Extra income

At my previous job, working 10-12 hours per day was the norm, and it wouldn't feel like a long day until after the 12th hour. It was not uncommon to work for 6 or 7 days in a 7 day work week. My shift was scheduled for 1pm to 10pm, but I got a 5% differential for working that shift.

The problem with 2nd shifts is that the timing of your day gets messed up. For example, I would work from 1 to 10pm, go home, stay up late until 2 am or later, then sleep for about 8 hours. By the time I get up, it would be about 10 am or so. That would leave about 3 hours to get things before work, but after getting dressed and eating a late breakfast or early lunch would leave only 2 hours before work. That wasn't usually enough time to go out and do other things so I just sit around before work or show up to work early because there was so much to get done. Basically 2nd shifts take away a lot of free time to do for other things so I would personally not do it again as a full time position.

The job that I started in 2004 was a standard 40 hours per week job. Very rare was there overtime. Overtime would only happen if something had gone wrong, and we had to start over. To this day, I've never had to come in on the weekend.

I started my job in 2004, and I got a regular day shift, which I worked from 7am to 3:30pm. Since my shift was done in the afternoon, I had more free time in the late afternoon and evening hours. I also had weekends free to do as I please.

Having free time was nice, but I also thought I was unproductive. Hours doing nothing could have been spent working and making extra income, so I began searching for a part-time job. I tried working at a concession stand at PETCO Park for Padres games, but I quit after the first day. Making $9/hr for 6 hours, with almost non-stop action is not worth $54.

I found something in May 2005. The position wasn't some minimum wage position. It was for a per-diem research assistant in a clinical research setting. The hours and days were flexible. Originally I had set weekday hours from 5-11pm and weekends anytime, but I later switched it to just weekend hours. Because it was per-diem and not part-time, hours were not guaranteed week to week. Sometimes it would be months between shifts. However with per-diem, the employee does not have to fulfill any hours that were scheduled, if advance notice was given to cancel. Since the employer can't guarantee hours like part-time staff, they can't expect per-diem staff to give them availability when needed.

The best part about weekend shifts was an extra 15% differential. In 2005, I made about $1580. In 2006, I made about $5250. In 2007, I made about $12500. 2007 was an exceptional year, but I had to really work for it. There were lots of staff shortages on the weekends, and I always volunteered for double shifts. Eventually, they began to schedule double-shifts for me because they knew I would accept.

Working double-shifts on the weekends had lots of benefits. For the first 8 hours of work, I made regular wage + 15% differential. For the first 4 hours of over-time, I would make regular wage times 1.5 times + 15% differential. And for any hours after that, I would make regular wage times 2 + 15% differential.

Doing that for twice a week (Saturday and Sunday), I would make more money than someone who worked Monday through Friday, 8 hours a week. Not only more money per week, but with less hours worked. In essence, I made 58% more per hour than the weekday person or 27% more per week.

Since I relied primarily on my weekday job for budgeting, all of this extra money is just extra savings. I felt my savings were enough at the time, so it went straight to investing.