As I’ve discussed before, I’m not entirely happy with my job. I’m not doing the work I was hired to do, I often feel like what I do is a complete waste of my law degree, and I don’t exactly see eye-to-eye with management. For a while, I was job hunting pretty steadily.
Not so much anymore, though.
Don’t get me wrong, I still get job alerts every few days, and I skim them to see if anything looks good. But that’s just it – I’m looking for jobs that look good, not just any job so that I can get out of here.
I’m not entirely sure what changed. Clearly, getting a promotion and a raise didn’t hurt. Of course, I would be looking for a new job at the same level, but I feel that this promotion shows that management is recognizing the work that I do and that my time and presence here is valued. I can’t say that I have always felt that way. In fact, for a while, a few of us felt like we were being “encouraged” to leave the agency by a certain member of management. (Thankfully, that person is no longer playing as active a role.)
Some of it has to do with my co-workers. In the past few months, I took on a big project that required me to work pretty closely with people who I normally wouldn’t work with. In doing so, I got to know a lot of people, learned about what they do, and they learned what I do and how I can help them. So in general, people are friendlier.
A big part of it is the current economy. I’m so lucky to have a good paying job, to not have to worry about being downsized (well, I do, but not really), and to have a job that allows me so much freedom. It’s rare that I’m asked to work late or work weekends. I don’t have any trouble scheduling vacations (provided I have annual leave available for use) or taking an afternoon off for a dentist appointment. I get to go to the gym at lunch every day, and if I take a class at the gym that lasts a little longer every once in a while, it’s not a big deal that I take a slightly longer lunch, provided I make up the time. That seems small, but it’s really a lot of freedom.
So all in all, I’ve gotten more content with my job. We’ll see what happens in the next few months. I still have my dream job, and if I got that opportunity, I would jump at it. But other than that, I think I’m just going to try to see the good things and be thankful for what I have.
Megan is a 30-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
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