Layout:
Home > Category: choices

Viewing the 'choices' Category

Need Help Deciding Between 2 Jobs!!

August 31st, 2009 at 11:06 pm

Life has been busy! Baby M is now 10 weeks old, and I've been back to work for a couple weeks now. And I am now looking at other options.

I need an unbiased opinion, and comparasion on these 2 jobs. For you tax whizzes out there, what would my take home look like?


Job A(current position):

-Been there for 8 yrs
-Currently being made to use vacation time for pumping(Nursing my son). Used to get 4 weeks a year, now down to 68 hours.
-$28.75 an hour
-40 hours per week, day shift, no weekends, no holidays
-Insurance(medical for 3 and dental for me only) for family is $187 a week, plus I'm contributing $70 a week to HSA. We have $4000 deductible.

Job B--At hospital where I work perdiem

-also been there for 8 years
-Position is 24 hour 2nd shift. Manager says I could pick up additional shifts often. (But I know nothing is guaranteed)
-Get a 15 minute break--so I could pump
-$31.93 an hour base pay, plus $2.50 an hour shift differential
-Not sure what vacation accrual is like
-Insurance would be $127 a week for medical, dental and vision for all. Plus, its a plan that is more widely accepted.
-Would occasionally have to work weekends and holidays

The commute is the same

Financially, could we survive on me working just 3 shifts a week? With the better (and cheaper) insurance, would that even things out with my take home? I don't want to even bring DHs salary into the equation, so that's not an option.

Personal Loan?

March 19th, 2009 at 06:44 pm

Still frantically trying to save for leave, before baby comes. We have 14 weeks to go, if I carry to full term. We're about $700 behind schedule, but we'll get there. We still have the biggest savings account we've ever had!

Since we've been focusing on saving, we haven't been putting extra towards the CC debt. It kills me to just pay minimum, so I have been doing extra on the highest APR card. But now it seems everyone is jacking up the rates.

We have 3 small cards(still have a very ugly Discover card balance at 13K at 17% and a 2500 Visa at 7.25%) Our BOA is $1080, at 19.99%; Capital One $830 at 22.9%, and Home Depot $1100 at 22.4%.

My question is: would it be in our best interest to get a $3000 personal loan from our local credit union, and just pay off those three? The CU website has 'rates as low as 7.25%', but I figure even if they were 10%, it's still lower than the credit cards. I feel like it would be some load off of our shoulders to pay something off. Or just keep paying minimum and not stress until after baby comes and we see what THOSE expenses are like!

I did recently pay off our Care Credit, and only owe 2 more $200 payments on one loan.

We're making progress, just not as fast as I'd like.

A fun little payday game:

February 13th, 2009 at 07:50 pm

It's called "Who's Wants Our Money?"

We have $684.25 to divvy up. But VW credit wants $406.84, "personal loan" needs $200, student loan wants $250, maternity/baby fund should be paid $200 as well. Haven't paid the oil bill either. Oh, and we need money to live for the week: gas, groceries, etc. I didn't go grocery shopping at all last week, so cupboards are pretty bare.

It's so hard to figure out who should get what, and when. None of them will give big late fees or interest hikes if we're a week late. I ended up paying "personal loan" because if we don't, they'll be a warrant out for DH! $90 for living money, tranferred 250 to ING for leave fund(gotta pay ourselves first, right?)

That leave $144.25, which now isn't enough to pay oil bill, car or student loan. Ugh. My head hurts.

On the baby front, things are going well. Told boss about 3 weeks ago, and she took it well. We've already started training someone to help out when I'm out. Boss actually said 'we need to start training now, because you may not be able to work until you're due'. I hope I don't get put on bedrest or anything like that, but at least she's thought of that possibility. I am now almost 22 weeks along, feeling movement(finally!)and getting bigger every day!

My good brother (that lost his house, etc) just started his new job this Monday.
His wife got a yearlong temp job as well. They are both kind of stressing about logistics of driving one car, 2 jobs, and a kid in daycare. I think honestly that his wife was thinking of NOT taking a $22/hour job, because the only way they could work it out is to drop her off at work an hour early, and she'd have to hang around after her shift for 1/2 hour, while my brother runs to daycare to get baby. I talked to brother today and basically said: Suck it up, bring a book and deal with it. You need this job, you need this money, and it's just a temporary inconvenience until you can buy a POC car, or move closer to both jobs. I hope she realizes that's what she has to do. They were going to try to talk to temp place today about changing hours. Well, if they won't, then you'll have to put up with it, because there's 50+ people in line behind you that will do ANYTHING for a job right now.

