Last November I was working for a consulting company and was pretty sure I was underpaid. Not seriously underpaid, but I knew I was a valuable employee and had the standing to ask for a raise. Long story short I got a $4880 (8.5%) raise. It was a little less than the $15k I was asking for so a couple months later I started looking for a job. I was extremely successful at this venture and got tons of job offers (man I was a wreck back then). I ended up taking a job on the lower end of the job offers because of the great benefits and work environment. Regardless it netted me another $11,000 (17.75%) in base pay, not to mention I’m eligible for 20% of my salary in bonuses each year and 9.5% 401k matching. Then 5 months after taking this job I got a promotion and another $7300 (10%) raise and am now eligible for 30% of my salary in bonuses. All in all that’s a 40% increase in base salary in 8 months.

I also started some side gigs on the internet which make me about another $3k a year, and because of all of my connections job hunting I have been able to earn another $2500 in about a 2 months span getting referral bonuses. Won’t count the referral bonuses as those are one time events, but I dont’ think I can overlook the potential bonuses in my job.

Assuming I only get 1/3rd of my bonus on average going forward (which hasn’t been the case last few years here have resulted in full to close to full payouts) that bumps my take home pay another 10% which results in a 59.89% increase in salary in just 8 months. (2/3rd payout would result in a 74% increase, full payout 88%).

Not to mention our annual salary adjustment is coming up in September and I’ll be eligible for a prorated increase there too

I guess the biggest thing to take away from this is not necessarily that the results that Lazy or I took are repeatable for everyone, they are however certainly attainable in one form or another by a lot of people. While salary isn’t everything when it comes to a career (note I took a job for $7k less a year during job hunt) it is very important. Especially when you are young, I personally think it is vital to make sure you are getting paid competitive market wage. Certainly each job has its trade offs and it may be worth your while to accept less money for a short period of time to gain valuable experience that will reap rewards down the road, don’t put up with making significantly less than market salary for very long.

In the same sense that you need to start saving for retirement early and investing as much as you can early on to take advantage of compounding – your career is the exact same way. The more money you make earlier on in your career the more powerful raises and COLA are and the faster your salary will grow over time. The faster your salary grows the easier it becomes to save and reach your financial goals. Your career/earning potential while not the most important part of a retirement plan is a VERY important part of it. Don’t get me wrong its not what you earn it’s certainly what you save when it comes to building wealth, but making more sure makes it a heck of a lot easier to save more.

So if you find yourself in a sitution similiar to Lazy or I where you know you are underpaid and can find a comprable job that will pay you a significant amount more stop wasting your time and switch jobs!

Not only did I get a 10% raise, but I moved up a pay grade and now am eligible for up to 30% of my salary in an annual bonus. Compound that with the fact that my company effectively matches 9.5% of my salary including bonuses for my 401k and it ended up being a pretty sweet deal for me.

The weird thing is I’m a manager (well at least that’s my title – I will still likely be spending a majority of my time being an architect/developer). I have one person reporting to me and am in charge of about 4-5 consultants. I’m not exactly sure I want to head down the road of full-time manager for my career, but for right now I’ll take the money and the experience. Guess that MBA degree that I picked up after college is starting to pay off.

Anyway I had just mentioned that my career was really starting to take off when I was talking about planning to build a full-court basketball court down the road, I just never thought it would take off quite this fast. I haven’t really sat down to figure out the financial implications of my promotion, but all I know is reaching my financial goals is getting much much easier as time goes on. In fact now it’s getting downright fun. I guess I’d have to agree with FreeMoneyFinance when he says your career is your #1 financial asset.

Seeing as how most of my wardrobe has been around for a decade it is starting to get a little worn out. I recently started a new job and well I keep moving closer and closer to some sort of management position, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt if I started to dress the part a little more. It probably doesn’t help that I pull up in this every day, but it’s still probably better than having a hole worn through my khakis in an inappropriate spot.

Anyway due to the recent success I have had as of late with my career, I’m starting to realize how important my job is to me being able to retire comfortably and ahead of schedule. Just a small bit of effort the last 6 months or so resulted in me getting a $5,000 raise and that taking a new job with another company for roughly another $15,000 a year. So one conversation with the boss and a couple job interviews netted me an extra $20,000 per year. Pretty easy money if you ask me. In fact I realized it just doesn’t get much easier than advancing your career.

I think of all the little things that I am so picky about when it comes to purchasing things, lowering expenses, picking good investments, credit card arbitrage, high yeild savings accounts, blogging income, free give-ways, etc. and in the end the money I save/make absolutely pales in comparison the extra money I’ve made as a result of my career this year. Does this mean I’m going to give up being a frugal entrepreneurial tightwad, absolutely not, but it does mean that I’m probably going to take my career a little more serious going forward as of all the variables I worry about in my retirement planning it’s definitely the most important one.

