I’ll be honest and say that money wasn’t an incentive for me, this may have changed in the recent years.
Left university and knew I didn’t want a role in the specialist area that I’ve studied for, software engineering.. so I given a job that I would have been able to do straight from college.
Only thing that kept me at the job was the debts that I mounted up at university. Didn’t really save, didn’t take the option for a company pension. It was really work and party at the weekends and buying Gucci belts for the weekend. Slow wage growth, on some poor salary and wanted to work poor hours to bring in more income, just to **** it up the wall.
Spent far to long at the company and sort of left after 7 years, as I got TUPE’d, left and rejoin as a new employee into a division/department which I knew it was closing down, which it did after two years. But during those two years I managed to save as it was the highest amount that I’ve ever been paid. Never regretted the move as I knew it was the best exit strategy I could engineer from the company.
It wasn’t a waste of 9 years, built up a lot of experience and qualifications which is still favourable today, just that my wealth level was near zero for most of it.
Spent a year out of work mainly by choice, spending most of the savings.. so yeah back to square one.
then took a job at a college on poorer salary than my previous role. Thought i would enjoy working in education but the slow moving environment and politics drove me mad.. the fact that they wanted me to do a specialist role yet wouldn’t engage in the idea of paying me any different from the non specialist people in the department was the straw. But importantly I started a DB pension.
Left and moved location to a different part of the uk to work for a charity for 6 years. I mainly enjoyed working there even thou the money was at the basic level probably uk average salary for all of it. I formed roots and really thought I would be there for the foreseeable future. Managed to save and was finally living debt free (those student loans lol) until I took a mortgage to purchased a house. I wouldn’t have managed this without help from family and renting in a below average price property. Even thou I had offers to leave and earn much more money, I stayed..
Anyway office politics got in the way and I left to work at a university on pretty much the same amount that I was earning before. The pension scheme at the university pretty much made me poorer than before on a monthly basis.
Then I received a job offer from a place, this was the third time we been in contact with each other, the second time that they reached out to me and it was a now or never situation.
They ask how much I wanted to be paid, I asked for a 15% percent uplift based on public vs private sector and other similar jobs in the specialist area, sector and responsibility.
Looking at the pay scale of the university it would have taken me 10 years to get to the grade that would be on the amount that I asked for and that’s if the opportunities appear but I didn’t hear back for weeks.
I thought I had over reached on the salary uplift… but they called back in inform me that they recruitment process was extremely slow and that they was processing the paper work to make me an offer with a 25% uplift.
A few years later and here I am.. I’m in a financial situation that I thought was never possible. Any differences between my current salary and my last salary is getting placed into my pension, early repayment in the mortgage, company shares, the stock market and savings.
My pension fund is still in a poor state and even thou stocks/savings is looking much more healthy than ever before, I need to try and cut down spending further to get closer to the retirement that I want.
Do I enjoy working? Hell no.. but I never really enjoyed working anywhere.. so why not get paid more for it. The plan is to work here for at least the next 4 years, until my mortgage is back up for renewal, by that time I will have my mortgage down to an amount that I may be able to pay off; if I liquidate everything.
But I will reflect and think if I want/can carry on like this for the next 5 years to pay off the mortgage and keeping that money invested, or if I should try and find a less demanding role and spread the payments out over a longer period.
After that it’s a different ball game.. I definitely won’t make it to the official retirement age at the place/role that I’m working in at the moment, the plan is to take early retirement when it’s finically possible to live off investment for a period before the pensions kick in. Maybe take a less demanding position/part time work in my later years that I don’t mind doing pass my retirement age just to keep active.
