You read that right.
Like Usher, these are my confessions.
Lipstick Confessions that is. đź’‹
Not Confessions of a Teenage DRAMA QUEEN. Even though I was a teenager, but of a TEENAGE WAITRESS!
Being a waitress was a humbling experience.
After reading about Financial Samurai working for $3.50 an hour at McDonald’s, I was inspired to share my story of making $2.39 an hour + tips while waiting tables at Shoney’s.
It was early experiences like that that shaped my attitudes toward money and work today.
It is also a reason why I try to tip well.
I believe in being a good tipper because that is how people make their living. My father always says tip well enough for people to feel it. I concur.
A waitress is a pretty grueling job.
You are on your feet for hours on end. You must constantly be moving and taking orders or picking up food. Then there’s the nonstop cleaning, folding of napkins, packaging silverware, putting ketchup, salt and pepper and other condiments out and etc.
That early job experience was enough to make me want to work and study so hard while I was young, so that I would not have to when I was older.
This job and other hardships are what drove me to dig my way out of debt and start saving over 40% of my after-tax income.
I have always been thrifty and a saver.
It is because of that, I knew I could not marry someone that is fiscally irresponsible and stay married to them. It just wouldn’t work.
See my post on Why I and Halle Berry Save Soo Much
I have never had the urge to go rent a Mercedes-Benz, drive down to Vegas, buy lottery tickets at every 7-eleven along the way, buy a $4,000 Cartier wrist watch just cause you know bosses gotta be on time, visit a psychic who says my lucky numbers are 4,5, and 6, and then bet it all on black.
Nope. I have not given any of that any thought at all.
Except maybe that the color of the S-Class Mercedes with a 3-layer fabric top is impeccably crafted for coupelike comfort, sleekness and outward views when it’s up, or vanishes in under 20 seconds, even as you accelerate to 30 mph should be silver.
Other than that, no thoughts whatsoever!
See my posts
Finance Lessons From Flipping Vegas
At age 17, I was a teenage waitress.
It would be six years before I began my career working in finance, banking, and loans.
And a full decade after that waitressing job, before I got hired to work at a top-tier private university with excellent benefits.
But first I had to pay my dues.
SLINGING HASH TO MAKE A BUCK
I looked down at my bank receipt.
I had about $10 bucks in my bank account. I was BROKE!
I needed a job.
Being only 17 didn’t provide me with too many options, but as they say, “beggars can’t be choosers.”
I heard the local Shoney’s was hiring wait staff. To my surprise, I applied and got the job.
We went in for training at around 9 am the next week after being hired.
My uniform was black pants, white button shirt, sneakers, a small bow-tie and a black apron.
I only worked there for one summer.
That was long enough to realize I did not want to make my career in the food service.
I knew this was going to be the first, last, and only job I ever took that dealt with serving or making food.
See my post Fast Food Nation
After reading the book Nickel and Dimed, I felt that the author expressed my views on how she and I observed the treatment of low-wage workers was pretty spot on!
The job: take orders, greet customers, keep the restaurant clean, and serve food.
Sounds simple right. Wrong.
We had a busy body manager. Chaotic shifts. And lulls in customers.
Shoney’s was an eat-in restaurant (mostly was a buffet place) that started in Tennessee, but had restaurants in the Mid-Atlantic region.
So many people opted for the breakfast mostly leaving afternoons and dinner times pretty sparse inside.
That means little to no tips!
Not something I was told upon being hired.
Some of the food on the menu looked better than it actually was in-person, but all the food was at least good.
And no matter how hard I worked, it never felt good enough to our nitpicking manager who was always so concerned about how she looked in the eyes of the suits at corporate.
She was too busy kissing their a$$ to worry about us lower employees on the totem poll.
Little good it did her.
She was a ball of constant worry and stress, a chain smoker, and overweight. This was our manager. Our fearless leader?
Is this what management is supposed to look like in America or was this just her issue?
There has to be better ways for her to almost be eligible for food stamps and make a buck, but what do I know.
My lunch break was the only thing I looked forward to because it was the one-time no one could give you any orders and you could get off your feet and rest.
I usually ate a Philly cheesesteak because it was just so good. Calories be damned!
