The Cost of Professional Development

How much are you willing to pay before you start thinking “okay, maybe I can’t afford this even if it will help my career?”

Photo credit: Karl Ericson, CC BY 2.0.

At the beginning of 2016, I opened up a zero-interest-for-12-months Discover card because it seemed like the smart thing to do.

Just, you know, have one around, in case you need credit and don’t want to put it on an interest-bearing credit card.

That card’s balance is currently $3,502.24.

Here’s how it got there:

1. As you might remember if you’ve been following my monthly “checking in with my sub-savings accounts” posts, I’ve been earning a lot of money this year but I haven’t gotten all of the payments yet. In January I received $4,884.30 in freelance payments, in February I got $3,330.38, and it took until March to get $6,307.33, which is much closer to what I’ve actually been earning.
2. While all of this has been going on, I’ve been signing up for various professional development opportunities—Mini-Con and Artist Camp in Juneau later this month, the Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference in Seattle in July (where I’ll get the chance to pitch The Biographies of Ordinary People directly to agents and editors), and so on.
3. I’m not going to say no to opportunities like these just because I’m holding on a few payments, so I’ve been putting them on credit.
4. There’s also the JoCo Cruise, which is always a huge professional development thing for me, and which recently invited cruisers to take 10 percent off their 2017 stateroom booking if they paid in full (instead of paying in installments). A lot of us did the math and bet that we could pay off that stateroom charge before the time limit on our zero-interest credit cards ran out.

So that’s how I ended up with more debt than I care to have, on this zero-interest credit card that I was only going to use “just in case.”

To my credit (pun reluctantly intended) I have also been paying off these expenses. I just put $372 towards the Discover card, and I’m planning to pay off the $425 PNWA conference ticket the day I get my next big check. (The PNWA conference is on a different credit card because they didn’t take Discover, which is also why it’s the first item to pay off—and I’m going to pay it out of my checking account, not my debt sub-savings account.)

These expenses are also a little bit front-loaded, in that I’m paying now for events that will take place throughout the year—and that by booking myself for events now, I’m also putting myself in the position to be able to say no to other opportunities (and workshops and so on) because I’m already doing enough.

But it’s shocking to see how quickly all of this money can pile up, even if it’s for professional development activities that I know I should be doing at this point in my career. Even if I tell myself that this should be everything I end up paying to do for the rest of the year (which may turn out to be an incorrect assumption; there’s a lot of year left). Even if I tell myself that it’s a tax deduction, and that I’ll pay it off before December 31, 2016.

How do you deal with paying for professional development? I know that freelancers are nearly always responsible for all of the costs, and employees sometimes get employer help but often pay for part of the costs themselves. How much are you willing to pay before you start thinking “okay, maybe I can’t afford this even if it will help my career?”