<p>We all go to work for the different reasons. Majority of us need to get a paycheck to pay the bills. If you are the lucky one that do for leaving what you like to do please list what is that you do and if it pays your bills.</p>
<p>My husband and I are structural engineers and run our company out of our home. I love taking care of the computer drawings and bookkeeping, and doing occasional engineering calculations when I need to. I love the flexibility. My mornings are MINE - I go for a run or to the gym. We can also be at home to keep an eye on our mentally ill son. I would never go back to working for someone else! I feel blessed.</p>
<p>MTA: It has been very profitable for us every year but 2013. That was a tough year - the phone didn’t ring often. Now people seem to be building again, whew! </p>
<p>Dh and I are both engineers too, but we don’t work for ourselves. We both like our employers, and enjoy talking about our work days over a glass of wine on the porch at the end of the day.</p>
<p>Yes, our incomes pay our bills.</p>
<p>I teach art to children in a public school system. I love almost everything about it and it pays SOME of the bills but my H has a much higher salary. If I were single I would have a much more frugal and limited lifestyle on my income alone. Would I still choose it as a profession Yes.</p>
<p>I am clergy. It’s a calling, although never a particularly high paying one. In fact, I am now working for free (no work visa in our new country). </p>
<p>H is a Usability Research manager for a video game company. He gets paid (very well) to play video games and watch other people play video games. It’s a dream job. </p>
<p>My son gets to play Mythbusters and get paid (well) for it. His situation is unusual in that he has military and community college training rather than a college degree or even a Master’s which all of the other employees have. He’s just that good at what he does. My BIL is an actor who began building his resume as a teen, has a college degree from a well-known college in NY and gets paid quite well to be other people every day. H works in communications and we do fine. We’re not living high off the hog but we’re ok. He loves his work despite the politics. My brother started off after HS as a laborer and owns his own award-winning contracting company now. It is not what he ever thought he would be doing for a living but he loves it. </p>
<p>Me and my husband are fairly senior airline pilots and we usually like it very much. Sometimes it’s miserable, but mostly enjoyable and it pays extremely well. Just afraid it might shorten our lifespan.</p>
<p>I really enjoy the low paying pastor job, and usually don’t mind the moonlighting home care aide job (fortunately I do sub work for them so I can just refuse to go back to clients I dislike). My first moonlighting job was at a grocery store fish department, and I decided I preferred changing adult diapers to dealing with dead fish and live lobsters.</p>
<p>My husband does cancer research and certainly got into it for the love of science. It’s pretty stressful, especially as funding for science has gone down the tubes, and there are some other issues at his current institution that have thrown everyone a real curve ball, but I can’t imagine him doing anything else.</p>
<p>I am an architect, self employed for over 15 years. When the kids were young I worked about half time with a salary to match. This year things have really picked up and I am working more than full time. I like the variety of my work. Today I drew up an as-built site plan for a gym, took a set of plans of a restaurant to the County Health Department for approval (which they did on the spot - yay!), met with a company that got a violation for running a business out of a house and told them that the kind of variance they needed required a lawyer before they needed an architect. I’ve got a bunch of home addition projects on my drawing table as well in various states of completion. My aim was to be making enough to be paying college tuitions by the time my kids were in college - I came close! This year I hope to earn enough to help pay for the addition going on to our house.</p>
<p>I’m a retired speech pathologist. My husband is a design engineer specializing in power design. We both really like(d) our jobs, and yes…they paid the bills…including the college bills.</p>
<p>Psychologists don’t get paid well, but I cannot imagine what else I would have done. It gave me the flexibility to raise my son as a single mom, and then later, to care for my dad. I think I am fortunate in that I have full time practice now. In my early years, I was more of an academic. I worked a dozen years in a hospital part-time, with private practice. I think the key is having flexibility, both in terms of time and what one can do. I use to do lots of testing, and I would score and write the reports at home. </p>
<p>I am a hospital pharmacist. I LOVE my profession but my job is becoming more and more stressful every day.</p>
<p>My husband and I own a medical business. I love the flexibility and that I get to put my organizational skills and other ideas to work. We were able to make our business how we wanted it, and able to say no to things we didn’t like. I work mostly from home, which always allowed me to be here for the kids after school, go to all their events, etc. The downside is owning your own business also means you are never off. Especially considering we deal in the hospital market. But we can sit in the hot tub to talk through things and call it a meeting. :)</p>
<p>Husband and I are both librarians, and I am also a former teacher. As public library managers we will never make over the average city salary, but we were frugal for long enough that we do okay, and generous universities helped make college affordable.</p>
