You can always make more money, but what you can’t get more of is time.
This statement is both profoundly true everywhere and logistically false in education.
The idea that any teacher can simply work hard to earn more income shows little understanding of a profession that is governed by salary schedules, lane changes, and tons of financial red tape and shortfalls at district, state, and federal levels.
So why in the world would a family made up of two teachers walk away from money?
Money to the tune of $5,000.
For us, it comes down to time.
My husband is a three-season coach. What that means is that he coaches students every season of the school year.
What that means for our family is that he isn’t home until 7 or 8 most days. Sometimes, due to other commitments, he isn’t home until 9 or 10.
Said another way, there are days when he only spend about 20 minutes of face time with our son.
Said another another way, that means that every day of the week, I work full time, make a mad dash to get our son, and then do everything I can to play with him, run errands, make dinner, and get him ready for bed. All before I tutor, grade, lesson plan, freelance, or work on my blog. While I’m working on these commitments, my husband scurries around the house to make lunches, finish the laundry that I’ve long forgotten in the machine, and takes care of other tasks. Rather than winding down, we just sputter into bed at 11 each night only to wake up and do it all over again.
That means that we plan for six hours of sleep on a good night. Assuming our son sleeps through the night.
Which he never does.
Our life exists in a time crunch. It isn’t what’s best for parenting, and it isn’t what’s best for marriage.
It’s also self-inflicted.
We Do It For the Money
Stipends are lucrative.
At least as much as anyone can use that word in education.
My husband is well-paid as a coach. His district incentivizes extracurricular work much more than mine, probably to partially combat their lackluster base salaries.
We don’t factor stipend work or side hustles into our budgets. But we do use them for things near and dear to our hearts. Our stipends have taken us on oceanside adventures in Costa Rica and to Chichen Itza, Tulum, and other adventures. These same stipends also help us pay off our mortgage more aggressively and meet other financial goals.
It’s a matter of $4,000 or $5,000 that’s on the table. But it isn’t just about earning money for money’s sake. There’s more at stake than just extra income.
…And Also Keeping Our Jobs
Domain 4.
If you’re a teacher, I don’t have to say anything more than that phrase for you to understand.
If you’re not a teacher, let me try. Under the new evaluation framework in teaching, we have to prove our professional worth. That means being involved not just in our classrooms, but with our coworkers and our students in an ongoing capacity. We have to be “full members of the teaching community and committed to enhancing it”.
Of course, this is incredibly subjective and leaves huge gaps in the evaluation process that are entirely open to interpretation. (Sorry, admin friends, but it is.)
When this new model came to pass, teachers scuttled about, looking for all sorts of ways to show their worth, hoping to get a passing grade.
RELATED POST: Teacher Talk – Losing a Little Control of a Career I Love
So walking away from not one, but two sports, like my husband is considering doing? It’s a bold move financially and professionally.
When Your Job is Who You Are
Walking away from money is never easy, and yet, sometimes it’s the right thing to do. The problem is that my husband isn’t just walking away from money, from side hustle, or from a job.
He’s walking away from a piece of who he is.
In education, you are trained from your very first class to focus on students and the impact you will have on them. Money is no matter. It isn’t discussed, and it’s certainly not prioritized. How could it be when most student teachers are strongly discouraged from holding paying jobs while they student teach for a semester or a year?
That mentality continues along the career path indefinitely. We take our jobs seriously, often times giving very little thought to what we earn. Instead, we focus on what we do, who we teach. Most of us happily weave the title of teacher into the fabric of our identity.
RELATED POST: My Passion is My Work
Coaching is no different. My husband is a skilled athlete who possesses the ability not just to play the sport, but to actually teach it to kids who have talent in the rawest of forms. He mentors these students. He is kind and patient. He shows them what quiet leadership looks like in an era when coaches and parents take things just a little too far a little too often.
It is a tremendous loss for these students to have my husband walk away as their coach. And I know it’s something he’s wrestled with deeply since our son was born.
But for everything he gives those students in the afternoons and evenings, it’s something that our son doesn’t see until the weekends.
