Career Archives - Page 43 of 46 - Making Sense Of Cents

Getting a Second Job?

Last Updated: February 22, 2014 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - Leave a Comment

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Hopefully all of this hard work allows me to retire on the beach sooner.

I keep telling all of you that my goal right now is to increase my income and not cut too much more out of our budget. The only way from here is up! I choose not to cut from my budget anymore for a lot of reasons. I’m happy with my budget where it is now and eliminating items such as cable wouldn’t make me that much happier.

My budget is low and at around $2,100 a month. Our after-tax monthly income is over twice as much as our budget, so there is plenty of room for us to enjoy the things that we want. We do have a lot of mortgage and student loan debt though. Extra income would be helpful. AND it would allow us to potentially retire earlier.

Now, just because I say I won’t cut things, doesn’t mean that I won’t try to find good deals though! I’m still going to try and lower my cable bill. And I do kind of want to start couponing again, mainly because I like getting things I already use for free. 🙂

Now, there are many things out there that can be done for extra income. However, what is the point where I reach my limit?

Around a month ago, over at Punch Debt in the Face, he talked about when you give up the extra income for your freedom. This led me to wonder what my limit is.

I get paid salary at my job, so there is no paid overtime. The only way for me to make more income is to do something on the side.

Right now I am doing mystery shopping, surveys and making a little bit from my blog. Right now altogether this makes me around $500 a month, but once I graduate I’ll have more time to make more as well.

I’ve worked full-time since I was 16 (and have gone to high school, undergraduate and graduate school full-time at the same time). Right now I go to the office M-F of course and from around 8am to 5pm. Then of course when classes are in session, I head to classes for another 12 hours a week.

This all adds up quickly and leads to NO free time.

When I’m done with my MBA, I definitely plan on taking a long break, but eventually I know I’ll have too much time on my hands. There’s only so many months where I could come home from work and sleep everyday. Eventually that has to get boring right? Ok maybe not…

I could get a part-time job. This will help me pay off my debt even faster. There’s retail, waitressing, bartending, etc. that I could get into. I still don’t know if it’s all worth it though for the minimal amount that I’d be making.

What will I do with all of this free time? The amount that I could get from another side gig that I most likely won’t enjoy would be minimal, so when’s the point when I say no to extra income?

Would an extra $500 for a part-time job a month be worth it? I’ll have my degree and hopefully be making more, so I think I’d prefer my freedom more. Of course if we needed the money, I would get a part-time job, but at the moment I think I’ll enjoy myself.

When does money just become money and
not worth risking happiness for you?

Getting an MBA

Last Updated: May 1, 2018 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - Leave a Comment

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

I’m about to earn my MBA with an emphasis in Finance if you all haven’t realized (I’ve made it pretty obvious!). Come this August of 2012, I will be done with school for another 10 years (until I get my dreaded Executive MBA).

Was all of this worth it? There are several factors to consider such as cost, time, and the opportunity that having an MBA gives me.

Cost. The school I attend isn’t scary expensive. I go to a state school but it is still top ranked for its business program. Not Ivy League ranked, but still good. I can definitely justify the cost, considering the fact that my undergraduate degrees were about 5 times the cost of my MBA.

I would say the school that I attended was definitely a good value. And where I live it’s a considered to be a good school, and a lot of CEOs of the big companies from around here have come from this school. My return on my MBA investment will definitely be high. In the end, it’ll be worth it. It will take just a couple of months (yes months, not years) for me to make the money back.

Time. Altogether, it took around 1.5 years for me to get my Finance MBA. Not too long, but I had to take 4 classes every semester (besides last summer when I took 0), and I also had to work full-time as a financial anaylst. I had no time for anything.

I wouldn’t say I regret anything though about rushing my degree. I’m the type of person who likes to get things done. And it’ll be really nice to just be able to relax from here on out.

Money/Opportunity. Getting my MBA will open a lot of doors for me. Yes, this isn’t true for every field, but for the specific section of the financial services industry that I’m in, it’s pretty much a requirement. More clients will start coming and I’ll seem more knowledgeable (well I’ll be more knowledgeable as well!) Also, my work already told me that I’d be getting a “big bump” in my raise once I complete my MBA.

I also would say the fact that nearly all of my professors have real life experience is helpful as well. I like how they are able to relate topics to problems that may occur in the real world.

Networking is also important. I’ve met a lot of people through my classes and this will be helpful in my career and field in the future for when I’m looking for new clients.

I started in January of 2011 and this has not been a long journey, but it has been a tiring journey. Hanging out and talking to people you know for only 1 day a week definitely gets boring and lonely!

