Two Jobs and Retire Early? 205
70_hours_week wonders: "A Survey of teachers in a Nevada school district indicate that 40% have a second job. Do you have a second job? Assume you are 30 and since you like to save your money you could semi-retire by age 50. Now, what if you could nearly double your salary working a second job and that meant you could semi-retire at age 40. Would you do it?"
NO! (Score:5, Insightful)
A Little Detail Called Retirement Savings (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, I'm not impressed by that survey... I'd bet that the vast majority of those jobs are small fast-food-joint type affairs where they spend 10 or 20 hours a week at most, as a way to get some extra spending money. We've got several people who do that where I work. Working two full-time jobs would be ridiculous.
Besides, if anyone actually had two full-time jobs, they wouldn't likely have time to read Slashdot now, would they?
Reality check (Score:4, Insightful)
Flamebate Summary (Score:1, Insightful)
Faulty premise (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Most good jobs require SOME non-standard time. It happens to me about three times a year where I pull an all nighter. I get comped for it, but if I had a second job, I'd be unable to meet the first's requirements.
2) Two jobs paying equivilant will not double your take home income. Taxes go up as you earn more, on federal and state, and often local level.
3) Part of being able to retirn in 20 years depends on the growth of money, and the miracle of compound interest. Two jobs might bring it down 20-40 percent, depending on growth rates, and original time frame, but will NOT cut it in half. Also remember that you will need some kind of medical coverage. Your $ required to retire will actually go up the early you retire.
4) If you work eighty plus hours per week for ten years, you will be losing the prime part of your life. I would not give up a decade of my life, and miss raising my kids for a million a year. Not worth it.
Re:A Little Detail Called Retirement Savings (Score:5, Insightful)
I work forty hours per week. My wife stays home with the kids. My house will be paid off after nine years of mortgage payments. I don't need to keep up with the Jonses. I bought a house that was about one year's gross income (less now)... a fixer upper, but it has also been fun learning to do things. We share a car. Used. Buddy is a mechanic on a car lot... got me a great deal for about half of blue book.
I don't mind working, but don't want to HAVE to work. When I hit fifty, I want to be able to work volunteer, and not have to worry about a paycheck. It means a slightly smaller lifestyle than most of my friends, but frankly when I see a BMW, I am thinking "big money wasted".
Now, would I work eighty hours to make it happen at 40 instead of 50? Nope. Life is too precious, and there is always the law of diminishing returns. I do enjoy my job, but that would cease if it became eighty.
Like anything in life it is about trade offs and moderation.
Mod Parent Down... oops, it's the post (Score:5, Insightful)
mod up, not down! (Score:2, Insightful)
I stopped when I read this gem (Score:5, Insightful)
So let me get this straight, you drive an expensive gas guzzler then give me some boo-hoo story about how you have to work 2 jobs? Maybe if you would drive something PRACTICAL then you could save money and not have to work another job.....
Living in Germany and Japan opened my eyes, Americans just consume too god damn much. I have become a minimalist and love every minute of it. My only guilty pleasure is travel, but I spend less on travel each year than most people spend on gas for their SUVs.
Need more facts about her balance sheet. (Score:4, Insightful)
That said, why isn't it possible for her to just work one job with a single child? She makes between $33k and $44k per year from teaching. It may not be a life of luxury, but it should be possible without having to work two jobs.
Ann Marie Perone's SUV ...
Maybe a greater awareness of the amount of resources she is consuming and a reevaluation of what is necessary in her life is required.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever you do, enjoy it. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you work in a job doing what you love, you can mostly forget even thinking about retirement, and leave it as a contingency for when your powers start failing. Granted, one must work in joyless jobs sometimes before getting into a career that matches the promptings of your heart. In that case, work as many jobs as needed to get past that point. Just remember that your goal is not to not have to work, but to reach a plateau where your work suits you.
IMHO life is not about getting to a finish line earliest, but rather about the fruit your presence here produces. It has been noted elsewhere that a tree that produces no fruit is only suitable for the fire.
