finances Archives - Career Pivot

Knowing Your Value or The Stealth Competitor

May 29, 2012 by Marc Miller 7 Comments

I have a female client who sent me the book “Knowing Your Value” by Mika Brzezinski and told me that it would help me understand some of my female clients.

The book is by a television journalist who never negotiated for what she was worth or, in the terms I use, for what she wanted. This ties in directly into Step 5 of the Cure for Career Insanity which is “How do you negotiate for what you want and IT IS NOT ALL ABOUT MONEY!!”

In the book Ms. Brzezinski interviewed President Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.

Ms. Brzezinski writes:

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As a female and an African-American, Jarrett says she always expected to face obstacles in the workplace: “My parents raised me to think because I was a girl and because I was black I was going to work twice as hard. They did it with no chip on their shoulder — it was a just a fact of life, get used to it. Don’t try to change what it is, just work twice as hard.”

So she says that’s what she did. She worked hard and kept her head down. But Jarrett didn’t expect that working hard would not automatically lead to advancement and better pay.

“I felt like if I was deserving, then my boss should recognize that I was deserving.” — Valerie Jarrett

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This is a trend I call the Stealth Competitor. It is almost exclusively a female issue and the book covers this topic in detail. What I have found is that many–not all, but many–women will work hard and expect to get recognition without ever having to ask for it out loud. They are stealth because their efforts to compete in the workplace are almost hidden. One can assume that they have no need of personal gain. They’re just working hard for the common good.

What is worse is the book documents over and over that the worst abusers of these diligent women were female managers of female employees.

It is interesting that as a guy I saw myself in this book.

In my last corporate gig, as I was completing a major assignment pay raises were handed out. The pay raise was puny. I made it very clear to my boss that he would have to do much better than that. After all, I had taken a major pay cut to work for this startup, then I had saved my boss’s butt by rolling out my project on a shoe string budget with excellent quality. I want to be paid fairly. He made good with a 30% pay increase that got me parity with what I had made before in high tech. I later learned I was still paid much less than my peers.

Brezinski clearly states men will stand up for themselves but women need to learn to do this in their own way and not imitate men.

Ladies, does this ring true? What have you experienced?

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Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Career Insanity – Negotiating for what you want – money!

April 18, 2012 by Marc Miller Leave a Comment

Before I get started please go and watch my Cure for Career Insanity video. I need two things from you.

Watch the video as long as it interests you. YouTube will not give me statistics until there are 300 views. Please give it view!
Please let me know what you think either by commenting in the blog or send me an e-mail.

Negotiating for what you want!

In a previous post, I asked you to develop a list of non-financial items that you want in your next position. This could be anything from childcare options to a proper desk chair.

Next comes financial requirements.

Never ever tell them what you currently make or what you want! Never! Never! Never!

Know what you are worth! Talk to peers. The world has changed and people will talk about compensation. Look at the entire compensation. Salary, benefits, 401(k) match, stock option, employee stock purchase plans……..

Check some of these websites for salary comparisons:

If you have other sites that you like Please write a comment.

When you are given an offer never ever accept it on the same day. If they insist on a immediate answer, then walk away as fast as you can! The answer is no.

If the offer is low, tell them you want more. If they ask how much more do you want, you respond I want to be compensated fairly. If they insist on an answer tell them you want to be compensated fairly. Do not take the bait!

Remember the non-financial requirements are likely more important than the financial ones!

Negotiate on the non-financial items first!

Once they have made an offer, they have made a commitment to hiring you. They will not easily walk away. Use it to your advantage. It often turns out money is the least important negotiating point but the one we put the most emphasis on!

We will finish Step 5 in the next post.

If you would be willing to give me input please read the post on “The Cure for Career Insanity – Looking for your input!” and make a comment or fill out the form with your e-mail address for me to contact you.

Check out the Cure for Career Insanity webpage and sign up to get updates on this program.

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Please share this blog with your friends and colleagues using the social sharing buttons below. You can subscribe to this blog and my monthly newsletter by filling out the form at the top of this page. Please visit my Career Pivot FaceBook page daily for interesting articles. If you “like” my page you will be able to download the “Baby Boomer Fact Sheet” with 24 important facts about the challenges that face baby boomers today.

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: Career Insanity Tagged With: Career Insanity, finances

50 Amazing Numbers About Today’s Economy

April 8, 2012 by Marc Miller Leave a Comment

I am a huge fan of The Motley Fool website and today they had an amazing article titled 50 Amazing Numbers About Today’s Economy. I want to comment on just a few of the numbers in the list.

