My Plan

Sorry for all of the personal stuff. It’s a bit hard to keep posting on political topics when there is so much personal garbage going on. This one is on my plans for the future. If you want to move on, I get it. There will be other posts coming soon.

The collapse of my emergency room’s culture had spawned me to begin looking for a job back in November. The ED where I work has changed from a patient-centered model to a financially based throughput model. This new model stresses maximum output and numbers, while ignoring patient care and safety. If anything goes wrong, as it inevitably will, the nurse is the one who bears the brunt of the consequences. I just can’t do that. Time to go. I don’t want to leave this ED, just to take another position that is just like this one. That gets me nowhere. Besides, I have a master’s degree now. Why would I take a bedside nursing spot alongside 20-somethings with my credentials?

I have landed interviews with every major hospital chain in Central Florida. Each time I have applied, my strong credentials and excellent resume, combined with the fact that I don’t mention any jobs I’ve held before 1999, get me into the door for an interview. I’ve had more than a dozen job interviews in the past three months. That’s where the story ends. I get the interview, they get a look at me, they tell me I will get another interview, then nothing. Silence. My emails go unanswered. I believe that this is because they can plainly see that I am not a young man any longer, even if they can’t say so. This plan isn’t working.

So I need to find another path forward. I got to thinking:

• what was the best thing about being a teacher? The copious time off.
• What is the worst thing about being a teacher? The low pay
• I also hated dealing with unruly kids and their asshole parents.
• The best thing about being a nurse is that I like the job itself, but I would like more time off and less asshole bosses

I really do miss the days when my wife and I could travel all summer. Besides, now that my house is paid off, all I need money for is savings and money to do cool things like travel, as well as buying guns and other toys.

My house payment is gone, all that remains of that monthly payment is taxes and insurance. The $3400 a month that was principal and interest are gone. Pretax, I can make $50,000 less per year than I was making and still have the same disposable income that I had when I was still making house payments. Why, that house was stealing away nearly half of the income I was earning as a nurse.

Then it hit me- I could work half of a year and still be doing pretty well. I looked into PRN (as needed) nursing. Nope. They require that you come to work every week, just for fewer hours. That was when I looked into travel/contract nursing. Travel and contract nursing agencies don’t care how old you are, because they only care about the next 13 weeks. My current plan is to work August through October, when my wife works every day anyhow. Then I can work some other period in the January through May period.

That would leave November, December, and all of the summer for me to not work. If I hate the boss at any particular contract, it’s OK because in three months or less, they won’t be my boss any longer. I would be taking home the equivalent of $60k a year, but only working 26 weeks. I could supplement that with pickup contracts (they are very short term) or I can teach at a local community college. Either way, I can be semi-retired. Our bills are fine. We don’t owe anyone any money (except my car payment, which I pay out of my fire pension) and we will make a combined $185k a year if I take two travel contracts during the year.

Now that I had the outline of a plan, I talked about it with my wife. She is on board, with a few conditions:

• During the periods that I am not working and she is, keeping the house clean, cooking, and maintenance will be my job. She says it isn’t fair for her to work and still expect her to keep house. That’s cool. I would get bored with nothing to do all day, so cleaning is cool. It’s not like the two of us make a huge mess, anyhow.
• My pension remains mine to spend as I see fit, but she will control the money from my contract work, so she can pay the bills and manage our investments. Meh. My pension is more than $3500 a month. I don’t need to spend more than that. She does a good job of picking investments, better than I do. I’m OK with that.
• She will continue to do her laundry, and I will do mine. I suck at laundry, especially women’s things.
• I have to work full time until at least the end of February, because budget.

So having come to an agreement, I have a plan. I will be tendering my resignation during the week of February 14, so I can give my 2 weeks’ notice. Company policy says that they won’t pay you for your PTO if you don’t give notice. I have 100 hours of PTO, so trying to get paid for that is the goal there.

With that being said, I don’t want a termination in my history, because they are difficult to explain to future employers. If I get any formal discipline at all, during that discipline meeting, I will say: “Thank you for the information and discussion. This makes things quite clear for me. Our goals and outlook are clearly no longer in alignment. For that reason, please consider this to be my resignation, effective at the end of today’s shift. I wish you luck.”

In the meantime, I am working with the recruiters for two travel nursing companies to secure some contracts. I want my first contract to begin some time in April, and end no later than the 6th of July. I will begin my second contract during the first half of August.

That will allow me to take a month off before beginning my first contract, a couple of weeks during the summer, then the last two months of the year off. So that’s the plan. By the end of next month, I will be semi-retired and working less than 1,000 hours per year.

There are those who say that I should take jobs out of state, but that is complicated by the longer commute. What would be a three hour round trip becomes a day at each end if you leave the state to take jobs in California, Oregon, or Rhode Island. Now instead of three days a week, I am away from home 4 or 5 days a week. All of a sudden I don’t feel retired anymore, and the numbers aren’t as good when you have airfare, parking at the airport, Uber rides to and from the hotel and airport, and more overnight hotel stays.

Others suggest a motor home. I don’t think those numbers make sense. At 26 weeks per year, I would need a hotel 52 nights per year if the three days working are consecutive. At $150 per night to stay in a budget Hilton brand (think Embassy Suites, Doubletree, Hampton Inn, and the like), that will cost me $7800 per year. Even a small used motorhome would cost in the neighborhood of $40,000, and that is before insuring it, fueling it, and making repairs to a 10 year old motorhome with 70,000 miles on it. It just isn’t worth the cost. It would take me a decade or more to recoup that expense.

What could make sense would be a camping trailer like this one. At $15,000, it would cost just over 2 years to recoup the cost. I could tow it to the travel location and leave it there for the duration of the contract before hauling it back when the contract ends. That’s something to consider.