Raises! (and a layoff) :-(

January 11th, 2009 at 07:00 pm

Well, first the good news:

I had approached my boss at my fulltime job right before Christmas regarding my annual review. She quickly shot me down with "after my vacation". (She was out of the country for 2 weeks). I very timidly approached her this week, and after "We'll talk on Monday", she called me into her office on Thursday. We spoke about how well the past year has gone, but she very quickly changed her tune and spoke about how Medicare reimbursments are down, expenses are up, can't give raises like she used to, has to help staff at bottom of payroll, etc. I soon felt, as I smiled and nodded, that I didn't have a chance for any kind of raise. She finally sits back in her chair and says "so you tell me, what will you let me get away with?" (Ooh ooh ooh, I do have a chance!) "Is 75 cents out of the question?" She didn't even raise an eyebrow-I got my $0.75 raise just like that! (Of course, DH said I should've asked for a dollar, like I have gotten before. But with the way I first felt, I didn't want to look greedy and push my luck)

I also got paid for one shift at the hospital, and noticed it was a bit more there when I called my bank. I checked the hosptitals online paystub system and saw I got a $1.04 raise there! Unfortunately, I spoke to my dept, and no shifts available except for one on Jan. 30.

Now the bad news.

I got a phone call this morning from the restaurant that I work at. I've been laid off, hopefully just for the winter. I have worked there for 15 years! This was the money we lived on-groceries, gas, laundry, etc. This job pulled in anywhere from 400-800 a month.

Now, we don't have the hospital job going into maternity leave fund. We don't have the restaurant job to live on. So all of that has to come from my fulltime job and DH's. I wish that extra $30 a week would cover that all, but it's not going to.

So, essentially, I've gone from 3 jobs this week, to 1. I haven't worked 'just' 40 hours EVER! But I do know, that in this day, I'm lucky to have even one stable job.

We've really got to play with the budget tonight. I don't know where to cut back, and still sock away $1000 a month for leave. We're going to have a hard time just paying the minimum bills.

OK, bear with me...this may be confusing!

November 13th, 2008 at 03:41 am

Hi everyone! Long time lurker, so I know that you all have great life experiences and will give great advice. I don't know where to even start. My DH and I have been together for 10+ years, married for 5. Due to some personal issues, DH racked up 14K in CC debt back in 2005-2006. I was not aware( in denial) of the problems he was facing, and didn't know about this debt. However, things have cleaned up nicely and we're back on track as a couple since Aug. 2006. We've managed to pay about 11K off, but still have about 22K left to go. I had my own debt as well. (We also had a big car repair, and various 'life happens' events occur, with no EF in place)

We now have about 2K in EF. We have 4 jobs between the 2 of us. My position does pay higher, and I have the health insurance for both of us.

Choices to make for now: Do we try to find a cheaper place in our area to live? Rents seem to be going down in our area, but for first, last and security, (plus various moving fees), it would probably run us about 3K. But that would wipe out our EF.

Do we stay where we are, and focus on debt, or try to get EF bigger because…

On October 22, I gave my husband "the best birthday gift ever"---a positive pregnancy test. We are both very excited. I'm about 8 weeks along. I know financially, we're not ready, but I’m 32, and are you ever financially ready for a baby?

He would be staying at home with the baby, so in the next 7 months, we need to decrease our bills the equivalent of his salary. (Usually brings home $800 a month). It's not much, but he does all the household stuff, cleaning, laundry, errands that I can't do while I'm working.

My job is also an issue. I work for a small company, which only has about 15 employees. The boss/owner/president is a real tough cookie. She does not give maternity leave. The last woman to have a baby had 12 weeks unpaid, had to sign some paper that terminated her, and paid COBRA while she was out. That mysterious paper had to be signed that day…couldn't be taken home to discuss with husband (or lawyer). She left with the knowledge that she would be back, and she is still with us. I have 4 weeks vacation that I'll have by June. If she even allows me to take 12 weeks, that would mean 8 weeks unpaid, plus maybe 1K/month for COBRA. Is that even legal? She has less than 50 employees, so FMLA doesn't apply.

So stay put in current apartment, save up 8 weeks salary, plus another 2K for possible insurance? Or try to pay down debt now before baby comes? Too many choices and this first post is too long!

I didn't want to get down to the nitty gritty with actual figures of debt and salaries on first post, but any advice would be greatly appreciated!