re: What was your life like within the first 5 years of graduating college?

1) Got married within a month of graduating (had been engaged for 2 years);

2) Took a job with an Environmental/Safety Consulting company within 3 months;

3) Bought a condo and began taking graduate classes at night within 12 months;

4) Got M.S. within 48 months (it takes a while working full time and taking classes at night);

5) Purchased 1st house within 60 months.

Didn't party much at all (had to act grown up), but played a shite-ton of golf.

Wasn't poor...but worked a ton of hours and traveled a lot for work (while working the travel around graduate school night classes). Certainly wasn't rich, either...but those first 5 years were invaluable in setting up my career path for the next 25.

Was playing golf professionally on the mini-tour circuit. About a year later, I switched to working at a country club.

Neither one paid much, so money was always tight. Lived with 3 college classmates in a house that one bought with inheritance money.

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I was pretty poor for the first 1.5 years (as in eating Totino's pizza and Ramen, while driving a 15 year old car poor). I was making less than 30k per year while paying for graduate school.

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a small part of me wishes i would have made a little less so i would have been more motivated to go to grad school at night or something like that.

i'm out of the corporate world now so it doesn't really matter, but i was a little too comfortable for my first 3-4 years. making just enough to live comfortably, save and invest a good bit, and do some spontaneous trips, shite like that, but not really enough to get ahead in any meaningful way. also the job was very cushy.

the conspiracy theorist in me thinks the biggest companies have set salaries to kind of keep you trapped in this fake comfort.

Graduated undergrad in 86, went immediately to work for the family business. We decided to computerize, caught the computer bug, taught myself how to program, started consulting and teaching computers at a local community college, Got married, decided to leave the family business and go into programming full time, went to grad school for an MBA with a specialty in IT. It was a busy 5 years.

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discovered that very little I learned in college had any real world application.

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This.

I finished undergrad in 2013 and grad school in 2015. By 2020 I was married with two kids. I have a very decent job and my wife is a teacher. We had our own home and two paid off cars with no student loan debt.

All things considered we were doing really well. LSU had also just won a a natty

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What was your life like within the first 5 years of graduating college?

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I completely read this as 'wife' at first, and not 'life.' Anyways, it was pretty shite. Lived with my parents during college because they didn't want to pay for dorms and I certainly couldn't afford my own housing - or rather, I was more inclined to save all the $$$ I was making working on my on-campus job between classes.

Moved out a couple years after graduation to live with my brother and that wasn't great, and quickly taught me I would've hated living with anyone else anyways. Luckily he was not at our rental house more often than he was there. He eventually got married to someone he was dating for probably only a year after previously getting dumped from a 5 year + relationship in which my entire family thought he would marry other chick.

So then I moved to my own apartment which I still have now and am getting fleeced because I'm too lazy to want a house and honestly really don't want one because I've always told myself I'd leave the state. Here I am 11 years post graduation... still banging a milf though so there's that. Guess I'm OT poor.

Bruh my plant career is the one everyone loves to hate, but also wants to be. Necessary but unliked. I'll let you figure that one out.

Waited tables thinking I’d take a little break. Turned into 3 years before I got on my shite. Don’t do that. I was poor af. It sucked arse.