Its all relative...

I made a bold claim in my first introduction post that Im already successful. Well it actually depends on how you seek to define success. In other words what I meant to say is that relative to my own past experiences, I am successful. Relatively speaking.

How so you ask?
At present most of my conscious thinking revolves around, developing my professional career, finance, and becoming a better person. To break down my career achievements, I graduated out of university back in July 2004. I got my first proper job out of uni in April working as a helpdesk monkey. Now this role I thought was very be-littling of me as I was somewhat over-qualified via my education (I spent five and half years studying Telecommunications Engineering). Apart from the role itself which was overly repitive and lame, I was only getting paid AUD $35k. Other graduates of my same age and education were scoring roles that paid minimum $45k (boy was I envious). But hey, I had to accept that the job market wasnt crash hot and I was somewhat fortunate that I managed to score this job.

Nine months on I changed jobs again to work for another company in a similar style help-desk role. I know your thinking WTF! Why did he do that! Well this role involved working in an ITIL environment, and although it was repetitive and boring work, the environment was more professional. Plus this was a contract role paying $25/hr plus 20% extra for shift loading. Yes the role was 24/7, I took it because I figured it would be good experience to have, and who knows, my next job might involve working in another 24/7 type role. I lasted 6 months before changing jobs again to my current role.

I now work for an American multinational as a Surveillance Engineer in their Network Operations. Finally a career role!!! Albeit its a graduate position, I consider myself extremely fortunate to have got this. Its paying $40k base with shift loading on top. Yes its another 24/7 job, who would have thunkit. An important note here, at my age money isnt tremendously important to me, as you can note I took a pay cut to work in this role. I am interested in building a long term successful career in networking. Long-term I want to be a specialist in network design. In the short to medium term, this role will definitely help me achieve my long term career ambitions and as I gain more experience, good money will surely follow. I can guarantee that!

So in-retrospect, after graduating out of university as an engineer, I had to slog it out in helpdesk for 15 months before finally landing a job I could happily tell people about. This to me is success. I succeeded in getting out of helpdesk in relatively short period of time and I know I will make great career progress in the coming years.

Now looking at the personal finance side of things. While in my first job out of uni, although I was getting crap pay, I was somewhat alert that I had to do something about securing my financial future. So what did I do? I went and spoke to a financial advisor. Basically what I wanted to know at that time was should I invest my money into a managed fund or should I be looking to go into property. Now this was October 2005, the advisor said straight up that at this point time your best bet is to invest in a managed fund, as the property market is currently sinking after the property bubble-burst due to the high unrealistic market prices driven by investor speculation.

So what Im doing financially is im putting away $1000/month into a managed fund, which is geared towards growth with roughly 50% Australian shares, 40% International shares and rest comprising of property/cash trusts. As im relatively young I plan to stick with this for about 5+ years minimum. I might look to invest in property once it starts to pick up again. As this is setup on auto-pilot, it gives me confidence and comfort knowing that I am already doing something about my long term future. Again success. (I will outline my personal finances in more detail in future posts)

Now becoming a success in terms of being a better person, this is something a little new to me. Ive realised a lot in the past 12 months I need to improve myself from within to become a better human being. Unfortunately this concept can be vague and is difficult to define at times. But in the past few weeks, Ive discovered there is an infinite amount of information available on the internet, particularly in the form of blogs and forums, I decided I would take action and start my own (I find writing down thoughts and feelings helps put things into perspective in many cases). The underlying aim is to reflect on what I write.


So here's hoping Ive explained my theory of relativity when it comes to defining success.