Tagged: investments, job skills, Money
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Awakened 3 years, 3 months ago.
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Hey, Joe. What do you know? You may be feeling bummed out because you have a s~~~ty job and nobody respects you. But fear not: there’s hope.
You can set aside some savings, if possible, and build up a nest egg with bank CD’s, money market funds, savings bonds, real estate investment trusts, etc.
After a few years of saving up, you can go to a trade school (or get a student loan) and learn something useful: carpentry, plumbing, auto mechanics. You may spend a few years living with roommates, driving a cheap car, or catching the bus, but it’s worth it, pal. Study hard and make good grades.
When you get your certificate, go job hunting. Make yourself look presentable and show that interviewer that you’re eager to start working! When you get a job, you will be on a “probation period” for the first few months, so be prompt and don’t slack, Jack. Learn as much as you can about your job and do the best work you can so you can get pay raises. If you want more money, you can get a part time job. With two jobs, you’ll get the bills paid and then have money left over for savings & fun stuff.
When the money situation gets better (and that student loan is paid off), start a long-term savings plan such as a 401(k) or an IRA. If your money is invested in a Fortune 500 index fund, you’ll have a good chance of making a huge profit 20 years from now.
If you spend 20 to 30 years of your life remaining single, living modestly (that means no expensive dates with women), and investing your money wisely, you can have yourself a goose that lays golden eggs. You can also make money on the side with rental properties. Your hard-working tenants will help you pay the bills. Once you get your passive income set up (rent, dividends), you can relax and enjoy your hobbies while everyone else is running around in the rat maze set up by the corporate world.
Congratulations, Joe. You did it! Buy yourself a hot rod, and get a lap dance at your local nudie bar!
"I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win-and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was ‘No.’" (Atlas Shrugged)
I am a STEM drone and I wish I had been an electrician.
It is not what you make it is what you save.
Love is just alimony waiting to happen. Visit mgtow.com.
It is not what you make it is what you save.
I was thinking this very thing at work today while listening to a guy brag about how much overtime he worked this year, yet his pile of debt only got larger. Its gotta suck to be so over extended you can’t even think about cutting back to a regular 40 hour work week without falling behind on debt payments.
It cracks me up though how these people always want to brag about their s~~~ and belittle you for not having as much stuff, going out as much, or going on as many vacations. In the end I can’t wait to be like peace out man, I’m retiring in my 30s, I hope you enjoy working until 70!
It is not what you make it is what you save.
I was thinking this very thing at work today while listening to a guy brag about how much overtime he worked this year, yet his pile of debt only got larger. Its gotta suck to be so over extended you can’t even think about cutting back to a regular 40 hour work week without falling behind on debt payments.
It cracks me up though how these people always want to brag about their s~~~ and belittle you for not having as much stuff, going out as much, or going on as many vacations. In the end I can’t wait to be like peace out man, I’m retiring in my 30s, I hope you enjoy working until 70!
I don’t consider traveling a waste of money and would rather work longer than to put off trips until I’m too old to enjoy doing it. Best experience of my life was the summer of 2001 I spent going to school in Italy and traveling around Europe by train every weekend.
I don’t consider traveling a waste of money and would rather work longer than to put off trips until I’m too old to enjoy doing it. Best experience of my life was the summer of 2001 I spent going to school in Italy and traveling around Europe by train every weekend.
Pretty much anything you needlessly run yourself into debt for is a waste of money. That 1000+ dollar weekend in NYC that goes on a credit card that consisted of an expensive hotel and a few fancy restaurants trying to impress some c~~~ is beyond idiotic. He’ll end up paying twice face value for such trips after he pays them off and he’ll be paying for it long after the current woman is out of his life.
I am a STEM drone and I wish I had been an electrician.
It is not what you make it is what you save.
In my former life, I was a union employed Journeyman licensed electrician. “It’s NOT all it’s cracked up to be”
In a World of Justin Beibers Be a Johnny Cash
I am a STEM drone and I wish I had been an electrician.
It is not what you make it is what you save.
In my former life, I was a union employed Journeyman licensed electrician. “It’s NOT all it’s cracked up to be”
Care to elaborate? This is really important for me – what the f~~~ could go wrong? Seems like a breeze
proud carrier of the 'why?' chromosome
I am a STEM drone and I wish I had been an electrician.
It is not what you make it is what you save.
In my former life, I was a union employed Journeyman licensed electrician. “It’s NOT all it’s cracked up to be”
Care to elaborate? This is really important for me – what the f~~~ could go wrong? Seems like a breeze
To clarify, my experience was as a Union Construction electrician.
