I’m 25 and I am trying to pay down as much debt as possible. I currently have roughly 30k in debt between car loan and credit cards. I’ve been working 80-90 hours a week for close to two months now and have made a lot of progress towards paying everything down. The hours are broken up between two jobs that are near each other so I do not have to commute far when heading to the next job. The main job which makes up roughly 75% of my hours is all customer service based and the other job has little to no customer interactions. For sleep I’m averaging around 6-7 hours of sleep per day. I’m noticing my mental health significantly declining and I do not have any interactions with anyone besides at work. I feel like I’m in a constant work mindset. For anyone who has worked these hours long term do you have any tips or advice?
How do I maintain a 80+ hours a week work schedule?
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You don’t. It’s only going to wear on ur mental health more and more. It might be worth it to stick to one of the jobs and pay everything off slower.
Get one better paying job
Did this for 4 years. Sleep is incredibly important but you will have the mental health hit no matter what and the physical exhaustion really catches up to you.
If I were you, use PTO every month if you’ve got quite a bit. Even 1 day off makes a huge difference and it could just be a day full of sleep and relaxation. I remember not spending a lot of money during those times because I was just too tired.
The answer is you can’t maintain this without something giving and you have already said your mental health is declining. If you are doing the majority of hours in 1 job quit the second job and get some sleep, you will be more productive and less likely to hurt yourself in the meantime.
Worst case go through some kind of debt management plan. No amount of money is worth your health.
It’s not sustainable. Tried to grind 100-120hrs/wk during grad school (literally 14-16hrs/day 7 days/wk)
I probably took years off my life and had a complete medical collapse after two semesters.
It’s not worth it unless you’re literally facing eviction or starvation as the alternative
As someone who has worked 270 – 320 hours monthly over the last 10 Years.
You don’t.
It’s killing you, not slowly but it’s the left lane. There are credit companies that allow you to refinance(?) debt as a loan. That might be a more valid option than literally killing yourself,
Your mental health is worth a lot more than $30k in debts. Work on a plan where you can do it with one job.
A long time ago, I worked a corporate job (50+ hours a week) while building a business during the evenings and weekends. I worked between 80 and 100 hours a week. No vacations. No days off. No holidays. No sick days. No mental health days.
I did this for years. I slept between 4 and 5 hours a night (I still do. I’ve never needed the 8 hours a night recommended by most.)
It was definitely a grind. My social life suffered. My relationships with family members suffered. My health suffered due to stress.
Having said that, getting out of debt is important. If there’s light at the end of your tunnel, putting in crazy hours for a few more months to pay off your debt might be a good decision.
I have zero debt. No consumer debt. House is paid. Cars are paid. It makes life so much easier.
it is so bad for you. my mental health declines every spring-summer, from may to august i average around 300hrs a month, work was getting all my energy, id go home and just be a self entitled asshole, not want to do things with my kids etc, life is way more than money. i recently quit one of my jobs, it paid great, but i feel like i’m living again and not just existing.
it is so bad for you. my mental health declines every spring-summer, from may to august i average around 300hrs a month, work was getting all my energy, id go home and just be a self entitled asshole, not want to do things with my kids etc, life is way more than money. i recently quit one of my jobs, it paid great, but i feel like i’m living again and not just existing.
I have worked these hours. The thing is, you need an exit date, when it all ends. You can’t do it forever and if you’ve done it a couple of months at most you have 1 more month where you can do it.
Set that date and stick to it.
If you do not then I’ve seen the consequences: physical decline, mental breakdown. You are 25 and likely recover, when you stop, but you are seriously playing with fire.
Give yourself 4 more weeks of it then you MUST stop it. That’s your exit date.
On the other hand when you’ve been working those crazy hours the first weekend will feel like a week off work, you’ll be amazed how quickly you refresh.
I can’t stress enough, you need to set that exit date and it has to be within 1 month from today, ideally within 4 weeks (even better 2) but you MUST have that exit date set.
You can slow down the pace as long as the debt doesn’t grow from that again. The thing is that debt is hole easy to fall into but hard / time intensive to get out. And as you are noticing – you can spend money WAY faster than you can earn it, even when you are working as much as you do. This is the big lesson here. When you got rid of your debt don’t delude into taking on new debt for depreciating assets again just because something tells you “oh I can get rid of it again, especially now that I earn a bit more” – you wouldn’t be the first person to get debt free, then start to earn more and therefore fall into an even deeper hole after. So be mindful of that. Anyhow – your health is at least as important as this debt, if you aren’t in a condition in which you can work, you cant earn money to pay it down further. So don’t overdo it.
