The weather is nicer today than it has been in a while. I'm sitting out on the back porch drinking a cup of coffee, listening to the birds, and the dishwasher....
Yup the dishwasher. And in about 20 min I'll hear the dryer beep or the washer ding because laundry is ready to be changed.
I'm back to being a stay at home mom. Or a work from home mom. I do still work some, I signed up a few months ago to drive for UBER and LYFT, at the time because I needed the extra money to pay for before and after school care for the kids. And then as time went on and we realized how little of my paycheck I was keeping on a week to week basis, it became more and more necessary for me to figure out an alternative path, or make more money, and option number 2 is a dream, not a reality for my field.
And thus we arrive at the theme for today. Why is it that we spend so much time telling our kids to do what makes them happy, don't worry about the money, and then we make life itself SO EXPENSIVE. Yes I know I haven't always made the perfect decisions and I have some debt that to be honest if I didn't have, if we as a married couple didn't have, then I probably could have stayed right where I was. But life happens and when you're young you make bad choices sometimes. Which again brings me back to being young and trying to figure out what that means in relation to then becoming an adult. Working, a career, a family, housing, and otherwise enjoying your life as opposed to just going day to day. And why should you work, strive to work, in something that you should enjoy? And why are we still telling our kids that?
So all professions have a price point, if you will, right? Wrong. Period. That statement is just wrong. There is no more reasonable average for what any given profession makes anymore. If you find just the right company to work for you make way more than you will working for the company that does the right thing. Now a days more often than not those that are trying to work to do the right thing, the ones that are working at what they enjoy, are the ones making less money. And do you know why that is? Because when you are doing something you enjoy, you are willing to do it for less money. If you are working at your job, where the objective is to put forth the skills and knowledge tat you have worked really hard to acquire, you expect to get paid for your efforts.
I have a B.S. in Animal Science. I went to school with the thoughts and idea and loosely laid plan that I was going to go the Veterinary school. So I spent, no I borrowed, ~$25,000 to finish my undergraduate degree. Now a lot of your are going to sit there and say OMG only ~$25K that's nothing, what are you complaining about. But mind you that was tuition/fees/books, period. I lived in an apartment, about 35miles off campus, with a toddler. So now lets add in gas, wear and tear on my car, child care while I'm in class, and food; since meal plans are part of college expenses. Ok so to put the arguments to rest, fortunately I got grant money to cover 90% of the child care expenses, so to all of you who are sitting there saying well you're the one who chose to have a kids so early, yes I am, and other than the time taken away and not being able to study for more than 5min at a time unless I was on campus, the monetary cost of going to school with a child ends up negligible.
Now that we can focus on the school portion, I went to school, borrowed $25,000 at an average of 5.5%, about half of which accrued interest while I was in school, 3 years, and the other half was deferred until graduation, or I dropped below FT status. I graduated with $24,020 in federal loans and $7000 in private student loans. To date I have paid $42,060; and I still have $18,977 left. I graduate from a program that I needed to then go to another 4 year program that would have averaged $250,000 to finish, with the hopes of then being in the career that I enjoy, doing what I like every day, wanting to go to work. But I didn't make it that far. I instead had to take the knowledge and skills I not had and figure out how to apply them because I didn't get accepted into any of the Veterinary Schools I applied to within the US. I had one offer from a school in Canada, but if I took that it either meant leaving my fiance here in the US, or having him come with me but then him not being able to work and effectively having to borrow the money to live off of for four years. Now I'm left trying to figure out what sacrifices to I make to be able to do what I enjoy?
In some respects I still kick myself for not having taken that option, but in the same, if I had, I doubt very much that I would be in any different a position.
I was able to apply my skills and get a job making $14/hour. Do you know how that works out at the end of the week? $560 for a 40 hour work week. Then less 20% in taxes bring you to $448. Now take out child care for a pre-schooler and an infant; yes we had another kid in the process. $58. I had $58 dollars left over at the end of the week. Maybe enough to put gas in the car. But is was all to be able to follow the goal of doing what I enjoy. Wanting to get up and go to work every day so I wasn't miserable.
I did the right thing by most standards at the time, I went to college, I pursued a job that I enjoyed, something that I liked getting up to go to every day. I had <$100 a month to show for it.
