Working 2 Full Time Jobs & What I've learned.

I own two businesses and work a crap ton too although not 40 hours at each like you are. Be careful about missing life. Work isn't worth looking back and wishing you enjoyed that time in your life.

I say this as I'm about to leave one business and go to another for the next 3.5 hours while my wife and kid are walking to the park to play. It sucks that I'm missing that moment and they get 100% of my time, effort, and energy when I am there but I still wish I could spend more time with them.

I respect the hunger that drives that work ethic though.

PaxtonShelby said:

First, let me say I admire your determination. Sadly, few people your age have the drive to do what you are doing.

Keep in mind that working hard and working smart are two different things. This isn't something you can sustain for long. It will wear you down and your health will suffer eventually. Not a matter of "if" but "when". Money is very important. I get that. But your health is the single most valuable thing you have. Good health allows you to enjoy life while earning what you need to live and ultimately retire.

6 months of this may allow you to save enough for a healthy down payment on a house. And that is a great thing. But keep in mind that at some point you will have to give up one job and the income that goes with it. Be careful not to overextend yourself financially.

You may have already done this, but I suggest you meet with a good financial planner to build a long term plan for your finances, covering everything from the house purchase to retirement to kids' college funds (if kids are a possibility down the road) to other things you want to do in life (vacations, starting a business, etc.). You are young now, and if you save smart and invest (401k, IRA's, the stock market) you can have a huge pile of money 20-30 years down the road enabling you to do what you want in retirement. It just takes discipline and from what you have said you have plenty of that. Just don't kill yourself getting there. We all like to think we are Superman, but in the end we are not.

Best of luck to you bud. I am pulling for you.

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See the highlighted part in red, it isn't most people his age. It is majority of the population regardless of age.

The rest of your post is completely on point, I had to throw it out there as that statement is ridiculous.

No work life balance....

You will burn out...

Soon....

And hard....

Have you ever heard an older person say, "I wish I worked more during my life?"

Like others have said, this is terrible for your health.

What are you going to do when you drop the other job? I would be worried that you won't be able to swing it without keeping up a hard work schedule. Not necessarily 80 hours a week, but do you want to work 60 hours a week for the rest of your life? Like the other guy said, 40 hours is enough.

You are using the time where you have the most freedom to work in that you have very little responsibilities and obligations. Wife? Kids? Buy a house? I mean, then you are required to keep going at it. You are 26, enjoy yourself. That's not to say piss it away on material items and such. However, using your money on life experiences would be much more beneficial. Remember that you have 40 years of work ahead of you.

You are giving two employers half ass work at best. I mean, you're selling yourself short at both places. Are either of these "career" jobs? Perhaps putting in some more time at one of them will be better off long term. Sure, you won't have what you may have in a year. However, in 5 years, you may be way ahead of where you would be.

I can appreciate the hard work, but I do not think it is worth it.

I know the feeling man. I work 70 hours a week at an investment bank in Boston Monday through Friday. Saturday and Sunday I valet two five hour shifts during the day and try to pick up the Saturday night shift if possible. People tell me I'm crazy and that I will burn myself out, etc. But I'm 24, hungry and have the same mindset that you do.

The goal is to make as much as humanly possible in the short term so that I can start my own business (fintech) and make the REAL money while calling my own shots. Seeing people like Treynor are motivation enough on the shitty days to keep me focused on what I'm working towards.

Keep it up man and best of luck to you.

Edit: Important to the story. I grew up in a blue collar family and learned hard work from a young age. My dad started his own commercial roofing business when he was my age and while he made a good living, he always told me you don't want to do this son. I never truly took what he said into account until I started working with him in high school and reality set in. I'm not the smartest guy ever but the one thing I know is hard work. Went from being an average student my whole life to finishing one A- away from a 4.0 GPA with a BBA in Finance. Now when I wake up at 4am instead of saying "****...it's time to roof" I wake up at 4am and say "Thank **** I'm not roofing today."

I did something similar when I was younger. It was really grating on my mind and made me really short with the people I worked with over time. It made me appreciate my career when I found what I really wanted to do. It's challenging but a great character building experience.

