Money, And All That Jazz

So, you're telling me that my bachelor degree is actually going to benefit me?

Wait...what?

Let's talk about a couple big blessings real quick. Neither Nathan or I were real keen on the idea of putting Levi and Asher into daycare, especially as infants. And seeing as how I make the majority of our family income and provide the benefits like insurance, me staying home with the boys just wasn't an option. Which left Nathan as the reasonable choice for lowering his work hours and being a stay at home dad. And thankfully, his boss was more than willing to work with him on that so now he stays home with the boys while I go to work to bring home the...err...formula.

The unfortunate part of this story is that staying home required Nathan to cut back on his hours, big time. Then again, he definitely wouldn't have been able to work 40 hours each week AND take care of the boys but it was going to put quite the crunch on our bank accounts. That's where the huge blessings and good timing comes in.

A week after coming back to work at the beginning of this month, I received my Step 3 raise for having been employed at dispatch for two years. Around the same time, our association finalized our negotiations and we all received a 4% raise. Which, needless to say, has somewhat lessened the gap between what our two incomes use to be and what they are now.

And then tonight, while I was at work, one of our officers was talking about what it would take to get her intermediate certification. You see, through Oregon's Department of Public Safety Standards and Training (DPSST), which runs the academy I went to, each certification (police, fire, telecommunications, emergency medical dispatch, corrections, parole & probation, etc) has three levels of certification: basic, intermediate, and advanced. Oh, and there's manager, director, etc, but we're not going to worry about those right now.

This is where my bachelor degree comes in. As our officer was talking, I realized that I may be getting close to being able to apply for my intermediate certification. I looked it up on DPSST's website and sure enough, the combination of my Basic DPSST Academy Training and my bachelor's degree means that I only have to have two years of experience before I can apply to be an intermediate. Remember how I mentioned earlier that this month I got my two year raise? If I didn't have my bachelor's degree, I'd have to have a combination of several more years of experience and training hours turned into college credits. I knew those four years of college were going to come in handy some day!

Needless to say, I have already filled out the application and have faxed a request to Pacific for an official transcript to send off to DPSST. Which will mean another raise in the near future.

See? Major blessings that all equal us being able to keep the boys out of day care and still in formula and diapers!