Not all jobs are equal (Score:3, Insightful)
Taxes (Score:3, Insightful)
Hold on a second (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, no... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Whatever you do, enjoy it. (Score:4, Insightful)
On the topic of the post rather than the article, (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that for a well educated, technically skilled, first world people, there are basically three optimal strategies one can choose in finding work:
1 - Find a job that you love, so that working itself makes you happy, where happiness may include the feeling that you've accomplished something worthwhile, even if the day to day work isn't pleasant. (eg. the physicist or aid worker options)
2 - Find a job that requires minimum effort and time and allows you to spend most of your time doing things that make you happy. (the writer who's also a security guard option)
3 - Find a job that sucks but allows you to make a lot of money, then retire early and spend the rest of your life doing things that make you happy. (the investment banker turned surfer option.)
I'd argue that one is best served by pursuing any of these three strategies with intensity. Compromises are sure to sink you: taking a job that you only mostly hate in order to make enough money to retire a few years earlier buys you nothing; finding a job that requires just enough effort to leave you feeling tired at the end of the day but doesn't either give you enough money to retire early or a feeling of satisfaction puts you in the same miserable boat as most other American white collar workers.
To that end, if you choose to run with option #3, you're better off stacking on as many jobs as you can handle without physical breakdown. The off hours you sacrifice will be low quality anyway.
The downside, of course, is that option #3 involves banking your healthiest, most active years on the promise of free time in the future. If your idea of a good time involves seeing a lot of theater and learning how to paint, and if you aren't obviously a candidate for early health problems, and if you believe the economy will continue to value the medium in which you've banked your savings, then it may well be a safe bet. On the other hand, if your idea of a good time involved climbing mountains, going to protests, and fucking, you might be better off choosing an alternative strategy.
My own policy has been to go after #1. So far, I've no complaints. But, it sure helps that what I happen to enjoy also pays enough to live on.
Re:Low Salary?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Keep trying to convince people that they should lower their standard of living to conform to your beliefs though. A few stupid souls might buy into your newsletter.
you should always have more than one income... (Score:1, Insightful)
Anything weird happens then, and it most likely will,and you only have one job, poof, you got the exact same bills with NO income, whereas with two jobs, you at least got the "other" income to tide you over, along with savings, etc..And I don't mean your spouse working as the second job, I mean every individual. It doesn't need to be two full timers, but anything completely different for a secondary job, do NOT get it in the same industry as your primary job. I could go into this why I say this but you should be smart enough to figure that one out.
Take it from an older dude who's gotten bitten a few times now by those gross pig's "globalization" congame (I kid thee not, three times now!), always have at least two *widely different types of jobs*, and preferably at least one other source of income besides that, even if it's just an active eBay sales page or something, anything at all. And I don't care how much you make from your primary income, always have a second job, even just a small part timer, and get the home and car paid off! Those are typically the two biggest bills, there is NO reason to pay on those things every single month of your life forever and ever outside of laziness or greed. Calculate what a truthful "living within your means" level is, not "the very utmost possible you can afford right today", I mean a real hard nosed pay attention to money matters level, then subtract 20% from that figure, and live at *that* new level, that 20% is your cushion, and you WILL need it some time. Do NOT put yourself into perpetual debt for these globalist goons, even though that is exactly what they want you to do, by such things as pushing the real estate bubble and the earlier dot bomb stock shilling. Recognize when you are being offered magic beans for the cow. Easy credit is even easier complete disaster.
And given such weird things now as "terrorist" attacks (and government emergency orders and various fascist edict nonsense) and enrons and exxon scams and bird flu and who knows what could happen, it is prudent to always keep several months food supplies on hand and little caches of this or that day to day mundane supplies. I am not kidding. Ever been through a hurricane or ice storm and be down for a long time and run out of TP? Weird stuff like that. Do you have a generator? If you are reading this I assume you are a geek who REALLY needs electricity supply-so-deal with having a guaranteed supply. It will do you no harm whatsoever, none, and it is easy enough to do at any budget level.
Just take that concept and run with it, work out some threat scenarios and mitigation plans in ADVANCE of it happening, based on your locale and typical weird crap that might happen in your area, then add in a-typical weird crap, like bird flu outbreak, currency collapse, big expandedwar in middle east knocking oil by the barrel to over a hundred bucks, stuff like that. Two jobs plus an additional little income plus your tangible "cushion" of cash/food/household supplies, etc is a good idea..If you can see the reasons for backing up your data, don't neglect to backup the other important stuff in your life as well.