<p>I’m an estate and trust attorney with my own solo practice, and I love it. Lawyer stereotypes notwithstanding , I don’t make very much money (tend to give away too much of my time and not charge enough for the rest), but we are frugal and get by. I absolutely love having my own business and calling all the shots. I love drafting trusts, coming up with creative ways to solve people’s problems, helping to create order out of the chaos that can ensue when someone dies, etc. I love it when someone leaves after an appointment saying they’ll sleep better, or they can finally relax, and it happens fairly often.</p>
<p>Hubby builds and repairs musical instruments, he also works for himself. (He’s been self-employed for 30 years, me only 6; I used to work for a judge in State employment.) He likes his work too. Now that I’m also self-employed we can commiserate about the trials and tribulations of dealing with the public, vendors, computers, etc., and it has brought us closer. I give him less grief about not charging enough, now that I’m walking in those shoes, but we also encourage each other in myriad ways. Not having any steady paycheck has been a bit stressful at times, but it’s more than balanced out by the fact that we both love our work now. We both understand when the other gets caught up in a project and works until late at night.</p>
<p>I am a writer and, aside from occasional loneliness of working at home, I love it. It is what I am best at, I always wanted to do it, indeed it is the only thing I am good for as I don’t like jobs in organizations.</p>
<p>I have chosen a niche - case studies - and am expert at it. While the format sometimes bores me, I am never lacking for work and people literally fly me all over the world to investigate situations and write stories, much like the work I did as a reporter.</p>
<p>H is a musician, used to own a music store til he started disliking having to deal with customers and moved into IT many years ago. He has done very well and is now a manager. I am an engineer, and have been at same company for over 30 years (yikes!). I like my job, hate my boss. Too close to retirement to leave (one of the few who still have defined pension plan, yea!) and too many layoffs happening here for me to change jobs within the company. I come in early (5:30AM) so I can be there for the kids in the afternoon. It can be problamatic in that I sometimes feel like I am ditching in the middle of the day and has had an impact on my salary. I do love being with my kids when they get out of school though. We live frugally, have no problem paying for college and private school but I will be happy when kids are on their own and I have all that money to spend on me, me, me! Although I make a good salary, H makes more. If I had to do it over again, I might look closer at being a math major and persuing a career in that field or teaching. </p>
<p>I’m an addiction counselor and researcher, much more research now, but for years I was in the trenches, and it did not pay well. Now, it does. But I really don’t care. Even though H has been tremendously financially successful in finance, I’ve never been much of a big money person. One thing the money has done is allow me to collect art and other aesthetic things I really love. But, that’s icing, and not anything i would have changed work for.</p>
<p>Our oldest graduated in one of those art majors everyone is always admonishing kids not to get, but she is so successful at this point, I can’t even figure out what anyone is talking about. </p>
<p>More and more I am convinced that Joseph Campbell was right. “Follow your Bliss.” (You can always bartend to pay the bills like many of us did, until you make it.)</p>
<p>I’m an Occupational Therapist who recently left my long term hospital management position for academia. The change in work setting is significant, but I’m truly enjoying the student interaction, more flexible work schedule and opportunities for writing and pursuing my doctorate. Working in the hospital environment had become so stressful in the last few years with little time to think and minimal recognition. I was fortunate to be able to adjust my work schedule to those of my kids as they were growing up. My husband has worked as an engineering manager for many years; he has always travelled internationally which required one of us to be more consistently at home. I had no idea when I chose OT as a career that it would allow me so much flexibility in work schedules and settings. It’s an even more popular career now; only 5% of our applicants are admitted. I’m so glad I’m not applying now!</p>
<p>H was a telecommunications specialist with the federal govt. his job changed very often in terms of responsibilities, but has mostly loved his job over the past 4+ decades. It gave him a lot of challenges as well as opportunities for continuing education, some travel, and the reward of doing work he loved with minimal supervision (of him or by him). His steady income allowed me to pursue a variety of jobs. </p>
<p>I was a trial attorney for five years just after graduating from law school. I then became a full-time mom, involved in kids sports teams, scouts, and volunteer PTA co-chair. I then became a special education hearing officer and then a part-time traffic court judge. I am now a non-profit executive director of an organization I founded. I have loved all my jobs and feel very, very fortunate. </p>
<p>Our S is a BEE by training and serves as a project manager. His hobby is “repositioning” goods and reselling them online. His hobby makes more money than his full-time job, but he enjoys both and has been doing both for about 3 years now.</p>
<p>We are hoping D will figure out her niche and find something she loves that can pay her bills. Bank of mom and dad will continue to pay her bills until then. ;)</p>