Having a full-time career plus attending classes, taking care of 2 dogs, a house, and my younger sister definitely take all my time away. And then of course I still need to make time for the boy and my friends.

In the end, I’m also not going to lie. Getting an MBA is also about adding those three letters to the end of my name. Those credentials are always helpful.

Also, don’t forget to read my last post about whether a Business Degree is a Waste or Not. A lot of you left very interesting comments on it, but for the most part everyone agreed. Good experience and learning is needed in order to get ahead.

Have you thought about getting your MBA? What are the pros and cons for you?

And here’s a big infographic to get your brain working:

Work-Life Balance and My Life

Last Updated: May 24, 2013 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - Leave a Comment

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Between working 45 hours at the office every week, taking 12 credits in my MBA program this semester, blogging and doing homework, I don’t have a lot of free time.Then you also have to through in the fact that I have a house and it doesn’t clean itself. Oh and my dogs can’t open the backdoor or take themselves for a walk.

Even with all of this, I love my life. I like to be busy but once my life slows down after this summer (I’ll be done with my MBA program), I will definitely enjoy the tons of extra free time that I will have. Yes of course I’ll still have work, but getting back around 25 hours a week from not having classes and homework will be nice!

When I’m done with my MBA, I know for a fact that I’ll still find ways to keep busy. There are so many things I want to do around my house, and possibly start another blog.

I attribute the fact that I can balance my work and life (and school),

due to having a good work-life balance.

Also, I still find plenty of time to enjoy life. Yes, I may not have as much time as before, but I never feel like I’m crazily running around (except right now of course since finals are starting soon). The BF helps a ton around the house also, so this helps balance everything as well.

Lately, I have also been trying to go to bed earlier, and waking up 30 minutes earlier than I usually do so that I can have more personal time in the mornings. Not having as hectic mornings has definitely helped out. I don’t get a ton of sleep, but instead of going to sleep around 1:30 am, I now try to be bed by 12 to 12:30 am. This is something that I can definitely still improve with though. But right now it’s hard since I don’t get home from class until around 10 pm, so it’s hard just to go to bed right after I go home.

Thankfully with my job, work stays at work. We don’t ever have to bring it home. This helps a lot with my work-life balance.

I’ve also been trying to schedule my posts ahead of time. Usually I just type it up the night before, but on Sunday I managed to type around 2 weeks worth of posts. It was all stuff on my mind and it seemed like the ideas couldn’t stop flowing!

Limiting my time online is also another big thing. I spend way too much online. I’m addicted, it’s sad. I can’t stop reading blogs and looking and Pinterest. Lately I’ve just been setting the computer down far away from me and surprisingly that has been working.

Here are my tips to have a successful work-life balance:

Create a schedule and set goals. Your schedule needs to be realistic and flexible to allow for anything that might pop up. Now I’m not saying you necessarily need to make an extremely detailed schedule where you say “from 8 am to 9 am I will be …..” I think you just need to have a general schedule of what you will do on certain days. You also need to decide what needs to be on the schedule and cannot be changed.
- This could be your family dinner every night, your sleep schedule, whether or not you think partaking in a certain activity is needed, etc.
Make a to-do list. I have several lists in my phone and it feels nice to be able to delete one whenever I’m done. It also helps me to prioritize and realize what needs to be done. This way nothing is forgotten.
Put personal time in your schedule. This needs to be done immediately. Having a schedule with no personal time is not the best schedule.
Don’t go crazy when something might not go exactly as planned. There will be things out there that ruin your schedule, but don’t let them take over your life. Just move on!
Tackle larger things in life first. I always like to knock the biggest tasks on my list first (such as writing my 16 page paper). This makes the rest of the list seem not as intimidating.
Don’t try to do everything yourself. The BF helps out a ton, which I believe he should. Just because I’m female doesn’t mean I should do all of the household activities, and honestly, I suck at cleaning.

How do you balance work and life? Is it vacations, personal time, or something else?

Analyzing My Job and What matters to you?

Last Updated: December 7, 2014 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 39 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Happy Tuesday everyone! Hopefully this week isn’t going too slow for you. I don’t have too much planned today except for the normal work and then boring classes.

I thought I’d join in with the others who have participated in From Shopping to Saving’s How to Analyze Your Job. It’s a very good way to look at your job and how you perceive it. Below I marked in red what I thought was important to me. I also thought this post would be interesting because I’ve noticed that a lot of readers and bloggers are currently looking for a new job. This might help steer you into the direction that you want to be in.

