For context, I am a 30-year old living in New Jersey, USA. After a grueling two years of working 80 hours per week up to 100 hours per week in the mortgage industry from 2020 to 2022, my work are now slow. I probably only work an hour a day and then do whatever I want now, checking my computer for something to come in every 10 minutes or so. I see this as a time to recoup from the burnout and start to do what I love more while I work like reading, writing, exercising, and making music.
From 2020-2022, I was making about six figures after receiving bribe bonuses to work 3rd shift after working all day. I was worried financially at the time, because my younger brothers and I were living with my single mother was dying of cancer, and I wanted to have a financial safety net with my brothers, so I saved about $30000 per year. She died towards the end of 2020.
The Pros and Cons
The Pros:
- I survived about 5 rounds of layoffs and am the last person on my shift, so I must be doing something right. I feel bad for all who were let go and do feel some layoff survivor grief.
- After a brief time being forced back to my office with an hour+ commute both ways, I got the okay to continue to work from home.
- I love my 12-8 schedule. It allows me to sleep in if I need to or to get up and do what I want to do for the day. I can also go to doctor appointments without requesting off. I'm currently getting my MBA. I could work on school while waiting for work at my job. The sucky thing is though that they didn't pay for my school because of a last minute acquisition of our company by a company that didn't include tuition reimbursement with their benefits package.
The Cons:
- I only make half of my prior 90K salary. On the scheme of things, this is not too bad. Only drawback is that I do not make as much money. I do make enough for some savings though, but not like FIRE amount of savings like in 2020. My expensive are low, as I split costs with several people.
- There's four managers for 5 people! The managers must be bored all day, so they come up with policy and rule changes just for the heck of it. There a new change about every week. We get error emails letting us know about our mistakes and how we need to follow the new rules. There's been at least 100 changes in the last 2 years. I was confident in my job last year, but now I do not feel like it's even the same job, since everything changes every week.
I'm debating leaving in about a year to make more money, perhaps getting a MBA internship, but it's hard to give up this freedom that I used to dream about back when I worked at a “Bear-like” restaurant during college. The more I read on here, the more I consider just riding this job out a bit.