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Any PAs working FT in non-benefitted position?


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Hi everyone, wondering if anyone here works FT in a non-benefitted position, what your experience has been, and if you'd recommend it. I've been offered a position with a private practice, SP and job overall seem cool, and starting salary would be higher than that for the typical new grad in my state (I just became licensed this month), with further increases planned after the first few months. However, in exchange for higher rate of pay, there are zero benefits; no medical, dental, vision, retirement plan, PTO, etc. They're flexible with time off (take it whenever you need to), but it's unpaid. Anyone in a situation like this? Around how much are you spending on health insurance? How do you handle saving for retirement? I know there are IRAs, but those have pretty low contribution limits. I'm single, so not able to jump on a spouse's benefits. I'm also in my mid-thirties, so making sure I'm saving enough for retirement now is important to me.  I've had a bunch of interviews over the past week and the offers are starting to come in, but this is the only one that would have no benefits at all, not sure if it would be worth it in the long run, even with the higher pay.  Any thoughts are appreciated, thanks!

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As you consider a non-benefited position you need to get hard data about how much you'll pay for various things:

  • Healthcare: look into high-deductible HSA plans.  With that, unused contributions stay yours.  In effect, it becomes another retirement account as withdrawals for healthcare are tax free and at age 65 you can withdraw for any purpose, just like an IRA/401K, but withdrawals not for healthcare are taxable like IRA withdrawals.
  • Find out if you can establish a 401K account - much higher contribution limits.
  • Find out the cost of dental & vision.
  • Find out if the employer will provide med mal coverage - with tail.

Once you have the cost of these items, you can compare this offer to ones with potentially lower pay but better benefits.

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This is basically a 1099 independent contractor job. You will spend a lot on medical/dental/vision/retirement/cme/dea/disability/life insurance/licensing/professional memberships, etc. Only you can decide if it is worth it. I have been working 1099 for a while now and recently took a part time job with benefits to get out of paying for all of them. I will still have one 1099 job(instead of two), but the savings for me personally will be huge.

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  • 1 month later...

No benefits (pto, ret, insurance, etc) does not mean equivalency to 1099 (vice W2.)

1099 means the worker pays both half of the social security tax as well, yet can deduct many things that the W2 worker can't.  I think the way Emed is doing it is the best as the W2 job pays for the social security tax (which is capped at income over around $140k), leaving the 1099 pay without any SS tax...yet still having the ability to write off massive expenses.

I think it is becoming more common for medical jobs to have less benefits, especially PTO.  I don't get any PTO or CME time at either of my jobs.  

As you said, they are offering you a higher rate of pay in lieu of the benefits.  You will have to see if the cost of necessary benefits are worth that extra pay.

 

As to retirement - if you do not have access to an employer-run retirement (401k, 403b), then you have many other options.  You can open an individual IRA and fund it to your 401K limits, then roll that to a ROTH.  Or you can open a SEP IRA and put something like $55k/year into it pre-tax.

 

HSAs are great, especially investment HSAs for young healthy people.  Good place to invest many thousand pre-tax money for years that grows tax free as well.

 

Good luck and let us know

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Boatswain2PA
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I did this for about a year. It was a W2 position in a union. My job hours were cut to part time, so I finally made the jump as the new place pays much better. I went on my spouses insurance, so that wasn't an issue, but I'm sure you can get a decent rate on a high deductible plan if you're young and healthy. I worked as many hours as I wanted while per diem. After about a year they created a full time benefitted position for me.

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  • 1 month later...
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Count on 20k for health insurance for family. 
need about 7 week’s PTO captured in your salary. 
 

so if you need 100k (reasonable new grad). 
plus 20k insurance 

Plus 14k for pto

plus other bennies 5k 

for working 45 weeks/year you need to earn 140k. 
 

this is $3111/week pay. 
 

if they are willing do it

 

oh yeah don’t forget the 20 gets taxed so actually needs to be 25 k. 
 

 

you start to understand why they don’t want to pay benefits.  

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14 hours ago, ventana said:

Count on 20k for health insurance for family. 
need about 7 week’s PTO captured in your salary. 
 

so if you need 100k (reasonable new grad). 
plus 20k insurance 

Plus 14k for pto

plus other bennies 5k 

for working 45 weeks/year you need to earn 140k. 
 

this is $3111/week pay. 
 

if they are willing do it

 

oh yeah don’t forget the 20 gets taxed so actually needs to be 25 k. 
 

 

you start to understand why they don’t want to pay benefits.  

More like 24k for health insurance if you actually want good insurance that covers dental, vision, etc

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