Quote:
Originally Posted by Kenomac
I looked up my registered nursing wage and compared it to the current Massachusetts average a month ago, and found out I was in the bottom ten percent... that hurt. But it's the price I must pay in order to work per diem and take off six months per year to cruise in the Med., unfortunately, a better paying job wouldn't allow it.
New nursing graduates make $20 per hour where I work. I have six years in the field with five years of hospital experience, so I make a little more. |
I'm surprised by the $20 because my wife who graduated from nursing
school 18 months ago started at $31 working 2, 12 hour days a week in a small to medium sized hospital as a "contingent" nurse. She's in a very demanding area of nursing (critical pulmonary care) but I know of lots of more experienced nurses who make much more. I happen to think that nurses SHOULD make a lot. It's a pretty unique job because you are a position to have more impact than anyone else on peoples most prized possession, their health! If a nurse does something stupid or careless, their "client" may be out a lot more than some
money... something that's irreplaceable and priceless! Additionally, I know just how hard nursing
school is and the huge amount of knowledge you are responsible for, as well as the physical demands during a long shift and the
health risks you can't help but be exposed to being surrounded by sick people every day. If minimum wage is raised to $22 for an unskilled workers, then to make it worthwhile for someone to go to nursing school and to put up with all the aggravation, then nurses should start at about 4 times that or $88/hour!
I agree that $270 for a
cleaning seems ridiculous and if I lived where you do I'd avoid it by having my teeth cleaned at a local school of dentistry where they charge very little or nothing at all. But on the other side of the equation, I sort of understand the high prices. I have a niece who is a 4th year student at Tufts dental school. In round numbers, Tufts currently costs $100K/year! In order to qualify to be accepted there she had to study her butt off to get 2 engineering degrees (bio and chem) with very high grades and pay for that as well. Then, as a new dentist she will have to work for an established dentist for a salary which, after she makes her payment on her $400K+ debt, won't allow her to buy a house or even a new car. Eventually, she will probably buy into an established practice and become a partner, taking out yet another large loan to finance that and to buy expensive
equipment, and THEN she will start making the big bucks. But when you add up all the years it took her and all the sacrifice along the way AND all the money she had to spend to finally get to the point where she is a partner, she HAS to charge a lot just to break even. So, the lions share of that $270
cleaning bill went to pay for the practices overhead, all the other employees and the expensive
equipment and the insurance and the expensive education of the dentist who owns the practice, the building, the heat, etc. I don't like paying that kind of money for teeth cleaning or other dental care either, but I do understand why it costs so much. Fortunately, all those years of being my nieces favorite uncle while they were growing up, (and and her older sister is also a dentist) is finally paying off, so, I have the option to pay for my dental care on a slightly different scale!
My most recent pet peeve as far as expenses is the cost of maintaining used cars. The
service engine soon light on my wife's car recently came on so I took it in to the local
repair shop. According to the manual, that light means that something is wrong with the
exhaust system or the gas cap is loose. I checked the gas cap and then dropped the car off. They plugged our key into their special machine to read the codes ($150) and learned that the knock
sensor had a transient fault, and the thermostat sender also had a transient fault, and the
battery was low so needed
charging, and they recommended that we replace the
electric water pump because even though it was working fine, they tend to go around 90K miles and that was the approximate mileage of our car. Total cost for all this, just over $4000!!! When they reported all this to me I asked what exactly had turned on the "service
engine soon" light and they couldn't narrow it down beyond saying it was one of those things. It turned out that the 2 faults were probably nothing more than a manifestation of the "low battery" which was caused by the terminals needing to be tightened and cleaned. So, the only thing wrong with the car were some
battery terminals that needed cleaning and tightening and to learn that it cost me $150 and would have cost $4000 if I hadn't said no. I've always had used cars and worked on them some myself and bought used part and saved a lot of money that way. But it's getting almost impossible to do that and to understand what needs to be done so you are at the mercy of the guy who owns the computer that reads the codes. So, instead of paying the $4K, we went to the BMW dealer and traded in our car and signed up for a
lease on a new X1. It'll cost $6K per year but we aren't tying up $45K of our money up front and we will have zero
maintenance costs except for 2
oil changes a year, zero cost for new tires, brakes, etc. and since we don't own it we aren't losing money on depreciation. $6K per year is our total cost. After comparing that with the total cost of maintaining a used car, I decided it sounded like an attractive option, at least for my wife's car. But I intend to keep my pickup truck for at least 10 years and drive it into the ground!
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