$200,000 salary as a RN, it's true

Specialties NP

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I'm a NP who works in the Stockton/Sacramento area. One of my boating buddies is a RN at Kaiser. He has been there 10 years and is a charge nurse on a med/surg floor. I didn't believe it until he showed me but he does make a base of $200k a year. With overtime he clears a little of $350,000. This is due to Kaiser in Northern California being unionized. He lives in Modesto which is a low cost of living area but the contracts for the union are tied in with San Francisco which leads to high hourly wages. At retirement he is guaranteed at least $110k annually for life and lifetime medical benefits with any medical insurer he chooses whether it is Kaiser or not. I read the contract and couldn't believe what I was reading but there it was.

SO as a NP it makes me want to jump to Kaiser but......if I was to start at Kaiser with 10 years of NP experience under my belt I still wouldn't be making as much as my friend.

Disturbing??? Maybe....I'm happy for him. It just lets me know that there really are those rare RNs who make more than NPs....way, way more and more than most primary care MDs working on the floor. It makes you wonder if this model is sustainable.

@ConstantGardener let's agree to disagree. I have lived in California and goods/services cost over twice as much from what I have personally seen compared to Texas and in some cases far more. That can be accounted for the far higher cost of living, taxation, and overall higher costs over there. Yet the wages for RN's is not double from what I can see. They are close to double on average, but not quite the same. Which means that whatever standard of living you have in Texas is not quite achievable in California but the standard of living will increase in relation to cost by moving from California to Texas. Your statement 'everyone wants to live here' is certainly not true as last I checked I am also a person and I do not want to live in Cali. Also there are many, many transplants from California and New York coming to Texas all the time due to the improved standard of living when comparing to cost. I won't go into this further, except to say this; If you choose to live in California and enjoy it that is your personal choice and any consequences of that choice are yours alone. You may choose to live wherever you want to, but know you live in one of the most expensive areas of the country by cost of living and a simple google search will show that. The numbers do not quite balance, which is what I have been trying to say. I will not say anything further about that, let's get back to what this thread was originally about; success stories of people who make big bucks in nursing. If you want to argue taxation rates do so on a correctly titled thread.

Specializes in Clinical Research, Outpt Women's Health.

Dang. I make so little compared to that. Yikes. I am kind of reeling.

16 hours ago, Jkloo said:

What's a level 9-10 school? The guy in question lives in Modesto not Sacramento...

I should have said "high-performing" schools. Modesto is worse.

Coming from someone who graduated from Sac City High School.

1 hour ago, CrunchRN said:

Dang. I make so little compared to that. Yikes. I am kind of reeling.

Yes. And I am mildly discontent because of my near to minimum wage pay rate. I have always failed to see how anyone can use the word and definition of "professional" with near minimum wage, when describing what nursing should be. After a career of doing nursing for these p poor wages, I would go back and opt for being able to pay my rent with something left over for the utilities. Were I able to have a career as a NP, it would have to be for job satisfaction. They just don't make that much more money as I see it. And some of us were born and raised in California, so don't appreciate the insinuation that we must move elsewhere so we can put a roof over our heads or food on our table. I have lived in TX and in other southern states. None of them call to me.

2 Votes
On 7/23/2019 at 5:12 AM, MikeFNPC said:

Sorry, you couldn't pay me enough to live in CA. And according to all the pt's I'm getting from CA to TX, this isn't news.

I will be retiring and moving out of California. There is a mass exodus taking place.

1 hour ago, bryanleo9 said:

I will be retiring and moving out of California. There is a mass exodus taking place.

Why? I'm genuinely curious because I keep hearing about the new laws to help nurses (staffing, unions, pay etc), so it's interesting to hear there's a mass exodus.

1 hour ago, bryanleo9 said:

I will be retiring and moving out of California. There is a mass exodus taking place.

I have read about this too.

2 hours ago, NurseBlaq said:

Why? I'm genuinely curious because I keep hearing about the new laws to help nurses (staffing, unions, pay etc), so it's interesting to hear there's a mass exodus.

I have mentioned in detail one of the reasons why and you can refer to my above post for that. Austin (capital of Texas) has a saying; no one is from Austin, they are from somewhere else. To the Californians here, you would be quite comfortable in Austin as many of it's residents are formerly from New York or California. It's culture is markedly different than elsewhere in the state.

2 Votes
Specializes in ACNP-BC, Adult Critical Care, Cardiology.

You can say the same thing about San Francisco. The transplants from Boston, Chicago, NY, etc., here outnumber California natives and the rare "San Francisco-born" residents. There are reasons why people decide on where to live and in many cases, it's their job that brought them here. The city will be tough for minimum wage earners and service workers (or teachers). But majority of my co-workers who are here to stay have double incomes (NP or RN married to another nurse, physician, PA, or CRNA, or tech employee, or financial district employee). Many are DINK's (double income no kids). That's a "work-able" situation despite the high cost of living and the quality of life here is pretty good despite what people hear.

1 Votes
Specializes in Psychiatric and Mental Health NP (PMHNP).
On 7/25/2019 at 6:25 PM, Jkloo said:

I brought up San Antonio and other cities as a metric of crime. The poster above was implying Sacramento was crime-ridden. That isn't the case when compared to other cities.

Lets say the cost of living is higher. You spend lets say, 20% more living in Modesto than you would in San Antonio. How much do you spend on average a year? 40k? So now you're spending 48k. You've gone up a whopping 8k.

Meanwhile, this guy is taking home 240k. How much can you take home in San Antonio? Guess what, his cost of living is higher, sure. But he is still financially WAY better off in this situation.

Obviously the guy is an outlier, but it's a real pain to see people throwing the whole thing out the window as a "wash" because of the "higher cost of living." It's preposterous, demonstrates a clear lack of financial understanding, and is driven by false ideas that the entirety of "California is too 'spensive to bother living in" by financial illiterates.

I don't understand your point. No RN is going to make $350K a year in Texas and bring home $242K a year.

@FullGlass, they are arguing that the extremely high cost of living in California is offset by the high salaries. On the flip side, he is also arguing that the lower salaries in Texas are offset by the lower cost of living and that they 'even out', then goes on to tell the reader that they are a 'financial illiterate' if they don't agree.

Specializes in Anesthesia.

California has its pockets of moderate cost of living areas that are still nice, but a commute to a lot of the higher paying jobs may be required. I'm somewhat surprised by all of the animosity California has a received.

Living in Texas? That's a big maybe. It'd have to be Austin or maybe San Antonio. Other than that, I'd hate to live anywhere other than California, and you couldn't pay me enough to live anywhere else, ESPECIALLY as a nurse where there are no unions and you can get tripled in the ICU, etc. etc (well, maybe Seattle, Portland, and NYC might be okay). All I hear from my out of state SRNA classmates is how deplorable RN working conditions outside of California are. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

While I'm not an NP, the beauty of becoming an NP rather than working as a bedside nurse for your entire career is no more bed baths and GI bleeds. While some might not care about those things, for me, escaping those things was important to me. I didn't mind the code browns at first, and I figured they'd be easier to deal with as time went on, but the exact opposite happened for me. After awhile, I just couldn't do it anymore, or at least not daily.

5 Votes
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