I need some opinions on what my next step is for my career. I'm 20 years old, I have an associates degree in accounting, and I like what I do. My apologies if another sub would be better for this, but this is also a huge financial obligation with maybe not a lot of payoff.
I made $14.00 right out of school, my performance raise got me to $14.50 (was super disappointed with this as I should have been making 15/16), but our 3 person department went down to just two last month (me and my superior) and my pay was raised to $17.00. Based on some guessing, the lady who quit was making around 50k/year or 24/hr (she had her bachelor's degree). My job responsibilities haven't changed much since she left, I am just learning to do a few new things. My supervisor is on salary and works overtime almost every week, but she must love to work extra, because I usually only work 38 hour weeks and often spend a few hours helping out another office with non-accounting work. We receive yearly performance raises every January. I am eligible for full benefits, and will be eligible for 401k and a 3% match in July.
The job I have now has many different responsibilities in accounting and I will come out of it with many different job options as I could probably find a job specializing in any one of the tasks that I do. Those jobs specializing in specific tasks maybe pay around $18-20/hr but generally need 2-3 years of experience. I've been working with my company for 7 months.
My financial situation: $1,000 emergency savings (goal is $4,800 for 4 months of expenses, then I will throw money at my loans)
CC never has a carrying balance on it, I use it minimally
$15,000 Federal loans, all are between 3.6-4.8% interest, repayment starts soon
A local university has a degree completion program for working adults. It has classes 1-2 nights/week and I will need to be a full-time student to be eligible for a scholarship. Accounting for the scholarship, I will need to take out $15,000 in federal loans for the two years it will take me to finish (assuming I can handle full time work with school) and possibly take out $2-4,000 in private student loans for books and extra fees. I have a lot of extra free time, have no friends, and I'm just not a very busy person. I did take one class this fall (paid out of pocket), had some trouble with motivation, and saved almost every assignment for the day it was due, although I still got an A and finished everything on time every week. It was not an accounting class but still business-related. It was not challenging at all, so that was a little frustrating. I have high standards for myself and always strive to be the best I can be academically. This is why I don't want to simply stop at an associate's degree. I feel like that's not good enough for me.
My question is - Do I take out another two years of loans to go back to school? I will start out at that 50k when I graduate, but I also might get there myself with the yearly raises or finding new jobs with my experience.
Submitted November 24, 2017 at 10:44AM by weatheredsweater http://ift.tt/2mYIssN
