Posts
1571
Joined
11/13/2011
Location
US
Edited Date/Time
1/18/2013 7:37am
I know there are some white collar career folks and or entrepreneurs here. I am relatively young and in the beginning phase of my career..i work a 9 to 5 ..come home..chill..ride on the weekends, go out here and there and get drunk..pretty ordinary.
i feel that in order to get ahead i need to start working longer hours and seeking out more challenges and since im in my mid 20s its time to start getting serious. at the same time....i wait all weekend to go riding and its pretty much the highlight of my week and dont want to give that up..but at the same time..for the right opportunity i would easily do 80 hour weeks
so...do any of you guys have good, high paying careers and do you get to go riding and or have some freetime?
i feel that in order to get ahead i need to start working longer hours and seeking out more challenges and since im in my mid 20s its time to start getting serious. at the same time....i wait all weekend to go riding and its pretty much the highlight of my week and dont want to give that up..but at the same time..for the right opportunity i would easily do 80 hour weeks
so...do any of you guys have good, high paying careers and do you get to go riding and or have some freetime?
Me and many on my team go out once or twice a week for happy hour and get drunk and I have fun on the weekends as well.
It isn't how many hours you work, its the value of your work that matters. A friend of mine who was a Colonel in the Air Force told me that if you have to work overtime to get your job done, you are a shitty worker.
Now that I am upper management and don't really work anymore, I monitor the teams to seek out the talent to promote. First I check for excellent work and ideas and what I have found is, the excellent work and ideas usually do not come from the people who work overtime.
I was a regular developer for 9 years but then lucked into a great mentor at work. My mentor taught me more in one year than I had learned in the previous 9. After learning from him, I started getting promoted very quickly.
Once in management, the best thing you can do is hire the best people you can find, and let them go to town. Don't get in their way or micromanage. Also, train everybody on everything, give employees all the responsibility they want. Sometimes I feel guilty because it feels like I'm not doing anything. But, what I am doing is grooming everybody that works for me to move up. I always get high employee satisfaction ratings so I must be doing something right.
Also, learn skills that not many people know. There is a huge shortage of people in my field. We have to import people from India just to fill positions. Makes getting higher paying jobs easy.
But all that advice is for IT, I don't know about other careers.
The Shop
I'm a mortgage loan officer.
Some of my co workers are making 7 figures...but they work 80-100 hours/week. I make low 6 figures and work 20-30 hours/week. Sure, 7 figures would be nice, but I have a wife (that I actually love) and 3 kids that need a dad...and I have a life outside of the office (riding, etc.), and some side investments I take care of (real estate rental properties).
Its taken me 10 years to where I can make a consistent decent pay check every month (building the clientele and making referral relationships), but even "on the way up" I never worked more than 40 hours/week. At this point in my "career" my income is going up and my work hours are staying the same (and my investment income is going up as well). So for me to work "part time", and still make 6 figures, well, I wouldn't have it any other way. I like my 10:00-3:00/4:00 work schedule (its occasionally more than that-like if I have a closing or something).
Here is my deal...find something that you like doing. Live within your means...save, save, save, save...and then invest that savings in investments that will provide a monthly cash flow...and re-invest.
One of my wealthiest clients, works at local motorcycle shop, making $30K/year....he loves motorcycles...so that is all he wanted to do. Started in High School...anyway, the dude is disciplined with him money (saved like crazy), and then invested his money...he now-at 35-has a net worth of well over $1M, and an AGI of over $100K/year (but makes WAY more than that before depreciation and other write offs). All while working at a motorcycle shop? Come on! it took him 17 years, and it was slow going at first, but it is paying off big time for him now.
So it's not so much how much money you make now...its what you do with it. Avoid debt, save your money, look for investments that you are comfortable with AND UNDERSTAND...and keep doing it, build a portfolio...expand it from there. You can have all the time you want while working for yourself.
I'll get off my soap box now.
If you are good at what you do, overtime shouldn't be needed. Prioritize and execute. More money is great until you don't have time to do anything with it. 4 Hour Work Week is a great book and points out that at normal "retirement age", we are less capable of doing things. Why not do them when you are younger?
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp
Find something profitable that you somewhat enjoy doing that you can AUTOMATE or somewhat automate.
Take that and X's it by 10 and maintain it with new angles.
Never give up on your dreams or ideas.
One of my riding buddies started in the local steel mill. He went to dental school at night at a nearby college and now he owns two practices in two different towns, only works 4 days a week and lives in a very large house with an in ground pool and about an 8 car garage full of vettes, cadilacs, escalades, street and dirt motorcycles and more. As far as I am concerned he's living my dream.
Oh, and it doesn't hurt to buy a lottery ticket once a month or so just in case.
If you don't have a specific passion you are determined to pursue as a vocation, and are smart enough to pursue different options, take the advice of some of the people here and target a profession you think you can handle that will allows you the means and time to do what you actually are passionate about.
I work with people who put in 60 plus hours a week, but that's mostly because they can't get their stuff done in 40 hours because they don't have the skills to do it, Management recognizes this.
Don't give up the things that keep you sane(riding, hanging out with buddies) to put in more hours in the office. Unless you're getting hammered Tuesday night and are hungover and stupid Wed morning at work that's a different story. You need those things to keep you sane, and something to look forward to when 9am Monday rolls around.
I do think you should seek out as many challenging tasks as you can handle, and handle well. That will help you move forward. Bring things to the table that your co-workers can't.
i see what you guys are saying and im def going to start looking in other fields but for certain career paths like finance, working 80-100 hours is the norm.
or..maybe i need to start looking into starting my own business or something.
Pit Row
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