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?"
Early retirement is not ludicrous. I started a plan to allow me to retire at 45 when I was 25. I am now 33 and could still make the target... worst case is I will be 50 barring something unforseen.
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.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
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.
the typical work day is less than 8 hours (8 - 3:30 is in the contract)
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.