Tech vs. Nonprofit Work: A Conversation Between Two Chicago Roommates

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scription to join us on patreon I have an exciting one um my name is Rin I'm 27 years old I'm a Solutions architect and I make 115k a year uh I'm Katie I'm 26. I work as a development coordinator at a non-profit and I make 50k and we live in Chicago Illinois uh how do we know each other slash how did we meet uh so the really short version is we met in college uh we know each other because we currently live together and have for seven years now which is crazy um I don't think we liked each other

the first time we met you didn't like me well you didn't like me like the third time but long story short uh we mended our first year college differences and have lived together forever and you are my best friend yeah we ended up um living in the same building like we moved out of our dorms and I lived below her and we kind of were like hmm without each other and then we ended up in the same class together and then it was like oh my God I don't want to hang out with anyone else and then basicall

y like after a couple years of living in the same building we moved in together we lived there for a couple years and then we moved into a current apartment which we've now we're going into our fifth year living in seven years living together yeah and we have a really cute cat together so shout out to our cat uh so question number two what is your rent and like is it average low or high for our area we pay sixteen hundred dollars and five years ago when we moved in well we paid 1500 then and it

was pretty reasonable it felt like pretty normal in that area but now it feels really cheap um especially for the amount of space that we have and like we have a very good location for where we live in Chicago yeah I agree our apartment is uh surprisingly spacious for the rent and it's really well located yeah extremely and like especially now because a bunch of stuff moved in Luther we're going into our face yeah how do we share expenses I would say we showed them pretty evenly uh we have this

incredible app called split wise that we put a lot of you know sort of day-to-day expenses in like meals out or toilet paper paper towel but when it comes to rent and utilities we just split them evenly yeah actually you used to like when we made closer to the same amount of money you used to pay more because you had the bigger room that's true but now that our rent is going up we're just splitting it evenly well you also have the office yeah because I have the office now um but yeah we just I m

ean we do everything together we eat all our meals together we go on vacation together um yeah we just kind of have like a running tally but we're not like picky like you know yeah we're sometimes like I'll owe you 200 or you'll owe me a few hundred dollars and we just kind of like know it evens out yeah we're not like nickling and Dime in each other we're not precious about it yeah all right Ren so tell me do you have any debt no I do not do you have any debt I also don't have any debt thankful

ly we were I was fortunate enough to not have any debt coming out of college and since then I'm like pretty rigorous about paying off my credit card yeah I'm really lucky my parents paid for my college um and yeah it's a big leg up going into you know the workforce adult life without crippling loans yeah for sure what was your financial upbringing like how has money talked about growing up oh that's a good one um I would say my parents uh didn't I wouldn't say they talked about money in a way th

at was really like this is what you do they talked about money sort of virtuously or morally so like it's good to save it's bad to spend but there was never like an education like this is how you invest this is how you file taxes so it was like know the value of the dollar but what exactly is that I think um I'm definitely becoming more financially literate the older I get everyone is but um so it's in my financial upbringing was sort of like vague talks about money but less like concrete facts

so a lot of learning on the fly as an adult uh how about you what was your financial upbringing yeah I I think it was like a pretty generic just like you should save money I don't think we ever really talked about investing yeah I mean like I think I knew what a 401k was sort of abstractly um but I think just the idea was always just like you should save money and that's what you should be doing so I think you know I got a savings account when I was quite young my parents like gave me an allowan

ce and I had to earn through my chores and then like we wouldn't I wouldn't get any other money um but at the same time I feel like we like we didn't really talk about it it was just kind of like our lifestyle was considered the default and I think like I obviously like grew up very well off but my parents didn't really like it was I think a little upsetting for them to consider that they were like rich or they were doing well sure and you know they would compare themselves to other people becau

se their priorities were sort of like having nice meals education you know they it wasn't important for them to have a fancy house or a fancy car things like that so they would look at people with those things and they'd be like well we're not like that so oh my God no my parents would be the same I think it's like generation too though you know like you don't talk about money and if you do it's like those people are garish with it as opposed to you know yeah and it's like you know so it was lik

