Rickety Bridge To A Financial Boost

I was just here recently, days ago in fact, complaining that my wife has a low salary. She has an entry level position and, with it, entry level pay. I, on the flip side, work hard to move up the career ladder and have pulled us along all these years. With each increase, our way of life improves.

I've always been upset about this because it feels like the weight of the world is on my shoulders and it feels like she has never had an interest in trying to make things better for us financially by increasing her skillset to get a position with more responsibility and a higher salary.

I posted about this recently here and folks were explaining that I should try talking to her about it. And...I did.

She recently had a personal care service done at a place my wife has been visiting for many, many years to have some work done. While there, she and the owner of the company struck up a conversation and my wife explained, I suppose because of the conversation we had, that she feels bad for making such a low salary. The owner asks what my wife currently makes and the lady tells her that she currently has an opening for a position and that she would hire my wife to do the job. The salary is a tipped position but she said her current employees are always getting at least double the salary my wife spoke of for her existing job.

To get this, my wife will need to take class for proper training and could start right after the classes end. After a discussion at home about it, she's decided to take the job. She called the owner to confirm the lady would hold the spot for her because the training takes ten weeks to complete. But, like I said, my wife has been going to this place for years and she and the owner are pretty good friends. The owner agreed and said she knew, when she offered the position, that she would have to wait for my wife to complete the training and knew, then, that she would have to hold the spot for her for a few months.

The cost for the training is thousands of dollars. My wife put in her notice at her existing job yesterday. We're scrounging to get the money together for her to take the classes and, during this time (nearly three months!), we'll not have her regular income.

This will be a rickety bridge to cross for sure as we'll have no money and will be struggling financially. We have to pay for the classes which was an unplanned expense, the holidays are around the corner (we have children), etc. She should get paid from her old job until much later this month but we'll go all of November, December, and January without any of her money coming in. We calculated that she would first get paid, if all goes according to plan, early February. Whew.

It's going to be tough, really tough in fact, and it'll be scary. I think we'll have less money than I've had since my early 20's. But, in the end, it should all be worth it and, when the money starts coming in, we can use it to "fix" anything we "broke" financially during the three month window of time she was out of work.

Her new salary will be double what she's currently making and, while that's still considerably less than my own salary, it's still a huge help and will give us a few thousand extra dollars we can budget with. I'm so, so, so very excited about all of this but am terribly afraid of the rough road ahead we'll deal with these next few months.

Well, I'll still be coming here to post my own writings and certainly to read/respond to other posts but I hope to come back in February with some very good news. I may be here for the Winter months, though, looking for folks to help me keep my head held high and spirits up as we deal with the horrible, but temporary, financial situation.

Thanks!