Fortunately that was a short lived couple months because then my older child was able to start pre-K. Do me a favor and google how many school districts still have a pre-K program. I'll give you a hint, it's not a great number, and what's worse is how many school districts in areas where parents could really use the help, still have a pre-K program. In our district it was a lottery system and we made the lottery. So I get to keep an extra $190 a week, AWESOME! Oh but now I can only work between 9am and 3pm; so now I'm down to top potential of $420. But the hours I'm available are so awkward that now I'm only getting 3 shifts a week, because when you can't open, and you can't close, you're not a very valuable employee. So we're down to $252 gross, $201.6 after taxes. And I can't have the exact same 3 shifts a week so I can't reduce the number of days I have to take the infant to daycare, which is still $200 a week. I'm now making $1.60. Oh but I forgot getting to and from work, and now it's actually costing me money to work. But I'm doing what they said, I'm working at something at I enjoy...
So I'm back to my question. Why do we tell kids to go after something they enjoy? I went after what I enjoyed and it literally sucked the joy out of me. I had clients telling me I didn't care enough, I had patients trying to hurt me on a day in day out basis, I had a boss who saw little to no value in me because I wasn't available enough, and I had a partner at home who made me look at the numbers and realize that it was costing me money to be working. We couldn't do any of the other things that we wanted on weekends because we didn't have the money. We could barely keep up with the expenses. And since he made $2 an hour more than I did because he was able to spend an extra 2 years working for the company and move up to a supervisor position, while I was in school, supposed to be getting the degree that would make up for the lost time, I was the one who had to stop working all together and stay home all day. Stare at the same four walls day in and day out, and figure out how to support a family of 4 on $33,280 a year.
All the reasons I thought I went to school had vanished. I was lost in being a mother, lost in being a house wife, which I sucked at, by the way. Lost in always trying to figure out how to stretch each dollar, how to find the deals and the bargains, and make sure that the rent was paid, electricity on, phone bill paid, car payments made, and don't forget about the student loan payment.
I hate the fact that I went after what I enjoyed most days. There I said it. And I, personally will never tell my kids to find what they enjoy and and make a living from it.
Finding what you enjoy makes you love what you do, and that in turn makes you make ridiculous sacrifices and bad decisions for your future. And if God forbid anything happen that isn't according to plan, then you're really screwed. Now this very tight knit plan that you have that keeps life just in balance is thrown to the wind. The guy who was working 60 hours a week to try to make it so we had more than $500 a week to live on; that's food/clothing/shelter/transportation all of the things you could possibly spend money on in a week, collapses, and now there in no income but still bills to be paid and kids to be fed.
I will tell my kids to find what they are good at. I will tell my kids to find out what skills they have that they can apply to a career that will allow them to support the life they want. The dollar is the almighty. It sucks to have to think of it that way, but I hope that if I can do anything I can help them to see that they can get that job straight out of High School, or they can go to college and glean more knowledge and skills. Be the mechanic, the mechanical engineer, the accountant, the human resources person. Take certificate classes that cost way less than a four year degree. Go to work right out of high school, work for two years and then get tuition assistance from your employer. Take night classes, or weekend classes, or on-line classes. Make them pick up the bill to help you to advance. But work at what you're good at. Leave what makes you happy for the time outside of work.
You like being able to travel, cool, travel with your friends and family, travel by yourself, but don't travel as a job. There are people out there who can write blogs, restaurant reviews, travel articles for the paper, but those jobs are like the people who manage to make it to major league sports, approximately 0.0015% of the 2012 US population by the way. Work is something we all have to do; alright yes there are a few out there again who have money from day one but they are the minority. We have to stop letting work suck the life out of us. Get in there, do what you're good at, and then let the life, let what you enjoy, let the fun, be the fun, be what you enjoy, be life.
I'm not the best writer, but I am pretty good with managing tasks, people, projects, and operations in general. I'm good at looking to someone and asking them if they have done XYZ, or if 123 is ready to go. I'm good at helping people to see how to use what they have available to them to make the best of the current situation, and then afterward reflecting on how we can improve the process moving forward. I'm really good at being open to new ideas and doing the research to figure out how something can be different, or better, or both. So I'm going to finally take some of my own advice, I'm going to take the certificate class, I'm going to expand my skills and my knowledge, I'm going to manage the projects and find the ways to make them more efficient.
On the weekends, and in the evening, I'm going to be able to take my kids to the baseball games, the ballet practices, go to the animal shelter to volunteer, buy a crap ton of food and beer and post up in my driveway and BS with the neighbors while the kids play four square. I'm going to do what I'm good at, and I'm going to enjoy what I like to do, but they won't be the same tasks, they won't be my job.
I'm going to tell my kids to do what they're good at, and enjoy what they like to do. And I'm going to hope that they never have to sit and contemplate it all. I hope you do the same.
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