13. Can You Make $100K as a Social Worker? [Podcast Episode]

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Hello everyone. Welcome back to the social work to wealth podcast. And today we're going to be talking about, can you make a $100k as a social worker? I wrote a blog post in, I think I wrote it in July, 2024. ⁓ can you make a hundred K as a social worker? So Faith and I are just going to kind of talk about all, all the details of that or takeaways and yeah, just our perspectives on.
social work salaries in general, cause yikes. Cause yikes is right. ⁓ yeah. So, okay. So Taylor, you gave up this idea where you made this survey, you put it out to your readers or just on your website, you just kind of like put it out. Yeah. I put it out on Instagram. had like, there's like a couple of work Facebook groups. put it in. Yeah. And you.
basically asked people, like social workers specifically, hey, fill out the synonymous survey, tell us how much you make, where are you from, all this really kind of interesting information, are you licensed or not licensed? And you got a lot of people responding. was, when I saw this, was like, damn, like that's, that's exciting. clearly people are interested in sharing this information. social workers want to talk about money, apparently.
Apparently we to talk about money. We care about it. Salaries. Yeah. think the first day I had like over 250 people fill it out. And at this point there's been like 700 people. It's so cool. If anyone wants to see the list, it's kind of messy. Cause you know, people will type in their salary just like in different ways. But anyways.
The link will be in the show notes. All the important links that we talk about today will be in the show notes. Cause it is really, I don't know, it's just interesting to see all these different salaries. So yeah. it's something we don't really talk about or know. when you graduate, you don't know. You're like, I'm happy to get a job. And so this is really awesome to see, Hey, you know, over 700.
people have responded so far. think your article or your blog post was written when there was like 600 individuals filling it out. It's kind of cool to see like the spread of salaries. So that you have a little bit more of an idea of what you should be negotiating or what you should be asking for. And also it kind of left me feeling a little encouraged, but also a little discouraged. I had these mixed emotions about it. Like, you can make a hundred thousand dollars.
spoiler alert, guess, that is possible. But there's also a lot of social workers who are not making anything near that. No, no, I think I felt similarly. was like, wow, this is amazing. And also so discouraging. why am I seeing that there are people with their masters making $50,000? that's absolutely, it's just unacceptable. Just like period.
And definitely after grad school. I didn't know. I mean, I don't remember any conversations about salaries to you. All I remember hearing was you're not in it for the money. And I've said that a million times, but that's all I remember hearing. so you just are preparing yourself for a low salary. And just like socially, socially, when you go, go talk to people about what you're doing or what you do for a living there, there's
mixed reactions to that? Like, ⁓ you must not make a lot of money or I heard that I heard that one time. feel like in I remember vividly I was in an Uber in Wisconsin. I don't know where I was going. But I told someone, you know, I told them I was a social like in social work school and they were just like, ⁓ they don't make a lot of money. And I'm just like, first of all, why? Why do you need to? Why do you? Why do you need to say that to me? what is what is
point of that. Thanks. I'm not, I'm not here to make a ton of money, but I also, I do want to make a decent lovable wage, you know? ⁓ so it definitely was discouraging to see these low salaries, but also there, there were quite a few. I'm going to bring it up. It's yeah. Let's, let's talk about like that specific part of your blog post or
the information you got. think it was, you wrote down what percentage of social workers make $100,000 or more. Yeah, so there were over 600 salaries, but I only took the ones from the US. And so we had 567 that were US only and 81 salaries. So 14.3 % of those social workers in the US made $100,000, which I was like, I don't know.
That's kind of a lot. I mean, it's maybe it was more than I expected, but it also was like, wow, there also were, there's 59 entries of people making between 90K and $99,000. So that's pretty good. Okay. And then.
three entries of people making over 200,000. like, okay. What are they doing? Whoa. But I do want to point out, half of the social workers, 43.7 % make between 30,000 and 60,000. So like 248 entries, literally almost half.
Just like, how did we, how did we get here? What are we doing? Obviously you and I are here to like try to, we're, we're, we're trying, we're, we're just throwing stuff out there. We're to see if we can impact this in any way, but I'm just like, how did we get here? Yeah. Yeah. And when I look at this pie chart, I'm like,
Okay, 75 % of social workers make under $90,000 a year. 70%, only 25 %ish, 22 % make over a hundred thousand or over. so I feel like that's really, and $30,000? what is going on? I, and you have your masters or you have your...
bachelor's degree. That's what is poverty line like 28,000 a year. this is problematic. And yeah, you know, our goal is to bring awareness to this issue and to kind of say, Hey, we need to make more. Our social workers deserve more. Our social workers. This is a problem. It's really cool that there it's possible in the profession to absolutely make a hundred thousand dollars. looks like
definitely if that's achievable, but this is not, I hope we see this pie chart change over time. That's like art, right? that would be really cool. I mean, goals, right? More people are making over at least $80,000 and we just like have this form available for the foreseeable future and
But also I'm just like, and I feel like this is a conversation for a whole other episode, but it's just like, how do we get there? know, what can we do as social workers to, yeah, to make a livable wage? It's challenging. Yeah, I agree. I it's challenging, but it's something that I think is really important. And I think we've talked about this before. It's just like our profession.
needs to be paid what they're worth so that we survive as a profession. So the burnout rate is different. So we can work less hours to make a salary that will take care of our needs so we can then care for others. And so I just think it is an important thing to talk about. yeah, we want to uplift the profession as a whole. And so first is to expose the problem.
