A friend of mine in university worshipped at the altar of Oprah-Finance-Guru Suze Orman. He loved her straight-talking, no-nonsense advice (I’ll admit, sometimes you gotta hear that you simply cannot afford something before it truly clicks!), and insisted that I MUST watch Orman’s video for debt-laden students, “Young, Fabulous & Broke” (oh, hi!)
One of my biggest gripes about Suze Orman’s advice is that a lot of the really useful tips don’t apply to us here in Canada (Roth IRA’s? 401ks?), but then again, I suppose Young, Fabulous & Broke Canadians were never really her target audience. Despite this though, she DOES offer a lot of interesting and thoughtprovoking advice for young people regardless of where you live. The part that stuck out for me? Suze’s suggestion that, even though you may be Young, Fabulous & Broke, you SHOULDN’T necessarily accept a job offer simply because it’s high-paying.
After working hard at school for four or five (or more) years, it’s understandable that once you finally graduate, you’ll want to make some money. After all, one of the reasons we pursue higher education is the hope that we will find better, higher-paying job opportunities that will let us build careers instead of being stuck in dead-end jobs. But, as Suze points out, it’s important to think long-term when it comes to your career decisions.
While 20-something new grads might be lacking in a lot of areas (many of us still haven’t graduated beyond glorified photocopying/coffee-making responsibilities, and we happen to also have very little money in the bank on which to live), what we DO have is time. Time to think about the direction we want our careers to go in, time to work hard to make that happen, and time to be underpaid without having to worry about supporting families and carrying mortgages. While it might be hard (and while it most definitely won’t be much fun), choosing to look at your entry-level or junior position as an investment into your future career instead of just the outcome of your university education is the smartest way to ensure that you won’t still be broke and photocopying when it really matters.
I learned two important things after graduating university. One, job hunting sucks (let's be honest). And, two, it's even worse when you've just spent the last four years at school with little more to show for yourself than a fancy piece of paper and a large debt load.
