Fair enough. I’m middle-aged too, and have plenty of assets, so really in terms of finances I would only need to work for maybe a year or two as an overpaid janitor. In my earlier analysis (and in my response to your post), I assumed that we were discussing what someone at the very beginning of their career might choose.
Beer Taster?
Work autonomously, low stress, few deadlines, no night/weekends (or days if you’re regularly scheduled for nights/weekends). If it paid more, janitor might just be my dream job. For $750,000? Absolutely!
I don’t have a “dream job,” so I’ll go with the money. Janitor is a shitty job because it pays shit, not because it’s hard.
Wow. Interesting question, but sort of different from the poll question.
I’m one of the few people who chose my dream job at $7.25/hour. Which is sort of what I did in real life. I’m not really working my dream job, but I did change jobs from a better paying job to a retail job for my own sanity and happiness. I do like my job, but I hate not making much money. I am much happier than when I worked an office job that paid better and I wouldn’t go back to the office job.
To answer the second question, I’d be thrilled. I’m good at my job, I like it, and it makes me happy. The only thing I dislike is how much I make. I’d love to be valued more than I am, although I work for a company that actually does seem to value me at least to a certain extent and treats me well. Just because a job is “unskilled” doesn’t mean that everyone can do what we do. There are plenty of people in service jobs that really suck at it…probably because they don’t care, but since we’re paid so little, there’s little incentive to care.
My dream job is to run the charitable foundation that I’ve endowed with about one half of the Powerball jackpot money I will have collected. Since the bulk of the other half will have been retained in my personal possession, I’d have no problem doing it at minimum wage.
(Is the OP undertaking to arrange for the option I select to materialize?)
I’ve got pretty close to my dream job or at least I’m on the path to getting there. I wouldn’t do the job I’m doing now for minimum wage if nothing else my house would suck a whole lot more to work from if I was only earning minimum wage. Of course, my dream job involves living in a very expensive place so I really couldn’t do that and enjoy it on minimum wage so ya I’ll take the $750K.
I think the more interesting question would be how little could you be paid to be a janitor vs how little you could be paid to do your dream job. I think over $250k for would be the break-even point since above that my wife doesn’t have to work and we can do what we want in our spare time.
I couldn’t maintain the lifestyle to which I’ve become accustomed on minimum wage, so janitor it is (if these are the only two options). I would certainly hate it, at least at first. If I still hated it after a year or two, I’d ‘retire’ and switch to my dream job, or just lazy unemployment.
How many hours/wk to make that 750k?
Janitor sounds a little dull, but I think I’d find it satisfying. Really, the only problem with janitorial work is that the pay sucks. For $750k I’d be happy to do it. I’d daydream creative stuff while leaving shiny clean surfaces in my wake, and feel good about myself and my role in the world.
There are lots of shitty jobs I wouldn’t want to do, even for gobs of cash, but janitor isn’t one of those.
As a followlup comment, I worked with a working-class guy who was distressed that his office job paid less than he could get catching chickens in a chicken shed.
I didn’t get a chance to point out that middle-class people were middle class because they saved more money, not because they earned more money, but I did try to explain to him that I went to university so that I wouldn’t have to catch chickens in a chicken shed, not to get paid more.
He wasn’t convinced. To his way of thinking, wages were an indication of his value to an employer, and the fact that he didn’t get paid as much as a laborer indicated that his boss didn’t value him.
I was a bit of a smart mouth as a junior enlisted Marine, which means I’m no stranger to handling a mop, broom, or buffer. Later, my wife and I also spent some time working for a family friend’s janitorial service, cleaning a Head Start school for several months.
I already work in my dream career field, and make decent money at it.
I’ll take janitor for $750k/yr, Alex.
I’m one of the few to pick the “Dream” but that could be because of my age. Right now, with maybe 10-20 years left tops, satisfaction feels more important than money. My house is paid for, car, everything else and Lord knows I’ve lived below the poverty line a time or two in my life. Had you asked me say 40 years ago I may have felt differently.
I know that I quit a job making more so that I could follow my dream. Granted, it wasn’t a choice between 750,000 and minimum wage, but I spent several years in full-time school to do it. So, I’m enough of an idealist to choose the dream.
Add me as another who doesn’t think being a janitor would be that bad.
You’re inside, no real heavy lifting, but you’re also moving around, so it’s probably a healthier job than most desk jobs without being terribly physically strenuous. I feel a sense of accomplishment when I clean my home; I bet I’d get the same cleaning a workplace.
I’m friendly with the janitors at my work and they seem to enjoy their work.
I also want to know if I have to work for decades. What’s the point of keeping a full-time job when you’ve got millions sitting around? I’d work as a well-paid janitor for a few years then retire in style.
For $750,000 a year I could work five years and live comfortably for the rest of my life thereafter doing my dream career - writing fiction. So I’d take it as a means to an end.
Although I suppose one alternative way of looking at it is that I already have my dream career and I make less than minimum wage doing it. I have to supplement it with a paid job, which isn’t ideal but at least I’m doing what I love.
With that sort of salary I can pretty much work for a few years then retire and do what I like, including my dream job at a much lower (or no) pay. Hard to believe anyone wouldn’t take this option, to be honest.
For 750K I’d be prepared to put up with some downsides, but when I was actually working as a cleaner, with a leading hand watching and directing me, it was hard work. A lot of cleaning is the skill of knowning which bits matter and which bit don’t, but when you are under direction, you’ve got floor to cover and time constraint.
I won’t say we swept on the run, but we moved as quick as we could for as long as we could, and were glad of our 7.5 minute morning break.