Will you be giving yourself a raise this month?

Three long years of working at a residential facility with behavioral adolescent boys and they still have not considered giving me a raise. I have come to the conclusion that I may never get one either. The excuse will always be the same-the economy is bad. I have heard the same excuse for years now from other employers as well. Normally I would have packed my things and left this company a long time ago. However a few things are more important than getting that annual raise each year.

·         5% match on my 401k distributions

·         80 hours of vacation time every year

·         40 hours of sick time every year

·         90% paid health care and free dental

·         Flexible Spending Account

These are a few of the things that you want to look for when you find a new job. It’s not all about making $20/hour. When looking for a new career I want to know that I am going to be working somewhere that offers close to the same benefits that I am currently getting. If that $20/hour job only comes with two vacation days per year, 80% paid health match, and no 401k plan, then I would much rather be making $15/hour. Some people may disagree with my logic here, however I don’t care if my employer gives me a raise. I’ll just give myself a raise instead and there are many ways I can do this.

This week I will be receiving the following net income:

Residential Counselor job-$712 (40 hours full time) 

IT administrator job-$156 (10 hours part time)

Ebay Income-$126

Grand Total-$994

I will be receiving approximately $994 this week and I plan on using most of it to give myself a raise. Since all of my bills are paid for the month I can use all of this money at this time. In order to make the equation a little easier for everyone, I am going to use an extra few bucks in my checking account to make it an even $1000 to invest with. What are my options and what is the best option in order to get the biggest raise possible? I could put the money into my savings account, stock market, or certificate of deposit. In this example I will be investing in ATT (T). 

Option	APY/Dividend	Annual Income
Savings	.90%	$10.80
CD (5 Year)	2.25%	$27.00
ATT	5.25%	$52.53

If I put the $1000 into my savings account I will only be making $10.80 of interest for the year. This doesn’t seem like much of a raise however this is the safest option. If I put my money into a 5 year CD, I will be getting $27 of interest for the year, but I won’t be able to touch that money for 5 long years.  The third option was to invest into ATT which currently has a dividend yield of 5.25%. This would amount to $52.53 of dividends for the year which makes it the highest raise option for the year. I could have picked a number of other stocks in this example; however I have had ATT (T) on my watch list radar lately. Each on e of these options are fine by me and I would encourage everyone to invest in all three but I would much rather give myself a juicer raise this month.

As of right now I am hoping to add a position with ATT (T), but I have also looked into Kellogg’s (K), and Wal-Mart (WMT) which also seems to be a good buy at the moment.  Does anyone have any other thoughts? Can you give yourself a bigger raise with $1000?