There's piece of paper insurance, then *real* insurance, it's nice to have both.
Relying on social security? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would you even consider living off the government to be a form of retirement? That's not returement, that's called welfare. Retirement is when you save enough money to be able to take care of yourself with no intervention from anyone, and it's perfectly reasonable and possible to do so much earlier in life than people traditionally do. I think a lot of people fourty and under have no illusions that we will see a dime from that money pit called Social Security.
Add to that the fact that retirement for a lot of people means "do whatever work I like for as little as I like" and you don't even nessecarily have to save up enough to last forever, just to allow you enough finanacial freedom to do what you love. Of course it's even better if you are saving for more advanced retrirement while you do what you love...
Re:NO! (Score:5, Insightful)
I belive that the starting salar is $24k with a masters. While a significant portion of the summer is vacation (nothing close to all of it), the hours during the year tend to exceed forty per week.
Even five years ago, this was a relatively inexpensive place to live. That is no longer true, with the median house price flirting with $300k. We've gone from well under to well over. Auto insurance is also outrageous, due to the bad drivers from around the country (which is far worse than bad local driving habits, which are at least expected by other drivers).
Utilities are fairly mild in winter (though it's harsh by California standards
These teachers aren't taking second jobs for extra money, but to survive.
Even if it were for extra money, it wouldn't come close to doubling your income. You use up all of your exemptions and deductions on the first job, and pay a higher tax bracket on the second.
hawk
Change your class instead (Score:4, Insightful)
Attempting to survive on those miserable salaries leads to a miserable educational experience for the students. That's why we wind up with energetic young teachers become disillusioned and on the picket lines in a fairly short order. The best teachers whom I had the pleasure to learn from could afford to teach for free. Poor teachers really made my time in school miserable. The correlation was simply too direct not to notice it.
Make your money in a successful career, then become a teacher. That will allow you to inspire students to break free of the boundaries of paycheck to paycheck lifestyle. Your job is to teach them to be successful. That does not mean preparing them to follow corporate orders.
Instead of that second job, figure out how to set aside 10-20K by living very frugally initially and start investing in things that generate real returns, such as REITs for example. Let your friends laugh at you that you have an older car (and no payments) and a tiny apartment for a couple of years. Once you have 10-20K, you can start to make real money by increasing your wealth through investments. Yes this approach does work. It took us a couple of years before we started seeing real returns on that initial sacrifice. And yes it does take a lot of time that is consistent with having a second job.
I love to teach, but I am not yet at the point where I would be comfortable to essentially retire to volunteer as a teacher for a lousy 30K.
Re:NO! (Score:5, Insightful)
You are fucking kidding. Teachers spend a signficant amount of time outside that 8-3.30 working: preparing lessons, marking, running extracurriculars.
8-3.30? Yeah, you go ahead and believe that if it makes you feel better about the fact that these people are slaving away on a subsistence wage for the benefit of your children, but it ain't true.
Maybe you should try asking a teacher what the job's like once in a while, instead of believing everything you're fed by rich talk-show hosts who've never done an honest day's work in their life and who have gotten fat by criticising the people who actually go out there and work to keep our society great.
Re:Faulty premise (Score:3, Insightful)
Compounding shows that he will NOT halve the time. For example, if he puts 1,000 per month away (grow by inflation) at a rate of 5% + inflation, it will take him 34 years. Double it to 2,000 per month and it still takes 23 years. A far cry from halving the time to retirement. In fact, to get it to halve, he would have to go up to around 3,700 per month.
Your numbers may vary based on the assumptions you use, but the principle remains.
Why have lifeguards either? (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at the history of social security. It wasn't a few more bucks for affluent middle-class retirees, it was keep poor older Americans (the vast majority) from starving to death or freezing to death in the winter. This isn't hyperbole, and a generation earlier the idea that many working people could actually live that long (vs. dying from illness or injury on the job) would have been ludicrious.
They should have saved? Please... this was an era where the simplest things we take for granted (e.g., getting some meat daily) would have been unimaginable. And even if they did managed to save a little... let's just say that banks today have those "Insured by the FDIC" signs on their front door for a reason!
