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For what it's worth, in college, I attended school full time, worked at a startup ~35 hours a week, and caddied at a major resort Friday - Sunday. The golf course was 3.5 hours from school and about a 1.5 hours from my parent's house.

All in all, nearly 100 hours a week and went 140 something days in a row without a day off. Maintained a 4.0 throughout.

I do not mean this in any way to come off like I'm being a hardo. I sincerely mean that if you put in the effort to be organized and manage your time well, anything is possible. You'll learn to relish every free moment you have.

 

Fortunately, I was able to work from "home" for the startup, so there were times where I was assigned a loop at the course and the players decided to either not take either fewer caddies or none at all. For those who have looped, especially in the resort style courses, this will seem completely commonplace. This allowed for downtime in the shack where I could put in a few hours here and there.

The other huge part factor was that each of my classes was recorded, so I was able to listen to the lectures again for a second time / listen to supplemental information in the car to help study.

Granted, this schedule lasted only for my senior year, it still was a lot to maintain. Were my classes the hardest engineering / CS ones available? Absolutely not. But that is not the point of this post nor my comment. The idea is that if you manage your time efficiently, you can really get a lot out of the 168 hours in each week.

And to Postgradwanderer, you specifically mentioned someone doing a 40-hour work week, and I talked to working ~35 hours at a startup while maintaining other gigs. So while you think that "college does not count at all," this experience is completely relevant. But good luck Pal, why don't you go sling pizzas or something. Better yet, Uber is always looking for drivers.

 

In college I did 40 restaurant 18 internship + full load of classes... But that honestly might have been easier than the 50-55 hour average weeks I'm pulling right now. Only difficult thing was juggling all the balls and making sure nothing fell through the cracks.

 

During college (full-time program) I initially worked as a waiter, then sommelier, bartender and finally as a croupier. The waiting gig was the most fun because the other waiters were quite young and the female ones were quite hot. Being a croupier was more taxing because there was no movement and you had to stand or sit all the time, also more difficult to pay attention 6-7 hours into a shift (did roulette, black jack, poker, keno and other stuff).

If you are excluding college years, yes - I worked as an eBay powerseller (own storefront) for car tuning parts and service parts. This was not dropshipping, I actually bought the parts wholesale and resold them across multiple platforms. This was difficult because my IB job also took a lot of effort and time. If you add the commute and chores at home (cleaning, groceries, cooking), I had no time left except for sleep. The irony is that the ecommerce business was paying more than anything else I ever done in my life (pro-rated) because of tax breaks, working from home, and car tuning was really popular back in the day (it was during/after the launch of The Fast And the Furious).

 

Not me personally, but plenty of people in my retail banking back office work two jobs. I would say 95% of the time people are working 8 hour days, hardly any overtime so people make up for it after work or during the weekends.

Those that do have do jobs usually moonlight service type work as waitresses, bartenders or late shift receptionists.

 

That is true, its just kind of depressing that honest people could have that kind of job 30-40 years ago and support a family on that single pay cheque and that the same job is hardly enough for a single bachelor to just live a modest life with practically no saving.

The reserves has a lot of potential but I feel the other jobs are a trap in a sense because they make you some nice pocket cash, but they are not a long term solution and don't lead to a more serious income stream.

 

Yes.
Recently after my last PE fund job ended I took on several consulting gigs while looking for the next job. As I have a stay-at-home-wife and a toddler, I have to keep cash flowing in. My last PE gig paid me only $150k/yr for f/t 80+hr/week work, which means in Hong Kong I saved some but not enough to just coast while looking for a job. So I set up gigs as follows: - doing capital raising work for a PE fund (was supposed to be 10-20 hrs/wk but ended up being >40 hrs/wk, $7k/mo) - being a compliance officer and responsible officer for a hedge fund (1hr/wk, $5k/mo) - doing BD work for a large startup (40hrs/wk+, $7k/mo) - doing BD work for a small startup (10-15 hrs/wk, $4.5k/mo)

All the players knew they were only part-time clients I was advising. However in practice, none of them were satisfied with the amount of time and work they were getting.

For instance the large start-up I was doing BD work for was supposed to be a 20/hr wk consultancy, but a lot of the employees did not know my contract details, so they thought I was full time. The weekly time expenditure and pressure was quite excessive.

And I should have fired the PE fund as a client. Anyone can glance at the above and know it's not sensible on a $/hr basis to keep working for the PE fund, and because of the excessive amount of time devoted to doing that capital-raising work, I got fired from two of the other jobs.

I just could not bring myself to tell the client "hey, I know you're relying on me to deliver these docs, make these LP intros, raise you money, etc., but you're just not paying me enough on a $/hr basis, and I've got to let you go, because this is unsustainable for both of us."

I deeply regret not firing the PE fund client, because later, that gig ended anyway, but not before the two startup companies fired me.

I am also not the fastest and most efficient worker there is out there. In fact, I'm somewhat slow and plodding, and I am a terrible multitasker. That's why I was fired by my PE fund employer in the first place (that plus I wasn't able to bring in as much capital as they expected). So I need more time to get work done, and the above schedule did not leave enough time for execution. The pressure caused by running around between 4 consultancies, trying to keep the client happy, etc. was unsustainable. Not to mention I barely saw my family and had trouble getting a proper workspace to work from (I didn't have time to shop for a co-working space).

After about 4 months the whole thing collapsed and both startups fired me as a consultant, pretty much simultaneously, and the PE fund started reducing my pay and eventually we ended the contract (mutual decision).

I learned a lot of bitter lessons. Let this be a cautionary tale. One has to be judicious of which clients to take, and be ruthless about firing them if they take too much time.

And I have never have worked a second job while working full-time in a proper finance job.

 

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