1. Working Conditions in New England: Hot Summers and Cold Winters–Sani-Cans in July are as bad as Sani-Cans in January. For example, after working in freezing temperatures all day roughing a building on an air force base that has no heat, you melt when you put your car heater on at the end of the day.
2. Dirty all the time, breathing in dust all day every day. Blowing out and coughing up black s~~~ every day.
3. No running water. Call me a pansy, but it’s nice to be able to wash your hands after you take a dump and before you eat your cold lunch while sitting on a sheetrock bucket. Hand sanitizer just doesn’t cut it.
3. Commercial and Industrial construction is Heavy Hard work, and very few tradesman escape injuries. If the accumulated injuries don’t disable you over your career, they sure as hell don’t make retirement enjoyable. You WEAR your body out ! Especially, you wear out your joints and your back. I have known more then a handful that were physically wrecked years before retirement, but they must continue.
4. The work is often feast or famine. It is often seasonal as well as economically cyclical. You can make VERY good money, but then you can be laid off for very long periods of time after exhausting your unemployment. If you are not working, you are not paying into your benefits, and that means your health care as well as your pension. It’s easy to lose your health insurance. I don’t know if Obamacare has changed this ???
5. Construction electricians are always working themselves out of a job, and many “big” jobs go in phases. For example, at the beginning of a project, the contractor may need a 100 electricians, but after the initial roughing phase of 2 months or whatever, it may drop down to 50 electricians. Then you get laid off after being on the book for 10 months, working for 2 months, and now you go back to the hall and end up on the bottom of the book where you have to wait for employment again. You have to live it to truly understand it. During GOOD times the book moves fast and you will be out quickly, the rest of the time you better get comfortable.
6. You could get laid off any day at any time for any reason. Most would let you finish out the week and cut you lose on Friday, but not all.
7. You are basically a day laborer unless you are well connected to the contractor. Usually, you would need a family connection etc. to have any type of “stable” employment, but there again no guarantees. A “few” chosen would hang around for long periods (IE years), but they were always running around afraid of getting laid off, and would knife you in the back to save their job. So much for brotherhood.
7. Can’t speak for all locals, but in mine, you only got paid for the time that you worked. No holidays, sick days, vacations, etc.
8. You have the opportunity to become a “traveler”. This would mean that you would travel to wherever in the country (USA) there is work to sign the book (book 2), and hopefully get on a big job with lots of O.T. This can be very lucrative but expenses (IE: maintaining 2 house holds, living on take out food and living in motels, etc.) can cut into the wages. This is not to mention that you work with a lot of druggies and drunks on the road that try and travel like gypsies from job to job. Travelers on book 2 are the FIRST to get laid off. It’s not a very “stable” life style.
9. You can do work on the side, but you sign a union agreement that states you won’t do any after hours work, and you are jeopardizing your union card if you do.
10. You can go into business for yourself. One -two man shops usually can’t afford the insurance, bonding, payroll, materials, etc. to bid on any decent sized commercial projects so quite often must start out in residential. Now you are trying to pay all the expenses of a small business man while also competing with every moon lighter around that’s into the job for just extra cash without any of your expenses.
I could go on, but I think that you get an idea that there is a lot to it that you probably didn’t know about. All that being said, it’s still a worthwhile career for the right men. I know some men that have ben doing it their whole life, and will do it until they retire. Some men love it, some men tolerate it, and some men leave it. In that sense, it’s no different then any other job.
In a World of Justin Beibers Be a Johnny Cash
Very informative. Appreciate it! +100
proud carrier of the 'why?' chromosome
The thing with the union gigs is they are all about seniority. I have a buddy who is a union carpenter with roughly 25 years in, and he’s got it made. He’s pretty much one of the top dogs in his local so he gets first pick of all the jobs that come up, and he can use his unemployment like months worth of paid vacation each year if he staggers his jobs correctly. A job can end, he gets “laid off,” then he can turn down the next 10 jobs if he wants while still collecting unemployment. Its actually disgusting what he gets with…
If you can get up near the top its amazing, but if not then yeah…it isn’t all that great, and really it comes down to timing. Just for example, I was on a 6 man seniority list at my last job. I spent the first 8 years on the bottom. When we finally had a guy retire and I moved up a spot, they hired another guy below me. That guy lasted about a year and a half and quit. They replaced him with another guy. Over the next year we had a guy retire, a guy switch jobs within the company to a non-union position, and a guy get hurt who ended up settling and going on disability. Took me over 10 years to be the #3 guy in the lineup, then I left for a different job and the guy below me who was there for a year bumped up to #3.