e oh we were comfortable and like I think sometimes they would be like oh like kind of emphasize like you know you're lucky yeah but I think they're like much more comfortable now kind of admitting it I think they've they've gotten used to it over time but um yeah I would say like financially a group extremely comfortable um and there was definitely an emphasis on saving but in terms of like investing my money or doing anything else with that I've kind of had to figure that and like even like cr

edit cards and things like that I've definitely had to figure out pretty much on my own as an adult well I think you're doing great thank you I think you are too well you're helping me be more financially literate yeah all right so I have to ask you I need to know what are your long-term career goals um to go on Survivor Jeff Probst call me I think like at my last job so I just started this job like eight months ago and at my last job I was there for three and a half years and I started super en

try level and I was like my first year or two I was not particularly concerned I was just happy to work from home do something that was relatively easy but as I started getting more responsibility and kind of caring more I was like very focused on getting the next promotion um like making more money I had kind of a clear idea of where I was going and then I switched to this role I got a huge raise but I was back at the bottom of the company but I I hope my boss doesn't see this but I feel very c

omfortable where I am now and so I guess um I guess you know I want to keep on doing this I want to keep on growing my skills I'm sure eventually I'd like to go into like management again because I was at Management in my last role and I really enjoyed like people managing and working with people but I'm not super pressed I would say my goals are more focused personally and on living my life and enjoying my life with the now very handsome salary that I have um and I'm I feel like happy now where

I am for a little while circles to hangs yeah basically what about you what's my career goal yeah uh well I just started a new job my current job about a month ago so uh having a career was a goal and I achieved that really excited um for the longest time I wanted like a really like sexy job you know I wanted to work in like poetry or something glamorous now I'm just working for an organization that raises money for cancer research it's something I believe in something I'm really happy about so

I think just Contin you know doing a good job with the job I'm doing you know really honing my development skills raising money and you know continuing to be of use you know for a college that's good yeah that's not those are my goals Channel um it's my turn I think no you just asked me about my financial goals I did just ask you about your financial goals okay so you don't want to go again no I don't no I know we haven't ordered a thing what is currently your biggest financial burden um like I

mean one of my biggest expenses I guess is like rent I need to get a new car too I'm hoping my parents will help me with it but I'm 26 and um they probably won't um I would say the biggest sort of like big picture burden is while I was unemployed I depleted a lot of my savings and I want to sort of get that back up to a number that you know feels like a safe cushion um again I'm really lucky I don't have debt my parents supported me through college they paid my rent when I was unemployed um you

know very very lucky in that regard so thankfully don't have like big Financial illnesses but yeah I'd love to um make my savings fun robust again I mean the biggest thing I have to spend money on every month is rent yeah well probably this vacation is probably what I'm going to be spending the most money on uh this month um but I will say like our rent is small enough that it doesn't feel like a burden um even when I was making less money like and I mean you know I'm gonna start paying a littl

e bit more now that our rent's gone up but again yeah it doesn't feel like a huge burden so um but yeah I it would be Rand that's what I pay the most money on or like the food that we eat I had a lot of food yeah but I guess I don't have a lot of financial burdens fortunately but yeah I was gonna say that's a good thing yeah how do you handle feelings of professional Envy I don't tend to have a lot of feelings because I don't I feel like I don't put I see I definitely see it a lot in other peopl

e but I don't put I try not to put myself in my job or put my worth in my job so if I see someone in a position where I feel like I should be in that position or I could be in that position I think what I do is I like try to work to get to that and if I can't get that at my current job I'll move jobs which is what I did most recently um but I think outside of that my goals and my aspirations lie outside of my career so if I'm making a good salary if I feel like and it's so important for me to do

good at the job that I'm doing but if I'm doing that I'm able to pay my living expenses I'm able to live the kind of life I want to live I I think I'm okay if like for instance like I know that I make probably the least amount of money at my company and that's all right with me like okay I make enough money to survive that's so Zen I love it how do you deal with feelings of professional Envy um I don't know if I have like direct professional Envy like I don't look at my boss and I say I wish I

was my boss you know but um I definitely like sometimes feel behind my peers so I had a big time being a long time of unemployment I am you know get a little jealous of people who are like really crushing it at my age um I think I just try and use that as motivation or just sort of like examine why I feel that I don't know if I'm taking that and like becoming the best I can be but I'm trying to say like hey well then just work really hard at what you're doing now or you know examine why you feel

