Hi everyone! I haven't been on in forever, looks like the boards have been pretty quiet.

You may remember that I was waiting to hear about job news last time I was on here. Well, I got a promotion to manager, with a 17% raise, which is awesome. I am at a different hospital, still part of my hospital system, but a larger facility which will give me wonderful experience and I am loving it.

However, they did not give me the head job like they basically told me they would. Instead, they hired someone at the Director level (we had never had a director level position in my department before) and she is a completely insane, rude, crazy bitch. We (my coworker and I) have already been in HR because she went off on my coworker for something she didn't do and was completely unprofessional and verbally abusive. She has made enemies all over the facility and everybody hates her. I can only hope that she won't last long. She's close to retirement, so maybe she'll hate working with us and just decide to retire.

Otherwise, I love my job itself, am still working my 2nd job, which I think I have about a year and a half left to do before all CC debt is paid off. I have most all of my CC debt transferred at interest rates of 4.99% or less so I can pay them off faster.

I'll try to check in more often, but am just plugging along trying to get stuff paid off!

Well they officially asked me yesterday to be the interim manager for all 3 hospitals in my hospital system! I love the one I am at, and would have to move to the biggest of the 3 hospitals, which is a slightly farther commute. I figured out an alternate route which, according to Mapquest, is only about 2 minutes longer and avoids the toll, so hopefully that won't be too bad! It also comes with a 5% raise, that will turn into a lot more if I decide to take the position permanently.

They said they know I want to move up in my career, and they can't afford to lose me, so if I want to be the manager of all 3 hospitals, it's mine, and if I don't like, I can come back to my hospital and be the manager just over here.

I guess they really really like me!

So several weeks ago I heard about a manager position coming open at one of our sister hospitals. I am required, as in internal candidate, to tell my boss I am applying, so I did, and she passed it on to her superiors. As a result, they are working on changing the reporting structure of my position, making me a manager here (of myself, but hey, it's still a title!) and giving me a pay raise (no idea how much).

The position I am planning on applying for still hasn't been posted so there has been no progress there. I have no idea what's taking them so long. It would be a minimum of a $12K raise, and probably closer to $20K, realistically.

Then today my boss gave her notice. Now they REALLY need to keep me! We have 2 other people who started in September, neither of whom are board certified (I am). I was supposed to hear about the changes to my current position "early this week" and here we are on Wednesday, but that's probably good because now that my boss is leaving I'll have more negotiating power.

So no matter what happens, it will mean a promotion and more money for me, but I just don't know exactly what or when that will be! Hopefully it will be more money than I ever could have hoped for and I can get this CC debt paid off even faster!

Hi all! So I have some potential changes coming on the job front and I was just thrown a curveball. So my immediate supervisor is a lovely woman but kind of a train wreck, and the person our whole department now reports to is a raging bitch (pardon my french, haha). My plan had always been to stay here until my supervisor retires, and then apply for her position, but the way things are now, I wouldn't want it! I happen to know she has currently applied for another job and is waiting to hear back.

So there is now a manager opportunity in my field, head of a department of 4 people, with my same company but a different hospital (so all seniority, vacation time, 401K matching, etc would transfer), that will be posted any day now and I am going to apply for. There has been a lot of turnover there but I have heard things are getting a lot better (from the people I would be supervising).

So I went down today to tell the head of my hospital that I was going to apply for it. I don't report to her, so I didn't need let her know per policy, but I like and respect her and wanted her to hear it from me (someone else who works here is married to "raging bitch" boss and I don't trust him to keep his mouth shut after wife tells him at the dinner table tonight).

She told me that she has been pushing to have me report directly to her, and asked me if I would consider staying if it came with a title change (to manager) and a pay raise. I told her I would certainly consider it, but that it would need to happen fast because I expect this other opportunity to come fast (I've already spoken to the hiring manager and they seem to really want me to come work there). I'm not going to stay here on the promise that something will happen in the future that might never actually happen. She said she will go to our CEO today and tell her that they need to do whatever it takes to keep me here.

So bottom line is, I love my hospital, I love the person I would wind up reporting to, and I would most definitely stay if they made me a good offer.

So when they come to me and ask what it would take to make me stay, how much do I ask for?? I've use salary.com, payscale.com, and indeed.com, and I don't make anywhere near what those sites say I "should" be making. I have never found those sites to be all that accurate. My field is small and specialized so there's not a lot to go off of from online research. I was thinking that if I took the new manager position at the other hospital, I'd ask for about 10% more, but knowing my company they'd offer me a fair bit less than that.

Any advice from people who have been there? I've never been told "tell me what we need to give you to make you stay" before and I want to ask for as much as they might reasonably give me without looking crazy!

So my husband got a company phone in January, and we finally decided to cancel his personal cell phone! he didn't like carrying 2 phones around and there's no reason for us to pay for his 2nd phone if we didn't need to. That will save us $50 a month, but of course we got hit with a $290 early termiantion fee. However, his phone was only 3 months old so I am selling thephone and we will break about even.

I have tried to sell it on Facebook groups, Craigslist, etc., in an attempt to avoid Ebay where they will take 10% of my money and then Paypal will take even more of what I have left... any suggestions?

When I googled different sites they all offered me about $210 for the phone, which it seems I can sell on Ebay for about $290 (minus all of the fees, but I would still come out with about $240 or so profit, almost enough to cover the termination fee).

We also refinanced my husband's truck and got a lower payment, so more to add to the snowball!

I haven't posted any blogs in a long time. It's been quite a year so far.

