I’ve been putting in ma-a-a-a-ad hours at work. I mean like 14-hour days. Tired and hungry, I’ve been driving home and contemplating about the regular vs. overtime pay, as well as salary vs. hourly wages.

I also noticed that my salaried co-workers have been putting in exact same hours I’ve been. Benefits aside (everyone’s are crappy anyway), I started to wonder about the best work arrangements for getting paid on an hourly basis vs. on salary basis.

Let’s say you make x dollars per hour. Your gross weekly take is 40x, and if you work all year, your take-home is 40x times 50 = 2,000x. Suppose you stay at work for just one hour later (or come in one hour earlier). Given the standard overtime conpensation of 1.5x, your weekly take goes up to 47.5x, an increase of 19% for just 13% of extra work.

If you work for one year with putting in that one extra hour a day, you’ll end up making 47.5x times 50 = 2,375x, and increase of … you guessed it … 19%. If your x is $15, that’s $30,000 vs. $35,625 per year.

However, I’ve been averaging 11-hour days (yep, the “come at seven, leave at six” routine). Each week, instead of 40x, it’s 62.5x – an increase of 56% for 38% of extra work. Annually, the regular-time 2,000x becomes the over-time 3,125x. At the same hypothetical $15/hr, it’s $30,000 vs. $46,875. If you consider the IT industry average of $25/hr, the numbers go up to $50,000 vs. $78,125.

Therefore, the salaried co-workers should receive almost $30,000 more per year in benefits, incentives, profit-sharing, etc. In reality, all they receive is a crappy healthcare plan and a crappy 401k contribution plan, along with the crappy requirement to stay at work as long (or longer) that the houry workers because of some “company above all” schpiel pushed on them by middle management.

In return for the ass-busing labor, the salary guys get … stability? … a fancy badge? … a parking spot? Please.

So you see, sometimes it’s much cooler (and more lucrative) to be a clock-puncher.

Don’t be surprised if this site is looking crazy.  Apparently, there was a phishing site neatly hosted in my ‘Uploads’ folder, so I had to upgrade WordPress.  After upgrading, everything stopped working, so I figured I might as well re-do everything.

On occassion, some of you leave nice comments on this blog to the tune of “nice blog“, “keep on bloggin“, or even “I added you to my bookmarks“. It’s nice to know that something I have to say is interesting to someone else. I’m sure some of the folks leaving comments don’t have their own blogs yet, but are wondering whether they should start putting their musings into a textbox.

Those folks should read an entertaining article entitled How To Dissuade Yourself From Becoming a Blogger (picked up from WikiHow).

In the article, an unknown writer shares a few nuggets of wisdom about blogging:

- Find five completely random blogs, and read them daily for a month. After thirty days, you will absolutely dread your self-imposed requirement to read all that dreck.

While it’s true that most blogs suck, there are some worth reading or watching.

- Write on a regular basis in a text editor instead. If that doesn’t satisfy your urge, and you feel that you must post your blog online, then you might just be craving attention and validation–which you’ll never truly find in a blog.

It’s true! People don’t start blogs because they want to help other people (exception). They start blogs because they want the attention. Hey, I started blogging because I wanted to see who’s going to care about what I have to say, and not because I’m some financial guru ready to dispense my priceless advice to everyone.

However, if you can say with certainty that you’re the type of person who likes to finish what you start (including things like blogs), you can pretty much count on making one dollar per month per unique daily visitor if you blog for around a year.

So check it out regardress of your blog ownership situation.

I’m talking about mattresses, not toilets.

Because we were not planning on sleeping on a $15 Wal-Mart Special air-bed forever, we looked around for a nice inexpensive mattress that would last allotted 8-10 years and allow us to have a good-night’s sleep.

The other night, thanks to our cat’s undying desire to claw everything, instead of waking up on the damned air mattress, we woke up on the floor. I’m sure there’s a demented Red Green / Dave Ramsey fan out there who would fill up the bath tub and methodically dunk the deflated air mattress into the water looking for air bubbles, and thus, the hole … (and then fix the hole with some duct tape).

Because we’re not that crazy and this time we actually had some cash, we started shopping around for a brand new mattress. After looking around, we realized that decent mattresses start at around $400. And no, we weren’t considering buying a used mattress to save money, ew, gross.

We were ready to unload $600-700 on a nice set (frame/box/mattress), which we did. If you spread the seven hundred bucks over eight years, you’d end up ‘paying’ $7.30 per month … a small price to pay for a good night’s sleep. Though I knew that markups on commercial mattresses reach sometimes as much as 400%, I had to bite the bullet and not go for the cheapest one.

