This is “The million dollar question” according to a commenter in one FB group. I refrained from pointing out that we all WISH it were a million-dollar question. The good news (um, good????) is that how to replace a teacher’s salary is definitely NOT a million dollar question.
That doesn’t keep it from feeling like a million dollar question to anyone trying to figure out how on earth we get out of teaching.
If there were an easy answer, I wouldn’t be writing this post. Every teacher would just figure it out and do it. (We really are NOT as dumb as most legislators seem to think we are.) But there isn’t an easy answer. In most cases, it is going to be tough. In some, it might be impossible. And then one just has to make a decision. Is the risk of going back to school is greater or than the risk of not making enough money to pay the bills?
But for most people, taking things step-by-step and breaking it into small sections will help.
What do you need to replace?
First, find out what you really need to replace. Is it really 100% of your salary? Instead, could you can reduce your expenses to give yourself a bit of breathing room? If you want more details on how to compare income with expenses, check out my blog post here. Also, even if you don’t think you can give anything up, sign up for a free 5-Day Found Money Challenge to help you lower your monthly bills. It will walk you step-by-step through how to lower your monthly bills, even without changing your lifestyle at all.
What if you have tried to lower your bills, and you still need to make 100% of your current salary – or more? Ideally, you hit the jackpot and find a job that out and out replaces your benefits and salary. They are out there. Here is one of my favorite job boards, which focuses on ed tech (usually remote) jobs for teachers.
Most of us are going to need to be a little more creative. And it won’t be easy. But in most cases, it is doable.
Your Magic Number
If you can’t find a job right away, but need to get out fast, you may need a variety of options to mix and match so that you can finally meet that magic number. And what is that magic number? Let’s break it down. Take your yearly salary and divide it by 50. That will give you the amount you need to earn each week to set aside money for taxes and still equal your original take home pay. Do NOT base it on your take home pay unless you plan to set aside 25% of what you earn for taxes. I have also included 2 weeks of vacation because I like to be conservative. And we all need a break now and then.
Some of these might be actual ‘jobs’, while others will be side hustles that you do on your own. I am going to refer to them generally as Income Earning Activities, or IEAs. Most likely, you will need to have some IEAs that provide a fairly high number of steady, predictable hours but do not pay as well per hour. Then you are going to make up the remainder of the amount with IEAs that pay more per hour, but don’t offer as many hours or are less predictable.
Allison’s plan to replace a teacher’s salary
Let’s look at a real-life example. Allison (not a real person) makes a yearly salary of $55K at her teaching job. She has cut her expenses as much as possible. Unfortunately, transferring to her husband’s insurance increased their monthly expenses again, wiping out her gains. So she is looking to replace the full 50K. She hopes to return to teaching second semester.
When we divide that by 50, we get $1000 per week. Holy cow! This is going to be tough.
After spending about a week scouring online jobs and applying, Allison is able to get a full-time job online paying $18.50 an hour. (Here is a link to an example job that teachers would qualify for.
She is working full time at $18.50 an hour, so she now has $740 of that magic number covered. The downside is that this is a temporary 6-month position. However, she is really just planning to use this job to cover the bills until she can get a permanent position, so that doesn’t concern her.
She now needs to cover $300 per week. There are not many families in her area that can pay for teachers to help in the evenings or on weekends. She is able to find one family that needs evening help and can pay $20 per hour. She will be supervising and helping with homework (not teaching) for 3 kids two nights a week for 3 hours each night. That gives her an additional $120 per week.
(NOTE: When I create scenarios, I do it based on actual research. I also try to present them conservatively. I would NOT recommend a certified teacher charge less than $40 per hour for working with three kids. However, in this situation I am lowering that amount considerably just to build in a bit of cushion. Based on my research there is a big demand for teachers to do in-home support. Charging $20 per hour would be on the extreme low end of the scale. In some areas, I have heard of parents paying over $80/hour for an experienced, certified teacher.)
We are now $180 per week below what we need. Allison decides to try out Shipt. She can work for Shipt on Saturday mornings and Sunday nights. She has heard that Friday-Sunday is the busiest time for Shipt, with Sunday night being a peak time. That works with her full time job and her part time arrangement with the family, so she applies.
Although it varies a LOT, she has heard that Shipt shoppers can average $17 per shop. Since each shop usually takes about an hour, that’s about $17 per hour. However, those are people who have a lot of practice. Since she doesn’t want to be left short, she figures that she will count on $12 per hour from Shipt. Again, we are building some cushion in. That means she plans to do about 15 hours of Shipt per week. That is a LOT, but with 5 hours on Friday and Saturday, plus 3 hours two other nights during the week, she will reach her goal with some cushion. If she earns her $180 faster, she can knock off for the week OR put that money aside in case she has a slow week at some point.
Big reminder
This is a big one. We are figuring everything here based on gross salary. That means that when Allison puts the money in her account, it will seem as if has more coming into her pocket than it seems like she needs. Why? Because while her employer WILL take out taxes, her side hustles like Shipt, VIPKid, and the families she is working with will NOT. She needs to take about 25% of her side-hustle income and put it into a totally separate account so that she won’t get a big, bad surprise next April 15. She can put it in an account that will earn her a little interest, but it should NOT be in any kind of investment that could lose value. Just a plain-old bank account so it will be there when she does her taxes next year.
Real Life
But she doesn’t really like doing Shipt. And it doesn’t pay nearly as well as her other jobs. She decides to try to work her way out of doing Shipt, or at least minimize it. Allison has always loved reading, and she has heard that you can build a full time income by indexing non-fiction books. She knows it will take a while to build a clientele, but it sounds like a great fit for her that she can continue even if she finds a full time gig.
But, in the interest of keeping this a real-life scenario, we have one more curve ball to throw at Allison. Her full-time job doesn’t start for a few weeks, so her first $740 pay check will come 3 weeks after her last pay check from her teaching contract. That leaves her $2240 in the hole.
The good news is that she didn’t wait for her teaching contract to act. She has been doing Shipt for 4 weeks already and started working with the family 2 weeks before her last teaching pay check. That means she saved up about $1500 from Shipt (she was able to work more when she didn’t have a full time job) and $240 from the family. She still has $500 to cover.
Allison gets a little worried until she remembers that she received a promotional add that would pay her $300 for opening a new bank account with direct deposit. She takes an hour or so, opens the new account and uses it for the direct deposit of her new job’s paycheck.
She is $200 short, but she decides to do an extra 2 hours each week on Shipt until she makes up the difference. Even though she does have $1000 in her savings account, she would rather work the extra time than dip into that.
So there you have it. It is a completely made up scenario of how to replace a teacher’s salary. But it is based on research and real numbers. If you have a scenario you want to tackle together, comment below, and we’ll do our best to work through it. I can’t promise we will come out in the black, but we will do our best.
And remember. This isn’t going to be easy for any of this. But I believe in you. You’ve got this!