I love these threads, really makes me more motivated.
To those of you who work **** loads of overtime, do you have unlimited work? I find with my job there is not enough work to do much over 42 hours a week and if its really busy maybe 50 hours a week.
I have made a choice to take control of my life. I have the luxury of time being that I am only 25. I have a physical limitation I do not have a strong back and suffer from back pain so have made a choice that I am not going to kill my body my whole life. No amount of income is worth being in pain earning it.
I work in a engineering machine shop as sort of an unofficial trainee, I have learnt skills and gained ability however it is a job where you have to be quick at what you do. I have limited experiance and am not fast. I am also not a natural at the job so it takes me longer to pick up some things and even though I enjoy making things on lathes and mills I am not very good.
I want to drag race cars, that is my goal in life and nothing and nobody will get in my way of that.
That costs money so I have been finding myself more and more financially minded as of late, I continue to work at my job yet I actively apply for jobs I see going that I feel I may be better suited for with better pay and better career advancement opportunities.
I have also started consolidating my debts and then working on eliminating those debts.
I am also going to actively pursue financial investments.
I will be the one who controls my life.
I two years ago thought that I because I did not have any money to race cars that I had to learn all the mechanical and engineering side so that I can do things myself and not pay someone.
Well two years on I have gained some skill and some ability but money like it or not is going to be the big thing that is needed to make my goals in life happen.
I don't want to be richer then everybody on earth but I want to get to a point where I can do what I want to do and do it well.
I have got to a point where I am living my life by these words "Where do I want to be in 5 years?"
If you don't have overtime in your department, what about working in another department of the plant to pick up some extra hours? And if you need more money, look for a job after work. It may not pay what you're making now, but it is extra income. And being 25, you've got a few good years left before overtime catches up with you.
And I didn't read all of the threads but the ones I did read, I didn't see anyone mentioning the benefits of working a lot of hours. In working, you pick up so many points towards your social security and retirement. I forget exactly what it's called right off, but they used to send a paper a year showing your numbers. I think you have to get online to do it now, and you get access to it when you are 50 maybe? I'd have to dig one of mine out.
But a lot of people will use the excuse not to work overtime because the government will tax the hell out of you. Sure your taxes go up, but so does your base earnings. I had my points gained a few years back for my social security benefits and they told me what I would be making. I had planned on retiring at 59 1/2 if I could have afforded it, and if not then, I was going out at 62. All of my surgeries forced me to go on disability at 55 which I did not plan on. But because I worked so much overtime and the money I made, what I get a month is actually more than what my take home pay was when I was working. But I did make more working, except I had a loan that was taken out of my check from borrowing from my 401K and I was also putting in 13% of my pay into a 401K.
So now, being that I went out on Disability, I was able to roll my 401K over to an investment firm (Edward Jones) and got it rolled over into a Roth and some other secure investment which is making us a few thousand every few months. And the wifes and mine are both into the same thing so we see some fairly good returns.
So working overtime and a lot of it, or even picking up a second job while you are young does have it benefits long term. And even though I basically started my life over at 35 and having nothing, all of that hard work gave us a nice house, a couple new cars, and a lot of other perks in life that we normally wouldn't have had. Plus my wife retired at 59 1/2 and I was able to take the disability and still be able to keep what we have without worrying where we would get the money to pay for this or pay for that. We far from being rich, but we also don't have to live from pay to pay either.
So the saying "work smarter not harder" should be changed to "work smarter and harder".
