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Fiery Millennials

Financial Independence from a millennial's point of view.

Stressed Out!

By 13 Comments

If you lis­ten to Top 40 radio even a lit­tle bit, you will have prob­a­bly heard a song by 21 Pilots. It seems they’re all over the radio these days.

There’s one song they played so much I can hear it echo­ing through my head even now.

This song is my life right now. I am so stressed out.

I was doing fair­ly ok until the last 24 hours hit.

Before, I was only wor­ried about find­ing a job. Now I am close to freak­ing out.

Back­ground:

Mega­corp has an entry lev­el devel­op­ment pro­gram. It’s com­prised of 2 18 month rota­tions in var­i­ous aspects of the com­pa­ny. I was placed in this pro­gram when I came back to work after grad­u­a­tion. So far, I’ve been placed in jobs that aren’t exact­ly the best fit for me. I’ve been real­ly look­ing for­ward to hav­ing the free­dom to pick my own job for once. How­ev­er, now I don’t even have that free­dom. I need to find a job, and find one fast for a num­ber of reasons.

Increased Rent

As I’ve men­tioned in all of my Month­ly Spend­ing Reports, my rent is $1007 a month with an extra $50 pet fee. On Novem­ber 7th, my lease will offi­cial­ly be up and I will move to a month to month lease. This means my rent will sky­rock­et up to $1749!! That’s a 60% increase!!

Now, because I have my hefty emer­gency fund thanks to being finan­cial­ly savvy, I can afford the increase. I’m not going to be home­less. I’m not even going to be forced to put it on my cred­it card. That $700 is basi­cal­ly all of my dis­cre­tionary spend­ing mon­ey though, and I am NOT a fan of not get­ting to spend it on food what­ev­er I want. Espe­cial­ly right as the hol­i­days approach. I have a niece to spoil!

The quick­er I can fig­ure out what I’m doing job wise, the quick­er I can get my hous­ing sit­u­a­tion sort­ed out.

If I stay here, I will sign a 6 month lease and prompt­ly resume my search for rental properties.

If I move, I will bite the bul­let and pay their ridicu­lous rent until I move to the new place.

I’m very glad this rental sit­u­a­tion will be able to be han­dled with­out going into debt. It’s still stress­ful, but not as stress­ful as los­ing my apart­ment would be.

Increased Competition

In a Mega­corp with 60,000+ employ­ees, there will always be peo­ple watch­ing the job board for a new posi­tion. I expect there to be at least a few appli­ca­tions for each open­ing. No biggie.

no_biggie

There are also my fel­low entry lev­el pro­gram grad­u­ates. I take them more seri­ous­ly, since we’re all rough­ly in the same place with regards to expe­ri­ence. I post out with 7 oth­er peo­ple. Cur­rent­ly, there are only 5 posi­tions open. We qual­i­fy for 3 of them. Com­pe­ti­tion is going to be fierce.

And final­ly, in addi­tion to my fel­low entry lev­el peo­ple, I am now com­pet­ing against ~70 employ­ees from anoth­er office. They received noti­fi­ca­tion yes­ter­day their jobs will no longer exist. They get one chance to get anoth­er posi­tion. If they don’t, they will be laid off with a tiny sev­er­ance pack­age. If they’re lucky to even get one at all.

This means I’m not only com­pet­ing against peo­ple who are sim­i­lar to me, but also to peo­ple who are far more expe­ri­enced than I am. As if that was­n’t bad enough, this is mere­ly the first round. There are rough­ly ~250 more peo­ple to be on the chop­ping block.

I need to find a job quick so I don’t have to com­pete against all those des­per­ate people.

Decreased Benefits

Cur­rent­ly, if you move to anoth­er posi­tion on the same lev­el, you’ll prob­a­bly get a raise. After Novem­ber, this will no longer be the case. Mega­corp is sus­pend­ing this par­tic­u­lar ben­e­fit until mar­ket con­di­tions improve.

This means I need to get a posi­tion before Novem­ber so I get the raise I’ve worked so hard for over the last 3 years.

Of course, I could just avoid the whole issue and go up a lev­el, but there aren’t any of those posi­tions I want to do/would be good at. For the rea­sons men­tioned above, I’m not will­ing to wait for one either.

I very specif­i­cal­ly did­n’t include any rais­es in my pro­jec­tions for this rea­son. The only guar­an­teed pay­check is the one I’m get­ting right now. (and even that is start­ing to look a bit shaky.….)

How­ev­er, giv­en the choice, I’d much rather get a 10% raise.  As count­less peo­ple told me at Fin­Con, they ful­ly antic­i­pate me being retired well before I turn 35. Get­ting a decent raise like this would def­i­nite­ly speed up the process!

What’s Next

I am allowed to apply for jobs this Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 30th. There is one open­ing I will be apply­ing for. I met with the hir­ing man­ag­er on Mon­day and I think the job will be a decent enough fit for me. It’s a lit­tle more tech­ni­cal than I’d like, but I will sur­vive it. This posi­tion also comes with the option of mov­ing to anoth­er loca­tion in a dif­fer­ent state, or pos­si­bly even work­ing from home. I like the sound of that, so I will be apply­ing. I come pret­ty high­ly rec­om­mend­ed (it real­ly does pay to know peo­ple), so I’m opti­mistic I will at least be a final­ist for the position.

