How to survive in the USA
Article was written by non-native speaker. There can be some mistakes in the text. Be attentive!
Visiting different countries is always interesting and tempting. But if you are lucky to go to the United States you should read this article for sure, because it can help you in different situations. If you are planning to visit or to work in the USA this article is exactly for you.
What is the most important in the US? Place to stay. And it’s not a joke. If you found a nice place to stay you might think you’re lucky one, because it’s not that easy to do. And you should think about before planning your trip. First you need to know where you are going to stay during first days. Use internet and find if there’s nice hostels in your city.
Let me tell you some words about hostel. It’s really cheap and sometimes nice place to stay for a couple of days. Usually you pay around 25-30$ for night which is not expensive for the US. The main problem
During your stay in hostel you can concentrate on finding a house or an apartment. Most Americans pay around 700$ for the rent and 150-200$ for the utilities. Plus you need to pay security deposit and application fee. It’s not difficult to calculate that you need about 2000$ just too move in. But it’s very expensive, and sometimes you can not have such sum of money.
So I’ll show you how you can have a place to stay for let’s say 200$ a month. You can start with the hostel where you stay. Talk to people and find out if someone is looking for roommate. Use internet, there are a bunch of different sites where you can find roommates. Students from different countries always need roommates. Usually they rent big apartment or a house so they will definitely will accept you, and your monthly rent will be no more the 200$ and you don’t have to worry about bills.
But if student life is too noisy for you and you want to have a private room you can also search in internet for rooms. I personally think that it’s nice way of saving too. Usually modest room will cost you 400-450$ including utilities. You’ll have private room and a shared bathroom. Depending how big is the house there could be 3 or 4 other people which is pretty nice. You’ll always have somebody to talk with and a quiet place if you tired.
So now you have a place you can call home. Now let’s try to find a job. If you are thinking that you can get well paid job just because you have a degree you are seriously wrong. If you want to have well paid job you should graduate at least from American or Canadian university. If you don’t have such paper all you can think about are local restaurants and hotels. This is two places where foreign work force is welcomed.
But don’t get worried even in such places you can make 200-300$ per shift. Find out wich restaurant is the busiest one. It’s more likely that you’ll be hired there and you’ll be able to make more money there. What position to choose? I would recommend you server and busser. The first serves tables second one cleans them and sets them up. Server usually gets 2$ an hour plus tips and busser gets 5-8$ plus tips. So you can see if you work 10 hours a day you can easily make 150-200$. During the weekends and holidays you can double your income.
This was just an example how you can make some money. In fact there are a bunch of different places where you can go and work. Talk to your new friends, who knows maybe they can help you in that better than any website or local newspaper.
Also let me tell you about system of transportation. American cities are very large. It’s good if in your city there’s wide public transportation but sometimes you can get from point A to point B only by you car. So finding job or apartment don’t forget that it’s going to be the most frequent route for you. And sometime buying bike from pawn shop for 50$ could not only improve your health but your budget too.
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