Moving to the USA, need some budget advice

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My Rhythmic Crotch: Jan 13, 2011

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# ? Feb 14, 2020 18:13

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# ? May 3, 2024 21:00

CelestialScribe: Jan 16, 2008

Edit: Deleted.

CelestialScribe fucked around with this message at 03:53 on May 28, 2020

# ? Feb 18, 2020 00:45

CelestialScribe: Jan 16, 2008

Edit: Deleted.

CelestialScribe fucked around with this message at 03:53 on May 28, 2020

# ? Apr 7, 2020 01:06

Sundae: Dec 1, 2005

CelestialScribe posted:

Now is...definitely not the time to be moving to the States.

OTOH.

I have received an offer of employment to start in Jan/Feb next year in Seattle

$145,000 base
10% yearly bonus (20% for high performance)
$100,000 equity vested over five years

Barring something amazing for your benefits package, you would be absolutely, utterly insane to move halfway around the world to Seattle with a special-needs child + family for that compensation. At that salary level I don't want to rule out great benefits since it's a possibility (and would change the balance a bit) but I'd be shaking my head and doing a hard pass on that.

# ? Apr 7, 2020 01:36

CelestialScribe: Jan 16, 2008

Edit: Deleted.

CelestialScribe fucked around with this message at 03:53 on May 28, 2020

# ? Apr 7, 2020 01:43

Crazycryodude: Aug 15, 2015; Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

....Is that still a valid thing to jingoistically blow out of proportion?

I mean like you said this really isn't the time to be moving anywhere much less Seattle, that job (or the very concept of the United States) might not even exist in a few months who the hell knows, and if it does Seattle's not gonna be the same place it was 6 months ago. That said, pretending everything is just like it was a few months ago, $145k is... a significant chunk of money, I can believe you and your family could live off it in Seattle but the US has a way of always being more expensive or otherwise worse than you might expect.

# ? Apr 7, 2020 03:19

Sundae: Dec 1, 2005

Crazycryodude posted:

I mean like you said this really isn't the time to be moving anywhere much less Seattle, that job (or the very concept of the United States) might not even exist in a few months who the hell knows, and if it does Seattle's not gonna be the same place it was 6 months ago. That said, pretending everything is just like it was a few months ago, $145k is... a significant chunk of money, I can believe you and your family could live off it in Seattle but the US has a way of always being more expensive or otherwise worse than you might expect.

$145K in a city where the average 1BR is almost $3,000 and the average property is over $750K, where his childcare costs are going to be obscene for special-needs (depends on age of kid / need), where medical intervention / recurring treatment can be obscenely expensive depending on the special need, and where the region is still growing more and more expensive every year, is not as good a deal as it sounds. The median household income in Seattle is $93.4K, and it is my understanding (paging Solkanar? You live[d] in Seattle area, right?) is that the growth of high-wage tech jobs in the region is rapidly turning it into Bay Area 2.0. A house is still more than 5X the proposed annual salary, he's going to be on a work visa, and he's coming into the USA at one of the most uncertain times he possibly could.

To be clear - If he was from the USA and was just relocating across the country or something, I'd say hell yes, take the job. In the USA, it's almost always Money++ because you basically have no safety net anywhere here. There's no way in hell I'd uproot from another country and move here at the start of a potential economic crash for a salary that is going to make you nice and comfortable but not "set" whatsoever.

# ? Apr 7, 2020 06:16

CelestialScribe: Jan 16, 2008

Edit: Deleted.

CelestialScribe fucked around with this message at 03:53 on May 28, 2020

# ? Apr 7, 2020 06:39

Sundae: Dec 1, 2005

I started editing my last post to add responses to your earlier post, but then the baby started screaming and I missed my window. Replying here:

To add a bit more to my original post: I'm fairly risk-averse and have a very poor view of corporate loyalty after my career to date. You can read my stuff as very pessimistic and it's a safe way to read it. :v:

