Question regarding overtime

Depending on the shift incentives I've earned three times by base pay before on extra shifts. It just depends on what your employer is willing to pay.

Salary variations happen for many reasons. Overtime is one of them. Shift choice is another (night shift often has differentials, as do many weekends). Full-time benefited employee vs Per-Diem/Float Pool (pays more $, no bennies). New Grads vs multiple Years of experience. Some places pay more for certifications. And, yeah, picking up an extra shift is already 1/3 more plus overtime and bonuses.

But don’t pick up THAT much, you’ll burn yourself out, especially as a new grad.

23 hours ago, Hopefulnurse1823 said:

I ask because I’m a little bit suspicious with the whole taxes thing.

First time you get an adult paycheck and see the tax line makes a lot of people rethink their political beliefs pretty quickly ?

When I use to pick up overtime, I learned pretty quickly that a lot of it gets gobbled up in taxes if you are picking up entire shifts. However 8 hrs here, 4 hours there seemed to be well worth it.

If you pick up one overtime shift per pay period where I work, it's worth it financially. Anything more than that and it gets eaten up in taxes. If you pick up extra hours somewhere else, you don't get it taken out in taxes then but it may put you in a different tax bracket come Tax season and you may end up owing money, depending on how much more you make.

2 hours ago, poopylala said:

If you pick up one overtime shift per pay period where I work, it's worth it financially. Anything more than that and it gets eaten up in taxes. If you pick up extra hours somewhere else, you don't get it taken out in taxes then but it may put you in a different tax bracket come Tax season and you may end up owing money, depending on how much more you make.

Yeah, I did this one year. Worked my tail off, didn’t see a huge difference in my take home check for how I felt after all the work-and got the extra kick in the *** when I found out that we OWED another $1000 to IRS and had originally not claimed our child or married on Our w2s! It just wasn’t worth the decreased quality of life.

Thanks for all the replies. It seems like it’s one of those things that will depend on a lot of internal situations within the hospital. Good call on the tax bracket thing.

One's entire income does not go into a new tax bracket. Never did. The marginal income does.

The increments are quite gradual. It isn't like making 100k is great, but the person making 120k is a fool for paying all those taxes. It doesn't work like that.

Whether or not that is worth it to you is a very fine line.

There is not any magic point in the income bracket where working extra isn't worth it.

All that being said, I will compare working extra to earn more money to exercising more to be able to eat more calories.

At some point, exercising makes you hungrier. And working makes you want more stuff.

That is my experience and opinion only. Food for thought.

Also please look closely at your check, and see how much of the deductions are federal income tax. You might be surprised.

I do quite well, I am in the top 5% of NPs income wise, have no deductions of any kind, don't have any special secrets or the services of a CPA, yet I only paid about 17% of my income in federal taxes last year.

4 minutes ago, Oldmahubbard said:

One's entire income does not go into a new tax bracket. Never did. The marginal income does.

The increments are quite gradual. It isn't like making 100k is great, but the person making 120k is a fool for paying all those taxes. It doesn't work like that.

Whether or not that is worth it to you is a very fine line.

There is not any magic point in the income bracket where working extra isn't worth it.

All that being said, I will compare working extra to earn more money to exercising more to be able to eat more calories.

At some point, exercising makes you hungrier. And working makes you want more stuff.

That is my experience and opinion only. Food for thought.

Also please look closely at your check, and see how much of the deductions are federal income tax. You might be surprised.

I do quite well, I am in the top 5% of NPs income wise, have no deductions of any kind, don't have any special secrets or the services of a CPA, yet I only paid about 17% of my income in federal taxes last year.

That’s impressive with your taxes, even more so considering you don’t have a CPA. I had a teacher friend whose aunt did his taxes and always got him about 10k in his return according to him, he didn’t quite know or was unwilling to let me know what his aunt did.

Mind clueing the rest of us into your mathematical genius?

Also liked your analogy about working out. I actually do intermittent fasting so I could eat as big a meal as I can. Now you got me worried what I’m gonna do to my salary. ?