that basically I talked to my therapist about it and hopefully we come to a good conclusion yeah do you have any savings slash Investments what is your best saving strategy I do have savings slash Investments I think overall I have a little under 50K between my savings and my investments [Music] um I yeah I mean my saving strategy is a percentage of my paycheck automatically goes in my 401k every month and then I then try and put a certain amount in my savings account every month as well becaus

e I'm trying to like build up a larger emergency fund I feel like for a long time people are like 10K should be your emergency fund but I don't know I feel like 10K is not three months of living expenses for me sometimes so um yeah so I've just been trying to like build that up as well I'm gonna like kind of half-heartedly um so yeah I try and put a certain amount in there and then if I meet that certain amount in my savings account and I still have a little extra left over at the end of the mon

th then I'll put that in another investment account which is languishing a little bit currently you have like a direct investment account right that you were yeah I have like I remember in the pandemic you started really getting serious about it yeah I have one well yeah in the pandemic I wasn't spending any money so yeah it was crazy I was like making half the amount of money I'm making now but somehow I was able to save twice as much but um yeah so I had like one like it's they're just Robo in

vesting accounts so I had like one with Ella vest and then I just opened one with where my company does their 401K so betterment that's like I'm kind of over the yellow vest ones so I'm I opened a new one and I've grown right back at you um I wish I was uh we might get to that later actually with financial work Grant um I wish I was like more serious about Investments I have a Roth IRA that I've been contributing to over the past five six years I try and max out the contribution every year I do

that either pulling from savings or from what I'm making it work it's really boring um otherwise I don't have any like individual investment accounts uh that's something I think I should start doing and regret not having done earlier um yeah how much do you have I said no pressure um right now I depleted my savings pretty significantly while I was unemployed so I have a savings account with about 8 000 in it um regret how low it got but still happy I have that uh I have about 15K in my uh Roth I

RA and in another savings account I have about 20K so I'm very I know but I want to be like I want to be ahead I want to be excelling I want to be investing a little too hard on yourself there I'll watch the financial diet I'll learn how to invest I'm curious about this one for you if you could go if you could go back and give yourself your 18 year old self any piece of advice what would it be oh my gosh Financial advice it just says advice um I think I would tell myself to be a little less prec

ious about employment I think for a really long time I thought I have to find the perfect job um you know the career that either absolutely fits me or that I could sort of merge my identity into like I could go to a party and be like and I'm a literary editor and then people be like that's so cool but I think um sort of what you do and how you make money shouldn't be something that's collapsed onto you as a person um and I really think I could have told that to 18 year old me so I could be a lit

tle more realistic about the career I'm looking for and also it just takes a lot of pressure off you know you could find a job be good at it enjoy it and not have it be your entire life that's really good advice yeah I wish I could tell myself a Tic Tac that I've been getting and she actually like I don't know what her deal is but I thought that what she said was really good she was like when you're starting a new job like you always you people tend to like look for like what's the kind of job I

want to have like who do I want to be and then this job is going to make me that person like that and she was like instead look for what you find easy to do because somebody else won't find it easy and if you do what you find easy to do like that's how you're going to find success in your career because you're gonna be an expert in that area and I feel like that's kind of where you're going with your current role because we were talking about this like yesterday and you were like you know I rea

lly just feel like I have like the right set of soft skills for this specific job and like it wasn't the job like two or three years ago when we were talking about what kind of job you wanted you had in mind but maybe it's actually a really good fit for you yeah absolutely and I think like I love that Tick Tock because it's like it hits a nail in the head it's what you can do what you can develop you know um yeah trying to sort of mold yourself into something that you know isn't out there is imp

ossible isn't the best but developing what you have within you finding a way to make that personally you know professionally useful that's that's awesome yeah yeah what advice would you give little baby you're in 18 year old rent uh she would not have listened like not for one second like I 18 year old me was gonna do what 18 year old me was gonna do and honestly can we reveal a little bit I I like I took a gap year before I went to college and I lived on my own occupy walls yeah I was like a li