I've rejected several offers for being too risky / low-reward, including multiple outside the USA (due to probationary terms / visa transfer restrictions associated with them), though that's a different ballgame from rejecting one in the USA from outside of course. I've had a company falsify relocation costs and tie me down for 3 years after billing $32,000 for driving my beanbag chair and textbooks from Long Island to Connecticut (< 2.5 hour drive, one small U-Haul sized truck), I've had a company change my pay the day I started, and I've worked in both emotionally and physically abusive job environments, where people would scream in your face on the manufacturing floor or throw things at you if they disagreed with your presentation. In the latter, I reported a mfg supervisor to HR after he slapped an operator across the face for messing up a batch and was told "so what?" in response. I've had two separate dental plans in effect at the same time and still had to pay $4,500 or so for my wife's dental work. I had a $60,000 bill for a surgery where the insurance plan had literally no surgeon in-network contracted to perform it even though the hospital was in-network (they waived it and just ate my entire OOP after it was clear I straight up couldn't pay it). I've watched my first company hire hundreds of employees and then lay the vast majority off three months later. My first company, about a year before I joined, relocated my entire department halfway across the country, made everyone who wanted to stay with them sell their homes and uproot to Michigan, and then closed the facility in Michigan six months later and told them all to move back to CT again.

Those are the sorts of things that color my pessimistic view of US employment.

Re: Compensation - I don't count equity as compensation until it's in my bank account. I can't pay the bills with a promise, and companies love to find ways to make equity worthless here. I am the no-longer-owner (took the buyouts since there was so little value at the time of freeze) of two separate frozen pension plans. I value bonuses as half of whatever they say the minimum is, because I've had a company change my compensation structure on the first day of the new job after I'd relocated there. They gave me the reduction letter during orientation. The compensation package as listed is $145K + 5% bonus to me, plus benefits. The benefits are the big driver to me, because $145K is pretty average for a high-wage job in Seattle. It's a good salary in the USA, don't get me wrong; but it depends what it's competing against in its field. It's not competing against Home Depot. If the salary package is way lower for the job in Australia, make that a positive instead. (For perspective's sake: My role in most of the USA pays around $110K-$130K pretty much regardless of where you live. If you offer someone $135K to come work in San Francisco, they're going to laugh at you. They had to pay me a loving fortune to come out here.)

The #1 and biggest thing I'd be looking for is health insurance, particularly as it pertains to your child's needs. If your child is school-age, that'll take a ton of the cost off of him provided you send him to a public school or reasonably-priced private school of course. If you have those sorted, a large portion of my concern goes away re: things draining your account on the regular. Next, I look at the terms of the relocation package. I've been trapped in lovely jobs by relo packages and had one job that expected you to repay it even if they laid you off. If the terms aren't reasonable such that you have a short repayment time period (I'd expect 1-2 years for domestic, no idea what I'd expect for international honestly) and indemnity in the case of involuntary departure, that's a big red flag to me.

The visa thing is fantastic re: permanent residence. The US Gov likes to gently caress with people even on family / spousal visas if they come in from "undesirable" countries (a friend of mine here in CA had to answer all sorts of inappropriate questions about her partner's sexual habits, followed by an interview with the partner to see if the preferences matched, etc, before they'd issue her green card on spousal), but Australia isn't one of those countries to the best of my knowledge. I withdraw my concern here. :v:

quote:

Agreed, which is why the start date is next year.

The economy is not going to be recovered by next year, but high-skill / high-wage positions will probably be less impacted than lower-wage roles.

The next thing I'd be looking at is how much vacation and sick time you get. If it's "unlimited vacation" it means you have zero and it's entirely at the whims of your boss. If it's fewer than 15 days, it's sub-par for a white collar job. Also, check for whether they've lumped vacation + others into general PTO. It's not unusual to be told you get X days PTO, have it sound like a nice big number, and then realize it includes all your sick time and personal days / company closure days too. For that latter, I'm referring to things like "company shuts down for a week at Christmas, drains all your PTO for that week or counts it as a furlough if you have none left." This is a pretty common practice, depending on the state (I don't know about WA) re: legality of it.

CelestialScribe posted:

i want to point out something crucial here, that is by staying in Aus, I'm seriously lowering my earning capacity. My field does not have very many jobs here, and moving to the USA, even for a short while (3-5 years), will *significantly* increase my career potential moving forward.

This last part, I go "ehhhh... it's a fair point and not my place to judge." If it's worth it to you, :shrug:

go for it. If it's a real growth opportunity, it can be worth it. Financially (to me), it all comes down to the benefits and whether they're good enough to prevent using them from draining your $145K down to feeling like it's the same as what you made in Australia.

Sundae fucked around with this message at 07:34 on Apr 7, 2020

# ? Apr 7, 2020 07:31