(MONEY Magazine) – Among the perks of his job as general manager of the Los Olivos Grand Hotel, a stylish $160- to $325-a-night country inn in California's central coast wine region, an occasional night of stargazing is what John Sprague, 36, enjoys most. Like the evening last October when Elizabeth Taylor and her suddenly famous beau, construction worker Larry Fortensky, threw a wedding party in the dining room. Or the times actors like James Garner, Andy Griffith and John Malkovich have visited. In sober fact, though, stargazing is one of John's few perks. After holding 11 jobs in 10 cities during 14 years in an industry notorious for high turnover and low fringe benefits, John lacks many of the basic protections common to steadier lines of work. He does have family health insurance, for which $1,975 a year is deducted from his $60,000 salary. But he has no company retirement plan, no disability coverage and just $10,000 in employer-sponsored life insurance -- hardly enough to provide for his homemaker wife Beth, 37, and their three children, Tyler, 8, Cody, 5, and year-old Savannah. Is John worried? Not especially. A pleasant, accommodating man who has spent his life floating from opportunity to opportunity, John is not one to agonize over the future. ''I enjoy hotel work, and we all like traveling,'' he says. ''Besides, I'm young enough that I can earn a bigger income later, although Beth and I have started to wonder how we'll afford to retire.'' Should John be worried? You bet -- he and the nearly 15 million other Americans in high-turnover professions like advertising, computers, engineering, fashion, publishing and sales, not to mention those in the many industries hit by downsizing and layoffs. ''People in most walks of life are changing jobs more often these days,'' says David Lord, managing editor of Executive Recruiter News. ''As a result, more of them are having to provide their own pensions and other benefits.'' Indeed, the proportion of American workers who are not covered by retirement plans at work rose from 50% of all full-time private-sector employees in 1979 to 54%, or 38.6 million people, by 1988. Experts say it is probably higher today. In John's case, his peripatetic habits have saddled him with an extra burden: two loans totaling $83,500 on houses the family bought during their travels but then had trouble selling. Nevertheless, after only two years at the Los Olivos Grand, 35 miles northwest of Santa Barbara, John is already negotiating to purchase the trim, sunny three-bedroom ranch house the family rents for $1,300 a month in nearby Solvang. Price: $262,000. Like many who lack a corporate safety net, the Spragues have tried to weave their own. Since only two of his many employers offered pensions, and John never stayed long enough to become vested anyway, he has built an Individual Retirement Account held mainly in Fidelity's Magellan stock fund that now totals $18,020. He has also purchased his own life insurance -- a $150,000 universal life contract that costs $788 a year and includes riders covering Beth for $10,000 and each of the kids for $5,000. But for disability insurance, he looks solely to Social Security; it would provide benefits of about $14,000 a year after a five-month waiting period (the state of California adds another $336 a week, but only during the first 52 weeks). And as for the children's education, John and Beth can only hope their parents will continue to help. ''We have no formal agreement,'' admits John, ''but the zero-coupon and savings bonds that they've given the kids at Christmas and birthdays already total $9,600.'' The Spragues' parents have been generous. Four years ago, for example, John's stepfather, who heads the Arkansas-based research foundation Winrock International Institute for Agricultural Development, lent him $35,000 to pay off the mortgage on one of their former homes. ''We're part of the generation that is less well-off than our folks,'' John concedes with a shrug. But parental largesse does not pay the day-to-day bills, leaving the Spragues chronically short of cash. ''Even the few hundred dollars that Beth puts into a bank Christmas-club savings account goes in December for gifts,'' says John. In the past, they coped by pulling out credit cards. But they broke that habit last year when their total charges hit $10,500 at a towering 18% (monthly interest payment: nearly $160). Since then, they have whittled the balance to $5,600 by scrupulously paying $500 a month, even though they had to shell out $2,000 in uncovered medical costs for Savannah's birth last year. ''We usually manage to pay our bills,'' says Beth, ''but it's often a stretch.'' John's habit of frequent moves may have its roots in his childhood, when his dad took the family from John's birthplace of Ithaca, N.Y. to India, Thailand and Mexico while working as a plant pathologist funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. His parents were divorced in 1974 and both have since remarried new spouses. Though John majored in psychology at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., he enjoyed his summer jobs as a hotel clerk in Fort Myers, Fla. so much that, upon graduating in 1977, he moved to Miami to study hotel administration at Florida International University. He was making a mere $4 an hour as a Holiday Inn night clerk when he received his master's in 1979 but a year later found a $16,000-a-year job directing renovations at Miami Beach's Fontainebleau Hilton. In 1981, he took another step up, joining a New York City hotel consulting and brokerage firm at $35,000 a year. The year after that, he headed off to manage a New Hampshire ski-country resort hotel that was among the firm's holdings. While there, he met and married Beth Fanjul, a desk clerk from New Jersey, where her Cuban-born father had supported his wife and six daughters by running a blood bank. Unluckily for the newlyweds, the hotel was converted into a time-share within months of their July '83 nuptials. That launched what Beth calls ''our seven-year journey,'' as John bounced from job to job, chasing better pay or being pushed along when hotels were sold or changed managements. First he ran a hotel in Brian Head, Utah for 15 months, then spent two years at another in Columbus, Ohio. After that came the year in Savannah, where he operated two separate motels before heading back to ski country to manage resorts in Jackson, N.H. and Montpelier, Vt. before moving in February 1990 to the Los Olivos Grand. Along the way, the Spragues acquired a two-bedroom condo in Cedar City, Utah for $37,900 in 1984. But it fetched only $31,000 when they sold it in 1988, and $29,900 of that came from a 20-year loan that the Spragues extended to the buyer at 10%. The $285-a-month payments they receive nearly cover the $295 a month they owe John's stepdad, whose loan retired the bank mortgage on the place. ''For us,'' says John, ''it's a cash-flow wash.'' They also bought a three-bedroom home in Savannah for $56,000 in April 1987, not knowing that they would leave town only five months later. The place has been rented intermittently since then, but the latest renter left in December. Even with the rental income and tax deductions, however, the Spragues have been losing a net $1,300 a year on the property. ''Our new real estate agent says we need to do $5,000 in repairs just to sell it for $60,000 this spring,'' John says. Meanwhile, John paid his landlord $5,000 last year for an option to buy their current house for $262,000 when their lease expires in September (half the monthly rent counts toward the planned 10% down). Though they still must raise another $15,000 to complete the down payment, two recent events have bolstered their hopes. For one thing, Beth is now earning $500 a month taking care of a neighbor's year-old son five days a week. Potentially more significantly, the Grand Hotel seems close to turning a profit, and John's bosses have promised him a bonus of 7% of it, to be paid out over two years. ''That's worth sticking around for,'' says John.

