As most of the world’s population knows by now, teachers do not get paid very well..
It’s a sad truth but everyone who goes into teaching already knows that they will not be leaving it with a fortune or, really, rich by any standards. We know that the work that we really do is not truly compensated financially and that we are kind of stuck in a permanent financial rut. 
If you are like me, just coming out of college and starting on this real adult-life teaching job, you realize that the financial world is stacked against you a bit. We are promised this small amount of money and all of these benefits. “We have health care, dental, eye doctor insurance, and all of these other awesome benefits, so you definitely should come work here for us!” But come to find out, that small amount of money is what they promise before taxes and you do get these benefits, but they will cover very little and you will have to pay out of pocket for everything.. Sorry…
We come to realize, extremely quickly, that we cannot survive on this meager salary and definitely not splurge on anything.
“The median annual salary across all teaching professions is $57,949, about $3,000 below the median annual salary of $60,996 across all workers with a bachelor’s degree, and nearly $15,000 below the median annual salary of $72,852 across workers with a master’s degree. Approximately 56 percent of teachers have a master’s degree.”
That quote is from a USA Today posted back in October… How sad is that? This is recent information!!! And that is the average of all of the states in the United States… Some of you might be thinking ‘that’s still a good amount of money, get over it’. Yeah, not going to happen because if you look carefully and do some research, that number gets skewed a lot because teacher’s salaries in places like Alaska, which are in the $85,000 range.
I find it nearly impossible to even save up any money at the end of the month. I literally have zero dollars in my savings account as of the date of this post. I have found that if I want to save to by anything important, I have to take a second or sometimes a third job..
For me, finding a second and third job came down to when I had availability, which was never. I looked at retail and customer service jobs, cooking jobs, being a restaurant hostess, and soooooooo many more jobs in not only my town but also in the surrounding towns. Eventually, I found that I could be a Uber/Lyft driver and make my own schedules around my already packed other schedules.
At first, this was a good job for me. It forced me to clean my dog-fur covered car and actually get out on the weekends. However, I realized that if I really wanted to make enough money to get out of this financial rut, that I would have to go out almost every night after 8 hours of teaching and almost every weekend… I would come to work exhausted and not be able to keep my eyes open and focused.
I realized that this was going to be a struggle for me. As an educator, my teaching job comes first and so I just have to struggle through the financial struggles and just hope that I make it through to the next payday….. and that my car doesn’t break down!!
Being an educator is so worth it and it is a truly amazing job! However, they really should pay us more….