As for the blog, I will be tak­ing off for a two week trip to Europe! I will be see­ing the new Har­ry Pot­ter play in West End, spend­ing a few days in Paris and Ams­ter­dam, and explor­ing oth­er parts of the UK. I prob­a­bly won’t be quite as respon­sive, so for­give me if I take longer to respond to mes­sages. I’m look­ing for­ward to test­ing my Google FI phone plan over­seas for the first time.

I’ll be sure to share lots of pic­tures! If you’d like to see me explore Europe, fol­low the adven­ture on my Insta­gram!

Update: I added a new post about my career sit­u­a­tion which you can read here.

Any­one been through lay­offs and staff reduc­tions? How’d you han­dle the stress?

 

Reader Interactions

Comments

    • I have a feel­ing drink­ing prop­er British hard cider in a pub that’s old­er than the US will do won­ders for my stress levels!

      Reply

  3. While I under­stand why you are stressed out, I’m going to do my best to tell you why you should­n’t be stressed.

    The one thing that those 250+ oth­er peo­ple don’t have? They’re not Gwen. They don’t have a six fig­ure net worth built up in their 20’s. They don’t have the what I call, “exces­sive­ly extro­vert­ed super pow­ers”. Most of the peo­ple who have trou­ble find­ing jobs are the intro­verts. Julie recent­ly had a blog post on this, how to nav­i­gate the job inter­view process as a woman (but real­ly, any­one). You can use that nat­ur­al state of “in your face Gwen” per­son­al­i­ty that I’ve read so much about on Fin­con recaps to your advan­tage in the job hunt. Human resources loves an out­go­ing per­son­able per­son. That’s you. From where I sit, you’re golden.

    You don’t have the expe­ri­ence that all of these oth­er peo­ple have, but you’re also in the finan­cial spot where you don’t have to accept the first offer you get. You have some FU mon­ey. You just don’t know it yet. 

    Enjoy your Euro-trip. Try to detox if you can. And if you do end up with­out a job for a lit­tle bit, please don’t end up like I was. Quot­ed from a very recent blog post: “I sup­pose I would have sold part of my port­fo­lio if I real­ly had to, but that was an ear­ly retire­ment fund, not a TJ can’t find a job fund.” The mon­ey can be replaced. You nev­er get the time back.
    TJ recent­ly post­ed…You Real­ly Should Take The Moti­va­tion­al DNA QuizMy Profile

    Reply

    • Thanks lady! I’m just doing my best to keep breath­ing lol. I’m see­ing the DTG famil­ia (or part of it) on the 4th! I’ll be sure to pass on the hug to them.

      Reply

  5. I can see why you’re stressed — Hah, that rent increase alone is mak­ing me stressed for you!

    Not sure what kind of tech posi­tion you’re look­ing for, but my com­pa­ny does a lot of dif­fer­ent things and is frankly awe­some. Rais­es are also more or less guar­an­teed (nev­er out­ra­geous­ly high, mind you, just con­sis­tent). DM me on Twit­ter if you’re at all inter­est­ed for more detail. 🙂
    Felic­i­ty (@FelicityFFF) recent­ly post­ed…Free Events in and Around BostonMy Profile

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  7. Staff reduc­tions, espe­cial­ly at a big com­pa­ny, are hor­ri­ble. I’m root­ing for you to get that posi­tion, though! I’m assum­ing you want to stay at this com­pa­ny instead of look­ing for exter­nal posi­tions? It could­n’t hurt to look; although the time invest­ed in the com­pa­ny for your raise would­n’t pay out, so that sucks. 

    I’ve been at com­pa­nies that were lay­ing peo­ple off left and right and threat­en­ing all of us. Although I haven’t achieved FI, I don’t let peo­ple treat me like a dog, so I left. Staff reduc­tions are nat­ur­al, but the cul­tur­al effects are what real­ly take the cake for me. Every­one’s afraid and man­age­ment resorts to neg­a­tive feed­back; not good!
    Mrs. Picky Pinch­er recent­ly post­ed…30-Day Fru­gal Cleanse Week 1My Profile

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  8. Holy Moly! That’s a huge rent increase. I thought I was being a jerk by rais­ing rent 15%, but now I feel better…
    Keep you option open and look for posi­tion in oth­er com­pa­nies too. Your Mega­corp isn’t the only option. Good luck and have fun on your trip!

    Reply

  9. Hi Gwen! I met you at Fin­Con, I joined you all to In ‘N Out Burg­er on the last night there and then was on the boat hang­ing out. It was great meet­ing you and want­ed to say hel­lo. The week­end went by way too fast and I was over­whelmed with all the social inter­ac­tion, so I feel like I was a bit all over the place and did­n’t get enough time with all the amaz­ing peo­ple there.

    I real­ly enjoyed this blog post and can relate to the stress of work­ing in a mega­corp. I’ve spent a good part of my career deal­ing with that stress. But just hav­ing the ambi­tion and knowl­edge you have at your age is enough to almost guar­an­tee success.

    I have a relat­ed blog post I thought you might enjoy…about my expe­ri­ence dur­ing the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis. I have a feel­ing the core mes­sage will be noth­ing new to you giv­en your FI aspi­ra­tions, but I hope you can find it relatable!
    http://shiftupwards.com/shifting-the-balance-of-power-in-your-career/

    Enjoy your Eurotrip! I’m sure you are hav­ing a blast.

    Reply

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