Not buying the venom from successful creators. Sorry not sorry
If we're to believe the Ayodeji Awosikas and the Tim Dennings of the world, there's nothing closer to hell on earth than being an employee and drawing a paycheck.
“Wages teach you all the wrong lessons about money. It makes you think you deserve an immediate reward for your effort,” Ayo says.
Wages teach you all the wrong lessons … except for the times that they teach the right lessons.
The same Ayo also owes his success to a $10/hour job as a video store manager. The one he applied for because he “was broke.”
The answer to employment: “it depends”
This isn't really meant to call out Ayo. People change, and by any reasonable accounting, he's turned his life around 180 degrees in spectacular fashion.
It's more to emphasize that the answer to employee / non-employee is “it depends.”
If you need money right now, then there are many worse things to do than get a job. Getting a job quickly is its own hustle, on par with drumming up business doing whatever, and has a higher chance of short-term success.
But once you have the money coming in from a job, then the question changes:
Do you stay with earning money from a job, or not?
I'm convinced that the answer to this question is also “it depends.”
I wrote down this number
I went to my pay stub.
You know, that grim relic of my servitude to my employer.
On the pay stub is a lot of information: gross wages, deductions, deferred income … and benefits paid by my employer.
I added up the gross wages and the benefits my employer paid on my behalf, and divided by 10 so I got the daily amount.
Then I wrote down that number. That number was the daily monetary value of my job to me.
Why add up those numbers in particular? Using the gross income (rather than net income) is important because I'll need to pay taxes if I were earning on my own — actually more because I'm also effectively the employer as well (self-employment tax). Including the benefits is also important because they offset services I'd want to have anyway, like health, dental, vision, and life insurance, and retirement planning.
The number made the answer to “it depends” very clear.
Looking at that number, it was far larger than any effort I have going on to make money online.
Even if I were to do what Christina Piccoli is aiming for and hit the Road To $5k mark … it wouldn't even be half of that number. And I have a long way to go toward even thinking about $5k/month online.
It would be reckless to the core to quit my job.
The main reason why I'm not quitting my job is clear.
My job is my greatest asset and my biggest source of income right now.
Having that job enables me to meet many of my family's needs and wants — and affords me the freedom and the safety net to do the side-income money-making things.
My job makes a lot of things in my life possible — not the least of which is a great environment to eventually not need that job anymore.
Having one's needs met is a big deal. Many people don't have that.
To throw it away for an unknown wouldn't just be silly. It would be ungrateful.
Thanks for reading!
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header photo by cottonbro studio