I am Getting Burned Out at Work

[davek181]

At age 28 you should start a 401K, I recommend the roth method for future tax savings. I have a young mechanic here I employ and I convinced him to put a little away each month and by retirement time he may have more money than he needs. He buys one or two shares a month in a Nasdac matching fund that has traditionally grown by 10-12% a year. I recommended the ticker QQQ because of the historic steady growth and since it is a fund there are managers that know way more than the average person managing it.

There are long range calculators that you can use to get an idea of how much that would be at retirement and it will blow you away. Also if you work for a company that will contribute to your ira if you match it too, contribute as much as they allow.

Otherwise your plan sounds great and do try to achieve your goals you outlined. I wish someone had convinced me to build a nest egg earlier rather than later when I was your age.

 

[Aaron_W]

This is a good question. I don't have a good answer, but it is something I've reflected on since retiring.

I'm not sure where I got it from but from a young age having a job with good benefits and retirement were of great importance to me. Since nobody has claimed to be the source, I will credit my 8th grade math teacher who had a significant impact on my relationship with math and how money works.

I was a late saver, not because I didn't think it was important, mostly just because you have to have money left at the end of the month to save. I've worked since high school but my focus was on education, and then getting the experience to get a good job so I had a series of mostly low paying seasonal or part time jobs until I was in my late 20s. Once I had a secure job I started dumping money into a deferred savings account (essentially a 401K).
When I retired our standard of living actually went up which makes me realize that maybe my family didn't have to live so close to the edge for so many years. Might be over doing it when you are living pay check to pay check with a couple hundred thousand sitting in savings...

We were not living like broke college students most of that time, but maybe I could have opted for more frills on occasion, maybe replace a car before the doors (literally) fell off, little stuff like that. On the plus side I did follow my Dad's advice of getting a job I didn't hate going to. I ended up working for the US Forest Service and the National Park Service, we like outdoor activities so despite maybe being a little too tight with my saving we were able to have a lot of fun outdoors without spending much money.

I could have tried to get better paying jobs but it doesn't suck to look out the back window of your house and see this for 5 years, and get paid on top of it.

 

[macardoso]

At age 28 you should start a 401K, I recommend the roth method for future tax savings. I have a young mechanic here I employ and I convinced him to put a little away each month and by retirement time he may have more money than he needs. He buys one or two shares a month in a Nasdac matching fund that has traditionally grown by 10-12% a year. I recommended the ticker QQQ because of the historic steady growth and since it is a fund there are managers that know way more than the average person managing it.

There are long range calculators that you can use to get an idea of how much that would be at retirement and it will blow you away. Also if you work for a company that will contribute to your ira if you match it too, contribute as much as they allow.

Otherwise your plan sounds great and do try to achieve your goals you outlined. I wish someone had convinced me to build a nest egg earlier rather than later when I was your age.

That is good advice. I use the term retirement loosely, but I started contributing right at 22 when I started working and never even look at that money or slice of my paycheck. I live like it does not exist. Including employer match, I put away 16% of my gross income in Roth. That's 95% in a target date mutual fund and 5% in bonds. We also contribute our take home paycheck to non-retirement midterm investments. This is in a total market index fund and we keep probably 75% of our savings in there.

Wife is a retirement actuary, so she keeps us pointed in the right direction

 

[jwmay]

FWIW, I don't really think you have a lot of debt. But I think you'll be happier if you don't feel like you're fighting to keep your head above water.

 

[RJSakowski]

Here is my perspective. I worked until almost 70 because I enjoyed it. If it weren't fun, I wouldn't have done it. In the same vein, when a hobby becomes work, it is no longer enjoyable so I keep my hobbies separate from income producers. I still do projects for friends and family but don't charge for them except possibly materials. When they offer to pay, I just tell them to "pass it on". I'd rather someone owed me a favor than the other way around. There is a qualifier to this in that we are financially set, barring some total disaster and we have no children. When we pass, any assets will go to charity. It would be a different story if we were financially strapped. My wife retired when I did at age 55 so no SSI or Medicare yet. We'll hold off on her SSI for a few years yet as it will keep our taxes lower.

My wife and I had a late start coming from previous marriages and almost all of our assets were acquired in the last 25 years. Nevertheless, we made a decision to go on a pay as you go basis. Everything that we have acquired has been cash on the barrel head so we went into retirement with no debt.

When I was making my decision to retire, the main driver was free time. I was committed to 110% of my time to work and 110% to home work which left no free time for me. When I worked, It was literally get up, eat, shower, go to work, come home, eat, maybe an hour of TV and bed. I made a commitment to keeping weekends free but that was for household chores.

I have no desire to have a bigger and better machine even though I can afford it. I look at it as "what will it do for me". I see no sense in spending a lot of money on something and then struggling to find ways to justify the expenditure. when we sold our startup business, I bought my Tormach because I had an immediate need that couldn't be done easily be other means. It was the same for buying a seat of SolidWorks. A few years later, I bought my Grizzly 602. Those were the last major purchases for the shop. They will in all likelihood meet all my future.needs. It would be nice to have a plasma torch, a tig setup, a CNC laser capable of cutting, and a decent 3D printing setup but in reality, I find it hard to justify the need. Think of as a business. You wouldn't spend big bucks on some equipment that would just gather dust. It has to earn its keep.

The same goes for other hobbies. I wouldn't buy a second home on some Northern lake just to go up every six weeks to mow grass and paint shutters. My Great Lakes fishing boat is sitting in my barn because it needs a $10K motor and although I can afford it, the boat would get used once or twice a year.

