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poorgradstudent.
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February 12, 2007 at 1:53 PM #45185February 12, 2007 at 2:03 PM #45187
Anonymous
GuestTo each his own. My friend recently followed the money and moved to Houston from San Diego for a great job, probably the >200K variety that you speak of. It is true there are not many high paying job opportunities in San Diego relative to many other cities. My friend’s goal is to eventually move back to SD with a huge wad of cash in his pocket. I think it is a good strategy because if he moves back in five years or so real estate will be pretty cheap.
Personally I could not make that same decision. For one,I moved here for a reason, to enjoy the good weather and outdoor lifestyle. And secondly there are good jobs here in San Diego for my career field. I also have no kids so it is easy to live comfortably here right now.
The reason to move away would be to create a better quality of life for your family. However, I disagree somewhat with boston and oc renter because I don’t believe the high paced executive lifestyle that he is talking about is necessarily a quality lifestyle. In order to succeed in those jobs, you generally have to be a workaholic (like my friend in Houston), this implies that you don’t have a good balance between work and personal life. For me that is somewhat of a selfish goal.
February 12, 2007 at 2:06 PM #45189PerryChase
Participantibjames, i like your outlook on life.
People who have a “show me the money” mentality generally end up with no family or friendship either. They get treated the same way they treat others — show me the money.
February 12, 2007 at 2:24 PM #45190BostonAndOC_RE_perspective
ParticipantActually I work pretty much 9-5. I am no workaholic, as any of my close friends will attest. The key is building and maintaining visibility with the right execs, working smart, and understanding how to prioritize key deliverables.
I have a family, and my career choices allow my wife to stay home raising the children. I hope to follow the example of the poster who had a friend who did the same move but to Houston, planning for a return to SD with a big salary and lots of $$$ in the bank. CAVEAT: Houston sucks!!!! I would have a very difficult time swallowing the move to Houston, however $200K there would let you sock away at least $2K/month in taxable savings after maxing all 401K/stock purchase plan etc. Houses there are dirt cheap.
It sounds like most on this board aren’t exposed to the executive job market. Directing a large organization and participating in high dollar transactions is great fun; I don’t even consider it work, and as such I find I have very little job-related stress (or any stress for that matter). It is a privilege to associate with all of the brilliant people that I interface with every day.
To the poster that asked about L.A.: I grew up in L.A. There are some good jobs, but the ratio of F500 companies between LA/OC/SD and SF/SJC are like 1:3. The only place in CA to make real money is the Bay area. Take a look at the recent Bureau of Labor Statistics on average weekly earnings to see where the $$ are: NYC, SF/SJC, Boston. L.A. was higher than OC and SD, but not by much and lagged the aforementioned metro areas considerably.
The RE market is really starting to bear out the income picture. A post on Lansner’s blog in the OC Register today stated that 3 homes in Dove Canyon (nice South OC area with a private country club) , all over 3K sq ft, just went into escrow for the high 800’s. These are very nice homes in a very upscale area that just two years ago were going for $1.5M and up. But in today’s stringent underwriting environemnt, guess what? Very few in OC make the kind of money that would allow them to buy those homes on a conventional mortgage. Those prices were a real stunner, and a wake up call to every over-priced area of SoCal. Where will the buyers come from?????
February 12, 2007 at 2:48 PM #45194CardiffBaseball
ParticipantBostonAndOC did you get an MBA from a top school? I am just curious, I am a development manager, in software, but I don’t see those kinds of positions so I must not mix in those circles. Granted I have chosen not to go for the gold, as I put a premium on being able to coach Little League, and chapperone the occasional field trip (that outside of work lifestyle). I’ll be 45-46 when both kids are college age, so I suppose in another year or two it might be time to get more ambition, but right now the job is fine, and pushing doesn’t seem to be in the cards for me.
Depending on the age of your children moving around a lot is hard on them, I have my oldest starting Jr. High next year.
February 12, 2007 at 3:11 PM #45196kicksavedave
ParticipantNo it’s not…. patience, patience. If you leave you’ll regret it.
kicksavedave, you’re one of rare ones in San Diego who won’t spend all his money on real estate.
————————————————-The problem with patience is that some people simply have more of it than others, and some people simply have more time to wait. My wife and I will be 40 this year, and we are both way behind on saving for retirement. Even if we did the unthinkable and bought a nice place and stayed in in for all 30 years and paid it off, we’d be 70 by then. We need to start socking away extra money quickly, and we have very little margin for error on the house purchase. Like you mentioned, we’re NOT going to do a toxic loan, or buy over our limits. But we also do have to take into consideration more than just “where we want to live”… we have to look at what makes the most sense overall. And spending $400K on a property that would run $150K in other, completely livable cities, well it’s hard to talk yourself into that making any sense. And thats IF, and only IF, those $600K houses, actually do come down to $400K. If they don’t, then we’ll just be 45 years old and have no equity…
What I wouldn’t give to be 25 and stupid again 😀
February 12, 2007 at 3:55 PM #45199blahblahblah
ParticipantIt sounds like most on this board aren’t exposed to the executive job market.
Perhaps that’s because for every executive there are at least 100 people with regular jobs. Most people in basically any setting outside of a country club or corporate boardroom aren’t exposed to the executive job market.
February 12, 2007 at 8:08 PM #45222GuestHey, Boston and OC, there are plenty of $200K+ jobs in SoCal; that’s officer pay at a VC-backed startup, of which there are tons here (remember, we get more VC money here in SoCal, now, than you Northeastern folks get).
