Fun with math

One more day. One more day. Focus on the money.

I am currently making, as an hourly rate, approximately 0.66x what I used to make in my old job. This was determined by taking my total annual income from my last tax filing and dividing by 52 and then by 40. This number captured both "salary" and "bonus" income. However, in my old job, a 40 hour workweek was actually closer to 45 or 50 hours at work, not counting commuting. This is not to say that I did 45 to 50 hours of work each week. No. Large stretches of my time were taken up by waiting for responses from clients, ready to spring into action whenever - and if ever - they came in.

I now work a 4x4 schedule - four 12-hour days on, four days off. So while I work on an eight-day cycle, my pay is still based on a seven-day cycle, Sunday through Saturday. The upshot of this is that my paycheck alternates between four 48-hour weeks (Sunday-Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday through Wednesday-Thursday-Friday-Saturday) and four 36-hour weeks (Thursday-Friday-Saturday, followed by Sunday-Friday-Saturday, Sunday-Monday-Saturday, and finally Sunday-Monday-Tuesday.) Any time over 40 hours in a given Sunday-Saturday week is considered "overtime" and is paid at 1.5x the standard rate. The upshot of this is that there are actually four 52-hour paychecks followed by for 36-hour paychecks.

This week should have been a 52-hour Wednesday-Thursday-Friday-Saturday payweek for me, followed by a 36-hour Thursday-Friday-Saturday payweek - my fourth workday in the next rotation is Sunday, but that counts towards the following payweek. But in reality I am working Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday-Saturday-Sunday. This means I have worked 60 hours in the first seven-day week, which are worth 40 hours of straight time and 20 hours of time-and-a-half - 40 plus 30 hours, for a 70 hour paycheck. Next week, assuming I make it through the week, will be a 48-hour workweek that will pay 52 hours.

So for these two seven-day periods I will have earned 122 hours of pay, as opposed to the 80 hours of pay I would have earned in my previous job. But these 122 hours are at 0.66x my old pay rate. So, calling my old pay rate "r", instead of earning $(80 x r) I will have earned $(122 x 0.66)r = $(80.52 x r).

In other words, I broke even. So, if I work one day of overtime every rotation,, putting myself on a 5x3 schedule, I will earn as much money as I used to make...with a bonus of an extra half-hour of pay thrown in.

And run myself ragged in the process.