An end and a beginning

So I have my answer. Friday afternoon I accepted a chance to become a financial advisor with Edward Jones. I dropped out of the hiring pipeline of Merrill Lynch even though I would have learned from someone who I've respected for 20 years.

In that case, much of it was timing. I would have had to wait another three to four weeks before they made a decision and nothing was guaranteed. It was a situation of a bird in hand ...

The last thing to wait on was Monday. I had had two excellent conversations with Northwest Bank and they finally called on Monday because I let them know I had a deadline with Edward Jones. Back at my first meeting in late August I had given them a salary figure I was shooting for. I won't say what it was but my calculation was easy. I wanted what I had been making at the Register Star plus what I paid annually in child support.

In the end, that priced me out of the market for Northwest. They would have had to create a position for me and they were uncomfortable doing that at what I had asked.

I told them I understood. My reasoning was simple. I didn't want to get myself into another position where I had to work five or six part time jobs to afford what I want to make for myself and my daughters.

Of course, the salary at Edward Jones is well below that, but now I'll have incentive to do more. The more clients I find and the better I do for them the better I do for myself. I'm only capped now by how hard I want to work.

There are lots of other advantages to this opportunity. If I do well I will have my own office in a year and can set up my day to my advantage. Edward Jones goes after all kinds of clients, not just ones of a certain wealth. That turned out to be important to me. I talked to lots of people in the past few years who could use some solid advice, but most of them aren't at the financial level many financial firms look for. I didn't want to go somewhere where I couldn't help them.

It's a solid chance for me to recreate myself and it's scary. I don't think I would have taken this chance before 2009. I liked a set paycheck. I liked to be able to budget to a penny. Then I went through a divorce and my financial life became very complicated. All of a sudden every minute of my day was for sale. Umpiring, scorekeeping, lifting gates, donating plasma, stacking packages, bookkeeping. It was never boring, always tiring and it expanded my horizons. There had to be something better.

Now, I have a lot to do to get where I need to go. I have to pass a six hour test called the Series 7 and then a shorter but still important test called the Series 66. Officially, I start studying Nov. 17. Really, I'll start studying now. Edward Jones gives you one shot at it. Fail and you're out. So I have to clear the decks so that I have as few distractions as possible.

Some of that I'll be able to do. I plan to wrap up this version of Sunil's book by the 17th. He has talked about adding to it in the future. That future will have to at least be summer. My second round at UPS ended after three weeks. I quit this week. I'll be taking the tests in late December. I can't be staying up until 3 a.m. for $8.50 an hour. I felt bad getting out, but it was barely worth it. When I hear politicians say it isn't necessary to raise the minimum wage I think of the hard working people at UPS. The deserve a raise. I'd like to see Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker work a week on Green Runout.

I will continue the basketball scorekeeping. The Jefferson games start in December. I'm also coordinating doing the statistics now for Rock Valley College. That starts Friday and right now it's a bit of a chore. They have a very sophisticated program they use, but I was just able to start practicing it tonight and it's going to take a lot of repitition to get it right. We'll need to use spotters for the first several or else we're going to miss things and the men's coach put us on notice. If we aren't accurate after the first few games he'll look for someone else.

I think we'll get it, but it's nerve wracking going into games Friday and Saturday with so little practice.

The other distraction is that if I pass the Series 7 and Series 66 I'm going to have some training out of town in January and then lots of door to door work in January and February. I'll have to give up several games for Jefferson and RVC because it's more important to get this next career launched.

It will be a different mind set as well. I had lunch with my old Register Star coworkers Tuesday to let them know my final decision. I've talked finances with two and then found out a third needs to make some decisions with their old 401(k). Hey, I could be that guy if I do well. On the way out I said hi to several others. I need referrals now. I need people to help. A couple people asked me why financial advisor. It actually has been years in the making. A book I read coming out of college was called "The Wealthy Barber."

It is an excellent book that all should read and it started me down the path of studying personal finance. People who know me I'll talk tips of how to save more and spend less all day. So perhaps I'm not straying from my true calling and instead finally finding it.

One other thing I plan to continue is staying involved in the business community in some way. For the next several months I'll be writing the Transform Rockford stories in the Voice. Hopefully, I'll be able to do the work without hurting my other efforts. Two stories a month shouldn't cost me too much time. I already have some ideas of what to write about.

My schedule with the girls will be in flux after January. I won't be able to pick them up after school every day. That'll be impossible. I'll still try to do it as much as I can. Emma is almost 16 so pretty soon she'll be driving herself. Hannah still hates to ride the bus so I have more years of enjoying that time with her.

I had lunch with George Hofstetter of Rockford Reachout Jail Ministry today. He is one of several I met with over these two months who gave me confidence. As we were leaving he told me to count my blessings. Many people lose their jobs and wait 12 months or more to even get a nibble. For me it was a day less than two months.

I have lots and lots of people to thank just for sitting down and giving me advice or confidence. I know I'll miss someone, but I'll toss out some thank yous to John Lewis, Denny Roop, Bill Roop, Ed Muguia, LoRayne Logan, Tom Walsh, Charles Kluzak, Linda Heckert, Stacy Brady, Scott Jeffrey, David Casalena, Dan Reece, Rick Bastian, Brian Leaf, Sunil Puri and Bharat Puri. Again, there are more, but it's late and my brain is shutting down.

