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?"
Assuming I'm in the US... no way. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want to retire early, get into something that pays really really well. Then hedge your risk by moving a chunk of your wealth out of dollar denominated assets. If you're smart enough to be an engineer (or even an IT generalist) then you're smart enough to be a successful stock broker or banker (think leveraged buy outs).
My point is that the risks we all face are great enough that I wouldn't be willing to sell the prime of my life to a second employer unless I was damn sure that my retirement was going to be comfortable and satisfying (Viagra gets expensive over 20-30 years, yo).
Not quite, but consider this (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not the Whole Story (Score:2, Interesting)
You make it sound hard (Score:3, Interesting)
I eat in (good) restaurants twice a week, and holiday overseas for a month every two years.
I don't intend on retiring since I enjoy my job, but I could retire tomorrow just on the income from my shares. It took 10 years to do this, once I decided on a financial plan, and that decade includes losing a lot of money in the tech-wreck.
Re:Low Salary?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's take a differant county in Nevada then. Washoe County where I happen to live pays its new teachers $29k this year. Our median household income in 2000 was $40k and family income $45k. This has actually gone up quite a bit in the last five years due in part to the housing boom and an increase in companies moving here bringing an influx of high paying white collar jobs. However, the housing boom has also driven the pricing for all types of housing up. While you may be able to search and find many apartments in the area for under $700, 99.9% of them will be section 8 housing and a teacher making $29k will not qualify to live there. The majority of apartmetns in Reno run around $850-1250. Public transportation here is very poor so it is almost a necessity to have a car. We also have high insurance rates so your estimates are off there as well. There is no income tax which is a benefit, only sales and property taxes. A recent survey done by the University of Nevada Reno found that it was necessary for individuals to earn at least $35k to live comfortably in the area. I can't find the link to it any more, I was present at the University when the results were discussed so am going from memory.
Having kids doesn't imply a second income, maybe 20 or 40 years ago, but not in this day and age.
Due to budget cuts many/most teachers have to dip into thier salaries to pay for supplies for their classrooms. I'm fairly certain this is happening all over the county and not just in Nevada.
Teachers are required to continue thier educations. This means for most of them taking graduate credits at the university though for some certifications or endorsments they may be undergraduate credits. This also has to come from their salaries.
While you didn't say this, most people keep pointing it out. Teachers only work 9-10 months of the year
Teachers do typically only work for the school district for 9 to 10 months of the year. They also typically have their salaries paid out over 12 months (it's an option in most districts). They however often work much more than 40 hours per week. Here in Washoe teachers are required to be on the campus for 8 hours per day. The children of course aren't there for the whole time. That gives a prep period in the morning and afternoon typically. A significant amount of teachers still have to take work home with them due to other factors. After school programs, tutoring, detentions, duties, other activities required and not eat into prep time. This means that lesson plan creation, and paper grading gets done at home. My wife for example works on average 75 hours per week. Many teachers work second jobs during the summer to supplement their incomes. With an increase in the number of schools on year round schedules to help fight over crowding this is no longer an option. School is in session for two to three months, there is a three week break, and then they are back to school. Very few places will hire someone that is only available for three weeks.
Besides, who said teachers *should* make more than 1/2 of all wage earners?
I don't think anyone is trying to say that teachers should make more than half of all wage earners (even though that's not what a median is). However, why is that so many people think that teachers are over paid? We are talking about the education of our children and the future of the country. Teachers should be held to a very high standard due to the job that they have. They should be given the resources to do that job. Unfortunately in this country being educated isn't nearly as highly valued as being able to dunk a basketball or hit a home run. Teachers get a bad rap, and certainly a number of them deserve it, but as a whole in the US we have decided to ask them to accomplish their tasks with little to no resources. We allow administrators to waste funds, we have allowed teachers unions to gain power and so the lazy and incapable still have their jobs. We allow those who have no backgrounds in education to design the legislation and rules that teachers must work by. The system is broken and salaries are just a small part of that.
It Doesn't Work That Way (Score:4, Interesting)
Double your salary? This isn't possible for any sort of professional career that I know of. Most careers that provide any sort of decent income take more than 40 hours a week.
The only "get another job, double your income" kind of positions I can think of would be menial jobs. If you're making $6/hour putting in 20-30 hours/week at Burger King then yeah, I'm sure you could do another 20-30 hours a week at another burger joint. But that's not the kind of money you can retire on. I mean, you can barely live on that.
The teacher in the article isn't retiring early either, by the sound of it. And she's sure not doubling her money. Sounds like she's supplementing her teaching income by working other jobs just to make ends meet and provide for her kid.
Even if this was possible, that's no way to live. Wasting the prime years of your life working sunup to sundown is not a ticket to happiness.
Ask your financial advisor (Score:2, Interesting)
Again, you're better off asking your financial advisor and consulting with you're family than asking the
Re:I stopped when I read this gem (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know what you've been hauling, but I've packed a ton of equipment into "family" sized sedans and had room to spare.
Re:A Little Detail Called Retirement Savings (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, though. I admire the way you're living, and your ability to opt out of the overwork-to-overconsume treadmill. Most people end up getting into a house bigger than they can afford, and spend their whole lives busting ass to afford the house, so that they can say their houses are as big as the neighbor's houses. The neighbors, in turn, are spending their whole lives busting ass to pay off houses they can't afford either. But the pressure to "keep up with the Joneses" disappears once you stop seeing it as a competition.
Of course, this rat-race mentality leads to bigger and bigger houses, which makes the market unaffordable for everyone, even those who only want a place to live, rather than a status symbol. This glut of overbuilt housing isn't going away, and there are psychological and economic reasons for thinking that this housing bubble may never really "pop". So one option I never really see mentioned: splitting a house with another family. Most suburban houses are filled with crap of marginal utility, as well as copies of stuff their neighbors have. Combine households, and much of the stuff you own becomes redundant.
Other advantages: Shopping for groceries and cooking for eight doesn't take nearly twice the time of doing it for four. Only one lawn to mow. Kids have greater access to playmates and homework help. If both of you are two car families, there are probably ways to do without the fourth car. One Internet connection with twice the bandwidth is much cheaper than two separate connections. You can drop one of your cable subscriptions (but heck, why not drop both?).
Of course, there are downsides. The number of relationships to be managed goes up drastically. People may feel crowded in (though a lot of these new houses are positively huge). Splitting up the household could be messy if things go sour. But real estate has long since departed the realm of affordability for most people, especially in areas that don't require an hour or so of commuting to work. This is driving all sorts of non-American-Dream behavior, like the sudden rise in adults living with their parents. So I think that, as time goes on, more people will be considering shared living arrangements.