I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I love my new job. A continual, free-flowing, bucketful of shared ideas, theories, and excitement over the latest and greatest (what’s your SecondLife avatar wearing?) is something I never really had before and am very much enjoying. While there still may be crazy deadlines, there’s a lot less stress overall.

The downside of the new job is the pay scale. It’s hard enough re-adjusting all your budgets and spending when you’ve accepted a significant pay cut, then I had to go and through heading back to university into the mix.

After finishing paying off my horrific student loan and relegating the entire experience to a locked box in the recesses of my mind, I’d forgotten how expensive university was. The last time I attended (post student loan), I was fortunate enough to have a tuition reimbursement program to rely on for some of the costs. If nothing else, it helped pay for tuition and books for half of the year. The new job doesn’t have a tuition reimbursement program for support staff weenies such as myself. To make it into a faculty position here, I need to – at minimum – complete a Master’s *sigh*

Mom’s advice was, as always, to cut back some more. Of course, she provides this advice AFTER her birthday has rolled around and her present is firmly in hand. Guess my sister will be the first to feel the cutbacks happening in this household. Her birthday’s tomorrow and she’ll get an e-card and phone call instead of something in the mail. I’ll tell her the cut backs were mom’s suggestion.

Someone out there – well, someone at my current job – loves me though. One, who shall remain nameless, wrote a reference letter for my university application. This would be the same gentleman who let it be known around campus that I’d be willing to do development work on my own time (weekends and evenings) for a fee. A few hours later I was being solicited for estimates and project bids. Which then meant I had to register a trade name with the gov’t (done) and have to open a business bank account (on my to do list this week).

On Friday, I won my very first contract. It’s small, but it’ll pay for a course over the winter semester and will help pay for the new roof that were having installed on the house next weekend. Drew’s sweat equity can only take us so far on the roof installation – eventually we have to pay for materials…

Now that the first blush of excitement is off being the winning contract bid, I do have to be careful not to get carried away. After all, I want a work/life balance and I’ll need to save some time to attend classes and work on papers, projects, etc.

In the meantime, I’m glad the hubby loves me because we may be subsisting on Ramen noodles and Kraft dinner soon. Actually, it’s not THAT bad, but it does mean that the rickety 1990 car we’re driving has to stay on the road at least another 1-2 years (if it doesn’t fall apart in the meantime).

Gin, if you’re out there – your son arrived yesterday safe and sound and Drew hasn’t yet put him to work. Lucky boy!

Technorati Tags: student, budget, work

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