I've been coasting along at my little p/t job, feeling fairly content. To recap, it's about 20 hours a week, pays $32/hr and is pretty easy to do. It's still a 40-minute commute (1-way) 3 days a week.

The game plan was to stay with this job for the next 6 years until I can get on Medicare.

More recently, I've been feeling a bit frustrated since I've been pushing to be moved from the recruiter agency payroll to the company's payroll, becus I feel the raises would be much better with the employer and I could contribute to a 401k.

I began this conversation with my manager back in AUGUST and while my manager hasn't said yes, definitely, he hasn't said no either. My coworker says he's just super busy.

In the meantime, I went straight to the agency last week and asked them for a raise. I just felt that if my manager is not sharing with me some reason they're reluctant to put me on the payroll, then I should still get some kind of COL adjustment from the agency then. The agency is supposed to be talking to my manager this week. I'm not expecting much from them; maybe 3% tops.

I thought my manager was a straightshooter, but I recently caught him in a little white lie; while it's of no consequence in and of itself, it bothers me that he did that.

When I last asked him a few weeks ago about the status of my possible switch, he said he was having trouble getting through to the woman who is his contact at the recruiter agency, and that she was "hard to get a hold of" and wasn't calling him back.

He wanted to find out if the company would have to pay any sort of fee to "buy" me out. He didn't think so, as I've now been there for a year although there's a sliding scale of a fee they have to pay if they want to permanently hire a contract worker within less than a year's time.

Well, when I called this same woman on a Friday to ask for a raise, she was out of the country on vacation but called me back the following Monday, which I think is pretty darn responsive. When, after talking about a raise I casually asked her if she'd been in touch with my manager recently, she said no, but she'd been meaning to call him. So he wasn't being truthful.

So yesterday, out of the blue, I hear from my old friend, the headhunter who found me the job I'm at now but who now works at a different agency.

He has an opportunity for a contract writer to work for a health insurance company (coincidentally, it's the one I buy my health insurance from) which he thought might be great for me to "supplement" my income with. It's 15-20 hours a week at $45/hr and work from home.

At first I was intrigued and sent him all my writing samples, but then I realized it wouldn't work becus the extra income would quickly put me over $45K, which exceeds the threshold for ACA subsidy and I'd have to pay the subsidy money back at tax time. It certainly wouldn't be worth doing this for just an extra 2 months worth of extra income in 2018.

But then I started thinking about leaving my current contract job for this one. With the substantially higher rate of pay, I could actually work around 18 hours a week to make the same amount of money as I would be earning at my current job working 25 hours a week.

There's a sweet spot of work and income for me, and it's about $40K a year. Work too few hours and I won't cover my typical living expenses, but work too many hours and I risk losing the healthcare subsidy.

I don't want to go back to f/t work becus I still want to help out my dad. He's been doing ok but his doctor recently told him his vision is deteriorating more rapidly. There will come a time when my dad will need to be ferried to all doc appointments, grocery shopping, etc. and I plan to be there for him.

THIS year I will have no trouble earning right up to about $41K (I have investment income and taxable interest too, so can't go much beyond that), but I worked FULL TIME the 1st 3 months of the year. It wasn't until April that I began the abbreviated work hours.

So in 2019, I'll work all 12 months p/t, and I think my income at this current job will be considerably lower as a result, which could be problematic.

So the new opportunity with the health insurance company comes at a a very fortuitous time. I've been so focused this year on not working too many hours that I forgot that next year, I'm going to potentially have the opposite problem: not enough income.

The new job would make that easy to achieve, in less time, and from the comfort of home during nasty winter weather and all year long.

But I need to find out how temporary or perm this contract work is...if they only envision needing someone for a year or so... or less... it probably wouldn't be worth it to walk away from my current job and income, which is fairly certain and secure.

My recruiter friend is submitting my resume this morning. I know it would be sweet payback for him if he poached me from my current agency, the one that laid him off. He didn't think it fair that he had just brought in me and another contract hire to our jobs at my current company only to be let go by his own agency a short time later. I would be happy to inform them of my new agency contact.