A Black Penny

This post is going to be both short and fairly easy for me to write.

My sister is a badass boss babe – she managed to get a job during a pandemic and also get a 5-figure pay increase while she was at it.

Yeah, I know. Jammy git. I’ll tell you more below.

The job she quit

Just before Covid measures came into play and we all realised how terrible the situation actually was, my sister left her job.
It was her first adult job and…it was wearing on her.

So, with no other job lined up and against almost all advise from our family, she resigned.

Everybody who knew:

I have to claim a little bit of responsibility for this. Dunno if you remember this tweet, but this was just one of several personal finance blog posts I sent her (not including any of mine – hello, semi Anon blogger here!).
If I retweeted you, I sent it to her.
Heck, if I read it, I probably sent it to her. I was on a roll!
A little bit of Luxe here, some BGR there, a little bit of Financial Mechanic there….

She was at a crossroads and I wanted to encourage her that there were other options than staying at a job she abhored for a paycheck.

But even I was surprised when she said she was leaving.

“Where to?”
“Unemployment,” she shrugged, and that was that.

Now, I want to point out some privilege on my sister’s part here. Yes, she is a young black woman. However, she also lives with my parents in Greater London and pays no rent.
She’d managed to save up a bit of money and her bills were coming out of that and she’s fairly frugal and material rich, so didn’t have to buy any new clothes or shoes.

She was, in a word, sorted.

For a bit.

Then Covid hit.

Job searching during Covid-19

Now middle of a pandemic, during the slow slide into a recession, when so many other people now found themselves furloughed, unemployed or no longer working enough hours to make a liveable wage, her chances of finding new employment seemed slim at best.

But she kept applying and asking for feedback and interviewing.
With her laptop, she didn’t even need to worry about travel costs to interviews since they happened virtually.

And then, finally, she got offered a job.

“How much did they offer you again?!”
She repeated the number. I’m not about to share ALL her business here BUT it was an increase from her previous job role by £15,000.

Fifteen. Thousand. Pounds. More. Whoa.

She is easily now outearning everyone in her immediate, biological family. Yes, even me, personal finance blogger extraordinaire, even if I was currently full-time.

There was surprise and shock, “Did they really mean to offer you that much? Are you sure you’re qualified to take that job? Have they sent you a contract so you know it’s real and not a hoax? That’s two pay grades in one jump…There’s not going to be a downside to this, is there? What are they expecting from you now? How did you do it?”

She shrugs again. “I negotiated my salary. Like you told me to.”

Whoa, where are all those onion chopping ninjas hiding? Making my darn eyes leak.

She’s not aggressive, my sister. Or bold. Or outspoken. Or direct in any way shape or form. But she’d had it hammered into her head so often by me last year, using the lived examples of other (young) women as proof that yes, she could do it, that she’s worth it, that it was worth a punt at least…that she decided to have a try.

And it worked.

I’m so proud of her, I could burst.

This is a big thank you, to all of you whose articles seemed so radical and fresh and exciting to me at the time – because if not for what you’d all written, my encouragement would have been limp.

Anyway, I’ll stop gushing about my amazing sister and send her some posts on investing now instead…

Have you or someone you know had a money win of some kind during Corona?
Has anyone ever taken your money advice ever?

Image Credit: Pixabay from Pexels.com