Need more $$$, thinking about changing careers or doing side work. 11

[nuuvox000]

I know the title sounds a little silly but that's what it comes down to at the present moment.

I think I might need to make more money, considering a career change. HVAC engineer (PE) currently; looking for advice and experiences.

Hello, my wife and I just went through our finances in detail and things aren't looking great; with the student loan repayments starting up again, we discovered that we have a net negative income every month. We have started to cut what we can but it's still pretty dire right now. My end of year bonus is generally pretty large so we should be able to coast on that for a while. But it's got me thinking about possibly going back to school, my wife possibly going back to school, etc.

We've got 3 young kids so we're trying to avoid my wife working full time if possible; she currently works very part time. We have a modest mortgage that's on the lower end for our state (house barely fits us), 10 year old cars, don't live extravagantly at all. Just a little wild how much things cost.

I currently make $100k with 7 years experience and a pretty good bonus. Seems to be about in line with what I see as I look around for job postings for HVAC and plumbing engineers with my experience in my geographic location. So it doesn't seem like hopping to another company will do a whole lot. My wife currently only makes $10k per year but we'd both like her to be home with the kids as much as possible, for now at least. Wife is starting to pick up more hours at night so I won't see her much right now but it is what it is for now.

I guess I'm hoping some people reading this have hopped careers after investing significant time already and I'd love to know how that went for you and what you learned. Did you get more schooling?

My grades in college weren't stellar but not horrible either. Wondering about going the route of patent attorney but not sure if I'll enjoy it. Even thinking about doing something in the medical field; opthalmologist, psychiatrist, etc. but I'm just brainstorming at this phase. Some of what I've written is probably very naive but we literally started thinking about this just yesterday afternoon. Also curious about what side work I could possibly do that would make more than uber/door dash.

Tldr; jumping careers after 7 years to something different possible? What was your experience or advice? Thanks for reading.

Also adding, I know student loan deferment or decreasing payment amount is possible, and we may have to do that, but right now we would pay them off in 10 years with our current payments. Going longer than that would obviously suck because of all the added interest. Thanks in advance to anyone who responds.

Edit: probably helps to add that I'm 35 years old.

 

[IRstuff]

I think that our educational system fails engineers in at least one critical area, namely financial education; going from poor, starving, college student to someone making relatively big bucks is exhilarating, but often leads to lifestyle creep, buying a new car, bigger home, adult toys, etc., that are detrimental to our long-term financial well-being.

While I don't necessarily recommend going the FIRE route, with saving and scrimping 30-40% of your salary, there are lessons to be learned; that is that people with way lower salaries can indeed amass small fortunes, and therefore, so can almost any engineer.

This is likewise something that could have also been taught in high school, such as in the infamous home economics classes; budgeting, setting aside savings and retirement funds, etc., are all things that all engineers need to do. Social Security is merely a safety net and not intended to provide anything more than general financial support and defined-benefit pensions are a thing of the past for most people. At some point in your life, you will need to have sufficient savings to fund your retirement lifestyle, beyond Social Security as well as emergency, medical, and long-term care expenses.

As I'm now retire, it's been painfully clear that as supposedly highly educated people, most of us are less than well-informed about how much money is needed to live retirement comfortably, and how little we've been educated in that regard.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[jgailla]

Adult toys can be fairly inexpensive. They just go through a lot of batteries.

 

[drawoh]

nuuvox000,

I am surprised this has not been mentioned.

Be damn careful about moonlighting. If you are seen to be competing with your current employer, you will be fired. If you expose your current employer to lawsuits, perhaps by using in-house design tools like FEA, you will be fired. If you are not getting your day-time work done...

If you are practicing on the side as a professional engineer, you had better have your own error and omission insurance.

--
JHG

 

[nuuvox000]

drawoh, thank you for bringing that up. I would actually only do any side work after getting explicit and written permission from my employer; in my state, you can lose your license for doing side jobs that are not approved by your primary employer. In my case, doing anything residential would not be in competition with my primary work so I think my employer would be fine with it. Thank you for bringing up the E&O insurance; I know it's expensive so any side work I do would have to be work that doesn't require a stamp. That's definitely something I would need to look into more closely. For example, I assume I can't advertise that I'm licensed for doing manual J calcs (license is not required in my state for manual J calcs). Thanks!

 

[GC_Hopi]

Sounds like you are in the messy middle of life. Its bitter sweet. A few things that proved helpful to me are learning more about personal finance and budgeting. The Money Guy show is a good resource and they nerdy take on personal finance appeals to my engineering brain.

https://www.youtube.com/@MoneyGuyShow

I recommend giving them a listen.

One more item, if your wife wants to increase her hourly pay I would look into certifications as opposed to a degree. IT, medical, and CAD certs are low hanging fruit.

 

[IRstuff]

Adult toys can be fairly inexpensive. They just go through a lot of batteries.

Depends on how you do the accounting. While batteries might be cheap, you also have to include the maintenance, and storage, i.e., bigger house, garage, driveway, etc., to store the toy when you are elsewhere or playing with some other toy.

We went from a nominally-sized house to a LARGE house, and accumulated A LOT OF STUFF, which we are now trying to downsize from. So, that large house didn't come for free, costing us mortgage and property tax expenses; it was nice, but totally unnecessary.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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[SuperSalad]

Quote:

Adult toys can be fairly inexpensive. They just go through a lot of batteries.

Depends on how you do the accounting. While batteries might be cheap, you also have to include the maintenance, and storage, i.e., bigger house, garage, driveway, etc., to store the toy when you are elsewhere or playing with some other toy.

We went from a nominally-sized house to a LARGE house, and accumulated A LOT OF STUFF, which we are now trying to downsize from. So, that large house didn't come for free, costing us mortgage and property tax expenses; it was nice, but totally unnecessary.

This is a superb series of posts......simply excellent

- Andrew