. I had the weekend to finalize the wording of an email I've been planning to send to my manager today. Yet I hemmed and hawed when I got into the office, feeling very nervous about the whole thing because so much is riding on it...like my subsidized health insurance.
And if my manager said NO flat out, then what?
I finally sent the email around 2 today, and not long after that, we talked. He's receptive to letting me work 3 days a week, provided he can find someone interested in working part-time (about 16 hours). He has already reached out to my friend the recruiter and another recruiter.
He said he hasn't had much luck in the past finding people who want to work p/t, and that everyone wants to work f/t. Surely there are some moms or others out there who for various reasons would love a steady, but very p/t job?
There is still much to be done. He would have to contact the agency that hired me and put me on the company's payroll. I would still be paid by the hour, but I'd be a W2 employee, and they would need to make me an offer. I expect to get what I'm earning now. I need to talk to him about vacation time; I've heard from others that they only provide 1 week of unpaid leave; I really want to have at least 2 weeks.
I told him I'd continue working f/t for another 2 weeks, or until they found someone. I told him I could be more flexible about when my day ended if I was only working 3 days a week, and he understood that, but he also tossed out the idea of having me work from noon to 6 pm daily. Now that happens to be 6 hours, not 5, so that would be a 30-hour week. I'd really like to work 25 hours. I'm not sure if he was suggesting that as a compromise in case they can't find another part-timer?
A 30-hour week would be problematic for me, mainly because at my current rate of pay, I would gross $48,960. The maximum income you can earn and still qualify for the ACA subsidies is $47,520. I could make $6500 in traditional IRA contributions this year, reducing my pay to $42,460, but then for 2017, for instance, I have about $3,000 worth of interest, dividends and cap gains, so that would bump up my AGI uncomfortably close to the ACA income break-off for subsidies.
I would rather work the 25 hours weekly, which would end up putting me somewhere closer to $40K, well below the ACA subsidy threshold and toward year's end, I could possibly even make my contribution to a Roth IRA (my preference).
Just thinking this through, I'd probably want to wait til December to do that, because if one of the galleries that has my mother's work sells something, that could be another thousand in taxable income. So I'll have to be careful. And also remember I've been working f/t for January and will do so for the early part of February. I'm going to have to track my YTD income.
Can't imagine what I'd do if anything happened to the ACA. What a mess that would be.
Anyway, it feels a little premature to feel "excited," but I am...this could be the start of a whole new chapter of my life; let's call it "semi-retired." It's something I have daydreamed about for YEARS.
Wheels are in motion, and it's scary
January 30th, 2018 at 01:32 am
January 30th, 2018 at 03:11 am 1517281886
January 30th, 2018 at 03:25 am 1517282750
January 30th, 2018 at 03:44 am 1517283876
January 30th, 2018 at 01:02 pm 1517317370
I don't think they would push me out. While I haven't known my manager long, or the owners, but they all seem to be very decent people.
I'd be willing to curtail my hours further, to 20 a week instead of 25, if that helped another proofer who really wanted more hours join the company.
January 30th, 2018 at 06:21 pm 1517336491
January 30th, 2018 at 09:21 pm 1517347294
I'm proud of you for having the courage to ask about this.