Career Cube Blog

I went to college in Dallas, Texas, and after I graduated, I stayed there as a recruiter for about 15 years. Then I got tired of recruiting, tired of Dallas, tired of the ugly development, tired of the traffic. And I moved. To Santa Fe, New Mexico.

I’ve always had this funny habit when I go grocery shopping. I don’t actually add up the items as I shop, but I always know within $5.00 what the total grocery bill will be. Until I went from Dallas to Santa Fe and continually fell short by about 1/3 to 1/2 of whatever the total bill was.

It always had a funny way of driving the point home that I was living off my savings and had moved to a really expensive area! In fact, everything was more expensive. I’d moved a lot in Dallas so I lived in apartments. Huge complexes are all over the place - you want to move? You go to the area you want to live, walk into an apartment complex office, choose a floor plan, sign a lease.

Not in Santa Fe. Rents were astronomical. Apartments were few and far between. I knew my stay was temporary so a house was out of the question, before you even considered the cost. Plus if the apartment/garage/casita/spare room wasn’t rented after 3 days, either the owner wasn’t home to answer the phone for the ad responses or you didn’t want to live there. The few good places rented quickly over there, and every landlord required first month’s rent, last month’s rent, AND a deposit.

Then I took a job as the Office Manager of Santa Fe Services, a permanent and temporary placement service, and cut my income by about 4/5!! But I was tired of recruiting and there was no way I was going to find something comparable.

From there I moved to Atlanta, GA, and it was just the reverse. It was like moving back to Dallas - I had my choice of places to live and gas was only .85/gallon (this was 1998)! But I’d gone back to recruiting so salary was a moot point because I was self employed, but I still could see the effects.

Then it was off to Fairfield County, CT - where I currently am - and where I bought a house. Back to high grocery costs; gas was something like $1.50/gallon when I first got here (it’s now about $3.50), and additionally there were outrageous property taxes to contend with as well. Since I’d first considered buying in Atlanta, realtor postcards were being forwarded to me. For the price of my house here, I could have had 6 bedrooms and a pool in Atlanta - on a golf course, I think!

So moving from one state to another can underline how far your money goes - or doesn’t go. For some families, throw in considerations like kids in a private school or special needs children; whether or not the spouse works and will be able to find a job; or just the huge, skyward climb of housing prices, and being able to negotiate an effective salary adjustment is a critical factor. The objective, of course, is an appropriate change in the number lest you end up on poverty row within a few months, grumbling and hateful at the same time.

The secret and the solution is research. Because if you don’t have the facts, you’re in a tough position to negotiate.

Aside from the normal cost of living factors, there’s the qualify of life aspect to make a case for, and when a company is willing to help you maintain that, then they have a happy employee who’s positive about the move and the change, and less likely to become disgruntled and quit. And part of negotiating your cost of living adjustment is being able to make a case for this if you need to.

Most companies have specific policies on cost-of-living adjustments. Ask what those are, and if there’s any leeway in them. Because while not every company may have a set policy, even those who do will handle things differently depending on the needs of the new employee.

The adjustment for a higher cost of living might be included in your new salary, which is the best option, actually, because it’s permanent, and it continues to build on itself with successive performance review increases. But the adjustment might also come in the form of a lump sum, sign-on-bonus. Or if it’s a place where the housing costs are particularly out of whack, it might be paying points on the mortgage to lower the interest rate.

Obviously the first step is to check out what things are going to cost in the new city vs what they cost where you are. There are sites all over the internet that will give you a cost of living index for the cities you want to examine, in other words, comparison figures on taxes, groceries, utilities, schools, housing, healthcare, etc.

You also need to know what others in your position in that area are making, what the variances are, and on what those variances depend. Call a few recruiters. Do some research on line. Ask the librarian in the reference section. You can try phoning a few companies, introducing yourself, and sharing why you’re asking such a private question, but don’t be surprised if you don’t get much information, although it’s worth a try. An excellent web site for salary comparison information is www.salary.com.

Get creative and think of all the different ways in which you’re willing to accept assistance in order to meet what you want. You’ll fare much better in the negotiations if you’re coming up with ideas instead of putting the burden on the company to think outside the box in solving the problem.

Much of it depends on where you fall in the hierarchy. If you moved from Boise, ID, to Boston, MA, and got a job as Director of Marketing, you’re going to have a lot less leverage than if your title is VP or if you’re a C-level executive. You might still get a temporary housing allowance, but it will be for a shorter period of time and for something less indulgent than those who are higher up on the ladder.

It’s also going to make a difference if you moved, then found a job or if you found the job, and the company that hired you is paying your relocation. If you moved and then found a job, about the only thing you can negotiate is salary, and best you know all your data well, because you might be justifying what is effectively a 25% or 30% increase. This is because you moved because you wanted to. You moved for you and the area, not for the company. It limits their obligation to you.

On the other hand, if you found the job before you moved - either on your own or through a recruiter - chances are the company is paying relocation. Or if they aren’t, then you knew that before you applied but went forward with the process anyway. You then have the ability to negotiate before you move, and if it doesn’t come down to what you need or are willing to accept, you haven’t pulled up stakes to find that out.

In any case, once you and your new company have come to an agreement on how they’ll assist you, in what form, and what the amount is, get it in writing.

Your research shouldn’t be limited to just salary considerations. Make sure you have a feel of the place. If you’re used to a big sophisticated city and move to Topeka, KS, you might feel very stifled after a few months - unless you hated the big city and wanted something more - provincial.

I stayed in Atlanta a year. I couldn’t stand it because it was so much like Dallas you could hardly tell the difference. And after Santa Fe, which was very eclectic, spiritual, and new age-y, Atlanta made me want to scream. Why I moved there in the first place is an entirely different subject - I’d intended to go to Nashville. But I digress!

The flip side of moving to a more expensive area is, of course, moving to one with a lower cost of living. There’s only one consideration when that happens: you’ll have to get your ego out of the way because you’ll be taking a cut in pay. There’s no way you can justify a lateral. If you’ve done your research, then you’ll know if what you’re being offered is fair AND if - percentage wise - it’s comparable to what you were making in your previous location.

Moving is a hassle. In my younger years, I did it all over Dallas with alarming frequency. Then in five years - between 1993 and 1998 - I moved three times: Dallas to Santa Fe to Atlanta to Connecticut. I had moved so often the thought of deciding what goes and what doesn’t, and unpacking and arranging one more time brought on an immediate migraine.

My point is, do your homework. Know the finances, know the culture, know the people. Know why you want to move there and if that place will take care of whatever it is you need and satisfy the reasons you want to move. Because sometimes it’s too easy to be seduced by a new location, a new job, a new start, and it’s easy to become overly optimistic and put blinders on.

You don’t want to get there and find you don’t like it, because not only will that quite possibly entail another move, but you’ll screw up your resume and your career track.

In any case, when you change jobs within your same city, it’s not always necessary to negotiate, and I never advocate negotiating for the sake of negotiating. But when you move to another city you must absolutely inquire about what they’ll support you in and what they won’t, so that if it’s not acceptable to you, you can begin to negotiate. But if you haven’t done your research, it’s tough to make a case for what you’ll need.

by Judi Perkins

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