Slashdot Mirror
Two Jobs and Retire Early?
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?"
Less money, but more family time is a value choice that my wife and I decided on before we got engaged.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Retirement is that milestone in your life where you (probably) have enough money earned and saved that you can live off said savings for the remainder of your life. Considering that (1) life expectancy is increasing and there's the possibility of life extension treatments on the horizon, and (2) the national budget is in the toilet (at least in the USA) with grim prospects for the long-range viability of Social Security... I think it's ludicrous to think about early retirement at all. Unless you're a serious workaholic, the old adage "slow and steady wins the race" still applies!
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?
I suspect any two jobs so cleanly compartmentalized that you can do both adequately are likely to skew toward mundane work, unlikely to pay enough (individually or together) to support retirement by age 40 with any kind of lifestyle you'd want yourself or your family to have. I would guess most people working two (or more) jobs aren't ambitious so much as limited by their options and life circumstances, and doing that work to support families, service debt, etc.
Even assuming you can get two jobs paying the same, consider:
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.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Bad summary. The article doesn't discuss people working multiple jobs to retire early, it's discussing a school district that pays its starting teachers so low that the teachers can't make ends meet. Unsurprisingly, the district has more than one thousand openings unfilled.
Worst "summary" ever.
Ann Marie Perone's SUV is like her second home.
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.
Monstar L
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 based on user account deletion
As one who is approaching retirement and could probably retire today, I will say that AFAICT the joys of retirement are over-rated.
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.
In particular, not all jobs are equal in time/effort/stress/pay. Job A could be the equivalent of 2 Job Bs.
In the US the tax system is 'progressive'. Thus your marginal tax rate will go up much faster than your income increases from your second job. Also savings for early retirement would have to take into account a longer period of retirement, inflation, and the incrasing cost of (individual) health insurance as you grow older (increasing faster than inflation). Bottom line - with two jobs you could retire early - but not as early as you might think. Personally, I'd rather take a more balanced approach than become a victim of karoshi.
[Insert pithy quote here]
You have to realize that most people who are able to retire in their 60s have either a pension or good investments. Those that are able to retire sooner have been really smart about their money, paid off their mortage early and made a conscious effort to live on cash alone. The problem with most people is that they look at financing vehicles and credit cards as a way of life, just like the electric and phone bill. The people who do retire comfortably are the ones that save and invest what would have otherwise been spent on interest and more expensive, unneeded material things. The more time you have money earning interest, the better it is, but investing takes time. Bringing in more money alone won't get you to retirement. Time, steady income and smart spending/saving is what gets you to retirement.
I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about this (although admittedly most of it was spent in the company of other drunken academics.)
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.
Actually, yea, it is low. It would be what, all of 44K if it was a 12 month salary? That's still below median.
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.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Considering that (1) life expectancy is increasing and there's the possibility of life extension treatments on the horizon, and (2) the national budget is in the toilet (at least in the USA) with grim prospects for the long-range viability of Social Security... I think it's ludicrous to think about early retirement at all.
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...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You should become a teacher only when you can afford to do so. It's a volunteer position that has a modest salary along with substantial time requirements and a not so modest budget for out of pocket expenses.
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.
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
I'm getting damn tired of this libertarian crap that would demand you throw a heavy stone at a drowning swimmer lest one penny be wasted on an "idle" lifeguard.
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.)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I am a new teacher. Like any job, experience helps, and keeping our talented veteran teachers is getting harder and harder with students with parents like you.
... That makes teaching an *unskilled* position (I am not saying all teachers are unskilled, so hold off those flames... I'm saying you can become a teacher with no skill whatsoever). Why should it pay like a skilled position without the reqs?
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?
I think one fundamental point to this debate that is consistently overlooked is the staging of your development. You simply can't bust your ass for 20 years, retire early, and then suddenly be a rounded, interesting, meaningful human. Becoming a worthwhile homo sapien is like growing a tree.. it's a life-long process that requires ongoing effort if the final result, the adult tree, is going to be an appreciable specimen.
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.
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"