Nurse Salary —So how much can you
REALLY make as a Nurse?
Yes, you should love what you do. The nurse salary however, is a pretty important factor to consider when choosing a career. I will be honest and tell you that the pay scale for nurses varies A LOT! Your ability to be flexible, advance your education, and your location (city and state) will make a huge impact on your income.
Let’s talk about just base pay. This is assuming you will be looking for a job in a hospital or some other entity that pays by the hour. It is important to know what base rate you would like to aim for when you are applying for jobs. Base Rate refers to the amount you are paid per hour excluding differentials such as night shift pay, holiday pay, overtime etc.Figuring out what your yearly income will be is easy from there. For example: When I started nursing I knew I was going to work 36 hours per week, every week of the year (hello broke college graduate), and make $18 per hour (look at that little number!)
To figure my yearly income I did the following: $18(pay per hour) x 36(hours per week) x 52(weeks per year) =$33,696 total yearly gross income. Please remember this is not your take home pay. This is what you are taxed on. I usually plan on a 30% tax rate to be safe.Therefore my take home pay was really: $33,696(gross income) x 0.30(or your tax percentage)
=$10,108 to taxes Keep going….$33,696(gross income) - $10,108(money to taxes)
=$23,585 take home nurse salary or $1965 per month. That sounds about right if I remember correctly!
According to PayScale.com, the average nurse salary today is somewhere around $50,000 per year. Take this number with a grain of salt as there are huge differences in pay from place to place. There are several things that will affect this base rate of pay in your nurse salary.
Some of these are: - Year of experience
- Education Level in school(depends on the area you live)
- Location—which correlates to cost of living
- Your ability to be flexible (travelling positions, float pool, etc)
- Loyalty to an institution (you will find nurses don’t fare very well in this category)
- Day versus Night shift
- Weekday versus Weekend shift
- Professional Certifications
and probably many more factors I have missed on this list.
Like I said, your nurse salary can vary GREATLY. Be smart about your nursing career. What do you want to get out of your career? Do you want stability and a familiarity of colleagues, or do you want to make more money? I know many nurses that are the breadwinners of their family but tend to work independently a lot. I also know many nurses that complain about how little money they make, but love the people they work with everyday. These are nurses working in the same hospital doing the same job! Either one of these decisions may be right for you. It all depends on your individual situation. Just know there are options out there when you start looking into what your nurse salary will be!
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