Definitely right about the injuries though. I’ve seen way too many guys get hurt and have to stop working 5-10 years before planned just because they couldn’t physically do it anymore. What’s even worse than that is the younger guys who get hurt…they end up having to go another 30 years or whatever with a f~~~ed up back or a screwed up knee. New employers won’t hire you if you have obvious signs of injury, and if you get hurt at a new job they’re going to claim it was pre-existing, only you won’t be able to go back after the old employer anymore at that point because you’ve already settled or because they’ll be claiming it was unrelated. Its an ugly clusterf~~~ that always ends up with an injured dude going months with no money and when he finally gets something, its after a lawyer takes their cut. I’m glad I’m not a desk jockey at this point in my life, but at the same time I’m glad I’m not doing hard labor or repetitive or heavy lifting anymore either.
The thing with the union gigs is they are all about seniority
There was no such thing as “seniority” in my local. Every local/trade may operate differently. I’m not an expert, but I do have some experience with different IBEW electrical locals, and at least in the North East they all seem to be pretty similar in this area. From working with other tradesman and having friends/family in other unionized trades (IE; Carpenters, Tin-Knockers, Masons, etc.). They all pretty much seem to operate the same way in the North East. There definitely may be differences like you speak of in regards to seniority with some of the trades, but I’m going on what I remember and have tradesman tell me then and even lately.
In my local, there were men that had many more years in the trade that would get routinely laid off, and newer younger men would be kept employed. Employment was/is at the SOLE DISCRETION of the CONTRACTOR. If the contractor CHOOSES to keep a man employed for his whole career, great. He can also choose to “shuffle” any and all unionized employees as he sees fit, whenever he sees fit.
Also, from what I was told from an acquaintance that s still a member. When your number comes up, you have to take the job or you slide to the bottom of the book. So, there’s no more “cherry picking” by members that have a fat unemployment account. or can wait it out because they have a spouse that makes a good income.
Actually, there are some contractors that like the “new” members that have come from non-union shops, as they think they can push them harder and get more out of them. If the “new member” is willing to bend the rules (IE: work after hours without pay, skip coffee/lunch breaks, throw the occasional brother under the bus, and has a good skill level). He may hang around for a while, and possibly even run some work, but eventually he too will have an issue with the contractor, and get laid off too. As you can tell, my local wasn’t/isn’t a very strong local The contractors have many running job scared, and the hall doesn’t want to create to many waves and risk losing any. It’s a viscous cycle, and stressful way of life for many.
Definitely right about the injuries though. I’ve seen way too many guys get hurt and have to stop working 5-10 years before planned just because they couldn’t physically do it anymore.
Supply houses and Home depot’s are full of these men.
In a World of Justin Beibers Be a Johnny Cash
As you can tell, my local wasn’t/isn’t a very strong local The contractors have many running job scared, and the hall doesn’t want to create to many waves and risk losing any.
I spent about 11 years in a union, and the one thing I can tell you about unions is unions are in it for the unions first, not the members. Unions appear “weak” because fighting things means lawyers, which means it costs them money. In 11 years I hadn’t seen the union resolve a single issue that required any effort on their part beyond a meeting with an employee, a steward, and a member of management. Occasionally the business agent from the hall would come to one such meeting, and he’d just spout some s~~~ about management rights even if the employee had a copy of the contract and proof it was being violated.
Think about it…the union makes their money basically by having as many members as possible and doing as little for them as possible. Why risk employing less people by p~~~ing employers off when if a worker bee gets p~~~ed off and quits the next guy in line will pay the same amount of money in union dues and admin fees. The best is when someone quits who hasn’t put in enough time yet to get vested…he just spent a few years making a donation to the union coffers! Most the guys I’ve met over the years that were strong union supporters have either never been in a union or are older gents who talk them up hoping the next generation of workers will be willing to fund their ponzi scheme pensions.
Supply houses and Home depot’s are full of these men.
And the sad part is most of these guys were the ones who were the best workers in their primes. Soon as an injury slows them up they get discarded like yesterdays trash, while the lazy s~~~ bags are the ones that manage to make it much longer injury free.
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I agree, and these are just some of the the “ins” and “outs” of a unionized tradesman life, and unfortunately finding a quality non-union shop is even more risky and le$$ rewarding.
In a World of Justin Beibers Be a Johnny Cash
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