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Today's question comes from Alexa in Iowa. My husband and I are on Baby Step 2 and bring home around $120,000 a year.

We have $230,000 in consumer student loan and solar panel debt. Yes, a whole lot of stupid. My husband is a mechanic

and has taken on side jobs in his home shop, which provides extra income. I am a CPA and would

love to take on side bookkeeping and payroll work. However, my office has the policy that we can't do

that kind of work outside the office for ourselves because they

say that would take away from the other employees. I'm struggling to find something that I can do

remotely in the financial space that wouldn't conflict with my office policy. Should I talk to my

boss or HR department to see what options are available or, this is the magic question,

is it none of their business what I do outside of my business hours?

Okay. I would talk to the boss or HR department to ask for more clarity on said policy

and gently and respectfully keep asking questions as to why we have the

policy and how the policy affects her situation and the reality of that because policies to me

should always be guidelines and allow the leader flexibility or else we get stupid crazy

ideas like you have to wear your mask until you sit at the table. And so my point is like,

meaning, meaning that no matter where you fall on that way, you kind of have to go,

that doesn't make sense. And I'm not taking a position on that. I know exactly. But it's like, what? So I, that irritates me. And I, I don't know what you think about this,

what I'm going to say, maybe you're surprised with this. But I would say it is a case by case basis.

Okay.

On what a business can dictate to me outside of this place.

I'm going to say case by case. That's probably fair.

Because my knee-jerk reaction is, you hired me to do a job. I agreed to do that job. When I go home, that's my home.

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