Its a short term fix, not a long term solution.
Do it until the negatives outweigh the positives, then stop.
I did this for a couple of months in my 20s. I was literally falling asleep at traffic lights. I got through it knowing it was temporary and for a specific goal.
Set a time limit and a cash goal. Seeing a defined end and goal helps. Make the end sooner rather than later, even if you still have some debt. The things you do in your 20s come back to you in your 40s. You can chalk this up as a lesson about the pitfalls of living outside your means.
Don’t get yourself into debt.
Do not have credit cards.
Keep doing what you’re doing until you’re out of this pickle; then step off the gas a little and don’t put yourself back in this position.
I’ve been where you are.
You’re doing this to pay off debt at the expense of everything else. Your conviction is going to be what gets you through.
You basically go until you’re burnt out and then think about work life balance.
I once did a similar thing (16 hour work-days, 6 days a week), and I could only swing it for about three months. If you’re going to do this (and I won’t tell you what to do- you’re an adult and have decided what you’re gonna do)- set a definite endpoint. By this I mean, I made it okay for three months, but if it was indefinite, I would have lost it.
You can’t.
Humans are not built for that, and it WILL affect you negatively.
Sometimes it will also negatively affect the number of hours you can actually do over a year.
Say you do 60 hours a week for 52 weeks = 3,120 hours.
However, if you push to do 90 hours a week but burn out (which will happen) after 30 weeks = 2,700 hours.
The only way it is doable is to have an obvious target in mind.
It sounds like you do, regarding clearing your debt, and you must know how long at 90 hours how it will take.
However, you need to be very accepting of whether that is, in fact, possible. Just because you want to do it doesn’t mean it is achievable.
I would work out how long it will take at 90 hours to clear the debt. if that is more than 6 months, I would seriously consider going to 60 hours and just taking longer to pay back the loans.
There is no point clearing your debt, but in the meantime, destroying your health, mental wellbeing and relationships.
.
It doesn’t get any better. Been doing it for almost a year straight now. Work 21 days then home 10 days, average maybe 4-6 hours sleep a night.
I sometimes have those kind of weeks…. You don’t maintain that on a regular basis. That’s the fastest way to burn out.
So do you think all this is worth it for that Tesla 3? Jesus how did you think you could afford it?
When I was 25, I drove a used 11-year-old Honda Accord. Even thought I was making decent money, I lived like I was broke.
And you’re a WSB kid too, that explains all the terrible financial choices.
How long to pay off the debt at the rate you’re currently working?
You don’t. It’s literally murderous long term, and two months of it, I’d say you’re approaching the long term part.
I lasted about 3 months working this schedule. You don’t need to wipe your debts this quickly, especially at the cost of your mental health.
If you want to survive at this pace a little bit longer take one job’s entire vacation (you should get paid for your time off) and then the other one’s. Give your body a break for a little bit.
With a commute under 5 minutes, I would suggest selling your car in order to reduce the debt and getting yourself an older, cheap model (or using public transportation is even better). Then focus on just one of those jobs (the one that gives you OT) and try to work a maximum of 60 hours instead.
I tried this once when I was saving up for a wedding. My wife got pregnant unexpectedly and the smell of cooking meat would make her violently sick.
She worked in a kitchen so that was pretty much career ending for her.
I kept it up for about 5 months but had to quit the second job because I was so constantly exhausted and therefore irritable that if I tried to keep it up there wouldn’t have been a wedding to save up for.
(I want to be clear, this wasn’t my wife being unreasonable – I was absolutely becoming an asshole. I remember doing a pizza delivery at 11:15PM and my wife sent a text asking me to do something. For the life of me I can’t remember what the text asked me to do, but I remember flipping out and planning in my head how much I was going to be going off at her for her audacity — when I suddenly realised that I was going to be ranting and raving over some 5 minute task — that’s when I figured it was time to dump the second job and we’d just deal with a cheap wedding.)
I wouldn’t bother doing 2- 40hr jobs, it’s not worth it.