Get a work ethic, some intelligence, and humility, and you, too, could join the club.
MBAs are nice — you don’t need to have gone to the best business school in the nation, as I did — http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/06/full_time.htm — but work ethic, intelligence, and humility are absolutely requisite.
Best book I read when I was a young know-it-all like you was “The New Rules” by John Kotter. He tracked the Harvard Business School class of ’74 over 20 years. He found that folks who went to work for small companies had better titles, made more money, and were happier than folks who remained at big companies. That put the seed in my mind to leave the Fortune 500, which I did four years later.
The Fortune 500 was a great training ground for me, but I’m happy to have the flexibility, leadership position, and meaningful equity stake that comes from working for a small company. I will recommend the same path — train at Big Blue so that you learn how to do things right, then go run/help run a company — to my children.
February 12, 2007 at 9:10 PM #45223GuestNobody is getting wealthy on corporate salary. Most wealth is family money. In California a lot of wealth was created with stock options during the Internet bubble. More recently, and to a lesser degree from real estate.
Let’s no fool ourselves that hard work or an MBA are necessary factors to become wealthy. Also, 200K salary is not nearly enough to live the good live in San Diego.
February 12, 2007 at 9:32 PM #45224Nancy_s soothsayer
ParticipantBased on my experience, after leaving San Diego and now after almost a year of living in a suburb of Austin, I can now 100% claim that San Diego is waaaaaaaaayyyyy OVERRATED. In addition, more than fifty percent of people living in San Diego are waaaaaayyyyyy DELUSIONAL. If we ever get bored living in the Austin area, we can always choose to go anywhere or even go back to San Diego, but at this point in time, San Diego is becoming a distant memory. We visited Corpus Christi (less than 4 hours away drive) and that place felt like Coronado islands in San Diego except that Corpus Christi has tons and tons of fishing, crabbing, shrimping, and oystering. I made up my mind recently that for retirement purposes, Corpus Christi is the one for me.
February 12, 2007 at 10:54 PM #45230Participanthumm…. and you’re still reasing about San Diego Real Estate?!
Kidding aside, I agree that San Diego is way over-rated (relatively). But the city area is still nice in my view.
You can make a good life just about anywhere. Human nature is such that people tend to love and be proud of where they live.My NYC friends think San Diego is a lovely city to visit but nothing more than a military outpost. But then they complain about the grunge of Manhattan and how expensive it is to live there.
February 12, 2007 at 11:02 PM #45232cowboy
ParticipantThis past year in San Diego the weather was bad. There was about 3 months of 90 degree humid days near the ocean. We had the few weeks of ice cold (like 20 degrees). Not very San Diegoish weather. All those people that I saw in homes with no AC who claimed they would never need to use AC? Watch out if this past year’s weather is the norm. I read an article somewhere on that subject. I’m not saying that the weather in SD last year was horrible but bad for San Diego standards.
February 12, 2007 at 11:10 PM #45234ParticipantIf you really look at San Diego overall, it’s not worth the price. It’s a debt trap. The house owns you. Its a speculative investment jungle. Nobody in their right mind would buy a postage stamp tract home for $1Million UNLESS they believe they will make a FORTUNE on it. Psychology drives California Real Estate Period in my opinion. 1+1=1,000 here in Cali. Like the CEO of Qualcomm said, “The only part that is really nice in San Diego is the first 5 miles from the ocean”.
February 13, 2007 at 5:34 AM #45237ParticipantCardiff,
No MBA here. Just a BS from a top 10 engineering school. I’m in sales. Unike the vast majority of my truly brilliant classmates back in school, I sought out industry mentors to answer questions on how I could maximize my “non-engineering” personality in the high tech world. One guy I met (ironically surfing Old Man’s) to whom I will be forever indebted was in sales at Sun, and recommended the same path to me. I took the advice and never looked back. I went with a different firm, but the ride has been awesome.The combination of an engineering degree and the F500 sales experience is now leading to even greater opportunities. Because of where this wave is headed (or at least where it appears to be headed) I’ve decided to dig my rail, get in the crouch and ride it with as much vigor as I can.
My kids are young, so we can do this for a while. I need to get to my final destination before they get to junior high. I will never sacrifice their happiness for mine. Money doesn’t mean that much.
The real goal to which I keep alluding, but few here seem to want to discuss, is engineering maximum savings, personal balance sheet health and hopefully an EARLY RETIREMENT. I personally feel that I’ll need at least $4M to retire, assuming 5% rate of return, to enjoy the lifestyle I envision in retirement. What figure do others think will be sufficent for their needs, and what is the status of your plan to get there? My plan is to try and make lots of money while avoiding debt like the plague. This means I will never go beyond 3:1 to buy a home. Never.
February 13, 2007 at 8:27 AM #45246bigtrouble
ParticipantI can’t believe you got an engineering degree and went into sales. You could be building things, instead, you are selling things that other people build, and kissing ass to get ahead. Sorry. I just hate it when people point to “networking” and “mentoring” as keys to success instead of innovation and just plain excellence. If the economy contracts, so will your salary and future plans, right? If your mentors are looking for jobs too, don’t expect a hand up.
Still you will probably do fine. But I am close to someone who is an executive at a Fortune 3 company. jg is right, you need to leave to get to the next level. If you work your way up, no matter how talented you are, your salary is always based on your last salary. The managerial and executive ranks are filled with people just trying to stay at that level, not progress, and they will steal credit and not promote anybody under them just to maintain an ever decreasing status quo. FWIW.
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