. I got the job, I got the job, I got the job!
It's not a permanent solution to my employment issues, but it's certainly better than unemployment and it could lead to something better if it works out.
Here are the details:
It's a startup news website which uses a very different model for reporting on breaking news of the day. I'm going to honor the non-disclosure agreement I have yet to sign by not going into further detail about that.
The good things about it:
1. It's full-time but also flexible if from time to time I need to take time off to do other frelance gigs. he understands that becus he can't pay me the kind of money to keep people there 100% full-time that people may from time to time want to do some other things. That's exactly my situation: i've already agreed to edit an author's book, and I know i'll want to coninue my normal, though widely sporadic freelance real estate copywriting.
2. He's asked me to drive into their small city (about a 50-minute drive 1-way) for 2-3 days next week, and maybe 2 or 3 days the following week, until I get the lay of the land and familiarize myself with how they work and what I'll be doing. But after that, I can work REMOTELY and only drive into the city once a week for the writers' meetings. This is ideal for me; if it weren't for the need for health insurance coverage, this is very much my ideal type of job.
3. The pay is, well, I expected that it wouldn't be a ton of money for a startup. They launch online on Monday, and the weeks immediately following will say a lot about what kind of success they'll see. I'm getting in on the ground floor now; if, in the worst case scenario, they don't do well and the business folds in 6 months, I'll have collected a paycheck as much as possible. If they do well and grow, there's a real chance of getting better pay, more responsiblity and so on.
So he offered me an hourly rate of $20 an hour. I was able to talk him into $25 an hour, but he also said if he pays that, this is the kind of output he'd expect, x number of news briefs written in an hour, or x number per day. They will also reimburse me for the parking garage, which would otherwise cost me $12 a day to keep my car there. (So i guess having me work from home also saves him money, ie, $60 a week.)
I have to say I spent considerably more time writing up the 5 news brief for him in a test assignment he gave me, but hopefully I'll gain a much better idea of exactly the kind of stories they want to focus on and be able to write them up much more quickly. This is a news site and so they need a high volume of new news story briefs every day. Not sure how many other writers there are....
So if I worked f/t, i guess that comes out to $52K a year, sans benefits. I am still seeking a full-time perm job with benefits, becus i must have health insurance, and those jobs would typically pay in the 80s.
So I'd be working for a lot less for him, but given that I'd mostly be working from home, given that I'm a news junkie and that this pays better than unemployment and that this would serve to elongate the time my remaining unemployment funds would last, it certainly seems worthwhile.
It will enable me to more easily pay my current bills and take care of several home improvement projects I have already committed to (paneling 2 closets damaged by leaking water from this winter's ice dams in gutters done by a carpenter i've used before will cost a very reasonable $550) or are considering (vinyl siding estimate from company #1 came in at $17,000).
The only thing it doesn't do is stop the clock from ticking on the remaining time I have to obtain health coverage thru COBRA. I'm good til year's end or maybe a bit longer, not sure.
It also doesn't fix my current dilemma of having health coverage, but not being able to use it, at least, if I don't want to pay 100% of costs. This is due to the fact that my health plan has a $1500 deductible. I've avoided all routine healtcare except for dental and a trip to the neurologist I had to make to renew my meds to avoid having to pay everything out of pocket.
But I would dearly love to get a physical and see my gynecologist and maybe my optometrist and get a colonscopy.
So maybe I'll work here for 3 months, then leave when I find another job with benefits. Or maybe I'll end up staying there for 3 years.....who really knows?
I got a job!
March 4th, 2011 at 05:37 pm
March 4th, 2011 at 06:06 pm 1299262009
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March 4th, 2011 at 07:39 pm 1299267583
March 4th, 2011 at 08:04 pm 1299269050
March 4th, 2011 at 08:34 pm 1299270847
I was able to just now confirm that if I should need to, I can keep the COBRA ($443/mth) until June 2013, which is a year longer than I thought. It's right in the letter I got when I started it. It's 30 months, not 18 months. It's a provision of the CT State Continuation law.
This will let me keep getting my meds at no cost to me (pharma company picks up my co-pay) but as mentioned above, I'm still avoiding any other medical attention except dental, which i pay out of pocket anyway, and neurology (required to renew meds) due to my high annual deductible.
March 4th, 2011 at 08:49 pm 1299271744
Your health is important, regardless.
Congrats on the job! That is wonderful news!
March 4th, 2011 at 08:56 pm 1299272176
March 4th, 2011 at 09:09 pm 1299272951
March 4th, 2011 at 09:47 pm 1299275269
Jerry
March 4th, 2011 at 09:56 pm 1299275784
March 4th, 2011 at 10:36 pm 1299278192
March 4th, 2011 at 10:59 pm 1299279556
The thing that's really giving me ogida is that, depending on how things go with this new job, I may or may not have my remaining unemployment benefits to fall back on. When Dept of Labor calcuates what your benefits are, they take the highest quarterly average, going back as far as the 5 preceding quarters. (They don't count wages from the quarter in which you filed your claim in.)
And they DON'T count wages earned from a 1099 job like this one. The only countable income I will have earned in the recent past was the one full quarter i worked at Prudential in 4th quarter of 2010.
So that means that if i worked at this new job but it didn't work out, either becus i didn't like it or they didn't like me, i'd have until as late as the 1st quarter of 2012 to file with unemployment and get credit for the work i did at Prudential, which was a job where they deuducted taxes and so on from my paycheck.
In a worst case scenario, if I couldn't find another perm job and had continued to work this job until April 2012, I would NOT be able to collect any unemployment at all because the Prudential job in 4th quarter 2010 would then be beyond the timeframe that DOL uses to determine benefits.
Not that I'm PLANNING to go back to unemployment but having lived hand to mouth for so long, it's really nice knowing i have a safety net of sorts of this new gig doesn't work out.
However, I would think I would know in the 1st 3 months whether the new job is going to work and whether he's happy with me and anyway, unemployment is not going to last forever in either case. It's just nice knowing I have a backup, but what it comes down to is, the "clock" is still ticking and I still need to find a perm job with benefits asap.
March 4th, 2011 at 11:18 pm 1299280685
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the one i work for concentrates on national news.
The more i talk to other people grappling with health insurance issues, the more i realize that $443/month is really not too bad,comparatively speaking (though bad enough as far as i'm concerned).