Here is a direct quote from her post:

“Here are the 7 factors that we like to take a look at to analyze our job as a whole. Work is not something that we all love to do but it’s something that pays for what we really want to do. Some of us are fortunate to have work that we do enjoy wholeheartedly and would possibly do for free, but sadly I’m not one of those people. “

My Job:

Salary – What are all of the benefits of your job? This includes salary, insurance, pensions, etc.
- My salary is pretty good, especially for the Midwest. Of course it would be on more average if I lived in an area such as LA or NYC, but it’s pretty decent around here. I also get bonuses, a retirement plan, free health insurance and other benefits. I would say that I’m pretty good in this area.
Job Duties – What do you do? Is it difficult?
- I enjoy what I do. Of course I would rather be laying on a beach and get paid for that, but I’m not a VS model, so that’s not possible. My job can be difficult at times but it’s something I enjoy doing and the time passes pretty quickly. I work mainly independently and I like that.
Location/Commute – How is the drive? Is it really long? Horrible? Are there other ways you can commute?
- The location is good. It’s in a nice suburb and only less than 15 miles from my house. I cannot take public transportation there (unless I want to spend around 2.5 hours on a bus). I don’t pay for parking and it’s located near a bunch of other places to eat and things to do.
Co-workers – Do you like the people you work with? How are your work relationships?
- I enjoy the people that I work with. I work at a pretty small firm, and we all get along. This is much different than a retail environment, where everyone is really catty.
Atmosphere – How stressful is your job? How is your workplace?
- The atmosphere is pretty nice at my work. Not too crazy. Pretty quiet and relaxing also.I listed to Pandora all day at work so that’s pretty nice too.
Flexibility – Can you take a day off easily? Or is your boss/employer one of those people who denies all vacation requests?
- I don’t have to clock in. It’s pretty easy to take off. I just have to put my name on the calendar. My boss pretty much lets me take off whenever unless it’s during a busy time of the work season.
Advancement – Is it easy to get a promotion, or are you stuck?
- There is definitely a path for advancement in my position. I was hired and told I was on a path for management/VP/President. So they flat out told me this in the interview.

If you couldn’t tell, I like my job. My job is pretty stable and reliable. I work in a very specialized area in the financial services industry as well, and there will always be demand for what we do, so I’m not too worried about our services and business tanking.

How does your job compare?

A lot of people would say that money is the #1 motivator for when they look at a job. I would say that a combination of happiness, money, stability (especially stability), benefits and opportunity for advancement.

I know many people who work at a certain big billion dollar company in my city and they all hate their jobs. It all started out nice because the money was very attractive for them, but they are terrified everyday that they might lose their job and the environment is very hostile. Would you work in an environment where you would trade your sanity and happiness for money?

I don’t think I could. I am a person who likes stability and I enjoy not having to worry everyday about whether or not I will have a job the next day. I try my hardest at my job and of course I expect at least not to lose my dignity everyday as with the example in the above.

I also have some friends who I think are being entirely too picky. Some graduated awhile ago and are still waiting for the perfect job and still haven’t found anything. I believe you need to gain some sort of experience instead of just waiting around. Not many jobs are going to score a 100% for you. Yes yes I know, I’m probably a depressing person and I’m sure there are many people out there who love their jobs, but I’m just being realistic in my point of view.

Are you currently searching for a job? What are some things that you are looking for in a job? What’s one thing you would not trade?

Work Wear

Last Updated: April 14, 2021 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 32 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

I’ve been a little lazy with what I wear to work lately. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the cold, the fact that I’m lazy or I don’t know what. I really want to change this though, because I am a firm believer that when you dress well, you work well. Anyone else dressing a little lazier these days?

I also want to dress well because I feel like I’m also representing my firm when I’m in my classes. Almost everyone dresses very nice to my classes because they are all coming right after work. I want to be trying harder!

My work is kind of business semi-casual-formal. When I say semi-casual-formal, I mean anything besides jeans/shorts. I usually just try and wear some sort of button up or nice shirt with a blazer, and nice black or grey pants. But not this month, this month I’ve been super lazy. I always wear nice pants, but my choice for tops has been bad. Let’s just say that I’ve been wearing my Northface sweaters a little too much this month already.

Usually I dress like the pictures above, but lately I’ve been lazy.

Also, I’ve been thinking about taking a picture of what I wear everyday and posting it on here in some kind of weekly round-up. I feel like this will help because of course I wouldn’t want to take a picture of me when I’m having a lazy work day, so hopefully this will make me try harder. Also, of course since I blog anonymously, my pictures will have my head not included in everyone, so hopefully that’s not too weird.

February Goal: Take a picture everyday that I work.

I work mainly independently in my office, so my outfits aren’t a huge deal, but when I meet with clients, it’s much different. When we have client meetings, we have to dress more business-formal corporate. Nice pants/skirt, button up, blazer, and the like. I work in the financial services industry, and that means that there aren’t very many females or people my age in my line of work. So what I wear is definitely very important for how I want to be seen/portrayed.

