I hope this fits the sub guidelines, I just need somewhere to vent.
I am a 29 year old male. Three weeks ago I quit my job as a bike messenger and got a job as a marketing specialist for a successful small-mid size business. I do a lot of work, but so far I enjoy the change of pace to an office environment and my coworkers are all great. I run marketing campaigns, do social media and blogging, work with marketing budgets, create plans of action for marketing campaigns, write press releases etc.
Don't get me wrong, being a bike messenger was awesome, I got to be outside all day, I made a base pay of $8/hr plus tips, received in cash at the end of the day, so I was netting between 20 and 25 bucks an hour. The problem is that the busy hours were limited, I was working between 20-30 hours a week, usually hovering around 25 and the schedule was such that I couldn't take a second job (no one wants to hire anyone with a very restricted schedule).
So in order to get a little more pay and secure my future a little bit more, I took your standard 40/hour a week office job, 8:30-5:00 every single day, making $30,000 a year. Not a great salary by any means, but I hope it gains me enough experience to make more a year or two down the line. I also live very, very frugally and don't spend much money at all. I buy clothes at thrift stores and alter them to fit (most of the clothes I've bought and altered myself fit about 1000x better than anything I've ever bought in store). I don't have cable, etc. etc. No unnecessary monthly expenses.
The problem is, now that I'm making what the US government for some reason thinks is a "good" salary, my health insurance has skyrocketed. Under my old pay, I was paying $20/month through the Marketplace for GOOD insurance. A max out of pocket of 1,200 a year, low-low deductible, free prescriptions, everything. But now that my subsidy is basically going to be nothing, I'm about to have to start paying more than $150 a month for the same insurance, or go to a much shittier plan through my company with an $8,000 deductible for a little bit less, something like $70 a month.
Since my new job "offers" health insurance, I'm not even sure if I can get insurance through the marketplace at all.
I also have had to renew my car insurance, which is $50 a month, luckily I drive a small Toyota so gas is very cheap for me, not even $10 a week.
Also, for the first year I did the bike messenger job, I qualified for public food assistance (SNAP) because I wasn't sure how my ends would meet initially. Now, of course, I won't qualify/won't need it.
Obviously there is some part of my ego that is glad to be off of public assistance, I suppose, but at the same time, I felt no shame using it when I needed it because that is what it's there for. I rarely even used the entire amount they allotted me, I eat a vegan/vegetarian diet and can feed myself very well on about 30 bucks a week.
What I'm getting at here is that I'm overall making the same or less as I was at my old job, working longer hours and not really seeing any benefits except maybe a potential future longer term in this job - you can't really do bike work your entire life, and I was getting to be the oldest person in my crew doing it.
Because my health insurance is going to be so shitty, the slightest health issue or accident will bankrupt my meager savings (about $6,000).
I read a post on Reddit the other day where somebody said that making between 30,000 and maybe 50,000 a year is the worst position to be in because you qualify for basically no benefits, but receive all the negatives of having a salaried job.
I'm three weeks ago and already seeing through the facade of having a "good job". At the same time, I don't feel like any of the odd jobs I've held over the years have any room for growth in the future. Should I be this antsy at a new job already? Am I just jaded from my relatively slack life I had before this and just suck it up and deal with it?
I already feel the crush of working 8:30-5:00 every day, because by the time I make it home, spend time working out/exercising, making dinner, etc. it's already time to go to sleep again (I try to go to bed somewhat early and wake up at 5:00am every day - I hate waking up and instantly running off to work. Having a few hours to myself BEFORE work is key for me to not getting stressed out)
Submitted February 04, 2017 at 12:48PM by seamster0000 http://ift.tt/2kEgRdz
