{"id":49002,"date":"2026-04-12T16:21:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T16:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-spent-decades-in-a-stressful-job-that-paid-30000-at-53-i-left-to-become-a-mailman-and-nearly-tripled-my-salary\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T16:21:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T16:21:19","slug":"i-spent-decades-in-a-stressful-job-that-paid-30000-at-53-i-left-to-become-a-mailman-and-nearly-tripled-my-salary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-spent-decades-in-a-stressful-job-that-paid-30000-at-53-i-left-to-become-a-mailman-and-nearly-tripled-my-salary\/","title":{"rendered":"I spent decades in a stressful job that paid $30,000. At 53, I left to become a mailman and nearly tripled my salary."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69d92df396ef6a4c9d121b17?format=jpeg\" alt=\"A man wearing glasses against a background of photos on the wall.\"\/><figcaption>Jim Lexa quit journalism after 30 years and now works as a mailman, earning over twice his previous salary.<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of Jim Lexa<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Jim Lexa worked as a journalist for 30 years and saw his salary plummet as print journalism faded.<\/li>\n<li>He quit without another job at 53, worked as a handyman, then got a job with the Postal Service.<\/li>\n<li>He now earns up to $85K a year \u2014 nearly three times his old salary \u2014 and can walk 40K steps a day.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>This interview is based on a conversation with Jim Lexa, 63, a letter carrier from West Seneca, New York. It has been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I never started out in journalism because of the money. I could have earned higher wages by staying in my job straight out of college, working in the kitchen of a diner chain.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, I was bitten by the writing bug as a high schooler, when I was hired by a local town newspaper in Lily Lake, Illinois, to cover all high school sports, particularly football.<\/p>\n<p>Those were the years I learned basic journalism rules, such as spelling people&#039;s names correctly and getting the scores right.<\/p>\n<p>I got my journalism degree and, after a brief stint working at the diner, landed a sports reporter job at a regional newspaper group in Amarillo, Texas. My salary in 1984 was $230 a week.<\/p>\n<h2>The popularity of newspapers dropped<\/h2>\n<p>It was exciting to write about teams like the Dallas Cowboys, and there was a lot more to it than game coverage. I enjoyed meeting people and telling their stories.<\/p>\n<p>In 1998, I moved to the copy desk, where my responsibilities included clearing the front page and assigning tasks.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Did you make a career change in midlife? Please contact Jane Ridley at jridley@insider.com<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Then the popularity of newspapers began to dwindle. Circulation dropped. The publishers stopped hiring people, and you&#039;d see offices being closed off. Then came the pay cuts.<\/p>\n<p>Management always said they were for the good of the company. Still, when my $37,500 annual base salary was reduced to $30,000, I started to seriously worry.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69d95a12f976785dcb1905ec?format=jpeg\" alt=\"A man holding a cat\"\/><figcaption>Lexa with one of his pets.<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of Jim Lexa<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I&#039;d go to the grocery store with a calculator to figure out what kind of food I could afford. If one of my pets got sick, I&#039;d be concerned about paying the vet bills.<\/p>\n<p>By early 2015, I was feeling burned out. Constantly meeting deadlines and filling the pages was getting to me. The stress wasn&#039;t worth the amount I was paid.<\/p>\n<p>I took a deep breath and quit, moving to DeKalb, Illinois, where I did handyman, painting, and cleaning work.<\/p>\n<h2>I was promoted within 2 years<\/h2>\n<p>Still, I felt like I needed a proper, new direction. It felt late in the game to make a career change at 53, but I heard they were hiring at the post office and was hired in November 2015.<\/p>\n<p>My entry-level job as a clerk was the brief stepping stone to becoming a city carrier assistant in January 2016. About two years later, I was promoted to letter carrier after I moved to Buffalo, New York.<\/p>\n<p>You have a few days&#039; training, and then you&#039;re out on your own, which was scary. At first, I&#039;d spend ages poring over maps, but as time passed, I got to know my routes well.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69d959c505c9b303c4e771cd?format=jpeg\" alt=\"A man and woman on vacation standing in front of the ocean.\"\/><figcaption>Lexa enjoys eating out with his wife, Charlotte, now his salary is higher.<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of Jim Lexa<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In my current position, I earn $34.26 per hour, with overtime at time-and-a-half after eight hours and double time after 10 hours. During COVID, I was putting in 60 hours a week.<\/p>\n<p>This past year, I topped $85,000 \u2014 nearly three times as much as my base salary in newspapers. My wife and I don&#039;t have to worry about dining out, and we enjoy nice vacations together.<\/p>\n<h2>I&#039;m much less stressed<\/h2>\n<p>One of the best things to come out of all this is feeling the fittest I&#039;ve ever been. I use a postal vehicle, but I walk 12 to 18 miles a day. If it&#039;s just my route, it&#039;s probably around 30,000 steps daily.<\/p>\n<p>During the winter, when it&#039;s really snowy, and I get a lot of overtime, I can get in as many as 40,000 steps. I&#039;m 5&#039;8&quot; tall and weigh 160 pounds.<\/p>\n<p>I&#039;m so glad that I made the switch. I&#039;ve got a decent salary with less stress, good benefits, a friendly relationship with my regular customers, and a spring in my step at 63.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jim Lexa quit journalism after 30 years and now works as a mailman, earning over twice his previous salary. Courtesy of Jim Lexa Jim Lexa worked as a journalist for 30 years and saw his salary plummet as print journalism faded. He quit without another job at 53, worked as a handyman, then got a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-49002","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}