The Biggest Financial Mistakes I’ve Made in My Career (So Far)

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Since I have a history of revealing secrets, I thought I’d let you in on another one: I’m not perfect. I know, hard to believe right? One of the reasons I wanted to start this blog is to be able to share lessons I learn while learning to become a professional. That means I will share the good and the bad; the mistakes and the successes. So far, I have shared a lot of things I have been successful with.  Today I am going to share some of the mistakes I have made in the hopes that you can avoid them in your career. So without further ado, here are the two biggest financial mistakes I have made since becoming a young professional.

I Didn’t Recognize My Worth

I started looking for a job during my last semester of college. Part of my overall job search strategy was to get familiar with salary ranges for positions that I applied for. I used sites like Glassdoor and Indeed to localize my search to my area. I felt like I had a pretty good understanding of salary ranges every time I entered an interview. So what was my mistake? Even though I knew the standard salary ranges, I almost always asked for less than the low end of the salary range. Pretty silly right?

I had the training to do the job. I had a college degree that was an exact match to the job title I was looking for. I even had over a year of experience in a closely related field, albeit at a lower level. But for some reason I made myself believe that I wasn’t qualified enough for a “professional” job. I honestly thought that the only way I would break into the professional ranks was by being willing to work for less than anyone else.

When I finally got a job offer it was for about $15,000 dollars less than the typical pay for someone in my position; I took that job offer without a second thought, and without trying to negotiate a better salary. I don’t know if you have ever been in a situation like this before, but it really is no fun being paid less than your co-workers while doing the same job. Now I have to be concerned with whether I have hampered my potential career earnings right from the get go. The moral of the story? Don’t be afraid to stick to your research for salary ranges and do recognize that you are worth it!

I Work Too Far From Home

Currently I live 20 miles from my place of employment. While that may not seem like a lot, the miles really add up. Let’s do a little math:

40 miles a day x 5 days a week x 50 weeks per year = 10,000 miles a year

So essentially I am driving 10,000 miles per year just to get too and from work. My car averages 30 miles per gallon, so that means I use about 333 gallons of gas every year. Gas is about $3.50 per gallon where I live, so that equates to $1,165 in gas expenses every year. When you start to factor in the cost of maintenance, depreciation, and other expenses for my car and it is clear that I am spending way too much money due to living so far away from my work.

This is not an expense that I ever considered when looking for a job. I thought that it was “normal” to have to commute, so I never thought twice about it. Now I realize that my life would be a whole lot easier if I worked closer to home. I would love to be able to ride my bike to work every day. Not only would it be good exercise, but it would save me a lot of money!

What to Do About Mistakes

Luckily, these are the only big financial mistakes I have made so far in my career (or at least the only ones I have identified). While both of these mistakes have cost me a significant amount of money, I feel lucky to have learned them early in my career. Hopefully in the future I will be able to avoid both of these mistakes and the damage to my finances will only be temporary. I will leave you with the following thought from Henry Ford, as he can describe the way I feel about mistakes better than I can:

Have you ever made any financial mistakes in your career? How do you handle mistakes when you make them?

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