Stepping Up

Well the last couple of weeks have been crazy, to say the least. Most of the insanity has revolved around my job. Last week I spent a whirlwind two days in New Jersey for a sales conference. In addition to that, I have started taking on a larger workload.

Back in January, my boss asked me if I would like to be considered for a promotion, so like any normal person, I accepted. Once I was in the running, there was a lot to do. I had to complete online courses and tests, which were required to be done on a tight deadline and during non-working hours. This translated into coming home from work and spending 1-2 hours doing the online courses. The after-work time had formerly been referred to as "blogging time". :)

Fortunately, my efforts paid off and I will take on my new position starting our second quarter in May! It is still a sales position, so I will continue to be paid with a salary + commission structure, except the salary increases and the commission potential is better.

Since the only portion I can absolutely count on is the salary, I crunched the numbers to determine the difference this will make to our budget. My salary base will increase by $5000, which breaks down to $192.30 per paycheck (I get paid bi-weekly). After taxes, my take-home will be approximately $150 more per paycheck. Pretty sweet!

With the promotion, however, I plan to definitively quit my second job. Long time readers will know that I have wanted to quit for quite some time, but there's always a good reason to keep at it. Once I have the increased responsibility, I simply won't have time to do both jobs. So my drop-dead date on the second job is May 1. I am so excited! (Perhaps even more excited about that the the promotion itself!)

At the second job, I take home roughly $600 a month. So in actual hard paycheck figures, I will be taking a pay cut in taking this promotion. The plan, of course, is to make up the difference in commissions and I am confident I will be able to do so. Not to mention my quality of life will increase as well!