When a Nursing Pension Is Worth It

A pension should never be the main reason you take a nursing job. It makes sense only if you love your job and your employer values you. For most nurses, there are better ways to get to retirement.

Why employers push the pension

The pay is the best in the country, and the retirement plan sounds great too. Most of us have told ourselves something like that.

We often pick nursing jobs with our eyes fixed on the retirement plan. We miss the stress and the unsafe work that employers will put us through.

Employers don’t want to talk about hiring more staff to lighten our load. They hire travel nurses to fill the endless gaps. Or they lure us in with 401(k) plans and big pensions.

Employers may think retirement benefits will keep us tied to them. This is even more true when they match our 401(k) or make us wait years to keep our pension. Some may even think we don’t know how to handle our own retirement savings.

A $2 million pension story

I once talked with Kristia, a home health nurse in Southern California. She told me her grandmother retired from Kaiser with a $2 million pension plan after working there for decades.

Here is how much you could get in retirement if you worked for Kaiser and earned $150,000 a year on average.

To compare two pensions side by side, see the UC vs Kaiser pension calculator.

When a pension is worth it

If you love your job and your employer values your work, which is rare these days, then the retirement plan is worth thinking about.

But picking a job mainly for its retirement plan should be a last resort. Save it for times when money is tight. It also fits if you don’t want to switch specialties, leave your hometown or look for a better job.

Picture your future self

The person you are today may be very different from who you were five or ten years ago. People change, and so do their goals.

If you get better at saving and change how you think about money, a retirement plan may matter less to you.

For Monica and me, COVID-19 forced us to take a hard look at our money. We had over $128,000 in debt, no savings and no investments. So we rolled up our sleeves and worked our butts off. We took extra shifts, without risking our sanity, to clear that debt. Read the full story of how we paid off $128K of debt.

Now we see that we may not need our employers for as long as we once thought. We grew our net worth from negative $80,000 to almost $700,000 in less than seven years. We now rely less on their 401(k)s, their pensions and even their high hourly pay. That was a big surprise to me.

What matters more to us now

Our seven years in California have left a hole in our lives. We miss our family more than we ever expected. That got stronger after we had our pandemic baby, which changed how we see things.

Having a child at this stage of life was not part of our plan. We had pictured taking a campervan across the country once our daughter left for college. But life has its own plans, and as adults we have to adapt.

A simpler life now sounds better to us. We care less about stuff and more about small joys. That means lunch dates while the kids are in school, traveling as cheaply as we can, and time with friends and family.

Think about your health

Think about your health when you reach retirement age. Many people face health problems by then.

A job that doesn’t make you happy isn’t good for your health. It’s no surprise that nurses are more likely to have back pain, work injuries, miscarriages and even thoughts of suicide because of the stress of our work. An unhappy job can hurt your health, even when the work helps others.

Build your own path to retirement

Look for other ways to fund your retirement so you don’t rely only on your employer. That could mean investing in real estate, like many of the nurses I’ve interviewed on our YouTube channel. Or you could start a side hustle tied to your nursing specialty or something you love.

These steps can get you to the point where you no longer need your employer.

Dr. Kiiyonna Jones, FNP, RN, is a good example. She left her $95/hr job at UCLA to follow her passion for the medspa business. She went from making $150,000+ a year at UCLA to earning over $500,000 a year in profit from her medspa.

She said leaving her job and its benefits was one of the scariest things she ever did. It also turned out to be the smartest choice she ever made. For more ideas, see how nurses actually build wealth.

So don’t wait. Find your passion beyond the bedside and stop letting your employer hold you in place.

Written by Jason, RN. I went from $37 an hour in New York to $143 an hour in California and paid off $128K of debt in under a year. I share our numbers in the Nurses to Riches newsletter and on YouTube.