You apply for your Dream Job. They call you to offer you the job. They ask if you have any questions. You say, “Yes, how much can I make at this job, O Dream Job Hander Outer Person?”
And they say “____. I’m afraid we have no ability to negotiate on salary. Do you want the job?”
What has to go in the blank for you to say yes?
You get to define your Dream Job. You get to define your conditions for the employment. You get to define the location and start date. This is all about the money.
Meaning, what’s the minimum salary I’d accept in order to have my dream job? Hard to say. I am (as you may be aware) married and would need to take into account how a salary change would impact my living conditions and expendable income. A dream job is worth a lot, but most of my dreams involve what I’m doing when I’m NOT at work.
I guess part of the definition of “dream job” for me actually involves getting paid a ton of money without doing a ton of work. So I’m going to say $250k.
I’d never choose a job making less than $40K unless I had to (i.e., I don’t have any other choice). My standard of living would be significantly less than what I have now, but I wouldn’t feel too deprived or impoverished, and I’d have enough to save for a rather austere but functional retirement.
But at $40K, I better get some nice perks. Like lots of sick leave (I hardly ever get sick, but I like knowing that I can stay home if I need to) and a private office. I’d also want the ability to renegotiate my salary after at least two years. Even “dreams” lose their novelty after while.
I’ve had as close to my dream job as I have any expectation to achieve. It was around 100k adding up pay and allowances and I would have done it for less. Even at it’s most stressful and demanding I still loved my job. It was one of the most, if not the most, personally rewarding and meaningful thing I’ve done. What’s money compared to that?
I get to keep everything I have now, right? If it was indeed my dream job I would be willing to take as little as $10k a year or a little under a $K a month; maybe a bit less. That would pay the expenses of keeping a small room there and travel back and forth. The job itself I would basically do for free.
OK - call me nuts but before I die I want to take at least a summer at work at the one amusement park I know (Knoebels). I worked at a park when I was a kid (Hanson’s) and to repeat the experience in a like atmosphere as an adult is just a dream of mine.
I don’t really believe in a ‘dream job’ unless something truly unrealistic and outlandish is allowed. Even then, does this job come with a generous legal defense fund and full protection from reprimands? The entire concept is an oxymoron in my mind otherwise.
That said, jobs certainly differ and some are much better than others. I think you are asking us to maximize the curve so that you get high job satisfaction for the least reasonable amount of money. I have done that calculation in real life and even have a version of it now. No matter how appealing the job is, I cannot take it for less than $80K full stop because that is the absolute minimum amount I need to meet my obligations, fund retirement and live a modest life. That is a lowest standard I can do and it doesn’t match what I think a ‘dream job’ should provide so it needs to be higher than that. $125K plus generous benefits would be enough to provide everything I could reasonably enjoy doing outside of work, provide a modest cushion and help with an even earlier retirement which is also one of my criterion for a ‘dream job’.
My dream job wouldn’t have to have amazing pay so much as it would have to have amazing flexibility with my schedule.
I’m pretty comfortable with what I get paid, let’s keep it vague and say all the bills are paid and I have zero credit card debt (I’m on salary so it is an exact number), but every time I get pissed off at the big boss and I think about leaving (which would likely never happen anyway), I think about the fact that I could never get the kind of flexibility that I have here. I can literally walk in, say “I have to leave at 11:30 [daughter] has a half day” or “I have something to do at 9, but I’ll be back” or “hey, I gotta run an Target, I’ll be back” and it’s nearly never an issue". My schedule with daughter changes up from time to time (right now I leave early on W, TH, S and take off on Sunday and work 10 or so hours on the other days, but it could switch on a whim) and that’s okay. Try finding another job that’s okay with that.
Here’s the thing, if my ‘dream job’ was totally okay with that, my pay would just have to be equal to what I’m getting paid now. Maybe 10-20K more because it would mean leaving the family business which would be very difficult both personally and because I do A LOT there. Whenever I’ve imagined leaving, I think about getting calls days and weeks later asking how to do this or that and I can’t imagine abandoning them like that.
BTW, my dream job: HVAC. I’d love to do commercial refrigeration. I do most of it at my job to begin with, but I can’t touch the freon so when it involves that, we call in the pros. I’ve thought about going to school and getting my EPA license, but it’s too expensive. If we ever sold the business, I’ve planed to ask the boss for two years salary (if the buyout is enough) so I have time to put myself though HVAC school. I’ve put 22+ years into this place, I think it’s far.
Right.
How much less?
That’s a good point.
Yes, you get to keep everything you have now. Or, phrased better, you get to decide how much you’d have to be able to keep in order to say yes.
My dream job is one that I can get good at. Something where practice pays off, and where knowledge really does accumulate.
I hate jobs where I have to guess. I want to know what the right answer is.
Money is nice, of course. Minimum wage would not pay the rent. I could just barely get by at $13 an hour. (San Diego is a costly place to live.)
My dream job would be photographer for the National Park Service. Assuming the pay would include transportation between national parks/monuments plus room and board (tent and shower?) I’d do it for peanuts.
If I get less than $85-90K, it isn’t my dream job.
Sorry, but I got a mortgage to pay and my wife doesn’t make all that much.
Regards,
Shodan
I had free housing and no copay for health care along with no kids/wife to spend money. If they said it was only 20k a year on top of that I wouldn’t have left (if I would have actually had an option to leave that is. )
Sorta what **Shag **said in post #6. I’ve had pretty dreamy jobs and pretty crappy jobs. The crappiest needed a lot more money to upgrade them to “good”. The dreamiest dream job still takes a bunch of money to balance out to “good.”
I can sorta afford to retire now if I’m willing to leave pretty cheap UFN. So in that sense I *could *take a dream job that paid zero. But other than having sex with college girls of my choice or skimming money off Wall Street traders I can’t think of a job I’d enjoy enough to work for zero.
It’s kind of funny that you ask. I pretty much have every part of my dream job except for the income piece of it. (I own my company, so the final take-home pay isn’t even known until after all the expenses are paid and I see what’s left at year-end).
I think a total compensation package of at least 80,000 is about the minimum I’d accept right now - that could be a combination of retirement, health, outright salary, etc. - but I’d really be settling to accept that long-term. If the salary was fixed (except for inflation, say) then I’d probably have to insist on 100,000. I have a mortgage to pay, retirement to save for, etc.
Just enough to get by would be enough. I’d say $30,000. (I want to be a movie scriptwriter.)
Out of curiosity, what was it?
$2.75 million and a nicely furnished little officewhere I’d be expected to work on Tuesdays from 11:45 till 1 pm. Oh, and I get an hour for lunch.
I am working my dream job now, and I am satisfied with the pay.
My dream job would rake in about 12 million over a three year period. Plus all the “other” benefits that go along with it.
I’m still waiting for that call.