Most recently, my grandma died on Friday and we're heading to NY for the wake and funeral on Tuesday. It'll be an added expense, but we knew it would be coming soon and deliberately didn't make plans to go to NY this summer because we knew we'd probably be making this trip. She was 88, had battled cancer for a very long time (12 years) and stopped chemo about 5 years ago. They told us 19 months ago that she had a week to live, so I am extremely grateful for all the extra time we had with her, and glad she is no longer in pain. Also tremendously sad, as we were very close.

In other life news, we just returned from a 10 day vacation to Disney World, almost entirely paid for by cashing in my vacation time from work. Could I have cashed it in and put it all towards my debt instead? Sure, but we decided to do this instead and it was worth it to us.

DH now has a company car and we are selling his pickup truck. We will probably make about $7000 profit on it (we owe $9K and it's worth $16-17K), and then save $400 a month in truck payments, $60 a month in insurance, and about $300 a year for personal property tax.

We are then debating between selling our popup camper, or putting a hitch on the minivan so we can tow it locally (which is where we do most of our camping anyway). The problem with selling the camper is that we are underwater on it, and while we could take the profit from the truck and pay off the camper and then sell it, I think it is better use of our money to put it towards the credit cards which have a higher interest rate. I'm not sure exactly what we'll decide to do there....

But we are still making good progress!

On Monday, a high school classmate of mine lost her husband in a car accident on icy roads. He was 32 and they have an 8 month old baby. On the same day, there was a fire down the street from one of our family members, and a 12 year old and her grandmother passed away. Granddaughter ran back into the house to try and save her grandma, and the little girl's dad ran in after them to try and save his daughter and his mother. He's the only one who made it out. Today we had icy weather here, and my husband's coworker's father was killed in an accident. His truck slid off the icy road and it was 5 hours before anyone saw his truck down the embankment. Can't help but wonder if he could have been saved if he was found earlier. What a depressing start to 2015! I wish everyone a healthy and safe rest of the year!

So my mother in law works in HR and emailed me on Wednesday and said that they just processed a $600 bonus for me! My company doesn't give Christmas bonuses or anything like that, so the only thing I can think of is that my director finagled something for me getting my certification in October. It was put in as "on cal pay" and I am on call 24 hours a day and don't get any extra pay, so it's definitely not really on call pay. It will probably be $400 after taxes, so that will all go to my Discover card.

We are in NY this weekend visiting my family, so we will have some extra expenses. Just paid $32 to book a parking spot in Manhattan tomorrow for my dad's 65th birthday party, which is a lunch paid for by his girlfriend. We spent $50 on 2 pizzas today (yikes, NY prices!!) but this will feed us tomorrow night and possibly Sunday night as well. Have a family brunch Sunday that will be about $100 for my family of 4. Having some girlfriends over to our hotel Sunday night but that won't cost anything. We packed snacks for the drive today, and ate lunch when we got to my grandma's house, whereas we usually stop for a $35 lunch on the road.

Also on a good financial note, DH ordered his company car today! It will take 2-3 months to come in, most likely, but when it does, we think we will sell his pickup truck, giving us about a $7000 profit, to be put towards credit cards. We won't have any way to pull our popup camper then, but we are upside down on it, so have decided to just keep it for a while. I'd rather use that $7K to pay off higher interest credit card debt that to pay off the difference in what we owe on the camper. We can still have "campouts" in the backyard, and might be able to borrow my in-laws truck if we want to go camping with it a few times. We'll play that by ear.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!

So I like my job enough, and I make good money (about $69K)but I don't have enough work to do and there are a lot of aspects of it that just don't interest me. I look at my boss and can't imagine ever wanting her job - so much tedious & boring work. She's in her early 60's, so it's extremely likely I could have her job when she retires if I stick around.

I've been with the same hospital system for almost 9 years now, and 2 years ago I left being the lab supervisor to go to infection control. So a few months ago, my old boss resigned from her position. After a lot of thinking, I have decided to apply for her job. The lab director seems really excited that I have shown interest. HR can't talk to me about the salary range until I officially apply, and the job just got posted online, so I will apply and then see what they say!

If it is less than I make now, then I will just stick to what I'm doing. I have a lot of flexibility (good to have with 2 young kids) and I have a big office all to myself where I can do whatever I want to when I don't have a lot of work to do. But I am just not all that stimulated by the work. It's by no means a bad job to have, but microbiology is my first love!

Wish me luck and let's hope the salary is much more!!

Paid off $1800 of credit card debt this past month (from June to July)! Big improvement from my debt increasing from May to June. We'll get there! Also have a $5300 check we're waiting on from the insurance from when our camper got damaged. That will be awesome and my husband fixed the damage himself for under $100!

So it is the "norm" around here, at least in my son's circle of friends, to have your birthday party out at one of the many bowling alleys, mini-golf places, inflatable bouncy places, etc., that are in town. All to the tune of $200-$350. And yes, we have been happily paying this much for his birthday parties since he was 2 years old. But now we have come to our senses and realized that 7 year old boys can have just as much fun doing something a lot cheaper!

I am trying to convince my husband to have his party at home. One concern is that it is at the end of July and it is often 100 degrees in Virginia at that time of year. Also, parents typically stay with their kids for the party, which doubles the number of people in our house. Our house is substantially smaller than most of his classmates (at 2200 sq ft, so that just goes to show the size of his friends' houses!), so he would be limited in the number of friends he can invite.

Then there is the hassle of cleaning up before and after. That alone almost makes it worth paying $300 to have it somewhere else!

As of now, if hubby will agree, I'm thinking make your own personal sized pizzas, maybe decorate your own cupcakes as well, and any games I can come up with (both indoors and outdoors, but indoor games are a little touger to come up with.

We do also have a sprinkler and water hopscotch, but then I have to deal with wet little boys coming back in my house

Any suggestions for how to make this affordable and still make it fun for kids (and their parents) who are accustomed to fancier parties?