Money Money MONEY

Money Money MONEY

So down to what matters for many people, and often what your parents will ask you first:

"So how much money will you be making?"

This is supposedly one of the big reasons why people try to work on cruise ships, and that is to save money over a short period of time. When I first applied I scoured the internet to try and figure this out. I found Nothing.

I read so many different blogs about the experience looking for how much they got paid and no one would say it outright except that "it was very low" or "not very much, depending on your position". 

Now "not very much" to me would've been minimum wage (about $10-11/hour American), or at worst minimum wage at my last serving gig at a restaurant ($7.25 an hour without tips). 

Now have a look at what the Youth Activities Counselor salary is online at Glassdoor.com:

Job Salary- Disney Youth Activities Counselor

According to this, it's on average just about $1635 a month.

I will tell you that this is surprisingly very accurate, even though I think I got a little bit less than that when I first started (I don't know if this factors in the income tax) !

Using that number when you break it down, each biweekly paycheck will be $817.

Which means that every week on the job will earn you about $408.

When I look at it that way, it seems very good compared to my previous jobs where I'd be making about $300 on a good week with tips! But then when I really broke it down based on how many hours I would be working... it didn't seem so great.

At my serving job I'd be getting about 22- 30 hours a week, with 40 being the maximum.

As a Youth Activities counselor I was getting about 65-70 hours every single week. There's no way of not being sure either, because we actually have to sign off on our hours worked on a sheet that clearly outlines how much we worked each pay period and all of our work hours are tracked on an electronic punch-clock that we use.

So when you do the math...

You will be making about $5.80 - $6.20/ hour.

Not the most thrilling thing, but when I compare it to my friends working at Starbucks right now I make more than they do on average each week. Except that they also get days off and work about 1/3 less than I do on a regular basis.

Also keep in mind however, that even if the salary seems low, you aren't paying for your meals on board or your rooms (neither of which are altogether glamorous, but I'll get to that on a later post). So if you decide not to spend any money - all of that goes right into your pocket (depending on your country, this might also be taxed)!

....Except it's very unlikely you won't be spending a DIME while you're living here for 4-5 months. So up next I'll talk about how much things generally cost on board and what you can expect to spend on for living expenses!

NEXT: How Much Will it Cost Ya?