Can you pay the bills on your nursing salary?

Nurses General Nursing

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  1. Can you pay the bills--and insurance, retirement, savings--on your nursing salary?

    • 37
      Yes, my salary is adequate for all that I need.
    • 19
      No, my salary is just not cutting it.
    • 26
      Bills are only getting paid because of overtime or a second income.
    • 26
      I'm squeaking by somehow.
    • 12
      I think everyone's having a hard time of it nowadays, not just me.
    • 11
      Other

131 members have participated

Are you able to pay the bills, afford insurance, and contribute to a retirement fund on your nursing salary alone?

I live alone and pay all my own expenses with one salary, plus help out my kids sometimes. I do not drive a big car or live "flashy". Neither am I frugal. Just judicious.

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Specializes in Med-Surg, Trauma, Ortho, Neuro, Cardiac.

Yes. Mainly because I combine my middle income with my spouse's and we're able together to swing it.

When I lived alone, I still did o.k., just didn't have a three-bedroom, two car garage home.

Even so there isn't much left over to save for a rainy day. If it wasn't for the automatic withdrawal and investment in my 401K, I wouldn't have much to show for it.

I've always been the type that as my income has risen, so has my bills and my spending.

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Specializes in Gerontological, cardiac, med-surg, peds.

I voted yes. I am also my family's breadwinner, but we live very frugally and have no rent, house or car payments, or payments for college tuition for our children.

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I voted "other". I could take care of myself relatively comfortably if it were just me. Together, my husband and I do fine. He is active duty Air Force, so our insurance needs are taken care of at no cost to us, and he receives extra pay that covers all but $100 of our rent and utilities, since we live off base. I contribute some to a 403(b), but I could do more. We have some credit card debt, but we always make more than the minimum payment. We drive one new vehicle, and the other one is his "baby". A 1990 Nissan 300zx that he treats like gold. I've said before, in another thread, that we feel very blessed to have what we do. We are by no means wealthy, and we could experience a financial crisis if worse came to worse. But, we both grew up poor, on welfare in my case. What we have now is so much more than our parents had, and we feel very lucky.

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Are you able to pay the bills, afford insurance, and contribute to a retirement fund on your nursing salary alone?

If I stay in my area where there are few jobs, too many nurses, low wages and few job that offer ins benefits, no.

As a traveler, yes. But that means being away from my home and husband for months at a time.

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I'm seriously worried about retirement; there's never enough left to put away for that, and pensions are a thing of the past and hardly adequate.Savings is barely do-able

the cost of insurance , and the poor coverage offerred these days is atrocious.

Vicky RN

I know what you mean.

I'm 41 and have only a small amount saved for retirement. My husband works for the fed gov't and has their retirement. His school loan debt is large, though, and his truck was breaking down over and over again- he just had to buy a new truck.

But, fed employee benefits have been cut back severely. We have no vision or dental coverage.

However, I am very grateful for our health ins.

Also, thank God the plans to do away with social security have been scrapped. That would have been a major disaster.

I have been working for 26 years, and have contributed a lot to Soc sec. I am counting on it for retirement.

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In my 16 years as a nurse, I have always been able to pay my bills. I am single with no children. I own a condo and own my car outright. I have never had credit card debt. Plus, I have retirement savings.

Stephanie RN

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I pay the bills on the salary I make as a Registrar (10.95/hour). It takes some sacrifices, but it can be done.

The pay range for a staff RN at my hospital is $17.35-$27.20/hour. Float RNs make $23.05-$34.90/hour. RNs in management here are salaried, and make anywhere from $43,000-$72,000/year, depending on position and responsibility. I'm single, and will likely be so for quite a few years. I can't imagine not being able to pay the bills on any of the above-mentioned salaries.

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I would also note that, at least at my hospital, there is an abundance of available overtime. So if money ever does get really tight for me (when I decide to purchase my first home, for instance), I can always pick up a shift or two a pay period to get some extra cash.

The hospitals in this area generally provide good benefits, as well. I'll owe this one four years of my time when I'm through school because they're helping me with tuition. After I put my time in here, I plan on moving to St. John's Mercy Medical Center here in St. Louis because it's unionized.

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