Meet Jim Wheeler | Hiker, Photographer, Tech Manager

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jim Wheeler and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jim, do you have a budget?
Making a budget was probably the single best thing I’ve done to improve my finances. I started after I got a good job about ten years ago which paid 50k a year. It was the highest salary I ever earned. After about a year of treating myself to Dunkin every morning and buying lunch, I had the existential thought; if I were to lose this job tomorrow, will I be proud with how I used the opportunity? I made a simple spreadsheet of every pay week, what my starting balance was, what every bill that came out during that period was, and what my ending balance was going to be. I did this for the whole year to see how much I had left over. It turned out I had a lot left over. I realized the only reason I felt like I was living paycheck to paycheck was because anytime I had a lot of money left over, I’d spend it. I gave myself a $50/week allowance to spend on whatever I wanted, and the rest went towards debt. My wife and I were able to pay off about 50k in debt by doing this,

Once we became debt free, we became involved with a charity called Compassion International, which sponsors children (and their families) living in extreme poverty around the world. I remember giving $50 for a birthday and the family wrote us saying they used it to open a grocery store in their village. I think that was a very influential moment that changed how we see spending money. There was another time when someone used our gift to build a house. What we might spend on a family night out getting pizza could make a huge difference in someone else’s life. So we’ve made the decision that before we spend on ourselves, we spend on others first. We still treat ourselves to the occasional creature comforts, but we are much more intentional and less impulsive with our spending now.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I work as an audio visual technology manager at the University of Connecticut, which is where I’ve been for the last ten years. It is the best job I’ve ever had. For a period after college, I was working as a professional musician, playing in bands, musicals, composing, teaching. Even though it wasn’t just one single job, I was very proud to be supporting myself with music. But before the 2008 recession hit, the gigs started drying up. So I got into recording engineering and even started my own recording studio. It was another wonderful time in my life, but the work there started dwindling as well. I made a lateral move into doing live sound. Eventually, I landed a job at Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville at Mohegan Sun as the lead sound engineer. The recession still followed. We went from having bands 5 nights a week to 2 nights a week. Fortunately for me, they had a significant AV system. Even though that was not something I had much training in, my primary job there became supporting all the technology. Also, for better or worse (I say better), they had virtually no budget to regularly service the system, which meant I had to become an AV MacGyver. This experience put me in a great position to be where I am now. I brought the perspective of being a performer, understood the logistics of events, had a deep understanding of the science involved, and the experience designing and servicing the systems. And after the other candidate declined the offer, I was a shoe in! That really happened.

I have had a tremendous amount of support at my job, and I attribute that to my success in the position. When your leaders appreciate you, the moon isn’t too far for how far they’ll go for you. It makes all the difference in the world. I’m thankful for my time as a struggling musician, it’s made me appreciate what I have now, taught me humility, and gave me a work ethic I’m proud of. There’s a West Wing quote that always stuck with me, which I’ll paraphrase as sometimes we luck into opportunities we don’t deserve. The best way to honor those opportunities is to live up to them as if no one was more deserving.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
The running joke is Connecticut’s most attractive feature are the highways linking Boston to New York. So we have to focus on the hidden gems. For such a small state, CT ranks surprisingly high for how much open space we have. I love hiking, so I would take them to the best view in all of Connecticut- a place called Rand’s View off the Appalachian Trail in Salisbury. It’s not something you can drive up to, but it’s not a terribly hard hike either. There’s also tons of great camping in the area, great beer and towns that are quintessential New England. CT is also one of the few states where our high point isn’t our highest summit. Not far from Rand’s View you could also tackle Bear Mountain (CT’s highest “mountain”), Mount Frissell, CT’s highest point, and hike a bit further to get to the CT/MA/NY tri-state marker.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I have the most amazing, supportive wife a man could ask for. She is full of love, she is thoughtful, she is selfless, she is incredibly smart, and other than her questionable taste in husbands, to me she is perfect. The best parts of me are because of her.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-wheeler-a6809b29/

Image Credits
All pictures taken by me