49. According to economist Tyler Cowen, “Thirty years ago, college graduates made 40 percent more than high school graduates, but now the gap is about 83 percent.”

I had a near fatal bicycle accident almost 10 years ago where I hit a car head on where our combined speeds exceeded 50 mph. I went off and taught high school math for two years at an inner city high school. You can read about that career pivot here. Maybe 10% of my juniors and seniors would go to a 4 year college. It was shocking to understand their lack of financial and emotional resources to get a college education.

46. In 2010, nearly half of Americans lived in a household that received direct government benefits. That’s up from 37.7% in 1998.

Teaching at a high school where 90% of my students were poor taught me a lot about government benefits. It is not pretty!

43. About the same number of people was awarded bachelor’s degrees in 2010 as filed for personal bankruptcy (1.6 million).

I am in my mid-fifties and I have more friends my age who have been wiped out financially by these last two recessions. I started this business because I rode out both recessions as successful high tech startups. I was blessed.

40. In 2009, 5% of Americans accounted for 50% of all health care costs.

37. The number of Americans who don’t have health insurance: 49.9 million.

I have decided to leave the corporate world to be an entrepreneur. I cannot buy private health insurance for my wife because of pre-existing condition that cost $10/month to treat. We are applying for the Texas High Risk pool insurance where we will pay $481/month for a $7500 deductible policy. This is ridiculous.

30. Americans age 60 and older owe $36 billion in student loans.

I wrote last year about the plight of baby boomers and mortgages but this scares me that we also have enormous student loans.

15. Total government employment has shrunk by almost 700,000 since 2009.

I am assuming a lot of this is state governments which have been shedding employees to balance budgets. My son works in Washington DC for a large government agency. There is a surge of retirement at the federal level.

9. Adjusted for inflation, the bursting of the housing bubble destroyed wealth equal to half a 1950s America.

3. The combined assets of Wal-Mart‘s (NYSE: WMT ) Walton family is equal to that of the bottom 150 million Americans.

We all know there is a tremendous financial inequity in the US today. I live in Austin Texas where we did not see the bubble or the burst in the housing market. Most of my kids when I taught high school bought most of their clothes at Wal-Mart.

Read the entire list. I will get back to the Cure for Career Insanity tomorrow.

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Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: Employment Tagged With: baby boomer, finances, mortgage

Assumptions – Be careful when making a Career Pivot

January 9, 2012 by Marc Miller Leave a Comment

This is a great time to talk about all of the assumptions I had made up to this point and the ones I had already made but was not aware of them just yet.

There are two kinds of assumptions:

Conscious
Unconscious

When we make conscious assumptions we are aware of them when making decisions. It is the unconscious decisions that bite us in the a…

Let’s take about the unconscious assumptions I had already made:

I would be accepted in the first certification program. It had not dawned on me that I would get rejected.
The fastest path to getting to the classroom was the best. I chose the Alternative Certification route because it was the fastest. I was not the best. I made this assumption unconsciously.
The hiring process for teachers is just like getting hired in a corporation. Boy was I wrong.

My next surprise came in the new teacher academy in the days leading up to school starting. My school district ran a multi-day orientation and training for teachers new to the district the days leading up to school starting. We would learn about normal policies and procedures from the district. I had made one more assumption come to light.

I had my wife, son and myself on a COBRA health insurance policy from my previous employer. It was good insurance and even through pricey I had put little thought on getting off of it. I assumed that once I was hired by a school district I would put my family on the school districts health plan. It would be affordable — right??

The school district contributed $250/month for the teachers health insurance and nothing for children and spouse. The demographics of school districts are largely female with the majority in child baring ages. School district policies are expensive. My monthly contribution would be double of my COBRA payment. My monthly deduction was over $1,000/month. My take home before before health benefits were deducted was only $2,500/month. OMG!!

What I learned was most teachers had their children covered under their spouses employers plan. I did not have that choice as my wife was self employed. I had a good friend where both he and his wife worked for the school district. They bought separate high deductible policies for their children because the school districts plan was cost prohibitive.

I stayed on COBRA for the next year or so. Bought a high deductible policy for our son. We then chose the least amount of coverage from the school district for my wife and I. I tried to buy high deductible health insurance for my wife and I but we were turned down.

All of this was because I made a critical assumption on health insurance costs.

As you make your plans sit down and explore any and all assumptions you are making. I will discuss more assumptions I made in later posts.

You can subscribe to this blog and receive regular updates by filling out the menu to the right or click here. You will find other related information on the Career Pivot FaceBook Page. If you “Like” my FaceBook page you will be able to download the “Baby Boomer Fact Sheet” with 24 must know facts about Baby Boomers and the issues we face.