Even some of the cooks seemed disgruntled. They liked to flirt with waitresses and I think one was dating one of them! Whatever.
I just needed the cooks to be happy so that I could get food out piping hot and fast so I could make this money.
I need those tips!
After calculating the $2.39 an hour, working 40 hours a week would only get me $95.60! And that’s gross not net!
Anyway, I now had to deal with the situation.
The goal was to have spending money to hang out with my friends and buy all the cool stuff I always wanted but could never afford.
To be so young and naĂŻve. If I would have been thinking, I should have started tucking money into a Roth IRA. I would probably have had less anxiety when I got my first REAL job!
If I would have saved just $2,000 a year from ages 16-26, without adding another penny, in 40 years that money could have turned into $1,586,894.95 at a 10% return with compound interest! That would have required me to only stash away $22,000!
Just some food for thought right there. Start investing young!
WELCOME TO THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF TIPPING
Like the first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Welcome to the Hellmouth,” I was welcomed to how cheap people really are.
Tipping is the holy grail of waitressing and bartending.
See my post on Money Tips From Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Make that money honey.
I had a wide range of tips, as anyone who works for tips can tell you.
My range was this: $0 to $27.
The highlight of my night was always counting up my tips when I got home. I think the highest I ever got was $100 bucks in one day!
I know that may not sound like a lot, but to a high school kid in the 90’s that was good money.
Things were also cheaper back then as well.
You bought the item, like a pair of shoes or video game, and then the transaction was over.
Not like subscription mania that has now swept across the nation.
See my post America is the land of subscriptions
One of the smallest tips I ever got was from 2 girls I went to high school with. We were not friends but I didn’t expect to only get a $1.17 tip! That was basically the change from the meal they just ate and paid for. Maybe they should have put in an application to work here too!
I remember one time in college when I got a ride home from a weekend class I was taking (I was doing 6 classes that semester), telling me she worked at her brother’s restaurant and she made sure to be on point in order to get that $20 tip!
My days at Shoney’s was long gone by then, but I remember thinking it is far better to work at a higher end restaurant like her because you can make more money.
Lesson Learned: Focus working or catering to high-end clientele that can afford to pay for your services.
SAVE LIKE YOU WILL LIVE FOREVER
Have you ever heard the saying “Live like tomorrow is your last day on earth?”
Well, I like to save like I am going to live forever.
I learned this lesson, like James Brown said, you have to Pay the Cost to be the Boss.
That song and The Payback made me want to get my act together.
I put a plan into action. I was going to save money out of every paycheck.
It took years to make happen, but I went from saving nothing to putting aside 9% of my income. Then from saving $1 a day to $13,000 a year!
The plan had been to stop living paycheck-to-paycheck.
That was okay, but I needed a goal. Something to aim at.
So I picked a number. $13,333 was that number.
I chose it for a few reasons: 1) The number 3 is my favorite number; 2) I saw that another blogger was saving that amount per month so I aimed to duplicate that, but started smaller; and 3) I did the math and discovered I could have over $100,000 cash if I did this for about 7.5 years.
I also knew it was possible that if I invested $100k in the stock market that after 30 years without adding another dime, I could have $1 million shored up for retirement.
Considering that about 20% of Americans have $0 saved for retirement, I knew that I better prepare because tomorrow does come.
The future is going to happen.
If I was going to bet on anything, I would bet on that. Forget Vegas. You can bet the farm the future is coming. And it’s coming fast!
Remember that 9% I mentioned earlier. Well that small sum turned into a small nest egg of $25,000!
And most of that sum is invested in just a few stocks!
The power of compound interest baby!
| Pro Blogger IRA # 1 of 3 (Personal Finance) Traffic Estimate: 50,000 pageviews Pinterest Estimate: 48,000 monthly viewers |
| Stock | Price | Stock Quantity | Current Balance |
| AAPL | $201.35 | 37.256 | $7,501.50 |
| AMZN | $1866.86 | 5.000 | $9,334.30 |
| Total | $16,835.80 |
Source: GreenbacksMagnet.com
I hope this post inspires people to understand the value of a dollar and that paying off debt and saving are far better than blowing all your money on things.
Invest and watch your money grow!