7 negotiation tips for Millennials

7 negotiation tips for Millennials When you’re just starting out, negotiating may seem like some far-off point in your career: something you’ll do in your life eventually, like buy a minivan or start watching CBS procedural dramas. After all, you don’t have years of experience to use as leverage yet, right? Wrong! I don’t know how you feel about sensible family car choices, but negotiating in your work life is definitely something you should do now. There’s no magic rule that you must have a certain amount of experience or a particular level of work gravitas. And in fact, the more familiar you become with the process now, early in the game, the more potent your negotiation skills will be as you advance in your career.Why you should negotiateWhen employers make a job offer, they usually expect a little haggling these days. The offer may be at the lower end of a range for them, and why not? They have nothing to lose here: they have a good candidate on the line. If that person accepts t he offer straight away, they got a solid deal at the low end of the range. If that person negotiates up, the company is still likely within the scope of what they expected to pay. But it’s important to remember that you aren’t likely to lose much here either: as long as you negotiate reasonably and civilly, they’re probably not going to yank the job offer just because you tried to negotiate in the first place. And you do have the potential to make this sweet job offer even sweeter, either with more money or more perks.Negotiation also establishes a couple of things up front, before you even start the job: 1) that you’re a confident person who knows your worth; and 2) that you want to maximize your salary and benefits. The higher your starting salary is, the more you’ll be able to get when it comes to percentage-based raises and bonuses. Think of it as a professional investment that you can make now.When you should negotiateIt may be tempting to tal k about salary in a job interview, in a show of confidence- or even just curiosity to see if this job is going to be worth your while. Resist that urge. (And if the interviewer tries to sneak in their own stealth salary questions, here’s how to get around them.) Get past the application, the interview, the second interview, all of it†¦wait until you have a job offer in hand, with a salary attached as a starting point.Alternatively, you can negotiate when you already have a job, but feel ready for a raise or a promotion. Whatever the circumstance, it’s the same basic process: prepare, ask for what you want, and be ready for the back-and-forth.Tips for negotiatingLet’s look at some tips to help you build your negotiation skills and get ready to bargain with your employer. The more prep work you do now, the more ready you’ll be when it comes time- you don’t want to waste any time once you have that offer letter.1. Be prepared with an elevator pit ch.This is your headline, basically. Based on my previous experience managing social media, I was hoping to see a salary of $X. Your elevator pitch in this case summarizes why you’re worth the extra salary. I want and I need aren’t going to get you very far here- the employer isn’t concerned with what your preferences are. They want to make sure that you bring value in exchange for the extra salary bump or incentives added to your offer package. The more you emphasize those qualities in the negotiation process, the higher your chances of success.And this is especially important if you’re negotiating a raise at your existing job. The question of why is going to be one of the first you’ll need to tackle. Wanting a raise is all well and good (who doesn’t want one), but you need to show that you deserve it too.2. Be specific and realistic.This is where you should have a sense of what you’re worth. And I don’t mean that in a â€Å" my mom thinks I’m priceless† kind of way. I mean it in a â€Å"this is what people at my level in this field can make† kind of way. Once you know what you can reasonably expect, you can come up with specific dollar amounts as a counteroffer. Unrealistic counteroffers, just for the sake of seeing what you can get, are not likely to be met with success. Do your research- a search of similar positions on Glassdoor or Salary.com can often give you a good sense of what the market-level salary is for your new or current job. Use that knowledge to come up with a realistic range for your salary. It’s okay to reach a little in your counteroffer, but make sure it’s within a realistic range.3. Think outside the salary box.You know you can negotiate for more than just salary, right? When you get a job offer, you may also receive information on company policies, benefits, etc. Core benefits like insurance coverage and retirement savings plans may be set in stone , depending on your new company’s policies. However, you might be able to negotiate additional vacation or personal days, or work-from-home flex time. If the company seems pretty intractable on a salary bump, think about other ways you might be able to negotiate a more appealing package. But again, the key is being realistic. A junior employee is not likely to score an extra week of vacation up front, but if you think there’s wiggle room on time off, work that into your negotiation.4. Know what your limits are.Part of being realistic about your negotiation means having a dealbreaker in mind as well. It’s not defeatist to think about what could make you walk away from the negotiating table. You should decide ahead of time what your minimum is for this job. Maybe it’s the same salary as you make now. Or