If I Had 40 Thousand Dollars

I feel a bit mer­ce­nary doing this, because mon­ey isn’t the only rea­son I’m seek­ing a non-dead-end job. But while I’m craft­ing my online State­ment of Ambi­tion as it per­tains to my career, I might as well dish out some basic met­rics for what cer­tain salaries would mean to my lifestyle; at least in Cleve­land. I’ve tried to frame it so that it should be easy to see how much mon­ey I’d actu­al­ly end up giv­ing back to the com­mu­ni­ty. $30k won’t get me far in NYC.

If I had a job in Cleve­land that paid me $30k a year I could:

• Drink more than one beer at local bars like Edis­on’s and The Lit­er­ary Café.
• Buy beer for my friends at afore­men­tioned bars.
• Go out to eat at local places like Steven­son’s Ham­burg­ers and the Lin­coln Park Pub on Taco Tues­days.
• Have an inter­net con­nec­tion at home.

If I had a job in Cleve­land that paid me $35k a year I could:

• Drink more beer at local bars, and do a Bar Crawl of the fan­cy places like The Vel­vet Tan­go Room and 806 for Tremon­ter.
• Buy more beer for my friends at afore­men­tioned bars.
• Take girls on dates.
• Pay off my stu­dent loans twice as fast and save a bit.
• Go out to eat at local places and con­tin­ue my search for the best burg­er in Cleve­land. I could also prob­a­bly eat at a fan­cy restau­rant like Fahren­heit once or twice with­out hav­ing to save up for it first.
• Join Cleve­land Colec­ti­vo.
• Take a pro­gram­ming class at Tri‑C or anoth­er local col­lege.
• Move into a larg­er apart­ment that would allow me to have a dog.
• Take a small vaca­tion to go camp­ing and fish­ing.
• Buy a small piece of art from a local artist.
• Have an inter­net con­nec­tion at home.
• Start fenc­ing again.

If I had a job in Cleve­land that paid me $40k a year I could:

• Drink more beer at local bars.
• Buy more beer for my friends at afore­men­tioned bars.
• Pay off my stu­dent loans thrice as fast and also save or invest a bit.
• Go out to eat at local places and con­tin­ue my search for the best burg­er in Cleve­land. I could also prob­a­bly eat at a fan­cy restau­rant and even take a girl on a date there.
• Join Cleve­land Colec­ti­vo.
• Take a pro­gram­ming class at Tri‑C or anoth­er local col­lege.
• Buy a fix­er-upper house and get a dog.
• Afford to enter Notre Dame Foot­ball Tick­et lot­tery.
• Cre­ate a small schol­ar­ship for walk-on fencers at ND.
• Take a fun vaca­tion some­place.
• Buy a small/medium piece of art from a local artist.
• Have an inter­net con­nec­tion at home.
• Start fenc­ing again.

15 thoughts on “If I Had 40 Thousand Dollars”

  2. Just asking.…are these net or gross #‘s?

    Because I do fall in that range, but let me tell you, after Uncle Sam and the stu­dent loan com­pa­nies take their share, it’s still below the 30K take-home mark.

  8. I would­n’t say too loud­ly that you are an ND grad and don’t make that much. Their alum­ni dept will be all over you for neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty. Ha ha.

  10. tad­vent, you sound like you are a bit jeal­ous of Adam’s ND con­nec­tion. You aren’t a BC grad or per­haps you got wait­list­ed in try­ing to get into ND? 😉

  11. Jmay -
    I nev­er applied, how­ev­er I’ve been there sev­er­al times dur­ing and since col­lege. I have a few friends that went there.

    I always got the impres­sion that ND students/grads were pom­pus. My friends includ­ed. The whole we are bet­ter than the world thing. The whole, our foot­ball team is not what it could be because we have tougher edu­ca­tion stan­dards for atheletes. The whole we have spe­cial bricks that only we can use to build our build­ings.

    Kind of always want­ed to make me puke.

  12. I can see how the rabid fanati­cism of ND fans could come across as snob­bery, and per­haps the insu­la­tion of Catholic cul­ture and the wealth of many of the stu­dents’ fam­i­lies makes them a lit­tle less engaged with the real world. I know that I was pret­ty tired of deal­ing with peo­ple who’d nev­er been to a pub­lic school or nev­er had to work dur­ing high school and col­lege.

    For the most part they all mean well though.

  13. tad­vent-
    Sor­ry you ran into the 5% of ND folks that give the oth­er 95% a bad name. I hon­est­ly think you’ve just had some bad luck in that regard, there are always some rot­ten apples in every bar­rel.

  14. It’s cool, I’ve had some great times up there. I just have to bust your guys chops. I bare­ly remem­ber a few nights at the Line­backer and Senior Bar.…

    I did find it strange to go up there on a road trip, it was a fri­day night, and the place that had the most peo­ple was the Library.…

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