Mo Money, No Problems?

Hello to who cares,

Maybe out of boredom, maybe out of interest; I have created this blog for anyone who cares for an insight into the world of Engineering at a large multi-national Engineering conglomerate. To keep my nuts out of a vice, I won't be mentioning my company name but suffice to say it is a big player in the 'world'.

The title of this Blog - somewhat of a double entendre: the change can mean either the relatively low income I receive, or the change we would all like to see in our world. It will all depend on the day and my mood.

If I could go back to high school, at about the time of selecting post-secondary education, would I do it the same? Definitely not, but everyone would do something different with the knowledge they have now right? The job I have DOES pay the bills, but it doesn't keep a smile on my face: something more important than one could think. Engineering kind of falls in the middle of "shitty job but wicked fun" and "shitty job but AWESOME pay" which may seem like a good thing, but let me explain:

When I went into this career (schooling) I was the semi-geek who watched all the construction related programs on TLC and Discovery Channel, and loved them (no i do not watch any of them anymore). In addition to that, I was told that this is a highly lucrative profession. The problem with the term "highly lucrative" is that it is all relative... A high school career counsellor who earns about 35-40k per year would assume ANYTHING over 45k is lucrative, which I admit, sounds not half bad...until you get into real life.

EXAMPLE:

Let's say you earn 50k per year before taxes, which will equate to approximately $2,800 per month after taxes. Now, you have car payments (because that $50k look OH so good when you signed on) of about $300, then insurance for say $200, then gas for about another $200. Are you as good at math as I am? because that leaves $2,100 for others, which sounds good, but I am far from done. You also have cell phone bills, food bills, rent, entertainment, plus all the other things that life has to offer. Assuming you spend NO money on entertainment you may be lucky to have $500 bucks at the end of the month saved, and that is nothing when you suddenly hit huge payments you never plan for such as a car problem, a large birthday, a vacation once a year - you'd be lucky to have saved $1000 dollars at year's end!

Now enough of my whining, point of the story - you want vacation time and fun go teach the 3rd grade, you want to make some scratch get an MBA. Some may say MBA's are a dime a dozen, anyone who says that doesn't have one and makes $12/hr. MBA's in them selves ARE a dime a dozen, but every MBA comes with an undergrad degree, which (some disagree) separates the runners from the riff raff. Any idiot can get a history degree and a MBA from a non-target, but someone with an Engineering degree and MBA, or the coveted JD-MBA (available at U of T ONLY in Canada) is a rarity and a better investment than Microsoft shares in the late 80's.

This blog has turned into the financial part of the "change" (as in pocket change), hopefully tomorrow is a little more optimistic and engineering related, after all this is the first post