maybe you truly don’t want the job unless you can get a 2% raise over what you’re making now. Whatever the case may be, have that â€Å"last chance† number in mind before you get started. That way, if the negotiating drags on and you don’t see the company offering more than the bottom of your range, consider walking away and turning down the offer.5. Don’t panic.Once you’ve started negotiating, you may feel a little jumpy, like you overstepped your bounds. That can lead to accepting a counteroffer too quickly, just to get the process over with. If you’ve done your due diligence and have your range in mind, you know what you can realistically get. If the company indicates that they’re standing firm, then it’s time to accept (or reject) and move on.6. Keep it civil.A little confident swagger can be good when you’re negotiating. You know what’s not good? Threatening to take your ball and go home. It may seem like a baller move, but this is not the place to make ultimatums or threats. When you’re negotiating salary or a raise, both you and the company are d oing it in good faith, with the goal of finding an employment package that works for both parties. If you blatantly threaten to walk away if they don’t meet particular demands, then you just may find the job offer rescinded anyway. Or if you’re negotiating a raise and threaten to quit if you don’t get your way, you risk doing irreparable damage to your relationship with your boss and company. Always keep the tone civil and friendly, even when you’re making bold requests.7. Keep an eye on the clock.This isn’t necessarily a speed event, but you don’t want this to drag out. You want the job, and the company wants someone in the job as soon as possible. Try not to sit on any offer for more than a day without checking in with the company, or letting them know your decision timeline. When you get an offer, it’s fine to say, â€Å"I’d like to take a day to consider this offer. Is it okay if I get back to you on Wednesday?† Or à ¢â‚¬Å"I’m traveling this weekend. Okay if I let you know on Monday?† That way, the company knows you haven’t disappeared, and that you’re considering the next move.Negotiating is a process that you want to be familiar with as early in your career as possible. If you’re realistic and do your research, there’s no reason why you can’t be an advocate for your financial interests as a junior employee. Again, there’s no magic line where you can start negotiating, so why not now?

How Much House Can You Afford Learn to Calculate a Mortgage

How Much House Can You Afford Learn to Calculate a Mortgage SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips If you’re looking to buy a new home, then you’re likely asking yourself, how much house can I afford? How much mortgage can I afford, and what’s a reasonable monthly payment to take on? You don’t want to get in over your head, but you also don’t want to live in a shoebox in the middle of nowhere. Where does the balance lie? This guide will help you answer the question, "How much house can I afford?" based both on the numbers and your overall happiness. To begin, let's go over some general guidelines to consider when buying a home. Buying a Home: General Guidelines There’s a common misconception around buying a house, and it’s that you should buy the biggest and best house you can afford. However, the house you can buy and the house you should buy are not necessarily the same thing. Some banks will lead you right up to the precipice of spending when they offer you a mortgage. They’ll give you a loan that you can just afford to pay, but any big life changes, like getting fired or ill, could push you over the edge into bankruptcy. Not only is taking on the biggest mortgage you can financially risky, but it also may not do much for your overall life satisfaction. When it comes to house size and location, what we think we need and what actually fulfills us don't always match up. Figuring out the answer to "how much house can I afford" isn’t just about facts and figures. It also requires that you get introspective and strive to make the best financial and emotional decision based on your resources and needs. Before exploring issues of personal needs in greater depth, let’s take a look at the hard numbers. What percentage of your income should go toward housing payments? Deciding on a house is a balancing act between your financial and emotional needs. Key Rule of Thumb: Spend No More Than 30% of Your Income To figure out, how much home can I afford, the conventional wisdom tells us to spend up to 30% of our gross income on housing a year, or a little less than one-third. Gross income is what we make before taxes, not our actual take-home pay. We use gross income because the interest you pay on a mortgage is tax deductible. Regardless of whether you’re making $20k a year or $2 million a year, you should stick to this rule of thumb. You don’t want to overcommit to home ownership payments in case of an emergency, like losing your job or a costly injury. So, how can you calculate the house price that would correspond to 30% of your income? It's not just three times your income, because you have to consider total housing costs, which include the mortgage principal, mortgage interest, and general maintenance costs. Consider the example below. Remember the golden rule of real estate: spend no more than 30% of your annual income on housing costs. Estimating House Price: An Example You don't necessarily need a mortgage calculator to answer the question "how much mortgage can I afford?" When figuring out how expensive of a house you can buy, you can estimate that the lump