maintenance costs. Given my starting salary, I might have to rethink this and look for a cheaper car. I wouldn’t mind living in a small apartment in a nice neighborhood by myself. But if I had a roommate, I’d obviously like a bigger apartment, also in a nice neighborhood. The rent on my ideal apartment is $2,500 a month, but I probably can’t afford that on a starting chef’s salary. For this and other reasons, I need to reconsider whether I want to be a chef. I’ve always wanted to work with food, but the career requires enormous work and a great deal of culinary training. (If I attend the school where the best chefs go, tuition will be more than $23,000 a year for four years—not including room and board.) I also hear from a lot of people that long hours, and the heat as you’re working in a kitchen trying to produce everything so quickly, make a chef’s job especially stressful. No matter what I earn, I’m scared to get a credit card once I have a real job. I’m a careless spender and whenever I have any money, I use it up without thinking. As I get older, I’ll have to prioritize and learn to budget without making stupid, rash decisions that land me in debt. —Catherine Cosmo Monthly Income $2,143 Total expenses= 5,286 Over budget by: $3,143
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About
our books Stories from New Youth Connections have been anthologized in several books by Youth Communication. Starting With I (Persea Books, 1997) is a collection of personal essays first published in NYC; in addition, The Struggle to Be Strong: True Stories By Teens About Resilence (Free Spirit, 2000), Things Get Hectic: Teens Write About the Violence That Surrounds Them (Simon& Schuster, 1998) and Out With It: Gay and Straight Teens Write About Homosexuality (Youth Communication, 1996) feature stories from NYC as well as from Represent, our other teen-written magazine. |
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