My husband isn’t ready to stop coaching entirely, but I do know that he’s ready to scale back aggressively. Next week, he plans to let his bosses know that he is going to drop one or two of the sports for next school year.
Final Thoughts on Money and Time
You can always make more money, but what you can’t get more of is time.
After years of scaling back our expenses, growing our income, and making sure that our budget stays fairly modest despite those gains in income, we are in a position to do something new.
We can use the money that we do earn in a new way. It won’t allow us to make more time, but it will let us simply make better use of the time that we do have.
And right now, I can’t think of a better decision for our family.
So Tell Me…How do you balance money and time in your life?
You KNOW I am all for this decision. I quit my park ranger weekend job, I pulled back my job to 80% time so that we wouldn’t have the crazy weekdays any more. It’s been three years and it is SO SO worth it.
That said, I also started my commission volunteer work (2x a month evening meetings), but I don’t leave the house until after dinner, and the kiddo is older now. Remember too that this is just a moment in time and as he gets older you’ll get more space with the same number of hours as well.
I think that is my husband’s exact thought. It another 5 or 10 years, maybe a coaching spot will open, and he’ll go back. But for now, we’re going to hang out together more while he still wants to be with Mom and Dad!
Great perspective- and so unbelievably important to grasp. Time is so precious, so to make sure what you’re trading/sacrificing in place of family/downtime/self care is worth it is huge!
It feels like we’ve made the trade for money for long enough that we can finally make the switch to time now. I hope anyway!
Sounds like your husband is making a good (if tough) call. I actually have too much time on my hands most days — to compensate I watch way more TV than is probably healthy — so I don’t really have wisdom for a work-life balance. But I can recognize when someone’s on the right track to find his or her own balance, and it seems like that’s exactly where your husband is headed.
Such a good reminder! What balance looks like for one person can look and feel totally different for someone else.
I didn’t realize how huge a time commitment his sports were! That’s an exhausting schedule you’ve both been maintaining.
You can’t get THIS time back in any other way but to scale back and I am so happy for you that you can make this decision for your family.
I keep making this decision every time I think about picking up a side job. I have enough energy to do a stellar job at my FT gig, to cook, clean, write this blog, to parent when my kid comes home from daycare, to spend weekends together, to plan our social calendar. I can exactly what I’m doing, well. Taking on more work for the money may be really satisfying so that I can invest in large round numbers but in exchange, I’d also be giving up portions of my patience, my ability to parent effectively and thoughtfully, my ability to be a supportive and loving partner. That check would have to be really big to be worth that trade off.
YES! Too often, I focus on what we get (money) and not on what we give up…and what a toll that takes!
Woah, that’s a crazy interpretation of domain 4! I’ve never seen it used to require extracurricular or stipended positions. You’re obviously right – it’s very subjective.
The time/money equation has always been a hard one to balance. I stopped teaching as an adjunct because it was killing me to give up summer days with TFI to do it. I can imagine it would be an even clearer choice with kids. Good luck to you and your family – I’m sure it will be a great trade off.
Adjunct work always seems so enticing to me, but I bet it’s a TON of work!
You give me such hope that not everyone interprets Domain 4 that way!
This is a decision I’m wrestling with at the moment – whether to go part-time at my teaching job or not. You’re right – the money is hard to walk away from, but that time with young kids goes so fast.
I had a few people ask if I would consider teaching part time. But the positions don’t really exist in our district, and I carry the insurance. It seems like a fantastic way to get the best of both worlds if it’s a real option for you!
This is the reason I gave up a six figure income. We saved for many years before my oldest son was born and in the end I decided I wanted to be there as much as I could, which meant not returning to an IT job. Staying home and/or working part time is not without its sacrifices and realizing that I gave up over a million dollars over the last 7.5 years is hard to swallow, but you know what I wouldn’t change the decision. Having experienced medical crises in the past I know that tomorrow is not a given. So I decided to be present today. Your husband will regain the lost income at some point in the future when your son is older.
Thanks for this perspective, OFG. Time really is priceless.
