Living Paycheck to Paycheck. Need Advice.

[starmickey03, MSN, RN]

I'm an RN and have been since 2012. Currently a state government employee mainly for the benefits. No copays (comes in handy with kids who are rowdy and injury prone), $3 prescriptions, pension with 100% match (13% taken out of my check), etc- this became especially important after a couple family hospitalizations that brought serious medical debt and the private sector medical insurance we had was absolutely no help at all-. The issue is I'm literally living check to check. Anyone who has worked for the public sector knows the pay is subpar with no raises but like I said before I got into this for the benefits which I seriously need. I believe I'll be vested after 5 years and can leave but until then I don't know what to do. I've went the route of having a weekend home health per diem job but that left me working 7 days a week with no time for anything else. I actually love my job so I don't necessarily want to leave. My husband is a truck driver and works hard but without my previous salary we're struggling- I crunched all the numbers before accepting the govt job and thought it would be fine but clearly I was wrong. 

I guess I'm wondering if there are any companies where I could work overnight remotely or any ideas of what I could do to make extra money? This is seriously stressing me out beyond belief. 

[Wuzzie]

The first thing you need to do is evaluate your spending. You can't continue killing yourself working.

[klone, MSN, RN]

Agree with Wuzzie. Sit down and write down where all of your monthly income is going, and what all of your expenditures are.

[JKL33]

Agree with the above.

Take a hard look at what you can reduce, change up for a better deal or eliminate.

What measures have you taken so far?

[starmickey03, MSN, RN]

Thanks everyone but all of these suggestions have already been done several times over. I’ve decided to look into travel nursing in my state so that I can hopefully grab some of these crisis rates and save as much as possible.