(Three quarters of the way through the article he gets to his point)
So that’s why I went ahead and bought me a bunch of new clothes today. While you can debate the effectiveness of this plan, I see these clothes as somewhat of an investment as they may help increase the perception I portray at work which in turn might mean my career stock might rise faster. Certainly in the grand scheme of things there are many things a lot more important than clothes, but in just about every case dressing sharp can only help you. (Cheapwad here bought a bunch of pants and shirts off the clearance rack at Kohls and he’s acting like he’s Mr. GQ)

So what’s your opinion on this subject? Am I really a closet metrosexual just trying to justify his clothes splurge or do I actually have a point here?

Regardless I think today is a good day for me and hopefully a couple years down the road I’ll look back on this and decide a I made a wise decision.

I was amazed at how reasonable the rates were for his family of 4 and this last weekend I punched my families demographics into their quote calculator and while some of the deductables are a little higher (which isn’t bad if you want to start an HSA (Health Savings Account)), you can get a pretty cheap rate.  In fact I could get insurance for about half of what I was paying at my previous employer where they were subsidizing 72% of our health insurance costs.

Now I know as with any group plan, the healthy people at the company are subsidizing the costs for the sick people.  That’s why you should probably never buy life insurance through your employers plan if you are a healthy individual as you can get the same coverage MUCH cheaper by going out on your own.  Maybe this is the case with health insurance or maybe I’m just a big dummy and don’t understand something.  Obviously these are probably teaser rates and they probably expect you to have 100% perfect health (just like term life insurance quotes), but if you do have relatively good health and never go to the doctor maybe this is something to check out.  It just seems counterintuitive to everything I have heard about people getting their own health insurance and having to pay through the nose.  This is probably one of the biggest reasons I would find it hard to start my own company (I couldn’t afford the heath insurance).

Now if you sign up at these “cheap” rates and you have a bad year health wise I am sure they jack the rates on you or even try to deny renewal.  I’m really not sure.  For those of you out there that have your health insurance how does it work?  Am I overlooking something major here?

Regardless I have no non-compete agreement and went ahead and resigned. They asked where I was going and I told them that I had not accepted an offer, but had a couple on the table, one of them being one of our customers. I was told I could not go to the customer because I had signed a non-compete. I said I just checked with HR and I have no non-compete signed, just a confidentiality agreement. My boss said they still will try to enforce the situation with the confidentiality agreement somehow, I replied that I don’t see how that is possible, but even that contract is null and void because the company never signed it so it’s an agreement between me, myself, and I. Subject was dropped and my other boss had to come in from working at home to talk to me.

Everyone was pretty nice to me and no one seemed to hold anything against me, but my other boss said I could not go to the client because our company had a signed contract with the client that said they could not hire me and that the president was calling the client to explain this to them as we spoke. They asked me to give them a $$ amount as to what it would take to keep me and left me on my merry way. I called the client and the president had indeed called them, but they were looking over all of their agreements and they were certain that nothing was signed and that the president was just blowing smoke at them.

Regardless I still have most of my other offers still on the table, I know that my sole is not sold to the devil so even if the customer is unable to hire me, I am certainly free to go to another consulting company and work at this client (with a huge raise of course) and even if that consulting company wasn’t making a whole lot on me they would be stupid not to entertain the idea as I could get them a load of business at this client. I could also go independent and make even more money, but health insurance pretty much makes it impossible to be entrepreneurial these days with a family.

Anyway I will see how today plays out as now it is just an issue between my old company and my potentially new company, but I am not stuck in the middle.

Well if you have been following my blog lately you know that I have quite a few options available to me.  I have actually turned down Company 1 and a few other opportunities have presented me since my previous posts.  One of those opportunities is with a client that I have been consulting at for the last 1.5 years and while base salary wise it is not the highest of the bunch, the total compensation bonuses/401k matching/pension/health insurance takes it pretty much to the top.  Add in the fact that it is 18 minutes from my home, has very flexible and light hours, and I would be able to use the latest and greatest technology and it is pretty much by far the place I want to work at.

Now today I am going to go try and resign from my position at my consulting company.  Here is where it could get sticky,  my current employer gets very ugly when people try to do this, threatening to sue people and ruin their careers.  I am 90% certain I do not have a non-compete agreement signed with them in which case I think they can talk all they want but they got nothing to stand on.  My first order of business will be to try to extract the non-compete information from HR first.   Then if I know I do not have a non-compete I will be somewhat confident of my ability to hold my own in an argument with the my boss/owner.  I’m still not holding my breath it will go over that well.  Last two people that tried to leave for a customer with no non-compete signed, the owner scared the living crap out of them and even gave one guy a stress induced heart-attack.   He still didn’t let up after this and well let’s just say it will be an interesting day   If I have no non-compete signed I feel I have enough knowledge of employment law in Wisconsin that I won’t be that scared and will be able to push back pretty good.

Needless to say I have left everything else on the table with my other offers to see how today goes as it very well could get ugly in which case in a worst case  scenario (I have a non-compete) I may need to evaluate other options.

Note:  When you start a new job make sure you get a copy of everything you signed and keep it in a safe place, it could be very valuable down the road.