When I retired, we took a six week European vacation. I no longer have a desire for world travel. The idea of waking up on a different hotel room every morning and spending my evenings watch TV with a language I didn't understand has no appeal. I guess I'm a homebody at heart. The most travel I do now is an annual Spring fishing trip that is more about tradition than fishing. All in all, we lead a modest but comfortable life. I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[erikmannie]

I just talked to my Saturday supervisor, and the *joint arrangement* that we made will cut my Saturdays hours from 15+ hours down to 5 hours. The 5 hour shift will be spent sitting at a computer. The shift is from 4:30 to 9:30 PM, so I will have most of the day Saturday for resting up/family time/shop time.

 

[strantor]

I'm the last person who should be giving financial advice. I make enough money that I should be able to follow the "if you can't buy it cash you can't afford it" advice typically administered by people who grew up in and accumulated their wealth in the most prosperous era in the most prosperous country in human history (an era that was over before I was born). But, I can't. Or I don't. Can't decide which it is.

But is that what this thread was meant to be? Were you asking for advice? Or just venting? If you were asking for advice, this is all I got:

You can write off tools if you have a side gig.

+1
I've been full-time self employed twice in the past decade and both times I failed due to my inability to squirrel away enough money to ride out dry spells with the business. Now my LLC has turned into a bit of a hobby itself. I have a full time employer but I still maintain my LLC and it's just a side gig. It doesn't make much profit. I don't let it. I reinvest as much as I can into it, in the form of guess what? Tools that I want. It's a legitimate business, I have clients, I pay taxes, but I only "take home" (cash) maybe $10k/yr from it. That $70k could have been on the books as a business expense and you wouldn't have had to pay tax on it.

My business account is pretty much the only thing my wife doesn't have access to. I buy whatever I need (want? Again, hard to distinguish) for the business without the expectation of talking to her about it. And she buys whatever she wants using my paycheck, no expectation of talking to me about it. She manages the home finances. She can decide if we can afford it. It works out great for both of us, neither of us having to make justifications to the other or deprive the other of things.

I know you said you want your hobby to not be expected to pay for itself, but there are a lot of advantages to it. Another advantage is that it keeps me sort of focused. I can't just go buy a boat or plane. All my purchases are documented and before I buy something I have to make conscious decision whether or not I could justify it in an IRS audit. Because if I can't justify it to the IRS then I'll have to justify it to my wife, and if neither of those justifications are likely to pass muster then it's probably not worth it. This has kept me from buying things I didn't need. I think... I'm sure there's at least one example of when this happened... idk, I'll think about it and get back to you.

P.s. thanks for putting yourself out there. It's good to hear the perspective of someone not living in a house that's been paid off for 25 years, living off two pensions and a retirement fund.

 

[erikmannie]

@strantor

I suppose that I may have been looking for input regarding my inability to continue working the long hours that I had set out to.

My main point of this thread was to share exactly where my breaking point was: 70++ average weekly hours worked for 9 months, at which point I put up the white flag and reduced the weekly hours down to 63.

Also, because I have a secure union job, I am able to post personal details including the fact that I have borderline personality disorder. You guys get to read how a person with a personality disorder thinks and acts (e.g. recklessly impulsive), and in return I get to read how you normal (for the most part?) people think and act (e.g. responsibly).

I think my wife has a lot of patience for voluntarily remaining strapped to a runaway train.

 

[Aaron_W]

Nobody has ever accused me of being normal.


On the thought of making your machines work for you, high end bicycle people are a bit odd and have lots of disposable income.

Going along with your 1 on 1 welding training idea, and the various skills and tools you have acquired if you could get the right contacts you could probably do ok with a build your own bicycle deal. Work with people teach them how to do some of the work, and you can do some of the trickier stuff yourself as needed. Since you have built electric bikes you've got that covered as well.
Materials and your time covered by the customer, and you get paid to do something you like. Once you've got the 6 days a week thing out of the way, not now.

 

[strantor]

@strantor

I suppose that I may have been looking for input regarding my inability to continue working the long hours that I had set out to.

My main point of this thread was to share exactly where my breaking point was: 70++ average weekly hours worked for 9 months, at which point I put up the white flag and reduced the weekly hours down to 63.

Also, because I have a secure union job, I am able to post personal details including the fact that I have borderline personality disorder. You guys get to read how a person with a personality disorder thinks and acts (e.g. recklessly impulsive), and in return I get to read how you normal (for the most part?) people think and act (e.g. responsibly).

I think my wife has a lot of patience for voluntarily remaining strapped to a runaway train.

I don't have a diagnosis on which to lay my shortcomings but I would/will not (have not, in the past) disagreed with anyone who might speculate that I'm on the Autism spectrum. I'm the oldest of 4 kids and 2 of my younger siblings are diagnosed with Autism. My mother never heard of it (at least not by its modern definition as "spectrum" disorder) until my little brother was diagnosed. Then my little sister a couple of years later. My other younger sister is perfectly normal. I'm not. My kids aren't. My mother and I have both done research in past few years and reached the same conclusion: We are both "touched" by the autism stick to one degree or another. Knowing this helps me explain (to myself at least) why I excel at some things and am utterly incapable of other "normal" things.

I don't know what it means to have BPD but I know what it means to be a weirdo. I am likewise fortunate to have found a wife that puts up with me. Even if she does spend all the money (that I don't spend myself).