Florida Home Loan Officers Forced to Take on Second Job

Realtor by day, bartender by night.

Susie Labrie used to see herself as a Realtor moonlighting as a bartender, but lately it is hard to say which job is her “real job.” She finds she is working more and making more as a bartender with the Daytona Beach housing market slump. Plus, she gets health insurance in her job at Aku Tiki Traders Restaurant and Lounge in Daytona Beach Shores.

“The real estate market is so bad right now, you have to have another job,” said Labrie, a real estate agent with Dees Realty in Daytona Beach.

Achieving work-life balance is already a juggling act. Throw a second job into the mix, and it can become a lot harder to perform. More than 5 percent of U.S. workers have more than one job, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

For decades, Gus Rodriguez has been part of this group. A Florida home loan officer with AmSouth Bank in Ormond Beach, Rodriguez has moonlighted off and on as a waiter at many area restaurants.

He recently found it was just getting to be too much and quit his job as a waiter. He was working 40 to 50 hours at the bank and then putting in another 20 hours at a very busy restaurant.

He joked that when he was in his 30s, he didn’t mind the fast pace, but now that he’s older, he would rather be home with his family. Rodriguez is the ripe old age of 46 - and he can’t support his family with such slow Florida mortgage loan demand.

He worries about saving money to pay for his 14-year-old daughter’s college and wedding some day. “I’m still looking for extra ways to make money, maybe working on Saturdays or helping out during Bike Week,” he said.

During Bike Week, area businesses rely heavily on workers willing to moonlight temporarily.

The area’s historically low wages have forced many workers to take second jobs just to make ends meet. “It’s the cumulative effect: the price of gas, taxes, insurance,” Rodriguez said. “Things aren’t getting any cheaper.

“In Daytona Beach, having two jobs is the rule rather than the exception,” he said. “Most of the companies here aren’t willing to pay too much. You need two jobs to make one good job.”

Taking a second job primarily to make extra money can be stressful and unproductive, according to Renee Lee Rosenberg, an author and career coach with the Five O’Clock Club in New York. Her clients with second jobs often “get very angry and depressed and start resenting their primary work also,” Rosenberg said. And, sometimes, with better budgeting, a second job isn’t really necessary. She stressed the importance of researching what a job requires before saying yes, so you can know whether “you can function the next day.”

But some second jobs can lead to more enjoyable primary jobs. “It builds an opportunity to build a new network and ultimately it may develop into a new career,” said Kathy Blanton, a career management consultant for Spherion in Nashville, Tenn.

Labrie finds bartending helps her Florida real estate business. “I get to meet people and get leads that way,” she said.