With the economy of the United States still not fully recovered from the recent recession, many people are taking on part-time jobs in order to make ends meet. Although it may not seem like a great long term option, in the short term it is a good option in order to save up some quick cash or pay off debt. Many people wonder exactly how much they can make when working a part time job and this can make the difference in deciding exactly whether to work a part time job or not. When you’re looking at how much money you can make working part time, it is important to keep several factors in mind.
Using an Hourly Wage Calculator
If you are curious about how your part-time job’s hourly wage translates into an annual salary, you can use this hourly wage calculator. You can also convert your annual salary into an hourly wage, if you also have a full-time job and would like to know what it pays on an hourly basis.
But, as anyone with a full-time or part-time job knows, there is more to how much income you get to keep than the hourly wage amount. The rest of this article deals with other factors than can impact your paycheck:
Taxes
Everyone earning an income has to pay federal income taxes, and in many states some people have to pay state taxes as well. When looking at how much a person will make, it is important to factor in taxes especially if a person is self employed. For those that complete contractor type side work, taxes are not withheld from a paycheck. This means that at the end of the year taxes will be owed on the money that was earned during the year and should be saved up for. For those that work at typical job for an employer, taxes will be withheld and will consequently make the net pay lower than the gross pay.
Transportation
Another cost when looking at how much you will make from a part time job is transportation. If a person is making an extra $500 a month and has to spend an extra $100 a month in taxes, this may not be a good deal for them. There are many costs to transportation outside of just gasoline. One cost that is worth more than money is time. If a person has a part time job working three hours a night and must drive an hour to get there and back, they are really working four hours every night instead of just three. This means that the actual hourly wage earned by the worker is lower than they would think originally because they are having to spend time they are not getting paid for in order to get to and from work. At the end of the day, a part time job does not generally pay as much as a full time job so it is important that people factor in all costs related to working the job.
Time
Finally, as stated earlier a must person factor in all of the time centered around a part time job in order to truly gauge how much money they are going to earn at a part time job. Transportation, getting ready for the job, and other time activities all take away from the time that a person has to have as their own. Although people generally trade time for money in their part time job, it is still important to take this in to account when calculating an hourly wage.
In the long run, you should not have to permanently work a part time job if you have your finances in order. In fact, many people take on a part-time job so that they can get out of debt faster and thus get to keep more of their salary — increasing their quality of life.
For many people, a part time job may be a necessity to survive a tough spot or it may be a short term solution in order to pay off debt or earn extra money. Proper financial planning and goals should make it so that a part time job should be a temporary solution and not a permanent one.
