Originally Posted by
FTFF
...But after over 20 years in this pos thing called a profession I will not apologize for having children, a responsible mortgage, or various other financial obligations during my midlife years and UPS's assanine year 1 pay (for which we cut everything and reduced our output by a third but we're still over $45K for the year). No way in hell was I going to sell my house for a loss to move into some low income housing shiphole with crappy school districts, sell my cars to use public transit, feed my family crap food, skip a year of kid's sports, music lessons, 401K payments, etc., hold off on healthcare treatments, house/car maintenance, drink crap wine or use single ply TP just to prove I could survive at an arbitrary income level.
Sell a house? Sell your cars?? C'mon, aren't you being a little bit melodramatic?
No offense but everyone coming here knows what the first year pay is. Wish it was higher - but it isn't.
Some people advocate "leveling" the first 2 years' pay, in other words make more during year 1 and less during year 2.
Well, I did just that on my own and know several people in my class who did the same. Every month I'd receive a '0% for 12 months' balance transfer offer from several of my credit cards (and I still do receive similar offers, bet you do too).
About 3 months after getting hired I took a $20K transfer offer which was deposited into my checking account within a week or so. I paid minimum payments until my second year pay kicked in and then paid off the balance before the 12-months deadline. Didn't have to sell a house or a car. ..and I drank red wine from a real bottle.
The bottom line is that we all agree on first year pay being too low. However, it's not as impossible to live on it as some make it out to be and no one should ever turn down brown simply because of the 1st year pay. It simply makes no sense.