The advice THE PROBLEMS: PAYING OFF DEBTS, FUNDING RETIREMENT, INSURING THE FAMILY, BUYING A HOUSE / THE SOLUTIONS: START A SAVINGS PROGRAM, DOUBLE YOUR LIFE INSURANCE, APPLY FOR AN ARM, AND SELL YOUR PROPERTY IN SAVANNAH.

At MONEY's request, certified financial planners Robert Wacker of San Luis Obispo and Philip McKenna of Santa Barbara studied the Spragues' finances. Their advice: Pay off your credit-card debt, then start saving systematically. Both planners applauded the Spragues for paying $500 a month to their credit cards. When that debt is retired in about 10 months, they added, the Spragues should switch to saving that amount -- first for near-term needs like building an emergency fund to cover three months' living expenses (about $18,000), and later to meet long-term goals like retirement. The near-term money, which should include any funds earmarked for the down payment, should go into a no- load short-term bond fund like Vanguard's Fixed Income Short-Term Corporate (10.8% average annual return in the three years to Feb. 1; 800-662-7447). If possible, they should also keep putting $2,000 a year into John's IRA. The amount will be fully deductible, since he has no pension at work. Boost your insurance coverage. Wacker said John's $150,000 death benefit was not large enough and suggested he take out an additional $150,000 in term insurance. The $300,000 total benefit, which would be tax-free, would yield $30,000 a year (in today's dollars) for 12 years if invested for a yearly return of 2.5% above inflation. He also should increase the coverage on Beth by buying a $100,000 term policy to help pay for child care if she dies. And he should drop the riders on the kids, since insuring dependents is a waste of funds. Total additional cost: $408 a year. Wacker also urged John to buy private disability insurance, such as an annual renewable term policy from Ohio National Life that pays $2,500 a month to age 65 after a 60-day waiting period. ''The benefit would be tax-free,'' he added, ''because you, and not your employer, paid for it.'' The first-year premium would be $575 and, while it would rise annually, John could convert to a level premium of about $1,000 in three years. Shop for an adjustable-rate mortgage. The planners reluctantly went along with the Spragues' plan to buy a house, ''but only if John can stay continuously employed in the Los Olivos area for five years,'' said McKenna, ''because he certainly doesn't need to carry any more rental property.'' For a mortgage, the advisers suggested an ARM offered by the local Bank of Montecito that starts at 5.75% and goes up a two-percentage-point yearly maximum to a lifetime cap of 11.75%. First-year payments on a $235,000 loan will be $1,371 a month, or $71 more than their current rent. Moreover, they'll save $379 a month in income tax, which will more than cover the cost of property taxes and insurance. Finally, as soon as the repairs on the Savannah house are completed, the planners said, the Spragues should sell it for the best price they can get. They're already losing $1,300 a year on the property, and with the $5,000 repair bill, that loss would climb above $6,000 this year even if they found a new renter right away.

''The credit-card payments come first,'' agreed John a few weeks later. ''Until we've finished with them, the only other advice we felt we could put into play was to call for information on increasing our life insurance.'' He approved of the systematic savings plan and agreed that he needed to sell the Savannah property. ''But,'' he added, ''we were pleased to hear that if we do wind up buying our California house, we'll save enough in taxes to keep eating.''

BOX: Mortgage-mired

The $83,500 owed on former homes drags down the Spragues' net worth to $36,895.

INCOME John's salary $60,000 Rent and mortgage receipts 9,420 Tax refund and other 4,300 TOTAL $73,720

OUTGO Taxes $15,687 Rent 15,600 Mortgage payments 10,140 Food, clothes, household costs 9,020 Charge-card payments 6,000 Car costs 5,850 Miscellaneous 5,448 Insurance and medical costs 3,975 IRA contribution 2,000 TOTAL $73,720

ASSETS Savannah house $60,000 Mortgage balance on Utah condo 28,100 IRA 18,020 Personal property 11,800 Purchase option on Solvang house 5,000 Stock and cash accounts 3,075 TOTAL $125,995

LIABILITIES Mortgage balance on Savannah house $51,000 Balance on loan from John's stepdad 32,500 Credit-card debt 5,600 TOTAL $89,100

NET WORTH $36,895