I just talked to one of my roommates and he's got a bit of a dilemma. I don't even know what I would choose 100%, so I thought I would toss this out here. He's been working for almost a year now as a security guard at a county jail nearby, racking up 80-100 hours a week. Some of that overtime he converted to vacation time (he has 3 months available paid vacation), but the rest now he is pocketing and estimates he is getting $100K/yr gross including the overtime. Most of that money he is saving up to buy a home outright and take care of bad debts from times when he was unemployed.
He also has been interviewing in the city of Chicago to be a policeman, going through all the tests, etc. I found out about it because one of the interviewers called me yesterday about him. He was first interested in it because it's the next logical step up from security guard, but now he is a bit uncertain since it's unlikely that he would get overtime as a police officer. That would mean a pay cut down to $45K and he would probably have to move (which he enjoys our home). The fun part of the interview process too is that they may hire him in a couple of weeks, but they may call him up in 2 years offering a job.
If I was him, I would probably stay where I am as long as I physically can and then take the police officer job after that. I don't know how that man can work 80-100+ hours a week, week in and week out. If I was in the same situation (with wife and daughter), I would jump at the police officer position so that I could spend more time with my wife and daughter.
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I think it's interesting that you have roommates asking you for money advice and such. Is this guy single or have a family? When you're young and single, working as much as possible to make the most money is a priority. I think that once the family comes into the picture, it might be best to slow it down a bit and stable things out. Sure making 100k a year is nice, but the hours being put in are a lot. Can this person live off 45k instead of 100k, one would think so. Cleaning up the bad debt, saving up a nest egg to find his own place, those are goals. I think once he meets his goals, dropping the work down to something normal he should be fine.
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