I was working 55<65hrs at 1 jobs. 65hrs at 1 job is almost equal to 2 – 40hr jobs ( equal to 77.5hrs straight pay)
It’s a lot easier, managable.
I did it in my 20’s, working 2 full time jobs and sometimes over 100 hours/week. You put your head down, concentrate on the end goal and power through.
“The only thing I knew how to do was to keep on keeping on…” – Bob Dylan
You don’t. At least not if you want to live to see 35.
Ok so my advice is this. You seem stuck on needing to work these hours so here’s the moves.
You need to meditate for 15 minutes before work.
You need to take a 30 minute walk after work outside and preferably with a friend, family member, or SO.
You HAVE to eat properly.
The MOMENT you have everything paid off quit one job. This is an unsustainable lifestyle.
I have had such work weeks when starting a business, and recently I have also had weeks where I would work 10 hours daily. And my honest to god recommendation is DON’T.
It is mostly due to Mental Health, being in constant work-mode without rest really strains your mental health, and something not many acknowledge is that Mental Health isn’t like a flesh wound that heals in a month, it takes MONTHS to recover mental health. The moment you drag your Mental Health down the gutter you will have a very hard time picking it back up and in worse cases you will simply need professional help with that.
You want to pay down as much debt as possible and that is fair, but working your ass off with 90hour weeks will just make you not appreciate the accomplishment in the end because you will be just mentally drained.
Keep your main job, and instead of having a second job, look for doing occasional side-gigs. Repayment will be slower, true. But your mental health won’t degrade that much.
You can also try to approach it from a different angle, you mentioned car loan and credit cards, ask yourself if you need that car now, or if you will be better driving a shitbox for like a year or two until you sort out your finances. Sell the car, pay-off the credit cards and THEN look into a car loan that you CAN afford.
You can’t do this for very long.
I would look into finding a way to finance your debt with lower interest rather than killing yourself with work.
Sharing accommodations is the easiest way to save significant money. It’s a big sacrifice in comfort but compared to 80hr/week it doesn’t look as bad.
That’s the neat thing.
You wont have to pay off if you do not take money.
Take a lesson, pay off how much you can, but try to save your sanity!
And try to stay away from debt in future.
Im in the same but trying to go with 40 hrs weekly and changing jobs every 2 years for bumps. Works so far, but there are some things still that needs to be paid off
As someone in an industry where these kind of work weeks happen, it’s gonna be miserable no matter what. I’ve seen guys about get into a physical altercation over petty stuff simply because they were tired and stressed.
My advice is to eat as healthy as you can. Don’t turn to the chips and fast food when you don’t have to. Prioritize high protein, filling meals, with veggies and fruits. Drink lots of water. This will help keep your body fueled
Have you tried calling your credit cards and asking them if they can help you, you’d have to close the account but they’re willing to help as long as you’re willing to pay. I called in and they reduced my payment amount, but also reduced my interest rate to 1% until it’s all payed off.
I use ChatGPT to help me imagine that I’m at an all-inclusive beach resort vacation whenever I’m at work:
Turning my work day into a vacation
I don’t feel like I’m at work anymore.
Try OTR trucking. I work long hours: as hard as I want to. I was out of debt in a couple of months and have been stacking dollars ever since. If you’ve got no home, wife, or kids it’ll be much easier but you’re going to give up a huge percentage of what you’d consider a life in exchange for the loot.
Feel free to ask any questions you may have.
I did this for most of my 20’s. Rarely seeing my friends and family was the hardest. One of my jobs was as a bartender, so there was some social interaction these. I probably would have gone nuts if they had both been office jobs.
This time set me up for the rest of my life, so I’m happy I did it, but I don’t miss the grueling hours.
You absolutely do not attempt to maintain that. You’re already seeing the affects of it after only a couple months. That’s not going to magically plateau or get better.
If you really need the cash, I highly recommend just capping yourself at one job, since you said one makes up 75% of the hours. Just do that one so you can at least rest a little each day.
My best wishes to you and good luck. Hats off to you for working so hard to pay off your debt. Debt is a very slippery slope
Amphetamines.
> I’m noticing my mental health significantly declining
And nothing but rest will stop that.
Try to work 40 hours for two months, regain some of your health, and see whether you can work smarter, instead of harder. For instance: investing some of your time in training might get you a better job that pays more.
