What a Sweet Promotion!

As many of you know, I've been working a contract gig for the past few months that I really love. I feel like I've finally found a job that keeps me excited most minutes of the day and that can use my talents and ideas.

My contract is expiring in a few weeks, so my boss and I sat down to renegotiate the next part of my working with the company. It turns out that in addition to my liking the job, the people there, somehow, seem to like me too! Wow. Ok, so the only crappy part of the whole deal is that I've upped my hours to 40 a week, but I'm not considered "full time" because, as I've mentioned before, "full time" at my company is 50-60 hours a week. I'm not in the mood to work 60 hours a week (I'll burn out fast) so I said give me 40 and an offer I can't refuse. Well, I just said give me 40 on contract for another three months and make me an offer.

So I was making $3300 a month plus some small amount of stock options for 30 hours a week. That was fine, but in order to really make a living I needed to start working 40 hours a week. I figured I'd get offered $4400, without a raise at all. I'd ask for $200-$500 more, depending on what I was offered. So my boss decided to get rid of my stock options and instead give me more cash. That's ok with me... I love my company, but I know the odds of it succeeding to the point where my stock options would be worth more than the paper they one day will be written on is slim. So he offered $4600 a month for 40 hours a week. That was a good offer, indeed. Still, it doesn't include benefits, and I plan on my health insurance costing about $400 a month, with basic monthly payments and HSA savings (plus dental and vision). So I figured I'd ask for $200 more a month. The worst he could do was say no.

But he said yes. I probably could have gotten away with asking for even more than that, but I think I'll try to raise my pay slowly over the time I work with the company. In three months, I might end up signing on for a full-time salaried position. It's exciting to think what sort of offer would come out of that, given they'd be expecting me to work 60 hours a week! Well, I don't know if I'll ever want that, but it would surely be a nice way to save up some money for grad school and my potential house.