We're exposed. we have a problem. Houston, we have a problem. this is... problem. This is disgusting. It's honestly pretty, pretty sad. I'm like... I just can't. I really No wonder the burnout rate is so high. Right. Right. And I'm on the list right now. there's a social worker who...
they work in the UK making 32,000. this person in North Carolina, bachelor's making 32,000. It's you can't, you just can't, I'm sorry. You can't live off of that. You can't live off of that. So someone also just filled out the survey or the form.
like 10 minutes ago. So that's cool. Someone from Massachusetts, I'm just gonna throw this out there. They make $80,000. They have an MSW encouraging. Great. Years have been in the field, one to three, they work at a community mental health clinic and they are licensed. I love that. I love that like we just had an entry come in while we're doing this. That's amazing. And 80,000, I'm like, okay.
Okay. And just starting out in the profession, masters licensed, that's you should be at. That's where we need to be at. that should be the lowest. We're, making 80 K out of grad school. that's, yeah, we, definitely need that. One thing that was surprising couple. just like the over 200, there's three, three salaries making 200 K. I honestly,
did not expect for there to be any social workers that were making over $200,000. I've never heard of that before. So. I think the only time I've heard of that is if you were a professor and you were running like some sort of research group. think there were a couple professors in our department at UW Madison who were making into the 200,000s, but they have their PhD, they're running research groups.
they're training other PhDs. I think one of them ran like a whole center. So I think that's the only time I've heard, you know, and they're at a D1 school. I mean, it's like a, you know, UW Madison's like, you know, so I think, and you look at what you wrote in your blog posts, the one that's making 300,000. Is in Massachusetts, right? working as a therapist in an agency. In an agency.
and they only have four to six years experience. kind of therapy or what? So there must be some sort of like they run their own practice and they take a cut of clinicians working under them or maybe I'm totally off on that. I know I'm curious because I also had there were two options for therapy. It was like therapy private practice or therapy agency. So you work in an agency. What does that look like? But they also-
she or he runs the agency. It could be that they run the agency and then they're kind of like over a bunch of clinicians because that's a significant amount. I know, yeah, that's a lot. again, this isn't everybody, this is 600 people. So we're just touching or scratching the surface of what kind of sellers are out there. We would love, I think,
Taylor and I share this, we would love to have more people fill this out. That would be awesome. Right? So if you want to fill it out, please, please do that. Please do. We'll be in the show notes. And another thing about these three salaries is their hours worked per week. 50 plus, the one who's making 240. I mean, yeah, we have 58 hours per week, 55 hours per week, 50 hours per week. So.
It's just interesting to see the potential correlation with more hours equaling more salary. I'm not sure. I didn't look at the rest of the salaries to see if that was just a relationship. it's just interesting that all three of these salaries are over 50 hours a week. Which, no thank you. No thank you.
I'm tired after 40. I'm like, I get to 35 somehow? Yeah, I know. So the one thing I thought was really interesting from this is normally you think licensure, clinical licensure equals more salary, higher income, but the one social worker you have here is $240,000 a year, 10 years plus experience, 55 hours a week, no licensure. And I was like, that's uninteresting.
⁓ and they put their field as other. So it would be interesting to kind of be like, what are you, what is that other? Very curious to know what you do live in Oregon. But I think, ⁓ cause I think state, does depend on state. Also you, you wrote about that too, that can influence some of the salaries that we're seeing for sure. Right. Like the one of the salaries here is, mean, Arizona, Oregon, Massachusetts. I.
I feel like those are, you know, some of the higher, not highest, but more on the high range, maybe mid of cost of living. obviously that influences it, know? And I think- Yeah, but not being licensed is interesting. It's like- totally. Cause that's, I feel like that's, mean, I did write about that. most of the people- Yeah, in here it's-
who are making over $100,000 are licensed. So it's like, okay, that potentially, I mean, that clearly is like a way to potentially increase your salary. Like most people, think it's, yeah, over half, 70 % of the people. Yeah, 70%. Of the respondents who are making over $100,000 are licensed. So if you're wondering- have their clinical license.
what can you do? You know, there's, there's some things that are just like not in our control sometimes where it's like, I have to live in this state that pays terrible, you know, ⁓ or have to work in this area or whatever. So it's like, there's some things you can't really control, but getting licensed in a sense too, I'm like, can you control getting licensed? Sort of like, yes, you can, you can pursue it. But then there's also I need to pay for supervision. need to pay for study materials for the,
the exam and all that stuff. know, caveat there, getting licensed potentially if you're able to could, you know, help you make over a hundred thousand. another thing is getting a master's. mean, this could be a whole nother podcast about how expensive master's programs are and why are they so expensive when our salaries don't reflect.
the investment that we're paying. No, totally. school at all. based on this, I'm sure, it does seem that those who have masters are making higher salaries. Yeah. No, and that's a good point. Cause what, I was out of state in Wisconsin and my tuition was $90,000 for two years. Was I making $90,000 when I got out of school? No, I wasn't.
