LaVisHh said:

Gouldians are a BITCH... and the worst part is that many people only wanted to buy "proven" pairs and such. The Gouldians were BY FAR the hardest to breed.

Did you use Bengalese to raise their babies?

But... I will say that there is NOTHING like seeing a hundred Gouldian finches flying down your aviary! Damn, it is beautiful!!!

I was able to breed the various color mutations as well, but that was a bitch too... you have to keep up with the lines and that gets to be a REAL problem.

What beautiful colors!!!

Lleena said:

Yes!

I was selling those for $150 for a single female and I was getting $250 a pair.

The only problem is that they are VERY difficult to breed... at least they were for me.

I had only 4 pairs...had to build a seperate breeding/aviary for them, as they got scared easily. No, they raised their own.
I got into them towards the end, and only breeded a couple of babies (that survived). My problem was, even though they were decent money, that they were troublesome birds. The other birds, were easy to breed, successful parents, and I didn't get into breeding finches in general, just this type, because of their beauty and value. I used to get $50 a Gouldian from the petstore!

LaVisHh said:

$50??? Damn! That is CHEAP!

I was getting $150 for a single proven female!

There was money to be made, but I HATED selling them because I love birds and I hated to see fewer beautiful birds flying around the aviary.

IceNine said:

Dayum! Then you were selling directly to the public!

I sold at wholesale pricing.

But the petshops sold them at $75 each, so that wasn't bad for me!

LaVisHh said:

Yeah... fuck pet shops. I advertised and sold to the public... pet stores would have given me about $50 for the birds and they would have sold them for $200... I wasn't having it.

IceNine said:

It seems like a passion of yours, perhaps you should go back to it? Do something you enjoy.

IceNine said:

Go for it if that's how you feel, but like i said poverty isn't all it's cracked up to be. The frustration of not being able to provide properly for your family can be worse than being away. It can cause resentment and anger. If it's only gonna cause you to see your child about an hour less each day. I say keep the job. If you know you can meet all your needs on your new payrate, then go for that instead. The time you spend with the child is PRICELESS.

IceNine said:

just to give you the other side of the coin ive been running my own business (realtor)were called estate agents in Britain for the last 8 yrs.

Ive got two moderately successful offices which both deal in selling and renting properties.

It was good in the early years the long hours and the stress were off set by the money. Now however i have a young family im 35 in a few months and to be honest the money doesnt off set the amount of time you have to dedicate to your own business.

The bottom line is you are ALWAYS thinking about your business and for your staff and clients you are always on call, as you get older time becomes far more important than money

just my two cents worth, having your own business isnt always better than working for the big bad company

..My hamster once had babies and the pet store bought them from me but I did not get much money. I think it did pay for lunch though ... Well I myself would love to start a business of my own. I have actually thought about a plumbing business..LOL...I know it is hard to believe because I am a woman but my grandfather use to lend money to people and one of them was a plumber who would get a big job and need some money up front for material and then of course my grandfather got his money plus interest back within the first couple months. Well anyway I knew this plumber and they make the bucks. Now owning the business and hiring the plumbers I have really seriously thought about.

The extra hours of driving will cut into my time with my son, as I have been working from home most of the time with my current job and have been able to take him to school and pick him up after school... if I stay with my job I will not be seeing my son very much at all. I think that a $50,000 to $70,000 pay cut is worth it if I can spend more time with my son. I am just trying to get the balls to quit. I could move closer to the office, but I do not want work to run my entire life... I do not live to work... Is it so wrong that I do not want to allow work to dictate my life?


If I'm doing the math correctly, this cut would leave you with $30,000-$50,000 on which to live. You can easily do this by budgeting.
My suggestion is to take the pay cut and keep your life.

Take care of yourself...it's not an easy decision to make.

Oh, but the more important question is, with the job change...will u still b able 2 live at the .Org?

June7 said:

That I do not know... I will have to find out if and when I get there.

Man I say start your own company... hopefully you can get enough work and cheques coming to get at least keep yourselves comfortable, and you could work from home which would be great for your son.

A 4 hour commute every day will get tiresome very quickly.

ian said:

Apparently people do this in the Boston area--they'll live somewhere like New Hampshire and then spend two hours (each way) getting to and from work. Why? Cheaper residential real estate is one reason I've heard.

I don't think I could deal with "wasting" 20 hours each week commuting. Time is money in my profession--those 20 hours are time that I could otherwise use for "billable" work. (And no, I'm not one of those people who will type out memos on their laptop computer while driving down the Interstate at 75 MPH.) During the summer of 1999, I spent two months dealing with a one-hour (each way) commute to my job, and by the time I was done with it, I said, "Never again." Aside from all the wasted time, I was always having to refuel my car, and I didn't like how many miles I was putting on my car (even though they were highway miles, which are better than stop-and-go miles).

