The number of hours I have been working lately at my job has gotten me a little down. Because of several highly visible projects, recent staffing cuts, and year end processing coming up – I have been asked to put in several more hours each week. This is on top of the ~60 hours per week that I was putting in before this extra work came into scope.
Over the past couple of months, I have sacrificed a lot for my job. My ability to exercise has been limited and my diet has gotten much worse. Sleep has been sacrificed and my stress level continues to grow. All of these issues are enough reason to think twice about holding down such a demanding job.
The Most Important Reason for Creating Passive Income
All of the reasons listed above help motivate me to continue to build passive income streams. There is however, an additional factor that is even more important to me that has been sacrificed over the past several weeks. Each member of my family has been put into a situation that I don’t feel comfortable with because of my increased work schedule.
Just in the past week, my oldest son asked me the following question when I came to say goodnight to him – “…Can I have your bosses phone number so I can call and tell him I am going to beat him up?” This is from a 5 year old boy who gets to see his dad for 30 minutes a day during the week and about 2 hours a day on the weekends.
On another occasion, I had to leave for work on a Saturday and both of my son’s started crying because I was leaving for work – again! I am not sure if I have ever felt as bad as I did on that day seeing my boys so upset that their dad wasn’t going to be home with them, especially after not seeing them most of the week.
I understand that their are plenty of families who live like this and it is nothing new to them. This type of lifestyle, however, is not how our family wants to live.
I don’t want to wake up 20 years from now and realize that I missed my kids sporting or school events. There are only a few precious times that I will be able to witness their football and baseball games. I want to be able to go and have lunch with them at school and see their faces when I surprise them. I want to be there for them and to help them grow up.
My family is the most important asset that I have. They are the #1 reason why I continue to work so hard at building passive income!
What is your most important reason for creating passive income?
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I understand your point, but maybe writing aricles now is too much right now. Get some sleep, get to work earlier and spend time with your family. The nice thing with what you are doing is that it will always be waiting when your time frees up again.
I understand your point. I have definitely cut back on the time I spend writing articles. I just don’t want to stop completely right now as I have the momentum on my side.
I really hope that you manage to reach your goals as soon as possible. You are very hard working, and deserve that time with your family. My goals are similar, except I don’t have kids yet. But I want the freedom to live life the way I want and not to miss out.
@Web Career Girl – Thanks for the vote of confidence! I think you are one of the hardest workers I have come across as well. I find a lot of inspiration from reading your updates on your site.
There comes a time in your life when you have to ask yourself whether or not it is worth it.
I missed the first 8 months of my son’s life because I was working 75+ hours out of town. Finally, I had enough and found something different. Now that I look back at it, I realize that if I had not done so, I might have woke up 20 years from now and wondered where my life went!
@Dusty – Yeah, I couldn’t imagine traveling for my job. That is one thing that I never want to do is start traveling for work (unless it is for my own business).
I feel your pain, from both perspectives (the son and the dad).
I changed jobs about a year ago where I went from working 80 hours a week to about 60. The thing about the 60 hours is that I can work at a time when he is asleep as I can work from home at night and early in the morning. So it feels like, at least to my kid, that I have a 9-6 job. This month I have had to pump in tons of time at work which necessitated me being away from home. Just last night, I missed putting him to bed and was gone before he woke up. Not cool! Worse, he called me out on it and made me feel even worse…
From the other perspective, my dad was a workaholic and never got to see me do the stuff kids do. Literally, not a week goes by that he doesn’t tell me how he regrets his choice to work instead of spending time with the family.
Passive income is a smart solution and I hope we can all get to our goals so that none of us have those regrets in the future. Keep up the good work.
@Mace – It must feel good to be able to adjust your schedule around your child’s schedule. I try to do that as well by coming in extra early to work. It just doesn’t seem to work out as well for me.
I agree. However, ironically, if we are not careful, the goal of passive income can get in the way of the reason for the goal: time with those we love the most. What I mean is this, to create passive income, you need to put a lot of hours in up front, “priming the pump”, “planting the crop.” I hve had to learn to be more patient, while not giving up my passive income dreams. I have to make time in the present, and that may mean working a little less at the 1.5 jobs I work at, and even cutting back on those hours in between that I spend working on my blog and other ‘passive income’ projects.
I totally know what you mean, I used to work ou. tside the home over 50 hours a week and I missed my kids SO MUCH. I work from home now and my income is still only about 25% passive. My goal is 100% passive, obviously. I still miss a lot because the hours I’m putting in mean that I’m not able to drive them around, I just have to stay home and WORK WORK WORK. At least I get to see them, though. I want to encourage you, it can be done. SEO is your best friend. Have you applied at Suite101? You’ll make WAY more there than at eHow and the SEO training is very valuable.