. After a long five years of underemployment and well over a dozen part-time, contract or freelance jobs, I stand at the threshold of reentering the world of the gainfully employed.
On Thursday my boss told me her boss, who manages a team of about 30 staff, was working on securing funding for a permanent writer position for me. Yesterday after work, I went out for drinks with my boss with one other coworker, and when the coworker left for the restroom, my boss said the position would soon be posted on the careers section online and that I would have to apply for the job. The job will still have to be advertised internally and externally (which makes me nervous).
I asked her if this was all sort of a perfunctory thing and she said yes, they'd been wanting a writer in Marketing for a long time and I'm the one they want. 
I still have no idea what kind of salary they will offer. I have heard from others that when you go from contract worker to perm worker, they make you take a pay cut and justify it with all the benefits you'll get. But I'm worried about how much of a pay cut it would be. Some quick research online and it appears it could be anywheres from a 10% pay cut to 50% paycut.
I'm making $72K now but feel this is already under market for my experience, by about $10K.
I have thoroughly reviewed their benefits and they ARE very good. You get 18 days PTO (paid time off) and you can use these for whatever you want: vacation, sick time, whatever. There are 10 paid holidays and 3 excellent Cigna health insurance plans to choose from. The one I want costs just $400 a year (compared to $2100 with the plan I've got now with the agency) and I can set up an HSA with it. I'm very excited about that as I've never had an HSA and I understand you can save money in that account, pre-tax, for future medical expenses, even after you leave the company. So I could actually save money for medical expenses in retirement. They give you an HSA debit card that you can use whenever you have an uncovered medical expense to pay.
There's also a 401k you can start immediately, with a company match of 5% after you've been there a year; it fully vests after 3 years. There is another employer contribution of 2% of your pay made after you've been there a year.
I calculated that the benefits are worth at least $10,000.
I am very, very excited. There have been so many anxiety-filled days when I wondered if I would EVER find a permanent job again. I took up so many extremely frugal habits; some I may not drop, some I think I will.
I'll be happy to stop doing Pinecone surveys at $3 a piece. So tedious. I'd like to begin my Netflix subscription again or maybe even basic cable.
I am still a contractor now, and we have a mandatory furlough for all contractors coming up the first week of July. I am heading down to the Jersey shore that Monday to visit my dad, and them come back the next night. It's just a brief visit, but I am SO looking forward to just a break in my work routine, as I've been working steadily since last October with just occasional single holiday breaks and i really need some downtime.
Hopefully next Saturday, the tree guy will be coming to take down a 65-foot ailanthus tree that towers over my house. It's a peace of mind thing that is costing me $1500.
They added close to $100 in tax to the invoice, which I hadn't been expecting, but they said I could avoid it if I paid with a personal check instead of a new rewards credit card i just got. So that's what I did to avoid the tax charge, plus I'm now using that rewards card on other spending to earn another $100 back in bonus probably in a month's time.
Pursuing credit card bonuses is another frugal habit I adopted when I really needed the money, but as long as I can keep finding cards like this, I'd like to continue doing it since I'm spending anyway.
So, I feel an incredible lightness of being knowing that I should soon have this job in my pocket. The job is not too stressful, people generally all leave there around 5 pm and not much later, my boss is very nice, my coworkers are pretty nice and I find the work interesting. They really seem to value the work I do. I also don't have to stress out on bad winter weather days as everyone there has a laptop and you just work from home. They have a small free gym there I have yet to use.
The only things i DONT like about the job is that becus there's no real privacy in the cubes, it's not possible to make a personal call that others cant overhear. You'd have to walk into the garage or the stairwell to do that. I also can't access my personal email account during the day, which I hate, but the bank has super tight security on stuff like that. Oh, and I don't like parking in the garage; my car has already been scratched by someone who parked like 4 inches from mine and then jammed their car door into my passenger side to get out. Now I make a point to park on the top level, just to avoid stupid people.
Still, I could see myself coasting into retirement from this job in just a few years. Like 5 years. Sweet.
The wheels are in motion, and I feel an incredible lightness of being
June 21st, 2014 at 08:43 pm
June 21st, 2014 at 09:49 pm 1403387370
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June 21st, 2014 at 10:26 pm 1403389580
If the initial salary offered disappoints, I hope you'll hide your feelings with a smile until you can get to a private place to work out what benefits will add to your bottom line. What is the value of job security as opposed to the hustle of obtaining contract work? How lovely to be wanted by your boss. Monitize 18 PTO +10 statutory holidays, Health ins. $ 2,100 - $ 400., HSA, 401K, & vesting, working from home in inclement weather, pleasant environment, friendly colleagues and staying out of office politics?
Two factors that double value are that employers prefer to hire staff who already have full time employment should you wish to troll for better paying work, and your own time line, possibly only 5 years.
Sorry but your salary 5 yrs ago is irrelevant in today's, down sized, scramble except for those in the executive suite. For example, experienced teachers at the top of their grid are replaced with new graduates who have never coped with 30 - 40 youngsters for 7 hours.
June 21st, 2014 at 10:38 pm 1403390283
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