COMD 3503 Oct 24, 2018
Prof. Marianna
Miguel Santos
Reflection 6: Money
Today we cover an essential topic that everyone love to know about. Everyone love to know about salary, money, and investment. We learn how much does a graphic designer make in the United States. However, the salary can change depending on where we live. Also, the more money we make the more taxes are taking from our paycheck. It is vital knowing about money, especially when we start a career. As a junior graphic designer is very important to know our worth before going out there to work. Money is very important but before it, there are essentials parts that create a whole satisfaction on us.
A graphic designer makes more money in the United States than other states. In other words, this is one of the best city where specialized professionals are paid more. We learn in class that a graphic designer working full time earn an hourly wage of $24 which is $50,000 a year. In our case, coming out of college having a bachelor’s degree in Communication Design we can start earning $37,000 per year base on our experiences. Therefore, this salary range may vary depending on the level of education, industry, or company size and location. If we move to other states, the cost of living might be less, our earning will be a little less as well but all expenses will be higher. As we learn in class, we need to become wiser in this field because right now we are in one of the best city to make money while we are young.
As young people, we always complain about not knowing much about money. However, we learn in class that we need to start knowing our investments. In order to do this, we need to read business books to start knowing about money. For example, books such as the recommended ones: The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles and You Are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero. If we want money and a stable life as we all said, we need to educate our selves about how to reach that goal. Most of all including myself, we believe that we need to be brilliant at talking to people but that story that our professor told us opened up our eyes. In other words, our professor’s friend is not very social but he desire is getting money and he did it and has a lot of people working for him because he educates himself about money. This is a lesson for us, that we need to think broadly about our life now that we are young and not focus on the big picture right at way. We are only young once.
Right now, we can say that soon we will start working as a junior designer and then move on as designer or solo designer. This means that later we can apply to different companies and charged our worth. We also learn to have a sign and date proposal when we do other types of independent jobs. This information is very important because we are protecting ourselves out there, we are protecting our money. Little by little, this will become a habit for us later on which is really useful to know right now. On the other hand, we also review again about temp agencies which are the ones the help us start or help us connect to work. For example, creativecircle.com helps us find jobs, benefits, and connect us with great creative talent as an opportunity to put our skills to work. By knowing this information we are educating our selves, our path is more clear. Our resources are our primary things to know in order to be wiser.
As already mentioned, money is very important but before it, there are essentials parts that create a whole satisfaction on us. A relationship is a currency. In order for us to move on to new opportunities, we need friends. From my own experience, I can say that it is a whole satisfaction of happiness. My friend Luis recommended me to where he works at Marina Ice Cream Corp and that was the first time that I experienced the relationships are very important in every aspect of our life. Once I met Luis’s boss his first comments was “Congratulations! you are hired before filling out the paperwork, your friend Luis talked so brilliantly about you.” I smiled like never before, really thankful for having such a great friend. Therefore, wherever we go we need to make relationships, enjoy meeting new people and keep in contact with them such as we have been doing during networking events. I remember I read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not by the author Robert T. Kiyosaki. From this book, I learn a lot about people with money and how they maintain it but I also learn about relationships and good friendships as the two main characters who were very good friends. Talking about money is huge, a broad context. I know further on we will keep talking about money and salary in our field.
