Forum Post: Creating the Change

Why do so many people refuse to consider the cost of living before making decisions? I weighed my college options based on costs and expected annual salary after graduation. I also earned scholarships to pay for most of them (scholarships covered $205,000 of the $220,000 my undergrad degree cost) and worked throughout college to pay for the rest. I earned over $100,000 by working 15 hours a week while enrolled at a top 10 university. Then I considered graduate school through the same lens before putting $60,000 into a Master's which has paid off. I came out of college better off financially than I was when I entered it and that is without including the added value a GOOD degree has. It didn't even take much work. I spent a total of about 30 hours a week in class, working, and studying combined. The rest is enjoying life and garnering experience you can't get outside of college.

I went to college with many children of the 1%, but was not part of them at all and worked my way into the position I am in now. If you want to work then you have to prove you are going to be an asset to your employer. A college degree won't do this, but a good degree will at least be an introduction and show commitment. Getting a physical therapy degree from a state university may put you in a minimum wage job. Graduating at the top of Harvard Law School will assure you can provide for your family.

If you want a job, or better yet a career, then maybe its in your best interest to go out and meet some of the 1%. Put yourself in situations to ask them how they got there. Demonstrate both aptitude and desire to achieve at a high level.

If your degree is not, without a doubt, going to pay for it many times over then it is probably not a degree with pursuing. If you are concerned with the cost of living then you are free to live somewhere else. There are rural U.S. towns where a couple hundred dollars a month will get you by. Moving outside the U.S. can allow you to live on even less. I have known dozens of friends who have moved to different countries in order to pursue different careers or just to live a different lifestyle than they did in the U.S. Most of them are non-college educated twenty somethings earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year while being self-employed and making their own schedules. A little passion and a lot of dedication can work wonders.

Get out there and create the change. You are capable of providing for yourself.