So I think I've whined on here before about how I've only had one raise in the three years I've been at my company, which was more than offset by changes to our healthcare and other insurance plans which have put more and more of the burden on me. Wah, wah, wah. I actually don't mind too much most of the time because I feel I get paid pretty well for just being an editor/proofreader; more than I did at my last job as a supervisor, and more than the other editor jobs I saw out there offered when I was looking for a position like this. But I've been getting my paycheck whittled down so gradually that I just now noticed a slightly irritating funfact about my pay compared to NT's.

My gross salary is $49K. NT's gross salary is $41K. We each have our own employer's health insurance because it works out slightly cheaper that way. We each get bus passes through our employer; I pay for mine but it gets deducted pretax from my paycheck, so it's a better deal. NT gets fully reimbursed for his bus pass each month. NT hardly ever needs to go to the doctor so we didn't put any money into his FSA this year; I'm prone to minor health inconveniences and plus my new high-deductible insurance is scary, so I put the maximum in my HSA (and due to my scary high-deductible insurance, it looks like I'll need every penny).

My twice-monthly paycheck nets $1,388.53. NT's twice-monthly paycheck nets $1,334.78. For those of you without a quick math brain or handy calculator, I get $53.75 more than NT twice a month, or $107.50 per month. My salary of $8,000 more per year gives me $1,290 more per year. And that's with me taking a married deduction and NT filing singly.

Let me tell you that if my job required additional hours or stress or responsibility in return for that $8K, I would be royally pissed right now. As it is, we have comparable jobs in terms of stress and hours; if anything, NT's job has more stress and stricter hours. So I'm overall pretty OK with this, but it was quite a blow to realize it just now.

Good reminder, too, to re-evaluate our healthcare options at the end of this year and make really, really sure that it wouldn't be cheaper for me to go on NT's insurance, and to look carefully into whose insurance would be cheaper to put our baby on.

***

On a different note, I've been tracking baby expenses and savings and just decided to make that a page of its own on my baby blog. While I was at it, I thought I would share my expenses so far with you guys, too. This is out-of-pocket, so I'm not counting what insurance covers, but I am counting what's reimbursed by my HSA, which is pretax so there's some savings there that I'm not calculating.

Date Type of (expense)/savings Amount
1/9/2009 Prenatal vitamins (16.10)
4/1/2009 No birth control $20.00
4/15/2009 Prenatal vitamins (24.69)
5/1/2009 No birth control $20.00
6/1/2009 No birth control $20.00
7/1/2009 No birth control $20.00
7/6/2009 Pregnancy test (6.99)
7/21/2009 Large pants (19.99)
7/30/2009 Dr. visit co-pay (10.00)
8/1/2009 No birth control $20.00
8/10/2009 Iron supplements (5.99)
8/11/2009 Iron supplements (5.49)
8/27/2009 UTI pills (10.00)
9/1/2009 No birth control $20.00
9/6/2009 Prenatal classes (155.00)
9/10/2009 OB contract pmt (127.04)

TOTAL (COST)/SAVINGS (261.29)