Hello my friends...
Those who know me know that I can get some pretty neat ideas sometimes. Really big ones. But the problem is, real life sets in and I realize I can't quite balance all that, at least not right now. So, like many ideas, this one is probably going to sit on the table for at least 10 years, and then maybe I could finally concentrate on it. Better make that 20 years. Hey, 51 is a great time to start something new, right?
Anyway, here is something that has long been puttering about in my brain, and no one has done it yet that I know of.
Most people I know were on this track -- quick! We gotta get into college! We gotta get really awesome grades, take college prep classes, as many as possible, and then we gotta do sports or plays or music, or else something really amazing to impress the admissions people, and then maybe we'll get a scholarship or at least accepted into a decent school and become somebody -- doctor, lawyer, teacher, engineer, and on and on. Never mind that we don't know what it's like to live on teacher pay, even though people say not to expect much. We can be warned and warned, but we've never tried living on our own, so we don't know yet. At least not most of us.
If we want to be a doctor, never mind that there will be at least $40K in loans to pay off, we'll make plenty of money and pay it off "someday". Engineers, too. Never mind if we want a master's degree, we'll be taking out even more loans and pay them off "somehow" at $500 per month.
Never mind that many of us will want to marry someone almost right after college, some of us even during college. And then some of us will have kids. And some of us will decide, while we're at it anyway, to have a few more kids, because we may as well if we're going to have them.
And what if we want to change careers? There's retraining, and job market fluctuations that one cannot predict. There's medical problems, and credit cards you thought you could pay off "someday" and then lost track of somehow. And then both cars you got from your parents die, and now you have two car payments, because you never did learn anything about cars in order to fix the ones you have, and you don't have the money to pay someone because of all of the above.
Now, after all that... what if you want to buy a house? Pay for college? Start a retirement plan? What if you aren't sure at this point, despite having two college degrees, whether you can pay for your health insurance and food at the same time? What if you actually go bankrupt because you have no time machine to go back and fix these things with?
What if, amazingly, do you do solve all those problems, and now you have kids and are tired of letting other people take care of them, and decide after all to become a one income family, at least for the next several years?
What if you never learned how to cook? Or sew? Or fix your car or your appliances? Or garden? Or grocery shop in a prudent and carefully planned way? Or use coupons? Or budget at all? Or save money? Or laundry and dishes? Or put off til tomorrow what you don't need today? What if you never learned "LIFE MAINTENANCE"?
And why did nobody warn us? Any of us? I know so many people who are just learning something that we should have known all along, and should have been taught or been interested in learning, but we were so hot to get into college and get all that homework done that we never had the time.
I would like to compose a seminar/workbook/class, and I'd like to propose it to colleges, starting with this area and then statewide, and then hopefully farther, to warn people of exactly how much life is waiting to slap you upside the head when you leave college.
Maybe some folks are just going to make such ridiculous amounts of money in their chosen fields that they don't care. But I tend to think the human toll is humongous, when it comes to families, stress, money and living a real life, and what we sacrifice because, well, we don't see any other choice.
I'd like to warn those just starting out.
Would anyone like to propose topics for me to start on, since I've got 20 years to work on this?
Thanks!
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
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1. Finances and financial management.
ReplyDeleteThis one is key, as there are a number of college students who have never had to manage money in their lives, and everything else is going to fall down if they don't get this concept.
2. Food and shopping for food.
I had some idea of how to cook when I got out of college, but it took me a while to figure out the efficient ways to buy food. And it's also good to know where your limitations on food storage are— a freezer does you no good if it renders your food tasteless, for example.
3. Ad hoc furniture. AKA "Never buy furniture on credit."
Self-explanatory, really.
4. No, really, you should be saving even when you think you can't afford to.
5. Job searches and managing your expectations.
6. (related) Getting into fields you never would have thought you could do.
I mean, these days I'm working primarily in post-production photography. Not only is photography sa field I never would have thought I'd be able to work in (film is expensive, so the learning curve was above my head), but the job I do literally did not exist when I graduated. Sure, there was Photoshop, and a limited number of digital cameras, but the two had not been put together for anything like what I do on a daily basis.
That's more than enough to get you started. And now I need to start outlining my Photoshop book (the one that deals with PS in bulk, something that actually isn't addressed in the market yet... that I know of. Hmm. I should check.)
What are you trying to do, give me a heart attack? My anxiety level went up 3 notches reading that! I definitely agree that managing finances is number one, I would say that is the hardest to teach and learn, but if you can do that, much more will work out. The whole idea of living within your means is not very sexy these days... Maybe throw in some fixing your own stuff? I don't know if that would be to Home-Ec-ish? Overall I like it, Driver's Ed for Life Skills!
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