It’s hard to overstate how much I support this decision! As you know, we’re parenting kids who are relatively close in age, and if there’s one fundamental truth, it’s that these early years are fleeting, and can’t be bought back no matter how rich we all ultimately become. I treasure every moment so much, and I know you both do as well. I think you are all going to be so incredibly satisfied by making this move. I am really happy for you guys.
Thank you! Your Instagram is a great reminder of all the adventures that are just perfectly priceless.
OK, fine. Your wife’s Instagram 😉
I definitely agree with this decision. While I understand the want and need to support the students, like you said, we can’t get time back. Especially with our own little ones. They grow so fast! I don’t think it’ll be a decision either of you regret.
It goes so fast! I’m sure it’s twice as fast for you now with two!
I never thought of balancing my money and time until we had our baby. Before that MwC and me would work as much as we can to earn more money. And fortunately we saved a good amount that when BwC was born we were able to commit to taking care of him rather than spend more time at work. Once you realize that you have a baby, you make as much time as you can raising the little one and it puts your life into perspective on what’s really important fo you.
So true! I was bursting at the seams with HP, and one of my coworkers stopped to congratulate me. “You have a real priority now!” 😀
Hi guys,
I think you are on the right track. I to am a teacher of 25 years. I loved my job for many years really getting into every opportunity to take it to the next level and Coach as well.
My biggest regret? Not spending enough of that valuable time with my kids. And you just can’t get those years back.
This helps so much, Christopher! Thank you!
Not sure if I have said it enough but I love your writing. This piece, though so personal, makes me as a reader start thinking in so many directions and it is so sensitively written.
I think it’s a very fine balance that is also very personal. What do you let go of to make space for what is something people can answer only for themselves which is what makes Personal Finance so very Personal.
As you said, here it’s not just about the money but a passion as well. Good luck to your husband with the transition.
Thanks, Aparna. Your comments (and compliments!) mean the world to me.
My life has gotten this way with the spring semester, and I can’t wait for summer. I already have projects lined up (which I really want to do!) so now my goal is not to say yes to things just because I “could” do them. If it’s not a heck yeah, it’s a no!
Thanks for sharing, and I hope you all enjoy your new time together 🙂
Thank you! His season officially ends next week, so it’ll be great to have more time together!
I guess you summarize the issue pretty well in your last paragraph by saying: “You can always make more money, but what you can’t get more of is time.”
For us who already made the decision to make time more important than money we realized that there is also quite an interesting paradox that can be either healthy or unhealthy. Healthy would be when you reduce your spending to have more time which in turns let you spend less (which can be counter intuitive at first). Unhealthy when you want to reduce your time to make more money which in turns ask you for more time, which you touch upon on your article (we actually wrote in more depth on this on our blog – https://www.nomadnumbers.com/time-money-paradox/).
I hope your husband announcement to his boss about his decision went well. Keep us posted.
Thanks for weighing in and dropping the link, MNN!
It’s interesting, but I have found the whole process of getting serious about paying back debt made me more aware — and better — at balancing money and time in my life. Thinking about repayment also forced me to think about what I’m not willing to give up along the way. And while getting debt-free is definitely important to me, I’ve realized it’s not the most important thing in my life by a long shot.
Like you said, you only get so much time.
On a related note, I wanted to say thank you for the insight into a side of teaching I think people are generally pretty unaware of. I’m not a teacher, but my best friend is, and her stories always blow my mind. The work teachers do is SO important and it is frustrating to see that not reflecting in salaries. I really don’t understand it at all.
It is so important to make time for people and things that are important to us so thank you for the great reminder. We found a better balance a few years ago by saying no to some things we only did for the money and making time during the long days to connect via video chat for 5-10 minutes here and there. But I struggled watching the garden club, green team, PTO, newsletter and other programs fall apart at my kids elementary school as several teachers and parents dropped activities they felt took away from their family time and few to no new recruits eager to replace them. I find myself overcommitted as a volunteer in a way that isn’t good for my family, especially since the volunteering isn’t paid like the work I turned down. It may be time to let things go.
I am so glad you brought this up, Marie! It’s not just about work, is it? We can over-commit in so many ways. I hope you do what’s best for you <3