By Jennifer Shaw, Austin Massage Therapist and Guest Blogger
The American Massage Therapy Association says 83 percent of massage therapists’ careers started as a second job – a means to supplement the income of a job they already had.
Not for me. I wore rose-colored glasses.
When I decided to go to massage school, massage was going to be my job. I would be home with my babies, work when I needed to and make just as much money as I would with a full-time desk job. I never thought I’d be living at my 9 to 5 and using massage to pad my income around Christmas time or pay for family trips when we otherwise couldn’t afford to go.
In other words, life happened, and I ended up being just like that 83 percent anyway. But man, a career in massage therapy really works that way.
Three Good Ways to Use Supplementary Income
1. Save! As a young, single mom of two, I never seem to have enough left over from my day job to save anything. (There’s that good old life happening again.) But doing even just one massage per week I have something to stick in my dusty Roth IRA.
Think about it, for one $70 massage per week for 52 weeks minus some taxes, supplies and professional fees, you could have more than $3,000 to stash away.
2. Think in Massages. After having been doing massage for almost five years, I think in massages now. For example, if I want to take a trip to Denver with my family, and it will cost roughly $800 for round trip airfare for four, I know I need to do 11 massages to buy the tickets. Car payments are the same way. My car is dead. It is a 2001 Toyota Sienna with 160,000 miles on it. It’s paid for and well-loved even now, but we are tired of fixing it. For four or five massages per month, I could buy a new car. Is four massages worth having a car that works? Yes!
3. And the Painful “In Between Times” And when life happens, yes. I use massage to cover my assets. Occasionally, I’ll have a lapse in consulting work, an extra dental bill will come up or my kid will go through a period of really loving ballet class, and because I have a way to make life work when I really need it to, I don’t have to say no to ballet. Thank God for that!
Whether you started out thinking you were going to be a massage therapy rock star or just needing a little extra dough on this side, it’s hard to deny how easy it is to use massage therapy to supplement your income.
How do you use massage to supplement your income?