Oh my pay cut!

most of us work some sort of side work - i did more when i first became a school nurse until the salary guide caught up to a reasonable payscale. Now I work summer school because it's good money and it lets me get ahead for the school year. My district has an understanding that I am still a 10 mo employee and can and will take vacation so i may not be avail for all of summer school each year. I also maintain a call in job, but that has nothing to do with nursing and is basically gas money. In the past i've worked for agencies, in home health doing visits on weekends, and most recently as a pd assistant director of nursing for a local hospital (that was the big money side job - i was sad when it ended due to a corporate buyout). There have been summers that i've just been off. Those have been pretty sweet too.

I left a job and took an almost 50% pay cut to return to school nursing and I don't regret it a bit. I weighed my sanity against the money and found that my sanity won.

I got married to be able to afford the pay cut.

Kidding...I was already engaged when I took the job. It was an $8k paycut for me, so it wasn't too bad. A PRN nursing job or private duty over the summer can make up some of the difference.

PRN home care for when additional funds are needed.

I do camps or summer school in the summer. Sometimes this can add an additional $10k depending how much of my summer I want to work.

Summer camp nursing (or anything you can work vacations, the occasional weekend, and those long stretches of breaks) may help you. Good luck! Remember that we wear pink on Wednesdays!

PRN home care for when additional funds are needed.

I do camps or summer school in the summer. Sometimes this can add an additional $10k depending how much of my summer I want to work.

Camp never pays my enough to help much. But it's fun and they keep me busy enough to have no time or energy to spend money except for one or two nights out with the counselors. LOL

Do you have student loans, and are you eligible for loan reimbursement? Here where I am you are eligible for up to $4,000/year or $16,000 total for student loan reimbursement working for the county/state. This doesn't include the fact that they pay for BSN or MSN or even other degrees.

I don't know what your benefits are like or if you need them, but when I worked for the county as a nurse my deductible was $250, MOOP was $750 and I paid $50/month for benefits for just me. For a family it would have been $125/month.

Just pointing out that there may be hidden benefits to the salary cut!