I’ve been workin’ for The Man in social services, in a call center type environment. That means I’m dealing with people navigating arcane bureaucracies to get the things they require, often in cases of greater need – people with disabilities or generational poverty, senior citizens, etc. This job is the most intellectually and emotionally demanding work I’ve ever done. At five years in, I’m better than average at it, but it’s depressing and stressing and just never ends. Still, one abides.
But my pay rate has stalled. The first raises you get are substantial, but when the job “maxes out,” the raises are only half that rate. There are cost of living adjustments, but like the COLA for Social Security, I think it’s tied to the Consumer Price Index, which only includes the cost of groceries – not the biggest cost of living we’ve all been fucked by, the cost of shelter. Utilities are going up too.
Getting a mortgage might turn out to have been a good idea, but I need to either refinance to a much lower payment, or start making big bucks so I can have a prayer of paying this shit down, and it ain’t looking too good right now. I thought I’d catch a break on the endless increases in rent by getting a mortgage instead. But what happened immediately? The valuation of our property increased enough that the tax hike was almost as bad as the rent increases we’d been trying to dodge. The other main income in my household is a senior citizen who ran out of steam for her original job and can’t make that kind of money anymore. If I don’t increase my income dramatically, we’re one bad turn of events from hitting the skids.
But then, isn’t that everybody these days? I don’t know. Maybe just everybody I or my boyfriend are related to.
So there are paths to higher pay. I have reasons why promotion at my current employer is undesirable, but to say more risks saying too much about where I work. Let’s say those jobs are increasing your demonic rank, but you get even more exposure to what’s bad about Hell. Best avoided. I could try to slide to a different employer, but it’s hard to make the time to do that homework, and can I get as much telework as I have now, or will I have to throw away twenty uncompensated hours of my life per week on bus rides? Also, will the most readily available jobs in my sector contribute in some measure to imperialism and genocide? Insert ‘it’s more likely than you think’ meme here.
God I keep being tempted to say things that are overly revelatory about where I work. Somebody stop me. Anyway, I just gotta sell the screenplay for Gun Lemurs and make a bank fulla money. Until that day… Like I said, I’m avoiding doomposts at the moment. I’m gonna win like Wario. Just gotta keep making wild-ass leaps of faith, making hairpin turns, pushing harder and closer to the flames than I ever did in my youth. I’ve always been lucky before, no reason that luck should run out now, right? I rule.
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It’s a job.
My attitude (I was basically a bureaucrat) was that I had to LARP it.
(Work to live, not live to work)
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You do what you have to.
That is tough. I’m finally in a situation where I can pay extra on my mortgage and I hope to have it almost all paid off by the time I retire in 5-8 years. But getting to that point took decades.
Okay, advice. First, even though it’s tough, a mortgage is usually a better deal than renting. My first house I owned for ten years and then moved out and put it on the market in 2008. It didn’t sell for several years, and then I sold it for less than the price I purchased it for. However, I did a quick calculation and determined that the loss of money on the house was still less than the money I would have spent on rent over that time. That is, as an example, I was renting at about $700/mo when I purchased the house, and after 10 years in the house I would have spent $84,000 on rent. I lost about $40,000 on the house between the price I paid for it and the price I sold it for. The $44,000 difference was not completely eaten up by insurance, bank interest, or property taxes either. I also expect that I my rent would have increased over those ten years as well. Finally, the house is an asset and can be collateral (i.e. you can use it to get money) for loans or in extreme cases, sold. Generally a house does give more financial freedom (if less mobility) than renting. All these are trade-offs of course.
Re-financing. I did that once to drop my mortgage rate, and found that because of the processing fees it’s really only worth it if you can drop the rate more than 1.5%. Spending $2000 or more to drop a mortgage rate 0.5% just doesn’t get the benefit you are looking for. It can be difficult to scrape up that $2000 in the first place, and it may lower a payment by $20-$40. That $2000 would be better served by paying down high-interest loans, like credit card debt. Now if you can drop your mortgage rate by 3-4%, that can be worth it. I trust you are smart enough to do the math.
Finding more income. One couple I know who are having a hard time meeting their bills have started working a second job. They deliver food for Door-Dash orders. They do not work every night, I think it’s about 3 evenings a week, and it brings them just enough additional income to keep above water and save a little. One of them just got a new job and has stopped working for Door Dash, but gig work is an option. As a tip, they looked around for a community which was much wealthier than their own to operate in. They had to drive 20 miles to get to the area they served, but there was less competition and larger tips. People who live in wealthier communities tend to not want to do gig work, and they have more money. These friends also indicated that they got stiffed on the tip more often then when working in their own, less affluent (putting it mildly) community, but that the larger tips they did get made up for it. This idea may not work for you, but gig work may pull you through a rough patch.
Job hunting. First, and I tell this to all my reports, there is no such thing as company loyalty, that is loyalty of a company toward an employee. So there is no reason to feel any loyalty yourself. If you like the job, you find it rewarding, try to find another like it which pays better. Both my wife and I have been in jobs where we got promotions and found we hated the new position. She found other jobs, I managed to laterally transfer to a different position in the same mega-corp I’ve been working at for 30 years. It sounds like you have some interest in trying a higher-level position, but fear that it’s not what you would enjoy, I’d recommend trying it for a couple years. I hate being a manager myself, but I do enjoy helping my reports do better at their work, or help them advance their careers. I tell my reports that if they are not happy they should be looking for another position, because the company can replace them. The company doesn’t want to spend the time/money to do so, but no one is indispensable/irreplaceable, and it’s better to find a position which provides some satisfaction than work at a job where there is little to no enjoyment. That being said, there is no job which is perfect. There will always be some aspect to the job which you hate. I sometimes laugh (silently and without expression) at my wife because she has finally found a job which suits her; it has flexible hours, decent pay, no evenings or weekends, and just enough mental activity to keep her alert but not fatiguing. But she hates that the owner comes over and chats with her. I laugh, and sympathize, because I sometimes feel that she wouldn’t be as satisfied with any job if she couldn’t find something to be upset about it.
All that being said, all the above thoughts would involve extra work. And I don’t know your full situation, so I cannot say if you have the time or enthusiasm to take on extra work. At my age I often don’t. I’d rather write long comments on blogs.
At the end of the day, I’m sorry you are going through this. Life is not easy for most of us. But, one thing I have seen over the years is that people who stick it out generally make it. I’ve had two friends suicide over the years, they felt they had made such a hash of their lives that there was no way to recover. They were wrong. I’ve know other people who were in similar situations and pull through. They may not know how they did, but they get through it. Tails Up!
quality comment, flex. quantity too, heh. altho my mention of bus rides shoulda been a tell that uber isn’t an option… i abide tho.
Heh. Well, I could say that I do know people who use the bus but also own cars, but the reality is that I forgot that you generally take the bus. My mistake.
Hang in there.