Working the Second Job

Posted by Gwen on October 19, 2011

This is a guest post from Gwen in Ontario, who is 39 years old with a grown daughter, and is trying to rebuild her retirement dream just 20 years too late for early retirement.

Just after I signed for my mortgage, I ran into a serious cash flow problem. Some of my expenses went up (such as car insurance) that I didn’t expect when I was figuring out if I could afford to buy my condo.  I had already put in a request for a salary review and was waiting for the outcome of that. In the interim, my net pay covered my monthly bills not including food or any other “luxuries”. So I did the only thing I could think of to solve the problem, I took a second job.

In my day job, I rarely talk to the public, instead I deal with paper and numbers. In my “second” job, I’m on the front lines, customer service at a sod farm. The increase in hours that I worked and the money stress left me utterly exhausted.  This 40 year old body cannot handle 65 hour weeks like it could when it was 20. Sunday was my day off. I slept, ate, rested, napped, any thing to recharge my batteries for another long week. I got through it by reminding myself that it was short term, and by watching my emergency fund get replenished.

Being a seasonal business, the hours they needed me to work decreased at the end of June. I worked for 6 hours on Saturdays, and no evenings during the week. I cannot say I was disappointed. My main job income had been increased (in my industry we are lucky if we get an increase once every 5 years).  While I still have to watch every dollar, if I’m frugal with groceries, I can put extra payments on my debt, and not panic when I discover an unexpected expense (more on plumbing problems later).

At the end of September, the second job didn’t need me at all any more, and has asked if I’ll come back next year. This got me thinking about other times I’ve done the two job life, and the differences between then and now.

A plan needs to be in place. Previously when I picked up a second job, I found we would eat restaurant or store prepared food more, we would fight more about chores not getting done, and I always felt like I needed a holiday after I stopped (get rested, or rewarded for my efforts). But there was never any “more” money in the bank at the end to pay for that holiday, or for anything else.

This time, there was no “extras”. No eating out or “day-vacations”. The boyfriend helped wherever he could, whether it was making meals, doing my home chores for me, and generally making sure that I could put my full attention and energy to making that extra money, and keeping it. I feel that having a plan and support are crucial to the success of working extra to help get ahead.

Will I do the second job again next spring? I think I will (providing my support is there again), but I will definitely not work quite as many hours, maybe just Saturdays and 3 nights a week.

Have you worked a second job? Any tips to help make it successful?

The Six Figure Income Myth

Posted by Canadian Dream on August 25, 2011

As I was looking back at an older post over at Give Me Back My Five Bucks about making over $100,000/year would mean you are successful, it occurred to me that idea is more common that I would give it credit for.  If you do a few Google searches you can see that idea is still somewhat common from its start in the 1980′s, but some people are questioning how far that money will take you now (for example see here).

The reality is $100,000 in savings to me is much more impressive than $100,000/year income as the latter doesn’t tell me a damn thing about your spending habits.  Income levels only really matter when you compare it back to expenses, without that second piece of information telling me how you earn is a useless bit of data.  I’m much more impressed if you earn only $50,000/year and save half of that, than someone who saves half of their $100,000/year income, since I understand how at higher incomes it is easier to save more.

Also speaking from experience my combined income (from all my jobs) is currently kissing that threshold and frankly it is more of a pain in the ass than anything.  Why? In a word: taxes.  In a progressive tax system like Canada’s you end up paying more tax when you make more income so by earning $100,000/year you’ve put a big target on your back that says to the government: bleed me dry of my money.  So while earning more does have the potential to help you reach your goals faster you do spend a lot more time considering the tax implications of your decisions.  For example, maxing out my RRSP contributions gets a lot more important when you are at a 40% marginal tax rate.

This isn’t to say that earning more is a bad thing, it just complicates matters, at least in my experience.  A more useful measure of success depends largely on what you want to do with your life.  Money is all well and good, but you don’t need to define your success in life by it.  I would rather know that I’m happy most of the time at a job I like than a large income.  Does that mean your success is any less because you use a subjective measure?  No, it doesn’t change the feeling of pride that comes from meeting a goal.

In the end, don’t fall for the six figure income myth as being success unless you want it to mean something to you.  Pick your own measures of success regardless of how odd they may be and strive towards those.  Life is too short to chase other people’s dreams.

So have you ever made six figure income? If so, did it change anything or not?  If you have never made that income, do you want to earn that much and why?