Sticker shock

I got my first full paycheck today, which was an ambivalent experience ... on one hand, it's a great moment, the first tangible reward for a new job. But then I looked at the net pay ...

I'm sure everyone's heard this story, from a parent or whomever, of the first paycheck at the first real job, when it suddenly hits home just how much of your money goes elsewhere ... well, that was me riding up in the elevator this morning, after picking up my pay stub at my mailbox. The poor sweet old lady beside me was treated to me suddently bursting out, as I looked at my bottom line, "Oh, you're shitting me!" To her credit, she didn't flinch or look at me. Most likely, she was just saying inwardly, "Ah, new junior faculty."

It's not so much the tax as the other deductions ... we spend so much of our part-time job lives thinking of the utopia that is benefits that we forget they cost something. I did a quick calculation when I got to my office -- I take home 58% of my pay. On the other hand, I now have donated $188 to my pension plan here at MUN.

So a whole lot of the expenditures I was planning for this pay period will have to wait ... I'll just keep repeating the mantra "pension-dental-medical-tenure" over and over.