I think my commuting experience during the summer of '99 is one of the reasons I've chosen to live downtown near my job. I can drive from my home to my office in five minutes. (I tried to talk Kim into choosing this apartment complex that's a few blocks from my office--I'd just walk to work--but it's a high-rise, and she made it clear that she does not want to live in a high-rise.)

And as for this general idea of $100,000 being some magic salary figure, it's all relative. $100,000 is nothing in some places (e.g., Manhattan's Upper East Side or parts of California). Around here, $100,000 makes you upper-middle-class and will buy you a comfortable lifestyle.

IceNine said:

One nice thing about working for a "boutique" law firm is that I'm not a number. Our "HR" is one person--well, our finance administrator backs her up when needed. And if I need to for whatever reason, I can go directly to our senior shareholder. (I don't say "senior partner" because our firm is legally a "professional corporation" and not a partnership.)

no its not wrong to not want work to run your life!


good christ thats what people need to get through thier minds just cause you dont have a "job" like I don't doesnt mean your lazy and worthless

I dont want a job cause I dont want to put up with all the crap that goes along with it I know many a person who is quite alright with this

BUT it seems those that do have jobs want people who dont have jobs to get one cause they have one those people suck donkey dick


so take your pay cut and enjoy your life the way you feel is fit

Mr. Nine, and I call you that because I have nothing but absolute respect for you for the decision you are about to make, do what your heart tells you to do. Your situation reminds me of my own. I am facing an approximately $20,000/year paycut because I am tired of selling my soul to the devil amongst other things. The brokerage firm I work for is relocating to another town, so I am facing driving 3 or 4 hours a day or it's find another job. The brokerage firm I work for is corrupt beyond anyone's wildest dreams and I hear there are worse out there. The dilemma I am having though is that I am a sinlge parent and one of my boys is autistic. Dropping 20 grand in salary would hurt us greatly but I am tired of not being able to sleep at night because of a thankless job I work my ass off at. I never went to college and the other job prospects are dismal, to say the least. There is no way I'm going to make nearly what I make at the firm. I would like to go back to school full-time and spend the rest of my day with my kids but it seems impossible that I am going to do that. I probably will end up quitting my job because I know it will make me a better mom because I won't be so down after coming home from a day of debauchery. But, I am scared shitless. Good luck to you and bless you and your son.

stymie said:

I'm sorry to hear about your situation... man, there are probably a lot of us that are in this type of situation. I guess we can all take heart in knowing that we are not alone.

I am sure that you will make the right decision too.

IceNine said:

I really feel ya Ice, I know how it is to be stable and having to make a choice should it be about money or loved ones, heck I'm thinking very hard about moving to Texas myself from where I am to work for NASA, it is a big thing for me but I am also wondering will it work out in my favor.

Decisions Decisions.

IceNine said:
I'm sorry to hear about your situation... man, there are probably a lot of us that are in this type of situation. I guess we can all take heart in knowing that we are not alone.

I am sure that you will make the right decision too. [/quote] Ima be awright, Ice! it gets me down sometimes but I keep bouncing back! We do whatever it is we need to do when it comes to our kids, right? Thank you for your kind words.

Ice - Follow your Heart. 2 Thine Own Self Be True !!

Ice
For wha it is worth. Your son must come first. You will never get back the 3-4 hrs a day, 15-20 hrs a week, 60-80 hrs a month, 720-960 hrs a year. looks alot don't it. Those hrs will be worth so much to you in 20yrs when you can't get them back. Having said that if you have custody to think of you have to balance the 2 until that is sorted.
Anyway mate good luck and all the best.

You must work for Nortel...

wellbeyond said:

How did you guess???

Yep... I have worked for Nortel for the last 6 years.

wellbeyond said:

As long as he sold his shares in time...

Aerogram said:

I didn't... I lost a lot of money on that crap.

IceNine said:

Sorry to hear that. Just think that so many canadian companies had portfolios heavy with Nortel shares, including the National Pension Plan -- thank goodness, most had the good idea to reduce their exposure before the whole Nortel unraveling. Things were brutal at the Nortel Ottawa office.
[This message was edited Mon Feb 17 8:58:23 PST 2003 by Aerogram]

IceNine said:

I read the bidniz section quite a bit...lol What you described made Nortel jump out to the front of my mind...

And definitely sorry to hear you lost so much on stock... The stock just drastically plummetted...I went thru something similar as far as jobs are concerned, only on a MUCH smaller scale...where I worked, we went from having 45 designers to having just 8 of us...I got put on independent contract status, although they ended up paying me a little more per month to make sure my health benefits and pension were covered...they said they didn't want to chance losing me, so they sweetened the pot while I was on "temporary" contractor status...after 7 months of contractor status I realized that going back to full-time employment status wasn't gonna happen anytime soon and went out on my own...the $$$ is much less, but I'm also happier with the direction in which my career can now travel...

Hang in there, my friend...ultimately you'll find yourself happier after all the decisions are made, as long as they're made for the right reasons...