<prompt> Human: I work as a phone rep for a major brokerage firm making 40kyear placing trades for people and servicing accounts. Theres nearly always overtime available recently and damn its enticing.How do you guys balance things out? Ive been working all the overtime possible because it feels like lost money if I dont work it. Working 15-20 OT hrsweek has bumped my last two paychecks from 1050 to 18001900. This next paycheck after working two 85 hour weeks will be somewhere near 3k.How many of you work a good deal of OT and do you do anything special to keep yourself sane? Back to back 7am-11pm shifts are rough, but damn that money is nice.side note: money is going towards paying down school loans, hitting roth ira contribution limit, paying down my car, ect. I just started living in a new apt so I may buy some furniture. Assistant: Youre currently making around 19.50ish an hour. Instead of making more 19.50ish hours, is there something you could be doing to boost the base rate? Get a another degree? Certification like the CFA or something? You wanna get into some position that has upward growth as soon as possible. If you need cash to make that happen, log the OT. But if you can do something outside the OT to make the 40 hours a week your work the rest of your life pay what an 80 hour week does know, youre much better off. If you already know this and are making it happen, disregardHuman: Thanks for the advice. I think Ill lower my OT a little bit maybe 10-15 hours per week and focus on quality of work more so than quantity. I could certainly speak with my boss and see about getting my CFP books and see which CFP test date theyd pay for. Getting that nailed down would definitely help accelerate my movement in the company.Ultimately, I plan on working here 3-5 years moving as much as possible to max my pay while taking advantage of the 7 401k match with 10 profit sharing.  <response>: This. I would focus on getting the CFP or whatever certifications would raise your hourly rate rather than working crazy hours at the same rate. This is how you will progress in your career.Also, your biggest raises will come from switching jobs. I have 3 respectable IT certifications. I switched jobs shortly after earning each of them, and all 3 came with raises ranging from 10-25k and in more niche areas.Going from my first job out of college to second job was a 14k raise, after 2 years and earning the MCSE. I was on salary at 40k, spending lots of time after hours, etc all for a measly 3 raise even though I scored 103100 on my annual review. My much deserved raise instead came when I left. 