My gross income for September of 2017 was $8,752 which is on par with what I’ve earned ever since walking away from my main job. This includes some dividend income which I’m starting to keep track of and therefore including from now on.
Overall I’ve spent 1 hour working daily in September. I think this is a sweet spot for me. I would prefer to do some work in person since I know I’m forgetting my shit but I’m sure that opportunity will soon arise.
Interesting recent events is that Kaiser Permanente asked me to stop seeing patients for still an unknown reason. It’s been over a week and I haven’t found out why – because I’m working from another country or because I texted a D-pic to a patient??
In place of KP I am have found 2 new telemedicine platforms, Teladoc and Doctors on Demand. This confirms yet again that there are far too many employment opportunities available to healthcare professionals. It’s futile to deal with the idiosyncrasies of a problem company.
American Well – $780
I got hired through a temp agency for American Well which was a mistake in hindsight. My contact persons and scheduling mechanisms are different from the AmWell physicians who work under the Online Care Group. I work through MLS.
The red flags for MLS are multiple as highlighted by my inefficient communication with my contact person at MLS. The website is also poorly done. Clicking on their privacy policy statement reveals latin gibberish – even after translating it.
Also, they have moved healthcare to a virtual platform but still mail out paper checks – wtf. It took over 2 weeks for me to get my paycheck.
My income was $780 but that includes work from August. There is no way to keep track of your income through their online system.
The plan will be to try to switch over to the OCG in the future and if that isn’t an option I’ll probably cut back on AmWell.
Kaiser Permanente – $2,211
I have a soft spot for KP, they were my first. As much as I would love to continue working for them, it has become more drama than it’s worth.
There are still plenty of shifts where I get only 1-2 patients an hours and earn $100 for that time. But there are just as many 5-patients-per-hour shifts at the same rate.
It’s been a great journey but I think I’ve reached the end with KP. It might make for a good retirement gig when I’m 70 and broke but for now they can suck it.
JustAnswer – $3,400
I haven’t actually received the paycheck yet, it arrives on the first day of October and gets deposited in my PayPal account – and not handed out in fucking coins like AmWell.
The income will be a little higher than this but I had to guesstimate. The work has been incredibly easy now that I’ve gotten the hang of JA. Choosing the right questions and the right times in the day is helpful.
I’m embarrassed to admit that if I’m in a pissy mood my interactions reflect it; so do my customer ratings. If I feel irritable I avoid doing an online shift or compensate by going overboard being kind, patient, and caring towards the client.
For the past week their servers been sucky. Really slow response times and I’m unable to reply from my mobile which is one of my tricks to getting more questions. So I have cut back a lot this past week on work.
AirBnb – $116
This was the remaining payment from AirBnb for the tenant staying in the Portland condo. I haven’t yet found a replacement tenant but that may be because I raised the price.
I raised the price because I suspect that after Barcelona I’ll need to head back to Oregon. However, if someone wants my condo bad enough and rents it out then my backup plans are either: Scotland, Australia, Thailand. It doesn’t look like the long-term visa will happen in time so my days in Barcelona are numbered.
The AirBnb process went really smoothly. My co-host did a great job handling everything. The client left a great review except for pointing out that I didn’t have A/C which I disclosed ahead of time.
Dividends – $2,245
This isn’t my complete dividend payout. I wasn’t able to find my dividend incomes for a couple of other accounts so I’ll have to work on that.
I should also mention that this isn’t my monthly dividend income, it’s qurterly. At a 2% dividend yield my portfolio would have to be $1.3 million to produce this kind of income every month.
In my case, $2,245 represents my quarterly dividend income – every 3 months. This is an incredibly sum of money in my case because I only have about $600k invested in the market.
Tax Liability
I figure that my tax liability won’t be too bad. I’ll have the following ways to decrease my taxable income in 2017:
- HSA
- Solo 401k
- work related expenses
- IRA contribution
My income won’t be very high this year so after personal exemption, itemized deductions, and the deductions above, I’ll probably qualify for some tax breaks as well.
And since I get audited every year by the IRS, I have decided to step up my deductions game. This year I have kept disgustingly detailed records of my spending. I have made sure that whatever I spend is mostly deductible – as in, work related.
If I flushed the toilet while taking a shit during my JustAnswer shift then that’s getting added to the itemized deductions. The auditor can view turd pics with timestamps instead of receipts to prove they were work-related flushes.
Looking Ahead
I have friends visiting in October so I won’t be doing much work. I suspect my earnings will be minimal.
Teladoc and Doctors On Demand should finalize my credentialing in October so I’ll put in a few hours in order to become familiar with their platform and I’ll share my reviews here.