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This was originally published in Inter Visa, a Russian language magazine. Getting Started in the USA Dave Francis Last month, we talked about renting an apartment. I wrote about looking for a place, the costs, benefits, and tried to help steer the reader to an informed decision upon arriving in the USA with regard to living arrangements. This month, we will go in a bit more detail. We are still going to use St. Louis Missouri as our example, but you will find that most of the information is fairly applicable, unless you are in New York. Los Angeles, or San Francisco. In those areas, costs are a lot higher, and the living conditions a lot more stressful. (Higher crime, etc.) Once you have an apartment, it is time to start living there! You will need to find work, get your kids in school, take care of all your normal, day-to-day needs, and hopefully, some of the advice I am going to give you today will help. First of all, think in dollars, not roubles. Things are a lot more expensive in the USA, but salaries are higher too. The average apartment rent is going to be somewhere in the range of 600 dollars per month. Your electric will probably be about 100 per month. Telephone, 50 per month, cable television another 50, gas, water, and miscellaneous expenses another 50 per month. After that, you have to eat. Food is going to run about 300 per month for a family of 3. Now you have a home, food, and the normal things to sustain a reasonable life in the USA. Your fixed expenses, (expenses that wont or cant change much.) are about 1200 dollars per month. To that, you will need to add a car. In the USA, it is almost always necessary to own a car and to drive. Don’t let that intimidate you. Everyone does it, and so can you. Your car payment, and repair budget should be in the range of 300 dollars per month. That will keep you in a decent, used car. Something small, functioning, and dependable. Add to that insurance of 100 per month, and gasoline expenses of 200 per month, and you will find yourself with another 600 dollars in monthly expenses. Now, you need clothes, a bit for entertainment, and some miscellaneous things, which will easily add another 200 per month to your budget. That leaves us with a grand total of two thousand dollars per month. That is about the minimum you can expect to spend to have a decent, middle class life in the USA. Sounds like a lot, huh? Well, you’re right. It is a lot. At the same time, wages are a hell of a lot better in the US than they are in Russia. They have to be, or people couldn’t survive. A teacher in the USA will usually start at about 500-600 dollars per week. A secretary will earn about 400 per week to start. A good job in a factory will pay 800 per week, while a job in construction or roofing frequently will pay as high as 600-800 per week. Jobs that are easy to get, where the skills you need are minimal, such as restaurant work, or being a janitor will pay somewhere near 300 dollars per week. Any couple, if they work, can live a decent, middle class life in the USA. If they work hard, save, and are responsible, America can afford a wealth of opportunity. Work in the USA is a bit different than what I have seen in Russia. First of all, our offices typically open at 8 am, and close at 5 pm. Expect your working day to start and end somewhere close to that range. We also don’t have as much time for vacations as workers in Russia do. When I first came here, I was amazed to discover that people take a whole month of vacation in the summertime, and some people take the whole summer. In the US, unless you are a teacher, you are going to be working in the summer. Most jobs afford one weeks vacation after you have been there for a year, and after five years, they offer two weeks vacation. (It varies from job to job, but this is what is typical.) You take vacation time when it is convenient for the company. For example, if the company says that two employees may be on vacation at a time, but not more than two, then the employees have to work out who is taking time when. Typically, this is decided by seniority. The person who has been there the longest gets first choice. That means you, who just got hired gets last choice. Don’t let that bother you though. After 35 years or so, you will have first choice, and can take your two weeks when you want! Health care in the United States is very expensive. Most good companies provide their employees with insurance, where the employee has to pay a small fee for doctor visits, medicine, etc. An average cost for a night in a hospital in the USA is $1006.00 as of 1998. The average stay is 8 days. That means if you have a normal health care situation, you are going to have to pay the hospital 8 thousand dollars. That doesn’t include the cost of the doctor, prescriptions, transportation, etc. In the USA, you cannot afford to get sick. If your company doesn’t provide you with health insurance, you need to find another job. The good news is