- "Kevin Kipler spends his days managing corporate flights and military jets at Bangor International Airport. At night, the 41-year-old father listens to gift orders in a cubicle at L.L. Bean, where he recently took on a seasonal job as a quality control coach.Sometimes, during his 15-hour days, he forgets which job he's at, mistakenly calling people passengers instead of customers."
My thoughts: I work a total of 80 hours per week, and these are paid hours at two different full time jobs. My day time job is fixed at Monday to Friday 8 am - 4 pm, but my graveyard shift rotates every two months. I can either work Monday to Friday 8 pm - 4 am or Saturday to Wednesday 8 pm - 4 am, depending on the rotation. If you think about this for a moment, you would know that I am better off working Saturday to Wednesday at my graveyard job, because I can get more sleep. Working Monday to Friday at both jobs is painful, not work wise ,but body wise. I truly understand what it's like to be a zombie by Friday and making silly mistakes. Most of my mistakes involve public transportation.
1) Driving the car to work, and then taking the bus home, because I forgot that I drove the car to work.
2) Trying to open a door for 10 minutes at a bus stop before seeing the sign "Electrical Room". I thought it would lead to the escalator.
3) Falling asleep on the sky train and missing my stop....several times. I am just happy that I have not fallen asleep driving.
4) Forgetting to take the change after buying a bus ticket....this can get costly.
- "Tina Martin, a radio journalist who recently took a second job five days a week as a customer service representative for Dancing Deer Baking Co., leaves her 95.9 FM night reporting stint at 2 a.m. She sleeps a few hours, arrives at the Boston cookie company by 9 a.m., works an eight-hour shift, and then heads back to the radio station at 6 p.m.Martin, 31, usually collapses by Friday night, but she can earn more than $500 a week at Dancing Deer. She plans to use the money to pad her holiday budget and avoid overspending like she did last year."
My thoughts: Oh my god...she is going to blow it on holidays.
There is something strange about working two jobs to pay for better holidays. On average, I get about 2-4 hours of sleep per day on Monday-Friday rotations, and I am sacrificing for my retirement fund. I can not imaging doing the same just to have a good time. Typically, an exotic holiday costs my fiancé and I approximately $1500 CDN total for two weeks. For example, we went to Belize and British Virgin Islands last September, and that was our total. What cost the most were the airline tickets from L.A to Cancun at $350 CDN each. After that, we took the Mexican "luxury" bus to Belize city. The bus ride was $30 CND each. We camped all the time and ate at local diners. It was a great trip considering that one of our campsites was beach front.
- "LaDawna McLeish, 27, knows she makes a good salary -- more than $75,000 annually as a software engineer. But she needed a second job to pay for her dream wedding -- including a dress that costs upward of $1,000 and serving guests lobster and steak -- while still making her $2,000 monthly mortgage payments."
My thoughts: Who are these people? Lobsters and steak? My fiancé and I are working on our wedding details, and we want the wedding to be an investment, not
something that will put us into debt. Through careful planning and a bit of extra work, we can plan a reasonably priced wedding and make a profit from cash gifts (the only form of gift we will accept).
Also, $75,000 annually? She really needs to invest her money better.
So, by the end of the article, I realized that these people are not quite like me.
Me: Job 1 = $62,000 annually Job 2 = 35,000 annually.
Fiancé: Job 1 = $82,000 annually Job 2 = $32,000 annually.
We have been extremely lucky with the jobs we have. I barely do anything at my graveyard job. In fact, we can finish the work in 2 hours, and have 6 hours to watch TV, surf the net, or in my case, work on side projects. My work is due on a daily basis, so after it's done, there is nothing else to do. I figure that I am actually making more than $35,000 since I am using the time to make even more money. My fiancé’s second job is at a restaurant, and the environment is great, and he would never think of leaving. He considers them his family. So, both of us have second jobs that are too good to be true, and while the hard part is finding the time to sleep, the money is too good and too easy.
Between the two of us, we make $211,000per year, and all of the savings (after taxes) goes into investment vehicles. We take 3 vacations a year, each costs around $1000 - $1500, and I am working on making some money from vacations, such as writing traveling articles and finding sponsors. Every once in awhile, I still think of the days when my friend Kay and I used to collect pop cans on campus. We used to have a great system, so that we could make $60 in two hours. That's A LOT of pop cans. It was good spending money.
So my philosophy is: there are 24 hours in a day, so that's 24 hours to think of ways to better yourself and your situation. It all depends on how you decide to spend the time.