Look at the modern reality of social security. I pay social security... and I know that it goes straight into my parent's pocket. A few years ago four immediate members of my family were retired. I know that they all worked hard their entire lives (my father, in his 80s, still has a part-time job!) and the extra money went into providing the kids with an education. Think I begrudge them today? Think that society at large would have been better off with another working class drone instead of college-educated information workers?
Finally, if you really insist on calling social security "welfare", then I'll insist that public schools are also "welfare" for the irresponsible people who couldn't keep it in their pants until they could afford to pay the entire cost of their kid's education. I'm not just talking about K-12 schools either -- I'm including government-backed student loans, taxpayer funded state universities, etc.
Why do I mention this? Tell me about yourself. How much "welfare" have you received in your education? In current numbers I doubt it was less than $100k. When will you repay it?
(P.S., I don't begrudge helping to pay for the education of other people's kids. That 6th grader may be the one who saves me from a fire in 20 years, and the college freshman may be the one who saves my spouse's life in 25 years.)
(P.P.S., the reason for the subject line is that a "drown the baby" republican's proposed budget cuts for a city recently came to light. (Or maybe it's just an urban legend, who knows?) Prominent on the list of cuts was cutting lifeguards at public pools... if not closing them outright. (Let them pay for country clubs.) Reducing hours at public libraries. Things that make a big difference for working people look at you like you're crazy when you suggest they should put money into savings instead of their kids' bellies.)
Re:Low Salary?? (Score:2, Insightful)
In most places you don't need your degree to be in education or the field you plan to teach in order to be a teacher. You can get the job without the education, and you don't get rewarded for having it because everybody is paid the same (thanks, teacher's union!), so it's an uneducated position.
This is utter bull. Have you heard of No Child Left Behind? There are so many requirements and qualifications you have to meet that even with my diploma from fucking MIT I can't teach science without paying hundreds of dollars to take qualifying exams. Also, additional college credits and degrees raise you on the pay scale - it's not simply determined by how many years you have put in.
In most places you, as a teacher, are not held accountable for the success of your students. You're not required to do your job well, and since nobody knows you suck, there's no consequence for failure.
Teaching is a hard enough job when you do it well. If you are a failure, you know it every day and you spend your nights sleepless, trying to think of some way to do better.
Imagine how much less our education system would cost us if we only had *good* teachers, and we paid them *very well*. Yes, I said *less*.
Sounds like you're applying "The Mythical Man-Month" outside of coding. Let's say we follow your idea. Let's get rid of four adequate upper elementary teachers. Here in California, we've got class sizes around 30 at that age. Replace those four teachers with one of your highly paid "good" teachers, at twice the salary (starting salaries are $39K... so $78K which is more livable in Silicon Valley but not wealthy by any means) but four times the number of kids. Sure, you've cut salaries in half, but one teacher can't teach 120 students all day long as well as four. Individual time with the teacher is crucial, particularly for students who are behind.
The qualifications for substitute teachers in many areas are pretty easy, around here all you need is a college degree and a three hour high school difficulty exam. Why don't you get your sub permit and see just how hard teaching is before you talk like you know something about it?
Like pearls for a baboon (Score:4, Insightful)
If you sacrifice interest in music or learning a new language or falling in love to be able to retire by 50 then you're going to end up with a boring brain that's been neglected for 30 years and has no developed appreciation for the finer things in life. Quite simply, you'll suck. Yeah your money might let you buy bigger toys but you'll always have a quiet nagging knowledge that all all your flashy possessions are really just trinkets.
It's a sweeping generality, but our society is fixated on stop-gap measures that our aimed at making us feel okay with leading unbalanced and/or pointless lives. From prozac to the latest pulp spirituality (The Power of Now, for example) we're constantly seeking to glaze over a problem we refuse to define. It ain't easy being alive but if you blend in as much beauty as you can and indulge yourself in pursuits beyond what makes you some scratch you'll find the ride goes a lot easier.
Re:I stopped when I read this gem (Score:3, Insightful)
It's been 50+ years since our governments illegally holed up people and treated them badly enough to make them kill themselves.