I know there are people out there who would chastise us for spending ‘that much’ on a mattress. Those are the people who think ‘while you’re asleep, you don’t care what you’re alseep on‘. I used to think like that, too … until I got this mattress.

Turns out, it does matter what you sleep on. You will not derive the same sleeping experience from a $200 twin as you would from a $600 queen (unless the room is spinning because you’re drunk). You probably will be more tired and slightly achey after sleeping on a cheap mattress. I should note that age makes a difference – when I was 18, I could pass out on a wooden plank, and catch some Grade A sleep. Now I’m selling out and buying Beautyrest‘s because my shoulder hurts in the morning … and I’m still not that old!

As far as the guts of a mattress go, I liked the Mashal Coil (pocketed coil) idea because of motion separation (one person can get in and out of bed without disturbing the other) … so I immediately started researching Simmons. They just seemed more credible. They invented Marshal Coils and they manufacture their own springs (unlike the other boys who get theirs from one company, Leggett and Platt). Their units are decently priced and provide the level of comfort we were looking for.

Now that we got our new bed, I’m actually looking forward to going to bed at night. I seriously resented sleeping because it just wasn’t that comfortable.

To those people passed out on the hand-me-down singles and twins right now, the eighteen-year-old Max from eight years ago salutes you!

I used to dislike cell phones and cell phone users. Of course, back in the day, 75% of the cell phone users felt that having a cellular phone gave them the license to act like obnoxious assholes, so you can’t blame me for disliking them for that reason back then.

Now it’s a fact of life – you have to have a cell phone.

Of course, you could argue this subject to death – a person true to saving money, pinching pennies, saving for retirement, being frugal, or being the best pf blogger (s)he can be would not have a cell phone because “it’s $50-300 per month thrown away“, etc, etc.

So I ask a few questions – how are you going to coordinate rides/pickups with your significant other when you are sharing a car? How are you going to not look like an unprofessional cretin when your co-workers decide to set up an urgent meeting? How are you going to be reached for emergencies?

Besides, cell phones started to beat land lines in their own game a long time ago. Cell phones are convenient, cheap, and are quite necessary if you are planning to live a fruitful, busy, and fulfilling life amongst other humans.

Because of our move, we naturally decided to get phones no matter what, but as soon as money allowed. The time conveniently arrived when I was sick and tired of being too late to pick up my wife from her job.

A short visit to Cingular with my work badge (to get a discount), and we walked out with two Nokia 6030 phones, a two year contract, 1,400 minutes to share, and a $95/mo recurring bill.

I would highly recommend a Nokia to anyone needing a phone. I’ve used all kinds of phones, and this one is the best in terms of battery life, features, and convenience.

My conclusions:

• Whatever plan/phone price they throw around while you’re in the store, double it in your head. They say it’s going to be $50 a month, but it won’t. Taxes and misc. items literally double the price.
• Don’t be a whiny pansy and get a 2-year contract, unless you haven’t done your research or planning to move. You’ll get a better rate, and your fancy new phone(s) will be free. Don’t even think about getting those “Go Phones” in Wal-Mart.
• If you’re a talker, it’s better to overpay for service your first month, and keep the minutes with rollover than to not get enough minutes and pay for overages. You can always drop down to a plan with fewer minutes during the next month.
• Go for battery life rather then features. A cell phone is still called a PHONE, not a media combine. Squeezing a few more hours out of a battery is infinitely more important than having a crappy VGA camera. Call me when they’ve integrated all of the following:
• Phone with a decent battery life and loud speakers;
• A six megapixel camera with a gig of storage;
• Video camera that shoots 1024px wide video @ 30 frames p.s.;
• Movie player;
• Mp3 player with at least a gig of storage and a battery life of 36-48 hours;
• PDA with email, Internet browsing, and installation of your own programs on demand;
• Integrated and universally accepted credit/debit payment system;
• Flashlight;
• GPS navigator
• Before all that happens, don’t waste my time with intergating cut-rate, crappy features into a device that’s only supposed to do one thing – MAKE AND RECEIVE PHONE CALLS.
• Make sure batteries are readily available through ebay and PriceGrabber, and NOT THE STORE THAT SOLD YOU THE PHONE.
• You might want to “splurge” and justify buying that insurance thing they will try to sell at the store IF AND ONLY IF YOU BOUGHT AN EXPENSIVE PHONE. Two years is a long time. You probably WILL lose the phone, run it through the washer, or drop it onto the parking garage floor. Don’t bother if you’ve got a cheapie. Unlocked GSM phones on eBay are dime a dozen. Swap the SIM-card, and you’re golden.
• Cancel your old plan before you get a new one.

Peace.