Sn95Snake said:

See the highlighted part in red, it isn't most people his age. It is majority of the population regardless of age.

The rest of your post is completely on point, I had to throw it out there as that statement is ridiculous.

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It seems like we are saying the same thing, except I was only comparing him to others his age. I didn't see the point in comparing him to others who have more established careers that can and do require significantly more time to be spent working.

Work smarter not harder. I turn plenty of 70-80 hour weeks but they're always followed up with 10-20 hour weeks. You can always make more money, but your time is limited. Don't piss it all away

Holy crap. Cant believe how much some of you guys work. I do about 45 a week and my work phone beeps all the time and I monitor it but damn.

I should show this to some of my guys at work.

Props to all of you and one way or another all the hard work will pay off. Always does.

P49Y-CY said:

that does sounds difficult. all i can say to keep in mind is that sometimes our time is more valuable than money. it is the one resource that we will never be able to get back.

we are all (most of us) are wage slaves to one extent or another. we trade our time for money. that is why it is so important to be doing what you really want to with your time in life, and hopefully being able to make money while doing it.

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This comment says it all man... I've worked a lot of hours myself.. sometimes 96 straight and some of the best memories I have are of me and my girl spending time in our first apartment together

You never answered, in general terms what are the two jobs?

My 1st shift job (job I obtained shortly after graduting school), salaried, I'm working as an NVH Engineer for a smaller Brake Shim development company. I spend a lot of time designing brake shims, running tests for caliper manufacturers, creating reports, & meeting costumers to either share my results so far or to introduce myself and new updates about our company to try to get more business. It's a smaller company so I feel as if sometimes I'm wearing many hats.

My 2nd shift job, hourly, I'm working as a technician conducting routine maintenance at scheduled intervals and inspections on 2019+ GM vehicles and documenting anything that looks like it could be a potential recall. This job is no where near as mentally stimulating, but there's only 3 of us who work during this shift, my manager and another co-worker. I primarily do 60% of the work load, if not, half of it every single day.

So I do not feel as if I'm only giving 50% at each job. At my engineering job I spent most of the 1st year working from 7:30am to 9pm to try to learn all of the rolls I'd be involved in and to learn as much as I could since this position was completely new to me. It also made it challenging because my superior is Japanese and his English is not the greatest. So when he try's to teach me something or go over something, it was and still is difficult to grasp "exactly" what's being asked or demonstrated. This was part of the main reason why I put in so much extra time before and after the scheduled working ours. But there is some downtime at these jobs sometimes that I take advantage of to reply to postings like this. Normally I'd find something else to learn about (at my engineering job), or just stay busy (at my 3rd shift job).

first off, there is nothing wrong with being a hard worker. In fact, I think most Americans are lazy, worthless sacks of shit, who suck our system dry and sit at home doing nothing. However, I think what you are doing is unnecessary and unhealthy. The body needs sleep. And when you are younger, you especially need more sleep. I don't mean 5 hours of sleep. You really need 6-8 hours of REM sleep when you are younger. You are stressing yourself for no reason. And your post seems as if you want our help.

You say you are saving up for a house. Great, I totally understand that. I bought my first house when I was very young. But realistically, you DON'T need a large down payment. what I recommend is a FHA loan with a low down payment of 3%...which will be about 5000-$10000. Not that bad at all. Don't tie up a 20% down payment, when you don't need to.

Believe it or not....but MANY things change between now and when you turn 30 years old. You learn many things about yourself and who you have become. And who you want to be. But mainly, when you are younger you have freedom. You have less responsibility. You don't have a wife. You don't have children. You don't have a mortgage. What I'm getting at is....don't waste your life killing yourself about work when you are so young. Why do you need so many jobs? You have no one to support but yourself.

