All Forum Posts by: Masashi Borges-Silva

This is posted in Meetup as well

This is an event to network with people who are interested and/or doing real estate investing. In this event, you will be able to network with other real estate investors and learn about real estate investing.

The host is still a beginner in real estate investing but has been educating himself about financial freedom retire early (FIRE) in real estate investing. The issue he faced was: How do I even start? Where is a good place to look? Where can I learn more about real estate investing? The host can point in some direction to start (BiggerPocket.com or books to read).

In the events, the following is expected:
-Networking
-Playing games (Rich Dad Cashflow Board Game and Klask)
-Have an open mind to share and learn from each other

Education x Action = Result

$5 is used to cover the cost of the board game.

This is an event to network with people who are interested and/or doing real estate investing. In this event, you will be able to network with other real estate investors and learn about real estate investing.

The host is still a beginner in real estate investing but has been educating himself about financial freedom retire early (FIRE) in real estate investing. The issue he faced was: How do I even start? Where is a good place to look? Where can I learn more about real estate investing? The host can point in some direction to start (BiggerPocket.com or books to read).

In the events, the following is expected:
-Networking
-Playing games (Rich Dad Cashflow Board Game and Klask)
-Have an open mind to share and learn from each other

Education x Action = Result

$5 is used to cover the cost of the board game.

Please RSVP to Meetup Event for accurate headcounts.

I need some help with the salary range expectation I have after some research is realistic or not.

The background of this story is the following:

* My background is in Mechanical Engineering

* 7 years experience in the current job (9 years total as an engineer)

* I live in NYC

* The current salary is $93k

A recruiter contacted me for a position as follows:

* The position is a senior engineer

* I owe the recruiter to give them my salary range expectation by tomorrow.

* I talked with the recruiter last Monday and I asked them for a time to do the research before I say anything on the spot.

So, I have been researching for an appropriate numbers and my market values. After some digging, I found the average pay for the position, experience, location, etc, the number seems to fall under around $106k.

This number seems to be reasonable to me as I am expecting a 10% to 20% increase from my current job ($93k) when I do the job-hopping. In fact, a 15% increase from the current pay is about $107k.

Then for the range, I thought maybe to start with $107k for the lower end of the range, and the higher range would be a 10% to 20 % increase from the lower end ($117k and $128k), so I would either have:

1. $107k to $117k (10 % range)

2. $107k to $128k (20 % range)

Is this reasonable? Having a range of $10k and $20k seems pretty tight? I haven't really done job-hopping in my career, so I don't have that much experience and expectations from an HR standpoint.

Also, I contacted some of the employees via LinkedIn, and after speaking to them, I am very excited to work for them as it seems a lot of my values and wants are checked off. They also shared me with some benefits package, and the benefit seems very generous. One of the employees told me that the average year for employees to stay with the company is 14 years.

What do you think about the salary range I am considering to offer them??

Originally posted by @Caleb Heimsoth:

Masashi Borges-Silva another more extreme idea could be to move. You live in a high cost of living, high tax area. If you moved down to say where I currently live you’ll pay less taxes and potentially earn more making it a double whammy.

I’m also an engineer (studied mechanical undergrad, starting master in industrial this fall), so just figured I’d throw that out there.

My boss is from Long Island and I don’t think he regrets moving lol.

 Caleb,  this is another good suggestion!

You are absolutely correct about moving to another state.  We were talking about that since we are questioning ourself if it make sense to stay in NY, and raise a family.  That would be another variable I have to factor in.

I am currently exploring career change and searching for potential job in East and West Coast.  Another variable we have to consider is that my fiance's job is in advertisement/media so she needs to stay near somewhat big city such as Boston, Chicago, LA, Seattle, and such.  On the other hand, I also studied in Mechanical Engineering and have interests in Automotive industry, and I find automotive engineers are located in Michigan or out of nowhere in a big space with cheap rent for manufacturing.  I do see a lot of HVAC, construction, inspection or design engineer job with CAD experience... so I am contacting some people via LinkedIn to see if that the path I want to consider.

@Craig Curelop stop contributing to the IRA might be something I have to consider. You are the second one who suggested that idea. Dave Ramsey (suggested by @Abigail Hollar) also suggests to save $1000 for an emergency fund and pay off debt by paying of the smallest amount of loan regardless of interest rates, and once the first one is paid off, apply it to the next one until it is all paid off.