Getting rid of debt is a good goal, but if you kill yourself mentally in doing so, there won’t be a you to enjoy being debt free.
I know someone who is an accountant. Generally they work similar hours during busy season but it wouldn’t be sustainable long term. If you think you can do this long term with no negative consequences then you are wrong. You either live with the trade off of paying off the debt faster at the expense of deteriorating mental health or choose to cut down the hours and pay it off over a longer term but maintain good mental health.
Step 1 counseoller , step 2 write up a schedule and plot what u need down and ask ur counseoller and get support for it no point in reading Reddit comments all day and u have done nothing !
> long-term
You don’t. To quote a popular Internet video from my youth, “Caaaarl, that kills people.”
> short-term
You have a goal, stick to it. I personally don’t think that your goal is a particularly good reason to fuck up your health and that you’d be way better off paying off your debt more slowly, but I get why people do it. My girlfriend (now wife) did it while waiting for my dumb ass to get out of the Marine Corps. There wasn’t anything else to do, so she paid off her student loans and credit cards.
You prioritize. Your time outside of work needs to be incredibly structured. You need to do the basics that take care of your physical needs, you can’t have good mental health if you’re not sleeping, eating, and staying hydrated. There also needs to be time for you to decompress, I would recommend something you can do on your own that is not at all stressful (ie not videogames or anything that involves coordinating with others). You need a goal you’re working to achieve and it’s helpful for me to have some visualization of my progress.
You can do this. Don’t listen to the people who have never had to do it and think they can’t and because they can’t no one can. Burn out can totally happen, but keeping things disciplined helps a ton. If you just have to pay off debt, then your end goal is already in sight.
Hey bro a lot of people giving u dogshit advice on this thread let me help u out.
First thing that’s true, this is ultimately unsustainable. The longest I’ve ever been able to work 80 hours a week was roughly 3 months straight, and I’ve only had to do it twice in my life.
Make sure you get some type of physical exercise in the mornings right when you wake up, you have to take a walk, or jog, or gym, or surf. Get your heart pumping and wake up for the day.
Usually I would smoke 2 bowls of weed per day, one between the first and second job, and then one after I clock out of my second job before I go home. Limit phone time or video game time to like an hour after u get home tops. 1-2 games of league / 2-3 matches of apex / 3-4 matches of DBD, whatever just limit it to an hour or so each.
Make sure you’re asleep by midnight at the latest. Don’t sacrifice your sleep. You need that. As for the social aspect, you can make friends when you do your exercise. At the gym or surfing is the best time to do it. Just talk to random people. You can also make friends at work.
You can do it man. I know it’s tough. The most important thing is to stick the landing. You know how people diet for a few months and lose weight, then they go back to their old eating habits and gain it all back? Dont crash out when you stop working 80hours and buy another Tesla, or spent hundreds on a hentai addiction. You goal is to get back on a budget and be debt free as soon as possible.
“Find a job you love doing and it won’t feel like work”.
I did 70 hours a week for a few years. I would go home to take a shower and sleep. I was fortunate to work at a restaurant so I had somewhat of a social outlet and was being fed there everyday. I didnt have to worry about dishes / cooking at home. It burned me out though, its something you cant do forever.
Caffeine and hatred
When I was 26 I worked had an 8-hour physical job, drove home showered, ate, go to school for another 5 hours. I did that for a year. Walking dead. I got a job and things were more normal working 50+ hours weekly for a while. You need an exit strategy.
I can’t imagine doing that long term. I did it for a summer about 11 years ago. It was tough but they money was worth it. I was sad when it ended but it probably saved me from burnout. I remember the petty arguments on the jobsite, the rivalries that developed. I remember buying new clothes on my days off because it seemed easier than washing the ones I had. To this day I have hundreds of socks and a months worth of underwear from that summer I spent working 14 hour days and 6 day weeks
Ooh, you want to work 16 hours a day?!?
Used to work 75 hours a week. Try to eat healthy as possible, and decent sleep is the key
Also watch your taxes. I’m not sure how it works where you live, but when I was working two jobs, I had to pay quite a bit at the end of the year. Both jobs were taking the proper taxes for each, but the combined income was a much higher tax bracket.