Take a trip to Europe. Take a trip to Mexico. Explore the world. I wish I had traveled way more when I was young. Because now I realize, with so many responsibilities, you can't just walk away and enjoy a vacation. It's a part of life and part of being an adult. But don't force yourself on working brother. You will beat yourself to death with constant work. I hope you take my advise because I believe you deserve the freedom. I understand you are a hard worker.....but you have to draw the line in the sand at some point. You can't just work 24/7 like a robot and pretend life is normal. Take a breathe, step back, and really consider what you want to do with life. It's more than just work, I promise.

shoot, i won't bitch about my 60hr work weeks.

So saftey work...wow.

Your employer isn't very smart, knowing what's going on and allowing it. Massive liability there. You cannot be at 100%. This isn't opinion, but medical fact.

Working 60-80 hours a week by doing it every day is one thing. Doing it in 5 days and getting 3 hours of sleep is another. It's unhealthy short and long term, but more importantly for your job it effects decision making. Working with heavy trucks, doing saftey inspections and youre dead tired.

I did plenty of long weeks at your age, 7 days a week, and even then zombie mode sets in. A few years ago for about 3~ months I was working straight 12-14 hour days at two jobs, a factory maintenance one and the other doing concrete work.

You get past tired, where you don't feel it. Zombie mode. You don't really randomly fall asleep etc, but your decision making is bad, random things seem funny, etc. Not good.

What happens when you miss a saftey item on an inspection? Or drop a truck off the lift on somebody? And here it is online documented what your knowingly doing. Forget that down payment, gonna need some money for an attorney.

Get it man. Make it and save it then let it work for you. Do not adjust to your income. I do one thing from 9:30-4 and another some days from maybe 7pm-2am. Both are pretty much 100% me. I don't work for anyone so I can flake when I want to a certain extent. When the grind starts to get to you don't hesitate to drop a job. Maybe ride it out to a point where you can do "consulting work" and just have your own schedule.

As for sleep, everyone is different. Some people really don't need a full night to recharge and the weekend helps recovery. And let's be honest, you aren't doing manual labor here.

I used to drive a truck for a living, and I got so burnt out with the hours, lack of home life, lack of sleep I just walked away from it.

RedRocketMike said:

Get it man. Make it and save it then let it work for you. Do not adjust to your income. I do one thing from 9:30-4 and another some days from maybe 7pm-2am. Both are pretty much 100% me. I don't work for anyone so I can flake when I want to a certain extent. When the grind starts to get to you don't hesitate to drop a job. Maybe ride it out to a point where you can do "consulting work" and just have your own schedule.

As for sleep, everyone is different. Some people really don't need a full night to recharge and the weekend helps recovery. And let's be honest, you aren't doing manual labor here.

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Sleep is different for everyone so far as the difference between 6 hours and 10... Nobody has a fully functional brain with 3 hours of sleep. Just plain old medical facts.

Lifting up full size trucks on a lift and doing saftey inspections sounds close enough to manual labor to me. I sure wouldnt want to be around someone getting 3 hours of sleep on the reg running a 4 post, and I sure wouldn't want my saftey inspection done by the guy. Just nuts.

I used to do prop management and the owner would work 7 days a week, come in at 9am and leave maybe 6 or 7pm. He would do this for 4-5 months straight and take a 2 week vacation.

Just like you op, hard work, dedication brings its rewards. He started his company in his apartment and now runs it in Los Gatos (https://www.google.com/search?q=average+home+price+los+gatos+ca&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8).

Btw the 2 jobs thing as much as people like to shit on immigrants, ive seen first hand a lot of mexicans work two jobs. And they are manual labor shitty jobs.

That sounds brutal. The closest I have ever come to that is working full time(I work in audit so that is 40-60 hours a week), getting my MBA full time in night classes and studying for the CPA exam all at the same time. I was working around 10 hours, going to class for 3 (not counting homework), then studying another 3 for the CPA exam or so and sleeping. Those made for very long days especially since all three activities (the MBA to a lesser extent) are very mentally draining activities. Having no free time and just working every free minute almost drove me crazy. Now I am done with my MBA and got my CPA and am amazed at how much free time I have. It's crazy, but I felt like I had to learn how to have fun again because my brain felt like it had to be doing something productive or I was wasting my time. You won't know what to do with your free time once you quit working both jobs. Good luck in the mean time!