The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: green daisy on January 21, 2017, 04:06:30 PM
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I'm considering returning to school for a bachelors degree in Health Information Management. I currently have an associates degree in Dental Hygiene. I chose my profession because I wanted something I could do part time while still making a decent income once I had children. However, I feel very burnt out with the profession and have felt this way for quite a while now. My back and neck hurt from contorting my body into a pretzel-like shape to work on patients. My office is very high stress but flexible in ways that benefit my family, such as not getting upset if they need to hire a temp because my child is sick. I worked in an office where I went in with a 103 fever because the doctor wouldn't allow me to take a sick day. He also told me I couldn't have the day off for my grandmother's funeral! I found another hygienist to work for me that day, so he let me take the day off after all. I worked in another office where we had to take our 2 weeks vacation time when he took his vacation. No other time off allowed. So I keep the stressful job because of the nice home balance it comes with.
My marriage is on the rocks and I'm pretty sure we'll eventually be divorced. Marriage counseling failed and I will not do it again. In the case of a divorce, I would likely need to work full time for 8-10 years and I don't think my body or mind could handle it as a hygienist. If our marriage was sound, with ER in mind, the goal is for me to ER in 6 years, with him dropping to low part time for 8 years after that until the kids are out of college. This would give us a nice cushion because H is a spender and will not follow a budget even if it's very generous. He is on board with ER in theory, but doesn't want to cut his spending. Fortunately, his income is decent and my salary basically all gets saved.
Anyway, I've been looking for a while at this Health Information Management field and it seems like it could be a good fit for me. I don't know anyone who does it for a living to ask. Is anyone here in this field? I'm concerned I could possibly be treading into a stressful career. I see many posts on here complaining of stressful careers in management, although this looks different than typical business management.
It would likely take me 3 years to complete the degree. 1 year of part time classes to fill in the holes of missing prerequisites (done relatively cheaply through our local community college) and 2 years of classes at a reputable in-state school (90% online). I would keep my part time dental hygiene job until finished. I'm a good student and love to learn.
To add to this, we purchase our health insurance on the exchange. H is self-employed. I recently had a cancer scare and was very concerned that I could be uninsurable if the ACA were repealed (I know they say they're keeping the pre-existing condition portion of the ACA, but who knows for sure). So, I'm looking for a low stress career choice where I could work full time without hurting my body, possibly until Medicare age in case I were to end up unable to purchase individual health insurance due to pre-existing conditions.