College Aftermath

Life after college is often full of surprises. For those of us lucky enough to have a good childhood and college experience, we were often protected from the hard knocks of life. It really isn’t until you get your first apartment on your own and start accruing a pile of monthly bills that the reality of life on your own starts to set in. Even those of us who have a smooth college-to-career transition can sometimes be thrown off-guard by unexpected circumstances, like author and recent grad Jenna White, who shares her story below. Because we are young and unsuspecting, we sometimes have to learn tough lessons the hard way. Fortunately, Jenna’s story is a great reminder that even when things are going great, we need to stay focused and prioritize wisely.

Thanks for sharing your story, Jenna!

——

My Financial Disaster After Graduation

I graduated college a short six months ago, and I thought I was set. I had a great GPA, graduated with distinction, and I was getting married. I thought my financial situation would be set, especially since I didn’t have to worry about paying student loans, but I didn’t take into account how much starting my life after college would cost.

After I got married, my husband and I moved to a new state, where we had trouble finding an apartment because of our lack of credit and because of the fact that I didn’t have a job yet. As much as I tried, I could not find a job in the area where my husband was employed. The job search was brutal. I sent out hundreds of resumes and only got interviews with two places in that month. I didn’t get one of those jobs and the other one was not for me because it would have required me to drive almost two hours to get to work every day.

I started to get discouraged when my husband suggested that I try Craigslist. I really thought that was a crazy idea, and I wasn’t sure if I trusted many of those postings, but I was desperate. I applied to a few jobs and finally got a response. After that interview, I knew that was the job for me, and I was really excited when they gave me the offer. I absolutely love my job, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else with my life right now.

After I got the job, my husband and I started to pay off some of the debt we had incurred during the first few months of our marriage, and I really thought we were going to be okay. In fact, our paychecks were so much larger than our monthly expenses that we decided we would be able to afford a dog, so we went to our local animal shelter and found our new pet. That’s where everything went south.

The day after we got our puppy, we took her to the vet for a checkup because we wanted to make sure our cute little canine was in good health, but we found out she was not. She had a virus the vet called “Parvo” and they gave her a 50% chance of survival. I was absolutely devastated, but I decided then and there that I would do anything possible to save her. We ended up going $3,000 more into debt by the time they said she was in the clear. I thought it might not be too bad now that we were getting steady paychecks and we could pay off this credit card debt pretty quickly, but then she threw us another illness.

A few weeks after her battle with Parvo, she started to act lethargic again, and we had to take her back in to the vet. This time they told us that she had another virus called Distemper, which could also be fatal. We had to go through another round of vet visits, overnight emergencies, and medications, which ended up costing us about another $4,000. I was completely overwhelmed, and I was so afraid that all of this credit card debt would hurt our credit and our future. That was when I made the decision to start following a strict budget.

Everyone knows that emergencies happen, which is why so many financial advisors say that you should have at least six months of expenses saved up in an emergency fund. I wish I would have known that before I decided to get a dog. However, I know in my heart that I did the right thing by saving this puppy.

She brings me so much joy, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I know now that we will be fine, even with the debt that we have built up, and in time all of that debt will be paid off. I have made a plan and I intend to stick to it until I am completely debt free.

Jenna White is an author who writes guest posts on the topics of business, marketing, credit cards, and personal finance. Additionally, she works for a website that focuses on educating readers about secured credit cards.

Have you ever had to take a personality compatibility test for a prospective employer?
Are compatibility tests really important to the employment process?

While taking personality tests for a new job might be tedious, tests like the Myers Briggs
Type Indicator® (MBTI®) assessment can really help a company to see if you are the
right fit. Not only do companies benefit, but these tests can also help you figure out if
your personality and natural preferences will make it easy and comfortable to flourish in
a particular work environment.

Employers will be impressed if you know and understand your personality type. Not
only for the benefit of employers, but the results of your assessment will give you
some much-needed insight on yourself. If you are made aware of your type, you can
then come to understand how you can adjust to make yourself work in any workplace
environment.

No personality type is an indicator that you won’t succeed. Rather, your personality type
is an indicator of how natural things may come to you and how much you may be within
or outside your comfort range.

There are sixteen possible Myers-Briggs® personality types which help to illuminate your
natural preferences, referred to by four abbreviated letters.

Preferences include:

• Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I)
• Sensing (S) or Intuition (N)
• Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)
• Judging (J) or Perceiving (P)

Recognizing how your personality reacts to the culture of a specific workplace can guide
you in the right direction — the direction where you can be the most successful and
satisfied at your job.

Have you ever taken a personality test for career development? Was it useful?

Mona Abdel-Halim is the co-founder of Resunate.com, the world’s only search engine optimizing resume builder. Resunate has recently partnered with Myers-Briggs® to give users the option to take the assessment online and feed their results into its engine, enabling Resunate to provide personal insight into how well you fit to any job. The verified Myers-Briggs® assessment will be available to Resunate users starting January 2012. You can find Mona and Resunate on Facebook and Twitter.

This article was contributed by Mona Abdel-Halim. CollegeAftermath only accepts guest articles we think are super relevant and appropriate for post-college grads. If you liked this, let us know!