Your 20s: Finding a Job, Setting a Budget
"There's always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in," wrote Graham Greene. For 24-year-old Molly Laurain, a junior project manager at a New York City real estate development firm, there were likely at least 10 such moments: By the time she was 18, her family had lived in nine apartments and one house in her native Chicago, where her mother, a realtor, "would find something, buy it, gut it, and sell it," recalls Laurain. "I really know what it's like to buy something really cheap, take the ugly stuff out, and sell it for a profit." She got her own Illinois real estate license during her junior year at Fordham University in New York, and was planning to move back to Chicago to work for her mother after her graduation in 2007. But the faltering real estate market dashed those plans.
"A couple of weeks before I graduated, my mother said, 'I don't know what you're going to do. I'm not really busy,'" says Laurain ruefully. So it was time for Plan B, as in "Back to New York."
Laurain's childhood might have been a little different from most, but her story as a recent college graduate was similar to that of millions of other 20-somethings who entered the job market as the country headed toward recession in 2007. She was competing with more and more people for fewer and fewer jobs. The part-time gig she'd had at a health club kept her afloat for a while when she was in school, although, she notes, "just to pay my bills, sometimes I'd work 18 hours, three shifts a day." Even getting interviews was challenging, in spite of her degree and multiple internships, which included volunteer work with HIV-positive kids in Romania, and a stint with a Chicago commodities trader.
Finally, in October, she got her lucky break: Through a friend who knew the owner, she learned of a real estate development company looking for an office manager. She landed the job on a Friday, started that Monday, and by the second month, was managing projects.
"It just came natural to me," she says. "As office manager, I had to write up some contracts and price them out; we bid on them, and we were awarded more than the project manager could handle." Since then, the job market has become even more competitive, so she is considering a graduate degree in real estate development, hoping that will boost her career prospects and earning power. Last year, she also got a New York real estate license, and has a relationship as a referral director with the Corcoran Group.
She's furthering her education in a less conventional way, too: taking improv classes for the past year and a half, sometimes two a week.
"Listening well is the most important thing I've taken away from it," she offers. "It's a good tool for public speaking, even if it's just three or four people you're talking to. A lot of times when I go to job sites, I don't know exactly what's going on. Now, I feel much more comfortable talking in front of groups about something I hadn't practiced." Laurain is also taking an acting class that's preparing her for a one-woman show. "I have to write material and perform it — it's like exercising a new muscle."
Going back to grad school will require plenty of improvising as well. To save money, she recently moved into a less expensive apartment with two roommates, forgoes taxis for the subway, and tries to keep a cushion of savings "in case I get laid off, or have to take a pay cut or work part time." She contributes sporadically to a Roth IRA set up a few years ago, but would like advice on how much of her paycheck she should be saving, given all of the unknowns in her life. If she elects to go back to school, the questions of when, and how to finance it, remain to be solved. In short, she faces many of the same challenges that her 20-something peers are facing as they try to make their way in a brutal economy.
MoneyWatch asked Gary Schatsky, a certified financial planner and the president of Objective Advice, for help in framing the financial questions that Laurain — and others in her position — will want to ask, and in coming up with the right answers.
Click on the links below for his advice.
- Budgeting Wisely, Investing Carefully
- How to Pay for Graduate School
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