If You Must Work ...

Unless you won the lottery, are independently wealthy, or recently lost a rich uncle who left you an inheritance that dreams are made of, you probably have to work for a living. You are gonna have to pay the bills.

Since you probably have to work, you might as well do something you enjoy doing. What a concept - getting paid to do something you like doing.

For those of you who know me, I proudly where the title of Computer Geek. Does that mean I can solve every problem. No it doesn't. Does that mean I want to try to solve every family member's computer problems. I have to answer no to that as well, but I will generally give them some ideas on what they need to try to solve their own problems. I digress.

Being a self-proclaimed computer geek, people would hope that I would have a job that somehow relates to the computer field, which I do. I get paid to do work that I truly enjoy. Life is not so bad.

What is in your salary? A whole bunch of stuff. Most people think it is just the money that shows up in your check or account on pay day. I must disagree. If your company provides you medical benefits, you need to include that as well. The company that employees me provides medical, dental and optical. Try buying these on your on from insurance companies. See how much it will cost you; add that to your salary, because it is included. Does your company offer a 401(k) plan? If they do, do they match any of the money that you contribute? If they do, that is part of your salary as well. The pretax breaks you get on your 401(k) are also part of your salary. How about any other perks, such as pretax payments on your medical cost - add that to your salary as well, because that means you are paying less money to the government. Any other perks such as an ESPP? Cha-ching - more money to include in your salary. MSDN license or discounts to book stores or Microsoft - you got it, add it in there if you use them. One of the biggest things you need to add into your salary, which does not increase it financially, but nonetheless is included is the group of people you work with. Even the casual full-time worker is at work more than 1/3 of the day - 8 hours of work, plus either 30 minutes or 1 hour for lunch. If you have coworkers even half as good as the ones I have, you need to add that into your salary, because chances are you are not going to find a better bunch of people, unless you find yourself working at the same company that I do. A couple of examples of how good the group of people I work with are: 1.) This past Christmas, we adopted a family that lost everything in a fire shortly before Christmas. Not only did my coworkers give "stuff" for Christmas, but gave things for getting through every day life. They gave so much, it took three days to deliver everything to the family. 2.) My wife Yvonne is a breast cancer survivor. She has had more surgeries than I can count on all my fingers and toes. When Yvonne had to have a radical bilateral mastectomy, my coworkers provided meals for several weeks until we were back to some resemblance to normalcy.

To reiterate, if you have to work to pay the bills, get paid to do something you like. When you look at your paycheck and wonder if you are getting paid what you think you are worth, don't just look at the dollar amount on the bottom line as what your bottom line value is worth - there is a lot more to it.

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