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: Career, Career Pivot Tagged With: career, Career Pivot, finances

2 Baby Boomer Facts on Small Business Ownership

November 9, 2011 by Marc Miller Leave a Comment

I am getting close to the end of the Baby Boomer Fact series of posts. I should have a preliminary version out this week. If you register you will get to review and have input on the final product.

Baby boomers have been and will continue to be heavily involved in small businesses. There are two trends that are in opposition to one another.

Fact #1

9 million of America’s 15 million business owners were born in or before 1964, resulting in one business owner turning 65 every 57 seconds — and the potential for a tsunami of businesses for sale.

Does this surprise you? The challenge for these baby boomers is most of their retirement savings are in their small business. The current banking climate it is difficult for them to sell because of financing. How can they retire?

Fact #2

84 percent of new businesses are formed by baby boomers! As many baby boomers are figuring out that they cannot retire they are taking their retirement nest eggs and investing them into themselves. Does this surprise you?

For many of us, working for ourselves the rest of our lives is the way to go.

What we have here is successful baby boomer small business owners who cannot sell their businesses in order to retire and corporate refuges are starting their businesses.

If you have not read previous Baby Boomer Fact posts they can be found at:

If you are interested in receiving the Baby Boomer Fact Sheet please click here!

You can subscribe to this blog and receive regular updates by filling out the menu to the right. You will find other related information on the Career Pivot FaceBook Page.

If you are interested in learning more about career change for Baby Boomers please visit my website.

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: Career, Retirement Tagged With: career, finances, Retirement

3 Baby Boomer Facts with InfoGraphics

October 20, 2011 by Marc Miller 4 Comments

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you for all of the sharing of the previous posts which can be found at:

Here are three more baby boomer facts with the graphic that will go into the InfoGraphic presentations. Click on the text below each image to get the supporting article.

The fact is many baby boomers will never get out of debt and the fastest growing demographic seeking credit counseling are seniors.

When you apply for social security when you are 62 you lose 25% of your lifetime benefits compared to applying at your full retirement age.

This is not necessarily bad. In the TED talk by Dan Buettner “How to live to 100+” one of common factors of communities with many 100+ citizens were multi-generational households.

I am looking for feedback. Please make a comment on whether this resonates with you. I want YOU TO IDENTIFY THE KEY ISSUES.

If you are interested in receiving the Baby Boomer Fact Sheet please click here!

You can subscribe to this blog and receive regular updates by filling out the menu to the right or click here. You will find other related information on the MyCareer4MyLife FaceBook Page.

If you are interested in learning more about career change for Baby Boomers please visit my website.

Marc Miller Career Change Coach

Filed Under: Career, Retirement Tagged With: baby boomer, career, finances, mortgage, Retirement, Social Security

4 Facts about Baby Boomers, Medicare and Life Expectancy

October 14, 2011 by Marc Miller Leave a Comment

This is the Sixth in a series of baby boomer facts:

The next few blog posts will give you a taste of what is happening.

Here are four facts as they relate to Baby Boomers, Medicare and Life Expectancy:

In 2050, there will be 9 million people over 85, or triple what we have now.
According to 2009 data from the Census Bureau, the population of America that is 65 years old and over is projected to increase by 79 percent from 2010 to 2030, representing 19 percent of the total population by 2030. As of 2009, the 65 and older group represented 12.6% of the population.
In 2006, there were 38 million people were receiving Medicare benefits. In 2010, 47 million people received Medicare benefits.
Since 1964, Social Security and Medicare have risen from 2.5 percent of the nation’s GDP to 6.9 percent.

How long do you plan on living? 85, 95 0r are you going to be a centurion. This is a key decision in your financial planning. This is a key decision that is described in the Scott Burns Article on social security planning.

If you are interested in downloading the Baby Boomer Fact Sheet click here!

If you found this valuable please share it with the buttons below. Please comment and let me know what you think. You can also subscribe to this blog and receive regular updates by filling out the menu to the right or click here. You will find other related information on the CareerPivot Facebook Page.

If you are interested in learning more about career change for Baby Boomers please visit my website.

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: Career, Retirement Tagged With: baby boomer, finances, Medicare, Retirement

1st Summary of Baby Boomer Facts with Infographics

October 8, 2011 by Marc Miller Leave a Comment

This week I wrote three blogs on baby boomer facts. They were on:

I started researching this topic because I saw a lot of bits and pieces about the situation but nothing comprehensive. I will be building infographics that hopefully will make this a compelling story. Here are a few of the graphics that I have built.