In terms of big expenses.  you are correct about the housing and food costs in NYC.  We are actually in the process of finding an apartment.  I was hoping to find a place that is cheaper than the current location, but our situation is very unique.  My office is north of the city (Yonkers) and my fiance works in Brooklyn.  My commute is about 20 mins by car and hers is about an hour and 20 mins by train, and she wants to reduce the commuting time.  That means we have to move close to the city, which will be more expensive and probably smaller as well.  The situation is little tough since I will have more commute time and have to pay higher price, but I understand that she is commuting longer.  We talked about potentially having roommates, but we are still not sure if we can find a place (possibly 2 bed room apartment) and/or reliable roommate.

For food, we actually had the discussion yesterday.  We are saving money by cooking food at home and packing lunch for the weekdays.  We still like to enjoy a social life, and I suggested to have a social life at home.  I don't drink but she drinks socially so I suggested that if we buy beer or wine at home and hang out with friends, we would still have fun and save money.  We were talking about playing a table game, which is always fun with more people.

We are also talking about going over the budget and our spending together so that we can calibrate our spending habit.

@Abigail Hollar

Thanks for the information!  After quick view at the site, it talks about snowball debt method.  Long before, I used the method to pay off my credit card debt.  I knew the method was there, but some of the student loan debt interest are pretty low (1% to 4.5%) so I wasn't really considering it...  But I do agree the method can be a good system since I would be keeping a close look at the progress of reducing the debt!

I also quickly look inside of the book you recommended on Amazon.  I will see if I can find it at local library.

At the moment, I might not be able to afford $2000, but perhaps one day I will...

Thank you for taking the time to share!

@Melissa Gittens

Step 1 is done.  I had multiple loans that had interest rate ranged of 1.5% to 6.5%.  My parents offered me to use their line of credit, which has interest rate of 4.5%.  I calculated how much I need to borrow from my parents by filtering loans with interest rate higher than 4.5%.  In the process, I also considered if I can use a commecial loans such as Earnest, Credible, Landkey, and Sofi, but the quoted rates were higher than 4.5%.

Step 2, we recently started to adapt a method of making a bulk that is enough to cover lunch and dinner on weekdays.  We spend about 2 hours doing that on Sunday, and this is saving us money and also time spend on weekdays to prepare food everyday.  I will look into doing saving electricity and commuting method.

Step 3, I am actually looking around and researching what I can do as a career change, and also side gig as part time job.  I am still not firm with my clarity in terms of career path/change/side gig, but I started to networking via LinkedIn.  For example, I am interested in Mechanical Design Engineering, and I found some people who are one or in the industries.  I have request them to have a conversation to have their insights so that I can learn if the career path would be interesting or not.

Step 4, I actually contacted Wells Fargo to get pre-qualified without the hard pull. This is where it got interesting... With the amount of the debt I have and comparing my income (DTI ratio), I was not even qualified for a mortage... However, the assumption used here was to get an estimate with my individual income and combined outcome for myself and my fiance. After I combined her income in the equation, we got something to work with.

Step 5, Will SAVE SAVE SAVE, and SAVE! haha

Thank you for your input!   

Thanks for the input. I will try to negotiate with the broker as you suggest. If I don’t try swinging at it, I have 100% of missing it. Also, thanks for your suggestion about Nybits. With a quick search, I found some places that I might be interested in. I like the site because it has average listing price and also you can sort the results by neighborhood. This is useful for me to understand the name of neighborhood I am looking.

Originally posted by @Caleb Heimsoth:

Masashi Borges-Silva what is the interest rate on your student loans? How much of the 500 dollar payment is principle vs interest?

 The interest rate is 4.5%, and the fact is that I am not sure principle vs interest since I am borrowing from my parents.  Actually, they let me use their line of credit, which was lower than my student loan (6.5% at the time).  So I don't have a website to log in to see how much I am paying in interest.  I should be able to figure that out pretty quickly tho...

Just guestimating, I am paying about $500 a month for $40k so it would take roughly 100 months to pay off given $150 in interest and $350 in principle.

 Thank you for the link!  There are a lot of interesting topics to read about on the site!