To Work or Not To Work

My husband calls me a "workaholic." He says that my job is more important than my family, and that hurts. My family is the most important thing to me, but I am the sole income earner because my husband is incapacitated, so if I don't work, we can't pay our bills.

Life has been getting a little bit difficult lately. I work as a CNA for a staffing agency. On one hand, my job is great because I get paid well. On an hourly basis, I make 1.5 times what most facilities pay their core staff aides. I get to set my own hours and get to choose when and where to work, but so does everyone else who works for my company -- whoever requests a shift first gets it. So with the fact that I'm a mom and I have an incapacitated husband, I often miss out on shift because someone else will pick them up while I'm trying to figure out who will watch my son so I can go to work.

As we come up on the holidays, I'm faced with a major question.. to work, or not to work?

Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Day all pay time-and-a-half. New Years Day is not a major family day, but Thanksgiving and Christmas definitely are.

My husband and I got into a major argument, because I wanted to work the overnight shift on Thanksgiving. The shift was 11pm-7am. This would have been well after we were done with cooking and dinner and all the family stuff we were planning to do.. Our son would even be asleep if we were lucky, and I really didn't feel like I was missing out on anything or leaving the family to go to work.

I felt that staying up all night, after spending the day with my family, was worth the $27/hr they wanted to pay me. My husband, however, had a different opinion. He won the argument, although I feel like everyone lost because I missed out on making over $200 for one overnight shift. This also means I will not be getting a paycheck on Friday since I wasn't able to find anyone to watch my son for any other available shift that week but my mom was totally willing to watch him for me to work that overnight shift.

We are struggling pretty hard right now since I'm the only one bringing in an income. Bills are behind, payments have not been made, the bank account is overdrafted, and there isn't a paycheck coming on Friday.

Was it worth it not to work? I personally don't think so. I could have made a ton of money working a double that day, but I didn't. I wanted to spend as much time with my family as possible, but still take advantage of the holiday pay, but my husband and I did not agree on the matter.

There are a few factors to look at when trying to decide if the extra pay from working on a holiday is worth it.

First, are you missing out on anything by working? Many people do not have families to think about when thinking about working on a holiday, and some people would prefer to be working because they don't have anyone to spend the holiday with. Other people do have families and holiday plans that they may have to cancel if they want or have to work on a holiday.

The next thing to consider is the money. Depending on what company you work for, you should be getting paid 1.5 - 2 times your regular hourly wage. What does your current financial situation look like? Can you afford to take the day off or do you really need to make that extra money?

For me personally, I feel that holiday pay is definitely worth my time as long as I am not missing out on time with my family. I will not work Christmas day, but I might work Christmas night if there are shifts available near my mom and my son can stay with her. I am hoping to work as much as possible on New Years Day, since the family part of that holiday happens the day before.