this, teachers, professionals, and most jobs with large companies provide health care insurance. It is the lower skill jobs such as restaurant work that don’t. If you are in a situation where there is no health insurance, you are running a very serious risk of financial ruin. On a good note, there is a law in the USA that a hospital cannot refuse treatment to anyone in need. They have to treat you, whether you can pay them or not. In the case of a real crisis, excellent health care is available to everyone. I don’t know what it is like looking for work here in Russia, so I can’t compare and contrast the two countries processes. To tell the truth, I avoid work assiduously. It is so distasteful. I can help you to find that good job in the USA though. I have hired people, been hired, fired people, been fired, and so I know the drill pretty well. There are a lot of different avenues to pursue. Usually, friends, referrals, and word of mouth are the best way, but if you don’t have any friends there, you need something different. In the US, there are a lot of employment agencies, like Kelly Services here. They are a good way to get immediate work. You go to one of their offices, take a test, and they will probably have you working within a week. Not a good job, but something while you look for a better alternative. Newspapers in the US have classified sections, where they advertise job openings. The best day to look in the paper is Sunday, since it has the most ads. Get the Sunday paper, spend the afternoon reading it, watching football, (uhhh……football……) and mapping out strategy for Monday morning. Find a job listing that you like, and be the first person to call Monday morning. Be the first person to go for an interview. Take a resume with you, dress nice, and be brief. I remember once when I was trying to hire some people for a company I worked for in Kansas City. A man came in, sat down, and filled out the application. He took about 2 hours to fill it out, but it was perfectly done. The handwriting was exquisite, all the slots were filled in beautifully. It was a piece of art. I threw his application in the trash. We were in the candy business, not the art business, and I needed people who could work well, and work fast. If you are being interviewed, it is for a job. The only interest the company has in you is how much profit your work will produce. It may sound cold, but that is the truth. Be efficient. The average workweek in the USA is 40 hours. Any time you work more than 40 hours, your employer has to pay you extra. An example, if you earn 12 dollars per hour, for the first 40 hours, you get paid 480 dollars. After 40 hours in a week, you get paid ‘time and a half’, or in this case, 18 dollars per hour. So, if you work 5 days, 8 hours a day, your pay would be 480 dollars, or 96 dollars per day, but if you are called in to work on Saturday, the extra pay for that day would be 144 dollars, instead of the normal 96 dollars. Overtime is a good deal in the US. Besides making a lot more money, it is a good way to impress your superiors and move up the company totem pole. A wise man once told me, ‘If you work for a company, give them as good an effort as you can. If there is a difficult job, volunteer for it. Make yourself indispensable, and you will find yourself depended upon. That is where real job security lies.” It was true then, and it is true today. Public schools in the US are terrible. Depending upon your child’s age, and what grade he/she is in, the problems will range from incompetence to life threatening danger. The bad news is, most of us don’t have an alternative. Private school in America is very expensive, and for that reason, the vast majority of American children attend public school. 88 percent of the children in America go to public schools, but among teachers, only 50 percent attend public schools. The people who work in the schools, the teachers, choose not to send their kids there. That should tell you something. The possibility for a child to get a wonderful education exists. Teachers in the US are frequently hard working, capable people. Most classes are equipped better than anything you have seen here in Russia, but the will to educate just isn’t there. Too much time is spent on ‘sensitivity training’, and state mandated minimum standards to really move kids forward at a reasonable rate. This isn’t the time or the place to go into too many of the details. It would take too much space. Go into this area of life with this securely in your mind. If you don’t follow your child’s educational progress very closely in the US, you will probably not wind up with an educated child. If you do stay active, go to school functions, check homework every night, talk to the school staff regularly, (Like most parents do here in Russia!) your child should be able to benefit from the incredible riches that schools in the US offer. You and your family, in how closely you monitor the educational process, will make the difference. Next month, living and thriving in the USA! |