sum house price can go up to roughly five times your total income. Why? The average person gets a 30-year mortgage and pays off 6% of the house price each year. This percentage may vary depending on your exact agreement (typically somewhere between 4% and 8% of the house price), but it's an average that applies to lots of people. This payment refers to total housing costs, which include both the mortgage and other costs. If 6% of the total housing costs equals about 30% of your income (using the 30% rule of thumb discussed above), then the total house price equates to about five times your income. We can represent this using the variable "h" for house price and "i" for income. Here’s how the math works out: 0.06h = 0.3i Divide both sides by 0.06 h = 5i Let’s say you make about $40,000 per year. Using this guideline, you can estimate that you can afford a house up to $200,000. While you can spend up to approximately five times your income on a house, you could also choose to purchase a less expensive home (then you’ll have more disposable income for golf or spontaneous trips to Paris!). Once you figure out the mortgage, or loan, you need, you’ll apply through a bank. Below are three steps you can take to qualify for your mortgage and reduce your monthly payments. Besides crunching the numbers, how else can you prepare to buy a house? Qualifying for a Mortgage: Steps You Should Take Unless you’re paying for the house with a suitcase full of cash and gold bars, you’ll need to apply for a mortgage. Most mortgages have fixed interest rates somewhere between 2.6% and 3.7%, and people commonly choose a repayment plan that spans 30 years. Once you reach this step, your next questions might be, how much mortgage can I afford and how much can I borrow? Banks look at three main factors when determining your mortgage and repayment plan. The first is how much you pay up front as a down payment. The second is your outstanding debts, and the third is your credit score. These are the three steps you can take to put yourself in the best financial position for getting a mortgage and buying a house. Step #1: Save for a Large Down Payment The more money you can pay on a house up front, the less you’ll have to pay per month. With reduced monthly payments and perhaps a shorter term, you also won’t have to pay as much on interest in the long run. Aim to pay at least 10% of the total house price as a down payment. Ideally, you can pay 20%. On a $300,000 house, for example, a 20% down payment would be $60,000. Some banks charge an extra monthly payment toward Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) if you have less than a 20% down payment. Banks want to avoid risk, and a low down payment is one sign of risk. The bigger your down payment, the better contract you’ll get with the lender. The bigger down payment you can put down up front, the better! Step #2: Pay Down Your Debts Another way that banks assess risk is by looking at your outstanding debts. These debts might include student loans, car loans, or other personal loans. The less debt you have, the better deal you’ll get. If you have a huge monthly payment toward student loans, for instance, then you may not appear to be in a good position to put money toward a mortgage. You should also strive to show a history of consistent, on-time payments. If you’ve let your loans go into default, then you may not get approved for a mortgage. If you’re planning on buying a house, then it’s important that you handle your debts responsibly and work toward reducing them. Step #3: Build Up Your Credit Score Finally, your credit score is an important factor when you apply for any kind of loan. Lenders look at your financial behavior in the past as an indication of your financial behavior in the future. The strongest credit scores fall into the upper 700s or 800s. Now that you have a sense of the numbers - paying up to 30% of your income on housing - what else should you think about as you venture down the path toward home ownership? Buying a House: Beyond the Numbers A lot of guides for first time homeowners will urge you to go out and find a house that costs about five times your annual income (or the combined incomes of you and your spouse). While this mortgage calculator estimate may work well for you, assuming no unexpected interruptions in your income, it’s not necessarily the end all and be all in real estate advice. This mindset urges people to step right up to the limits of their financial profile to get the biggest house in the best location that they can. It prompts you to answer, how much house can I afford, with the biggest possible number. Banks and realtors, of course, are motivated to keep people in this maximizing mindset. But is this way of thinking necessarily the best way to approach buying a house? How much mortgage can I get and how much mortgage should I get are two different questions. If you think you’ll be happiest with the biggest or most centrally located house you can get, you may be overestimating the importance of house size and location. Let’s consider both of these factors, amount of space and location, individually. If your realtor shows you places like this, you might remind her that you probably don't need quite this much space for a three-person family. How Big a House Do You Want? People often want to maximize the amount of space they can afford, but they may not be happier with more space in the long run. Humans have a knack for adjusting, which can have many benefits, but also means that we won’t stay satisfied with material improvements in our surroundings for long. According to UC Riverside psychology professor, Sonja Lyubomirsky, â€Å"Someone who feels elated after upgrading to a big house is likely to soon start yearning for more - an extra bedroom, a pool, whatever it may be. But ultimately, whether we drive a battered truck or a Lexus to work; whether we have hypertension or asthma, our ability to be happy and get happier doesn’t vary much.