I did that for about 4 years. Got depressed, got bad habits, did loads of impulsive things i regret because i didn’t care about myself anymore. Now i chill working ~30 hours from home , often doing irresponsible stuff like smoking weed during work hours making more than 3x what i did back then.
The 4 years of work did boost my salary very well however not only was it very painful and probably not healthy, most of my coworkers did not make it. Some burned out and became neets and the others had less large salary increases. There was only one high paying role available at the end of the first couple of years and about 10 of us working hard and i eventually got that role while the others did not. So the suffering is not a guarantee you’ll make it either.
Also losing 4 years in my 20s was rough. In my late 20s i got out of that phase and tried to get back into a functional social life, reconnect with friends and acquaintances, get to dating and so on. In that time, it turns out i lost contact with basically every one as people moved, died, or just changed as people.
The initial methods i found success to handle burnout with for coping with the hours were drugs and alcohol under the justification that it made free time relaxing enough to be able to recover. When i didn’t use, i would get back to work feeling like i hadn’t been able to rest and stress was building up and i was approaching burnout.
While I havn’t found therapy to be helpful since, i found to to be really helpful at that time because i had spent years relatively isolated coding all day and i didn’t have the most objective grasp on reality. It was helpful to have a person to talk to who could call me out when my thoughts were getting too ridiculous because i felt I was struggling to identify that at that time.
That sounds horrible and it is not sustainable. To tell you the truth I actually think 40 hours is too much as well, but well the world is what it is.
Have you bothered calculating how long you’ll need to work like this to get it paid off? Having a finish line can really be motivational if an end date or $$ amount is something to look for.
One thing that helps is learning to cook meals cheaply. Paying $10 per meal adds up fast when you can make yourself something for $2-4, less if you get really good at it. Buying potatoes, beans, and rice in bulk is very cheap, for instance. You just have to make something palatable with them yourself. Learning how to add a small amount of chicken and veg to mostly rice and beans, with a small amount of sauce, to make something that tastes good and is nutritious is a valuable life skill, frankly. if you make 2-3 days worth and can store it, it doesn’t really take that much time. That won’t get you out of your situation, but it may help you pay down your debts more quickly.
I work 84 hours a week, but I also get two weeks off as well which definitely helps.
Life has hard seasons. That said, they are seasons, not ways of living your life. You do not “maintain” that schedule, you survive it. Keep pushing through maybe another few weeks to work down some more of that debt, but for your long term benefit, drop one of the jobs and just use money wisely to pay off the debt a little slower. Your current situation should be a short term arrangement.
Nothing you can do but grit your teeth and keep at it, that’s the point anyway. If you can try to grab another hour of sleep though
3yrs into it working 80hrs roughly, I take atleast 1 mini vacation(3-4 days) every 2 months. After that mini vacation I have a bit of a reset. Sometimes I just have 1-2 days of straight up doing nothing instead of a vacation.
All these people telling you to give up on the hard work, refinance your debt, stop slaving for “the man” are exactly the same people that bitch and moan that the American dream is dead and need the taxpayer to pay off their student loans.
You made some bad financial decisions, and now you need to climb out of it. My advice is to pay the minimum payment on all of your debt except the smallest one (ignore interest rates), and then attack the smallest debt like a starving man on a Christmas ham. When that one is paid off, there’s one less minimum payment to make, and you can roll that payment into the next smallest one. Rinse and repeat until your debt is paid.
As far as your mental health, you need to budget your time as much as your money. Set aside just 15 minutes when you wake up to do some quick excersize (push-ups, situps, stretching). Stay well hydrated during the day. Find creative ways to eat as healthy as you can on a budget. Most importantly, find a few hours one day a week that is 100% truly “Me Time”. Turn off the phone, turn off the screens, and get some sunshine. Go for a walk in the park, do some fishing, fly a kite, do something that makes you go outside and get some fresh air. It’s good for you.
Finally, once the debt is paid, remember the lesson that was learned. The debtor is enslaved to the lender. Maybe cut back on the hours, but maintain your frugal lifestyle. Keep pushing to improve yourself, make yourself valuable to employers, and fight for every promotion that’s available. If you do all these things, you’ll be retiring a millionaire at 55.
Consider taking a 6 month break from your second job. People burn out. Working two jobs is tough. Try to get some exercise in the mean time once you’re a little rested. You’re going to need that cardio in the future. My two cents.