ttle like Teenage Anarchist and I lived on my own and I worked in a restaurant and I'm really broke and I was I was not right in the head and I just would not have like I literally got a tattoo when I was 18 to be like this is gonna Stick it to the corporate shill I'm gonna become but I like that tattoo still so um yeah just keep doing what you're doing have a great time how do you handle money differently than your parents but more importantly how do you handle it similarly that was a great pod

cast if I say I try um so how do I handle it differently I think I'm like more active about like investing I mean I also think now that there are more like online resources and like online banks and stuff like that so like I've been trying to talk my parents and my sister into getting a high yield savings account and like stuff like that where it's like I'm like I'm aggressive Investments but like I don't I'm not sure uh so I think that's like the main difference um and even like with credit car

ds like I have a Rewards Card like they just have whatever they had from their credit union um how am I the same though like I think I still have a focus on like saving um I think I have like a strong sense of how much money I always have so and then I also think I have like a similar laxity or a similar like interest in um like eating out or like having a good time and like living a good life and like not attaching my worth to my job but seeing my job as a means to an end um to live the kind of

life I want I think my parents especially my mom very much like had that same mentality so I would say that's how I'm similar um oh another thing about differences I just talk about it a lot more and I'm like share a lot more with my friends and I'm pretty open about like how much I make or how we're saving and that's something like we all talk about a lot Liverpool's a good thing by the way like the tattoos around money make it really hard to have any education around money yeah exactly but al

so just like hard for you to contextualize yourself like in your social World in your personal life like it shouldn't be this like locked away thing that we can't speak about so um I think my parents have a lot of I think my parents are very well off they're both attorneys in the Detroit area they're crushing it top of their fields and thankfully I think they do have a lot of savings I don't know if they would see it that way my parents are people who are like in the traditional like well-off pa

rents world they're well off but they don't think they are and they have a lot of money anxiety yeah so my parents um are saving a lot they don't spend often obviously they will spend on me I'm incredibly grateful of them helping with college rent Etc but they don't spend on themselves so like there'll be something falling apart in their house they won't fix it or they'll have these really big you know dreams of taking a vacation or buying a new fence and they won't do it and that'll cause them

deep deep anxiety on top of the anxiety of already not having enough money I think um that's a habit I'm really glad that I broke out of I clearly am not making a seasoned attorney salary but um I'm trying to be sort of more relaxed with what I have what's practical how I spend I want to save but I'm not going to sort of use not saving as a cudgel to beat myself with you know or like not yet live your life exactly or not live my life um my parents like really stressed themselves out work really

hard and again they're they're I admire that in them I admire their determination their Drive their practicality but I I think I have a better um I think I found sort of a more you know Middle Ground that's that's a lot more appropriate but my parents are really cool they're great um Julie Robert um this is a short one if one of us couldn't make red for whatever reason how would we handle it I think the other would pay rent yeah I think we would just cover it and I mean yeah until you could pay

rent again but I I think it's an unlikely situation because I feel like you're you know your parents would and if I didn't make rent I think I would go to my parents first before you yeah but also I feel like we're close enough that it's like we would support each other if needed yeah I feel like that's a better question for people who are like just remember yeah I think like I mean just given that our split wise tab like yeah exactly variably um all right uh what money habits should you keep fr

om when you didn't earn as much as you do now and what money habits did you get rid of from that time um I think like saving I think I mean to be honest I think I spin very similarly and now I save more um I think like as soon as I hit 50k or like 55k I was like oh my God I'm so rich and I just immediately started spending like that and I would always like you know like I always automatically had things going into my 401k and I would have my you know like savings my emergency fund that would flu

ctuate um so I think now I can just save more money um and what did I get rid of well we got a cleaning person which has like draft like just coming once a month but that has drastically improved our life in my opinion or my life in my opinion I feel very fancy almost too fancy with it um yeah kind of similar for me I would say uh I'm gonna say that this is a saving habit it might just be me being a really neurotic person but I've always been like kind of silver was kind of selective about the t

hings I would buy I wanted to make sure I was getting well you look at me okay go ahead sorry well I mean I think I spent too much money on like food and clothing oh you want to like you were selective and that you wanted to get nice things not like you didn't buy a lot of stuff yeah or like remember how I bought like three pairs of wireless headphones yeah yeah okay and how like I crashed my car in December and still don't have a new car because I'm like I need to do all of the research yes yes