Down the stretch

This drama should be ending soon.

I stopped blogging because as things progressed I thought it best to keep the developments to myself because I am friends with people involved in the progress and I realized I'm going to have to pick one opportunity over another.

I have a job offer and I have until Monday to accept. I really have/had three solid opportunities. I had a solid knowledge of the starting salary of one and an idea of another and no real idea of the third.

Each of the three had different lengths to the training program. One was for 30 months, the other for 24 and the third I was told "we'll know in six months to a year if it's working out."

All three really are sales, either selling myself to a person or my organization to a business. All three will be a marked difference to what I was doing.

The one where I had an idea of what the initial might be was the first to come in with an offer -- and it was significantly better than I expected.

I wasn't sure what to do with the other two if I accept the offer. I messaged a friend who owns a staffing firm and was advised to drop out of the hiring process of one -- which was going to take another five weeks and I wasn't 100 percent sure I was going to be accepted -- and to message the other saying I have an offer and was wondering if they could speed up their decision making process.

So I've done both. I've heard back from the one I'm still hoping to get a competing offer saying they'll call me today or Monday to discuss what they were thinking.

I don't want to say either way today what I'll be doing, but I'm confident that by Tuesday I'll be meeting my old coworkers at the District for Taco Tuesday to celebrate this new direction.

In any case, it'll be nice to be back to one job again -- or one real job, I plan on working some of the side stuff in.

Three weeks ago, I still wasn't sure when this all would end so I re-upped for the UPS graveyard shift. I've found even if I can sleep in the morning after working so late at night just messes up your body clock. I'm exhausted all the time. That ends Dec. 23 and I may ride it out until the end, depending on what the new employer says will be my start date.

We're inching closer to basketball season and that means 30 or so days/nights at Jefferson High School in December, January and February. I'm expanding that business though. Charles Kluzak, who does the announcing at Jefferson, found out they need someone to supervise keeping statistics during Rock Valley College games. Charles suggested me. I exchanged a few emails with the RVC athletic department and boom, I'm scheduling myself and two friends to do those games. Those start next week.

I also have to wrap up a book I'm doing for a friend. I'll need this one off my plate by the time the new job starts. I just won't have enough time for the first year to do both. That's going to be my focus next week.

I've now been gone from the Register Star for two months and two days and I still haven't missed it. I found a platform to continue to do statistical research and write through Transform Rockford as a volunteer. I'll get to look into how the Rockford area got this way and be part of the team researching how to get out of it.

My old Register Star friends laugh at this because I've been skeptical so far of Transform Rockford. At first it felt like group therapy, which in itself is helpful. But there have been so many different efforts to fix things over the years and few have made a difference so I've become jaded. But now instead of sniping from the outside, I get to be in the process at least a little bit. I'm not exactly Theodore Roosevelt's man in the arena, but at least I'm closer to the arena and out of the safety of  the press box.

Look, I love to write and I love to do research, but with the way the newspaper industry was going it just wasn't going to be a career that paid well enough to put two girls through college. I'd win awards or launch new products, whatever, and made the same regardless. There's nothing more meaningless in life than doing your annual self evaluation knowing that it was pointless. Your pay was going to be the same. Your benefits were going to be the same. To me it was like the band of the Titanic that continued to play as the ship sank. Heroic? Yes. But really they should have run for the lifeboats.

The incentive was no longer there. Now, the better I do for the organization I pick the better my family does in what we make.

Where does the time go?

Have you ever been busy while not being busy?

That's how this seems. I have a list of things to do every day and lots of time to do them and then I look at the clock and it's time to pick the girls up from school.

I am still pursuing two similar but starkly different work paths. One is taking up a lot of my time with various hoops to jump through before a job offer. The other is moving along about as fast as I push it.

Each day I wake up thinking, "man, it would be cool to do .... for a living."

Then the next day I think the exact opposite.

Of course, I still don't have official offers from either and until I do it's really a waste of brain power.

I have put everything else on hold while these play out and I'm not sure that's a good idea. I also don't want to waste anyone's time setting up meetings that I may not need. Perhaps that's being too polite. I don't know the best policy here. In my head, I'm thinking if one of the two falls through then I need to start pushing again. There are a couple of "people of influence" I haven't seen yet and I don't feel like I'm to the point of just sending resumes out.

Unemployment came through so I should be good financially through the end of October. If this extends far into November I'll A) start to get really nervous and B) have to dip into some savings again.

I'll admit also I'm thinking a little about my dad. He's gone now so I can't ask him how he handled these situations. He got his degree from Rockford College when I was around 5 and went up and up and up in his career.

Then my parents got divorced.

He did OK here in Illinois for a few years and then kind of went south. He went from being the general manager of large manufacturing operations to selling insurance, along the way burning through a bunch of cash on a couple of restaurants. He made a lot of money in his life and ended up with nothing other than Social Security.

This past weekend I had the girls and at the store I was looking for some medication for acne. It sucks being 45 and having to deal with that. I've learned over the years it's the surest sign of stress. And I admitted to my oldest daughter that I'm stressed. She said I don't seem stressed. And I told her the goal is not to appear to be stressed -- but sometimes your body gives it away.