There are also things that I would never wear. What are some things that you can’t wear/do when at work?

This doesn’t apply to every industry, but in mine (financial analysis services), it does:

Super short skirts – I think the standard is that it should be no shorter than 2 inches past your knee. I definitely break this rule a lot, but I never go too too short. I’m a short person, so kind-of short skirts don’t look bad on me.
Shorts – I would never and could never wear shorts to work, not even on a super casual day. My work would look at me like I’m crazy.
Heels that I would wear to the club/bar – Stuff that I could wear out, I probably shouldn’t wear to work. If I have to ask myself if it’s too bar-like, then it probably is. Of course some heels serve a double purpose, but not all do.
Crazy nail polish – My nails are usually pretty plain (since I work full-time and would hate taking the polish off after 1 day on the weekend), so this usually doesn’t bother me since I’m used to it by now. Green glitter probably wouldn’t be good…
Tops that show cleavage – Since I work with mostly men, it would be extremely unprofessional if I did this. My boobs shouldn’t be hanging out everywhere and look like they’re going to knock someone out. I want to come across as mature and intelligent.
Tops that are so tight that it looks like one of the buttons will pop an eye out.

A lot of this also applies to interviews. For business interviews, usually the best outfit choice is something boring. I know, not fun. You don’t want to distract the person who is interviewing you with something crazy that you have on. Of course different rules apply to different places. When I worked in retail, of course you had to dress cute and the only rule really was you couldn’t wear something that you could possibly wear to the gym.

What’s your work’s dress code? Do you agree that when you dress well, you work/act well? Of course I’d love to wear pajamas to work everyday, but I’d probably fall asleep!

What salary would make you happy?

Last Updated: December 8, 2014 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 25 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

If there was a certain salary range that you believe would make you the happiest and feel the most fulfilled, what do you think that amount would be? According to a research study, the amount is $75,000.

The data showed that most people in the U.S are happy and satisfied with their lives

85% reported a lot of happiness

24% reported sadness or worry

39% reported stress

Comparing the U.S. evaluation scores with data available from approximately 150 other countries, the U.S. ranks high. Nations with higher scores than the U.S. were Canada, Netherlands, Switzerland and New Zealand.

In 2010, the poverty level for a family of 4 was $22,314,and 15.3% of Americans earned an amount at the poverty level or less. The median household income is $49,445 in the U.S.

I’m not really sure what my happiness salary amount would be. I’m pretty happy right now, but our yearly income already is around that $75,000 amount, but I feel like I could probably be happier. We also don’t have kids. So our income works for us now, but I’m not really too sure if it would work once we have kids.

Our goal is also to have more land and a big backyard (the BF’s family has a couple hundred acres), so we definitely want some sort of acreage. Definitely can’t afford that on our salaries.

However, money wise, I wouldn’t say that we are unhappy at all. If there was a time that we desperately needed something, we DO have things that we could trim in our budget. Cable, cars, entertainment, food, cell phones and other stuff could all be trimmed or eliminated.

So compared to others, I would say that we are definitely happy with our income.

So what about you, what amount would you be ultimately happy with?

And don’t forget, today is the last day to enter my giveaway!

Do you use all of your vacation days every year?

Last Updated: December 8, 2014 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 28 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

When I worked in retail, I wasn’t offered vacation days, so if I wanted a day off, I wouldn’t get paid (even though I was in management and worked there for over 5 years as a full-time manager, but that’s just another depressing story). But now that I have a different job I get actual vacation days. I get 15 days a year (not including holidays so it’s more than that of course) but last year I only used 12 days.

Why did I do this? After not having a vacation day for over 5 years, you’d think I would use them all. I think since I didn’t have vacation days ever, I felt kind of bad for using all of my vacation days.

This year I plan on using all of my vacation days. I still have 4 left, and I’m using one day this Friday and the other 3 the rest of the month. It’ll be nice!

I also came across this article from Yahoo that talks about how $34.3 billion worth of vacation days will go unused this year. Here are some interesting facts:

The average American worker earned 14 vacation days but will only take 12 of them
Most people didn’t use all of their days because they said they couldn’t afford a vacation
Too much stuff to do at work so most people can’t even use their days
Many workers feel that if they took a day off, that they may be fired due to the economic situation
Most other countries use ALL of their vacation time.

“Workers in France earned 30 vacation days, on average, in 2011, and often used every single one of those days. The same goes for employees in Brazil and Spain. In the UK, workers get 25 days and they used all 25.”

Do you always use all of your days?