† As long as we have a certain amount of comfort and our needs our being met, we won’t get much happier from a bigger house in the long run. People tend to acclimate to the space that they have, and many report higher levels of happiness after minimizing their lifestyles. All too often, extra space just becomes storage for extra stuff. You don't need to donate all your possessions and join the tiny house movement, but you should take time to think back on your various living spaces. Were you substantially happier in larger spaces? What was the smallest space you’ve lived in and felt satisfied? Before falling prey to the McMansion mindset, think about how much space would actually make you happy and how much would be unnecessary excess. Where Should Your House Be Located? While the size of your house may not be as important as you think, its location can have a large effect on your happiness levels for one main reason: your commute to work. Several studies have shown that commute time has a big impact on personal well-being. A study conducted at the University of Waterloo concluded that long commutes link with low overall satisfaction in life, while a 20 study from Sweden connected long commutes with low energy, high stress, and more frequent absences from work due to illness. While you may not be able to afford a location with the best commute, you should avoid buying a house far away from your place of work. Finding the right house becomes a balance, then, among your finances, the size of the house, and the area where it’s located. We all want to live in Danny Tanner’s townhouse from Full House, but with the average cost of a 4-bedroom house in San Francisco going for over $1.7 million, most of us have to let this dream go. How Much House Can I Afford? Final Thoughts There are lots of steps that go into buying a house, and you have to take a close look at your finances and personal needs. Generally speaking, you should spend no more than 30% of your income on housing payments (mortgage plus the other costs of home ownership). You can use this rule of thumb to look at houses that cost five times your annual income or less. While banks might be all too eager to grant you a large mortgage - assuming you can put down a large down payment, are paying down your debts, and have a strong credit score - you shouldn’t necessarily take on the biggest mortgage you can. Taking on any kind of debt is a risk, and you should be cautious about over-committing to a 30-year mortgage if you’re concerned about things in your life, like job security. You should also consider how much of your monthly income you need for spending in other categories, like a retirement savings account or a January vacation to the Caribbean. Think about what will make you happiest, whether it’s a larger space, a short commute, a location close to restaurants and cafes, or a small monthly payment that frees up your income for leisure activities. When purchasing a home, you need to think long-term about both your finances and your overall happiness. Once you’ve figured out what you’re looking for, you can make steps to put yourself in the best position for getting a mortgage and buying your perfect house.

Effect of the Economic Recession Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Effect of the Economic Recession - Research Paper Example Many experts believe that the seeds of this recession lie in the policies of the Federal Reserve Bank of America in the aftermath of the attack on world trade center. The bank feared that the terrorist attack would create a panic in the market and hence will affect U.S. economy. Fearing this, the bank decided to lower the interest rates to a record low level (Makinen, 2011). The effect of this policy was that credit was cheaply available to the people. This situation was misused by Wall Street and many banks such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. What these banks did was to provide people with a very cheap loan on houses that couldn’t have been affordable otherwise. The property market was rising at the time and so huge amount of sub-prime loans were issued to the American people. The people took loans from the banks as they were confident that the rise in house prices would provide them with the money they needed for repayment of a loan. But after some time of the boom, the property market busted. The price of the houses touched a record low and so people started to default on their loans. They didn’t have money to pay back. This meant that the banks who had issued this loan were in deep cash problems. The phenomenon was so huge that first Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac filed for bankruptcy (Jicking, 2007). Next in line was Lehman Brothers which had similar problems. With Lehman Brothers filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, the world was heading towards credit crunch. The banks worldwide didn’t know which bank had how many bad debts to its credit. There was suspicion all around and hence the banks were weary of giving loans to each other. When the banks withheld supply of money in the market, the businesses started to feel the heat. All these events had a ripple effect. There was a reduction in demand and because of this unemployment rates went up in the U.S.