I currently have 4 hard offers on the table that I received between Wednesday and Saturday of this last week. One of those offers has a deadline of 8am on Monday morning which is probably the reason I have been so stressed out and this process went from enjoyable to stomach turning. If I were to wait through this next week I am somewhat confident that I could possibly get another two offers which would both be much closer to my home and be acceptable as far as hours and technology. One of those offers could be coming from the client I have been working at for the last 1.5 years, I let them know ahead of time that I would possibly be resigning from my consulting company this week and they really did not want to see me go, essentially they would cancel all the projects they have been taking on for the last year and a half if I were to leave. I would LOVE to work there, but they can’t get me a straight answer until Wednesday. To make matters even more complicated my current employer could try to stop this potential swap from happening. I am 90% sure I don’t have a non-compete signed with them, but am not 100% sure. The owner of my consulting company has been known to be very aggressive when it comes to protecting his revenue and has no qualms suing the heck out of everyone involved and often wins.

To make matters even more exciting, while I was interviewing at Company 2 last week, it turns out that while interviewing with the CIO he looks at my current company name, and says do you know that your company is here right now? I reply no I did not. He asks if they know I am looking to which I reply “NO”. The recruiter that I was with goes out to the lobby to cross my name out of the sign in book and it turns out my boss is signed in immediately after me and had a 1pm sales call at the same time I had my 1pm interview. Had she not been late for her sales call we would have met in the lobby. Needless to say I am certain she saw my name as the next morning was met with offers for lunch and IMs making sure I was happy with what I was working on, etc. Not entirely too scared about being fired, but it is not out of the realm of possibility.

At this point in time I am actually considering turning down Company 1, Company 2, and Company 4. Company 1 I have just heard too many bad things about from previous employees/consultants and the technology is out-dated, Company 2 is just too far away, and Company 4 the expected hours and technology being used just don’t suit my fancy. Only reason I am leaving Company 3 on the table is they are my recruiter and they may have a better consulting gig for me somewhere and they have no qualms about you leaving their company to go work for a client full-time so I could go there as an intermediary step first.

I guess we will call Company 5 my current client and I will see how things shake out with them next week. Honestly the probability of things going off without a hitch as far as me getting employed there is probably about 15% or less, but we will see.

I may be much pickier as to who I apply to in the near future so that I don’t have to turn down so many job offers like this, but to be honest I never imagined having this kind of success.

Now here is the question? Am I a moron to be thinking about turning down this kind of money per year for what may be somewhat overcomeable circumstances at the various companies, for the hope of something bigger and better that may never come? Even two months ago I could not have imagined even considering turning down anyone of these offers. I was making $57,000 a year and here I am thinking about turning down job offers over $20,000 more a year than that, with better bennies. I’m either delusionally confident with my value in the market place and ease of finding a job or I’m being smart and not settling with for a job that isn’t a perfect fit for me. I guess only time will tell, but I certainly waited too long to sell my PS3s and now I will be returning those to the store, hopefully I’m not letting the hype deflate from my job hunt also 8-|

My Role – Part of development team, but would have a good say in what we are doing. Would actually being using some fairly outdated technologies for the most part with just a little bit of the latest technology. Also in unregulated arm of Energy holding company so it’s a lot more fast paced and exciting. They are growing like crazy, expected work hours are 50 hours per week

Career Advancement – Would have the typical chance to move up to management if I choose down the road.

Drive Time – 40 minutes in ideal conditions

Salary – $75,000 with bonus plan that has target of 10% of salary, but last year was 22%
401k – Will match 5% of my contributions, also have a company funded pension plan.

Health insurance and Dental – Anywhere from $30-$100 per paycheck with deductibles ranging from $200 to $3,000 with 80% coverage and an out of pocket max of $3,000 to $4,000

Note this post is part of a series

• My Job Dilema
• What I want in a job
• My Current Company
• Job Option #1
• Job Option #2
• Job Option #3
• Job Option #4
• Job Option #5 – coming later
• Job Option #6 – coming later
• Job Option #7 – coming later
• Job Option #8 – coming later

My Role – Consultant, would vary from project to project

Career Advancement – Not really room to move up their corp ladder as it is pretty flat, Administrative and consultants, possibly project manager positions, but not really. Obviously could get boost in pay but it is very dependent upon what client is willing to pay versus for me versus my true performance.

Drive Time – Assured would only get put in positions within 30-35 minutes of my house, currently trying to place me at a place 20 minutes away.

Salary – Would vary because I would be hourly. Good news is if I had to work over 40 (which I am told is entirely up to me and the client) I would be getting paid so OT isn’t nearly that bad. Bad news is if I don’t have an assignment I am not getting paid. I do however get 4 weeks PTO and 6 sick days so the risk is a lot less than other hourly consultants I know. Have been quoted $37 /hr = $77,000 per year. I personally think this is low for that type of work and think it should be somewhere between $40-$50/hr for this area minimum.

401k –Match 50% of the first 6% – fully vested after 5 years.

Health insurance and Dental – $250 per paycheck with $4,000 deductible and 80% coverage with max out of pocket of $8,000.

Note this post is part of a series

• My Job Dilema
• What I want in a job
• My Current Company
• Job Option #1
• Job Option #2
• Job Option #3
• Job Option #4
• Job Option #5 – coming later
• Job Option #6 – coming later
• Job Option #7 – coming later
• Job Option #8 – coming later