I understand what you're saying like it's selective in terms of like what I am investing in yeah yeah uh no I buy so much stupid so it's fine um but yeah that might just be a personality flaw and not an investment tactic no I I mean I agree with you I think I also want to get nice things or just like the crew or like yeah like something that's gonna and I think when I was making fewer purchases than I am now it was definitely like it needs to be good now I also I'm buying some bad things but li

ke you know definitely being uh doing the research on what I buy but who went last uh you did okay what do you wish people who want to join your industry would know oh I'm kind of new in my industry I've worked in non-profits I worked at a temple for a long time this is my first month working in non-profit directly like fundraising rather than General like marketing Communications development um I don't know if this is this is just sort of a rule of thumb for the industry that I've learned which

is like the sort of relationships you make sometimes matter if as much if not more than the funds that you raise so it's like developing these uh connections and also sort of like etching out of space for you in different like uh Community social spaces Etc so just sort of knowing like the how valuable the soft social skills are and knowing that fundraising isn't just you know going up to people and being like please give me money you know how about you how does one become a Solutions architect

what should someone know oh my gosh um don't ask me what I do um I work at a tech startup and I was an English major I'm not a software engineer and um I think like I think people think if you want to work in Tech you need to be a software engineer or have some kind of technical degree or some kind of like specific skill but there's a ton of jobs that are literally just like are you good with people are you organized um can you learn quickly and if you can get in an entry level position in one

of those jobs which is what I did at my last company you learn like a ton on the job and it's really about being adaptable a fast learner organized and just like being able to organize people so if you want to join Tech like you don't you don't have to go to a boot camp you're not you're not going to make as much money as a software engineer but like there's plenty of money to be made there for us English Majors have you ever success successfully negotiated a raise and I know you have a couple t

imes at my last role um yeah I mean there's there were a few times I think the first big raise was about a year and a half in I was doing like wait it was a startup so I was doing way more than my role my boss was going on maternity leave I was about to take on a bunch of extra work and I got what my yearly raise would be and I was like this is not enough for what I'm doing um one of my co-workers who was in a similar position got basically the same offer so we talked together and we made a plan

and we went we talked we ended up because of my boss was gone we were talking to the CEO about it again tiny little startup and we were like this isn't enough we laid out everything we did um we were like we need more he came back he gave us 7K more um and then like a couple years later when I after I'd gone through a few promotions I was getting promoted to management and I already knew that they weren't going to offer me enough they didn't and so I went back and I was like this is not really

enough and for what I'm going to be doing they came back and offered me like 5K more which was not quite what I wanted and I was didn't really feel like I was in a position that I could ask for more so I basically accepted it but four months later I did end up leaving for my current role because I knew I could get more money and just an amazing opportunity presented itself what about you I have never negotiated a race cool someday well I'll ask for your wisdom how did you get your job I applied

uh no I had non-profit experience I was familiar specifically with the non-profit I'm working for I think that really helped being able to go in and not just be passionate about the cause but you know have some knowledge of the institution uh on top of that I think I don't know I made my interviewer laugh I Charmed board members you killed it yeah I also think this is kind of lame uh the organization I work for has some affiliation with my college and I think having gone there really helped so y

eah that's an important answer I applied um I have an exciting one um so I at my last company there was a girl who had left about a year and a half ago to start a new job she was getting a big raise she left she moved to that job she still lived in Chicago we were still friends I kept in touch with her um and I saw you know nine months ago she posted about a job at our current company on LinkedIn I read the job description I was like that is everything I do I'm like exactly qualified for this jo

b I reached out and basically started going through the interview process and then I got the job so it was the only job I applied for because I wasn't really looking it was just like a very specific role I knew someone I had an in a Service Company like the vast majority of people are referrals because it's another small startup um but it's really worked out and it's been great coming in and working because I work so closely with this girl like working with someone I had already worked with so a

nd then to other people from that company did end up coming and working at this company now um oh is that it uh yeah there was this one but it was like really redundant it was how do we talk about money oh like this yeah on the financial times yeah the question and answer sessions okay well it was great talking with you yeah it was great getting something else yeah I'll see you later yeah I hope we get to meet again probably at the drink we're getting after this yeah or the show we're going to y

eah I'll never forget you I love you [Music]