Still penny pinching

Nurses General Nursing

Published

I work at a local hospital, med-surg. I work very, very, very hard. When I'm at work, I give my all to my patients. Sometimes I come home dog tired. Too tired to eat. So why do I do all of this, go to school, get my degree, only to be rubbing two pennies together when I get home. I certainly feel as if I don't get paid enough for what I do. But when you think of a Registered Nurse, you don't really associate that with struggling. My family seems to think I'vw got it made. For some reason, I can't get over 300 in my savings account. Too give you a bigger picture of me personally. I do have a 2 income household with 2 kids. Renting, but with only 1 car note. It would seem as if I should be rolling in dough. But far from it. The only guilty pleasure that we can afford is eating out. We do this very often because of how tired I am when working. Don't get me wrong. It pays the bills, but exactly that and not much more. I am not sure if financially, I would even be considered to be in the middle class. How do you all discipline yourself enough to save? Am I the only nurse with lint in my pocket after working so hard everyday? How far can this career take you when it comes to making good, good money instead of chump change?

Thanks for any comments!

If you want to track your spending, I'd suggest mint.com. You'll need to be signed up for online banking and to trust Mint enough to put in your online banking login info. The plus is that the site organizes all of your expenses and shows you how much of your income is going where. This is awesome for me, because I can never manage to hold on to all my receipts. I was shocked at how much of my money was spent on things like eating out and shopping.

For cooking, like others have said, crockpot! I love my crockpot--it keeps me sane.

Specializes in Family Nurse Practitioner.
Just wanted to say this is a great thread! I am fortunate to have a DH who makes good money, and we are very comfortable, and have everything we need and the vast majority of what we want. Did just find out that the dream house we bought in July needs a new septic system, so we have to shell out some unplanned $$ since the home warranty does not cover septics and the home inspector did not catch it (loopholes everywhere to protect everyone but us, grrr.)

So, I will be putting these tips to use, starting today! I hope this thread keeps going with lots more great tips. Anyone want to share links to websites they use for financial advice?

What sticks out to me from your insightful post is that despite your comfortable income you are going to watch your spending a bit to pay for the unexpected expense of a new septic system. Cutting back before things get ugly is very smart imo. Good plan, take care!

One of my best tips other than packing lunch is to drive your car until it croaks. Cars are a losing investment although a necessary purchase for most of us. I pay cash and keep them as long as possible.

Specializes in Interested in hospice.

I'd like to suggest Mvelopes (www.mvelopes.com). I don't work for them or anything, I just think it's a great product. It's about $100 per year, but definitely worth it, because it is one of the very few financial programs out there geared toward "envelope budgeting."

I used Microsoft Money and Quicken before, but I didn't like those products because you only see how you're doing at the end of the month - when it is too late to change things.

Mvelopes allows you to gradually shift to living off of LAST MONTH'S money, instead of the current month. So, in January, everything we earn is funding the month of February. Expenses are tracked daily (the software hooks up with your bank and credit card accounts) in envelopes that are pre-funded. This is a huge benefit. For example, we have not had any car repairs this month, but we still funded our car repair envelope. Over time, when we DO have a repair, we will have the money ready.

This has solved the problem for me of putting money into savings, only to have to take it out again for an expense. So that savings are truly "saved."

Anyway, it takes a couple of months to get used to the envelope method of budgeting, but once you change, you'll never go back.

Here are the 2007 census household incomes. The upper chart is unadjusted, the lower chart has all of the years converted to 2007 dollars:

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/f01AR.html

As the chart is divided into fifths:

Second fifth range: $27,865 - $49,510

Third fifth range: $49,511 - $75,000

Fourth fifth range: $75,001 - $112,638

So 60% of households earn from $27,865 to $112,638

Specializes in pulm/cardiology pcu, surgical onc.

Okay my pet peeve..... Bottled water. Why in the world do people pay for something that's essentially free? We have well water which tastes horrific but with a good filtration system is every bit as good as bottled.

I want to thank everyone for their replies. It was very interesting to hear what people do to save money. I got some good suggestions. Such as RNnbakes who does her svings into checks. If anything I save is tangible cash, then its good as gone. Others mentioned Dave Ramsey. (I'd have to look him up), A lot of people touched on the cable bill. I didn't mention it in my original post, but my cable bill is about 220 monthly for the cable/internet/phone bundle. I do have a crock pot that I could possible dust off for use once a week. I guess I am just conflicted about what I thought life would be like years post graduation, and reality. I had the financial image that our family and other outsiders have about nursing. If you got your degree, work as hard as we do, then we should be able to have a nice home with car and be able to afford it without penny pinching. (Even though I don't have those things, yet). The other part of me is understanding that you have to have some knowledge of financial responsibility, and that part I will continue to work on. Though, it would also be interesting to hear on this post from those that do have big diamonds, vacation, etc., and how they make it work.

I want to thank everyone for their replies. It was very interesting to hear what people do to save money. I got some good suggestions. Such as RNnbakes who does her svings into checks. If anything I save is tangible cash, then its good as gone. Others mentioned Dave Ramsey. (I'd have to look him up), A lot of people touched on the cable bill. I didn't mention it in my original post, but my cable bill is about 220 monthly for the cable/internet/phone bundle. I do have a crock pot that I could possible dust off for use once a week. I guess I am just conflicted about what I thought life would be like years post graduation, and reality. I had the financial image that our family and other outsiders have about nursing. If you got your degree, work as hard as we do, then we should be able to have a nice home with car and be able to afford it without penny pinching. (Even though I don't have those things, yet). The other part of me is understanding that you have to have some knowledge of financial responsibility, and that part I will continue to work on. Though, it would also be interesting to hear on this post from those that do have big diamonds, vacation, etc., and how they make it work.

We got rid of paying for TV programming in June-it was going to be temporary for the summer and now has become permanent-this has saved us nearly $100/month!

If you are looking for Dave Ramsey you can look for him on the internet and they will have taped programs from him-you can learn a lot or check out books authored by him from the library.

Good luck to you!

otessa

When I first considered a career in nursing I would not become rich but I quess I never had a huge financial expectations therefore no dissapointments. I just want to be comfortable...this word means different things for different people. For me it means being able to pay my rent,utilities,actually go to the store and buy a "normal" food,I guess what I mean is to have refrigerator full of fresh food,be able to go to store and select more than a few items and not worry I run out cash by adding to my cart an "extra" item,be able to afford a regular car and car insurance,have some money for traveling;nothing fancy,dont need 5 star hotels (there are a lot great traveling deals out there.Maybe one day buy a house (the market is great for the buyers) I realized that high expectations can drive person insane and bring negative energy so I try to avoid it and be happy with basics life has to offer. I also dont imagine be enslaving myself to penny pinching,collecting food cupons etc...I'm a simple person and this would give me too much headache and stress. Also I dint have to be rich to quickly realize that more money means more trouble.

I agree with the posters that stated the more money people had, the more debt they had. I did mortgage for years and this statement couldn't be more true in most instances. I remember talking to my co-workers that if I made as much money as XYZ, I wouldn't have to keep working and I wouldn't have as much debt as they had. Yeah, right.

To the original OP: I am very much like you. I would rather eat out than cook. I am trying to wean myself off eating out because it's not healthy and it's really, really expensive (over $800/month for myself and 1 3 year old!). I now try to cook regular meals and always have my freezer stocked with the new Healthy Choice steamer meals. They are yummy and filling and cost way less than eating out. Just one more suggestion if you want to try and wean yourself off eating out! Good luck!

+ Add a Comment