hippo and dog

interesting post.

i have a bs in mech Eng, but pursuing a master's in mech eng now. will be done hopefully by the end of this year or beggining of next. i'm 22 and stupid.

i am knee deep in school loans (deferred payment until next year). and know jack about money and investing.

i do have a problem with buying things just because i want them.

relating to the op, sometimes i get an extra 200 or 300 a month from allowance. what should i do with that? right now i just have less than 500 sitting in a savings account with as far as i know, no notable interest. chase free checking lol.

GPWhiteS2kFTW

First off, I would like to thank everyone who has posted on this topic; I find your discussions highly interesting.

I think I might have not told the whole story for you here.

I don't want to be mega rich. Too much money will kill ya, IMO. I just want to live comfortably. I feel that if a future wife and I made $~150-175k / year combined in this area of the country, that would more than enough to satisfy me.

I just want enough to eat out once or twice a week, maybe get some St. Louis Cardinals season tickets, drive my s2k and maybe a land rover, and live in a nice 1 story house.

I am a pretty simple guy, haha. I enjoy sitting outside after work in the back yard for an hour or two as much as going out on the town.

That being said, I really picked my BS in ME because to me, it was the hardest major I saw out there, and I love to challenge myself. I really don't like the major itself that much; I find designing parts and machines very boring. I DO like the business side of engineering; planning, proposals, cost analysis, construction management. That is why I feel an MBA would be good for me. I feel that if I got my masters in ME, I might as well get my PhD in ME, and I might as well teach.

I really like the construction side of the world. Architecture, civil engineering, HVAC plumbing design. Stuff that companies like http://www.populous.com/ have done. They have created some amazing stadiums all over the world. Too bad it looks like they only hire architects; I think they subcontract the engineering work.

I would love to, after I graduate with my B.S.M.E., to do a co-op with the company I am interning at, where I work there in the spring and summer, and i go to school for my MBA in the fall. I would love for them to pay for it as well.

Oh, and my mum just traded in her Infiniti FX35 for a 2010 Land Rover LR2, so maybe I can buy that from them after college!



So it seems like a home mortgage is ok.

I plan on matching my companies 401k.

I plan on investing risky early.

Keep the comments coming!

hippo and dog

just curious, why didn't you go into engineering economics? what have you taken as an ME so far?

also you might be interested in industrial engineering which is a more technical business/mechanical field than engineering economics.

GPWhiteS2kFTW

Well, I went to Purdue my freshman year. Too big a school; no one on one interaction with the professors; none of my professors spoke clear english; all the things you run into at a state engineering school.

Left there with a 3.52 GPA and transferred back home to the University of Evansville. Really enjoy this school; am an active greek member and vice president of my fraternity. I am of junior status and have a 3.77 GPA cumulative; 3.95 engineering GPA (damn gen eds bringing me down! ).

The only engineering majors down here are EE, CE, ME and CompE.

I have taken everything on track as a sophomore;

hippo and dog

impressive!

espelirS2K

6 classes? More power to you!

GPWhiteS2kFTW

I figure if I am paying for 18 credit hours in tuition, I might as well take 17-18 credit hours!

I need to literally fit 18 credit hours of "pre-MBA" courses on top of my schedule of 132 credit hours to graduate with my B.S., so I don't have to take another year of school before working on my MBA. I think I will graduate with 144 credits in 4 years total

So I am kinda ME major with a business minor, haha.

espelirS2K

Yeah, I love how in order to graduate in 4 years, you either load up on classes majorly and fit two semesters in, or take 1 course less per semester, and take a full summer semester--so you never have a break really

But I didn't wanna do that--and took a year off school, so I'm on a 6-year plan

I do envy you for being able to graduate debt free. I will be counting on financial aid and student loans to put me through school since my parents were too stupid to save $50/month for me for 18 years..

sahtt

Work your a$$ off to get as good as job as possible after college. Start right now. Do whatever it takes to get your foot in the door and on the way to becoming a professional engineer or whatever it is that you want to do. Most of my friends and colleagues graduated from top 25 or better schools in the nation and if they didn't solidify a position immediately after college or got laid off they are having an extremely difficult time finding any white collar work. This includes civil and mech engineers. The electrical engineers are usually able to find consulting work if they have good grades.

Given what I know from working in the energy and finance field, I'd look into mixing engineering and highly sophisticated communication and leadership skills, i.e., project management on building wind mills for BP etc. Engineers that haven't developed interpersonal skills or graduated from top 10 schools will slowly be replaced by the hundreds of thousands of highly qualified engineers from China and India.

cthree

The first thing you need to know is that everyone and their brother is going to be out promising you free and easy money, not money really, debt actually but they will tell you it spends just the same.

You'll get credit card offers, no interest purchasing, cash back, rewards, financing specials, rent to own, lease specials, the list goes on... They all sound very quick easy and trouble free and they will entice you with all manner of shiny bobbles like cars, big screen TVs, game consoles, computers and in exchange you need no money down, don't pay till next year, just take the little chunk of debt and it's all yours, you can have it all.

It's a low payment, you make more than that, you've got a good job, you'll hardly notice. What the don't put in the flyer or brochure is the fine print in the contract. Can you imagine? Can you image someone selling you a pill to cure something that isn't really wrong with you that had a list of dangerous side effects written in fine print? Would you swallow?

If you're like most Americans you would gobble it down like candy and take another just to be sure.

Debt = obligation and obligation = commitment and commitment = limitations and limitations = enslavement and enslavement = misery

So the real cost of the new car or that new big screen TV is misery. Why? Because you couldn't afford to buy it in the first place so you traded your freedom, your freedom of choice and your freedom of opportunity to the bankers for a TV and now you're their bitch until the debt plus their profits are repaid in full.

Credit is like a rucksack on your back. When you take on debt it's like putting a big rock in the sack, a rock you need to carry around like a prison sentence for 2 years, 3, 4, 5 years. It is always there, always a burden you need to service to make those payments month after month, year after year. If you get tired and need a break and put them down even for a second they penalize you by adding more rocks. You get the metaphor.

That is the lesson, that is the take-away. The more you desire the trinkets you can't pay for the more of a slave to your debt you become. Debt can be useful but only in the fewest of circumstances. A first mortgage for example is a good debt to assume because you need to live somewhere anyway so the load of the mortgage payment is no more than paying rent, something you can't really avoid.

It's not easy to live debt free because the entire world is fighting against you. Best Buy wants to move TV sets and there aren't that many people who can afford them so the team up with bankers who want your soul and who do have the money to cook a deal just for you. They work very hard at making those "essentials" irresistible, from all different angle, working you over like rag doll until you give in and buy the damn thing. Buy buy buy, spend spend spend. The advertising, the manipulation, is always there endless and insatiable.

Keep your materialistic greed in check and you can live a free (not just debt free) life full of choice and opportunity. Cave to the money changers in the market and accept their gifts and you'll find yourself chained to a desk for 8 hours a day in a windowless office listening to the buzz of the endlessly flickering fluorescent tubes above your head.

But hey, you can drive home in your shiny new car and spend your evenings watching your big screen and that has to be good right?

Before buying something you can't afford, do yourself a favor and hit yourself in the balls as hard as you can with a baseball bat. It will give you a sense of appreciation for the true price you're paying for it. By afford I don't mean make the payments on, I mean pay cash for.

Best of luck.