A few Thanksgivings ago, while I was still living in Manhattan, I went to a friend’s apartment for a pre-Thanksgiving feast. I wedged myself between a couple of my fellow working stiffs in the cramped New York City apartment and enjoyed a plate of turkey, cranberries, and stuffing. As is standard practice at these gatherings, people were catching up with one another on what they’ve been doing. Various discussions were happening around me, I just sat and listened while I ate.
What struck me was that the conversations were eerily similar to one another. It seemed everyone was going to work, waiting for someone to give them a raise or a promotion, or planning to use some allotted personal time for a short vacation to another country. One particular conversation was a bit different and caught my attention. Let’s refer to this person as “Jim.”
I overheard Jim lamenting that, much like the other people at the gathering, he had a nominal wage, high student debt, and astronomical expenses from living in the city (which he felt he needed to do because urban areas have the most job opportunities). Unlike his peers, however, he wasn’t content to continue down the same path – he could tell something wasn’t quite right about his situation and wanted to improve it. Unfortunately, that’s where reason and logic ended for Jim, and familiar (and incorrect) wisdom were leading him down a dangerous path.
Jim declared that since he felt he could not further increase his wages with his Psychology degree (Wrong!), that he would go back to college for another undergraduate degree (Economics). He expressed it would only take two years about $35K to complete the coursework. I grimaced – I didn’t fully understand just how silly that was at the time, but I knew it was pretty foolish.
Why did Jim want to double down on a losing strategy? Simply put, because he didn’t know what else to do, but he felt he had to do something. Poor Jim. Let’s think outside the box, and discuss how Jim could have improved his situation without taking on more debt or losing more time to a classroom setting.
1/ Online courses (udemy, etc.
2/ Reading
3/ Online tools (see blog & e-commerce)
4/