My first salary at a grad school was $40,000 in 2018. that's, that's a problem. That's like a huge problem. Cool. I've met with, you know, individuals who are wanting to be social workers or going to go to get their masters in social work. And it's 90, it's $90,000. It's 90,000. And I just, cannot believe that.
I find that so incredibly difficult to accept. mean, for me, my master's program was significantly cheaper because I got in-state tuition. went to a state school. So I only paid $20,000 for my master's. For the whole thing? Mm-hmm. ⁓ my I think it was $12,000 a year. So I find that my strategy is go live in the state you want to go.
Get your master's in, work there for a year, get in state tuition. let's not, maybe that extra year of just working is worth it instead of paying 90 grand. Go get an apartment, move states, invest a little bit more time, cause you'll pay less money. That's what I did. I was like, I can't afford, I mean, there's no way I could afford, I would have been able to afford UW Madison unless I lived in the state. And it wasn't like my plan. I wasn't like, huh, I'm going to do that. It was.
my life circumstances aligned and all of that, but that is affordable. You can pay your way through then. I paid my way through that. worked and paid tuition at same time, saved a little. So, I mean, that's how it should be, or there should be a lot more opportunities for social workers too, if they work for the state afterwards or programs that pay off your student debt.
Absolutely. And it's like, okay, there's public service loan forgiveness, it's like, it's 10 years. give me a break. we, can we get five years, please? That's, that's what I'm having. three. I don't know. or we should just not have, we should just not have student debt anyways. Right. That's something that we've talked about that we just want for everyone. no, there shouldn't be any social workers who have student loan debt. period. yeah.
In terms of the years of experience for like making over a thousand dollars. ⁓ I thought that was kind of interesting. ⁓ about 50%. So 49.4 % of people had over 10 years of experience, ⁓ which.
it made me feel excited and hopeful. I was like, wow, okay. There's hope for us. think that that essentially is the whole reason why I wrote this article anyways. think most, a lot of the conversations that I have on Instagram and you and I have are about just highlighting low social work salaries and all of that. But
this article I wanted to share and show people, it's possible. there's, it is hard and there's a lot of variables. ⁓ but just kind of wanted to take a different perspective of like, not everyone in our profession is getting paid shit. ⁓ and there's potentially as you move through your career and like there can be opportunities to make more money. And I think.
you know, having seen this of 10 plus years, know, 49 % of people who, who are making over a hundred K, you know, have been working for 10 plus years. And I was like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. there's growth opportunity. you can make more the longer you're in the profession if you don't burn out. And there's that right. is burnout rates. How many do we have? We make it to 10 years.
⁓ my god, right? Yeah, you can make it to 100k if you can. you make it 10 years. Wow. that's, that's your reward. ⁓ huh. And I mean, you and I both, yeah, like you have to be, you have to be social workers have to have an incentive to stay and money.
works for me. I don't know. Yeah. That feels good. It makes me feel like, yeah. we've talked about this before too. how does society as a larger, as a greater system show that they value something. It's monetized, right? we pay people their worth in our larger society. And so this is a reflection of in my view, how society really views social workers.
They're not, it's not a profession that should be paid well. It's something that is, you you have a good heart, know, bless your heart. You have such a good heart, you know, well, I do, but I also, I also want to make a living and I want to, I want to make a good salary and can I have both? Right. We've talked about that a lot, but yeah. Right. why can't I have both? Why is it that if I'm
in a profession, helping profession. mean, you know, teachers experience the same thing of just like, yeah. Why is it that this kind of work is devalued? And yet if we weren't here, if social workers weren't serving our communities, what would that look like? What would that look like? I don't, I don't even know. I don't want to think about it. It's actually pretty, I think concerning. that's scary.
That's a little terrifying to do a lot. I'm not trying to be all on our high horse of social orders or we're super heroes, whatever. There is a place for that. And I'm not trying to go there, but it's seriously, we are really important to society. We do really good work. We care about the work that we do and the communities that we work with. And so it's just kind of a slap in the face.
Yeah, totally. And I would love to bring on somebody who can talk about the history of social work and maybe fully conceptualize and break down why it is that social workers historically have been underpaid or make less and kind of talk about that trend. because we're trying to change it. We're out here trying to change it. So I think it'd be cool to talk about you also write
about the different types of professions there are in social work from this survey you put out and then you broke it down. ⁓ yeah. So the fields that most social workers are making over a hundred K. Yeah. So, ⁓ what are those fields? can't find it. So 21, there's 21 fields in the entire data, but only 11 of them were represented in the salaries of making a hundred K or more. And
The top ones, the very top one was hospital, which I have a story about that because I remember when I went to the field placement, fair or whatever that we had before our first year, I flew in and I remember each, you know, each field faculty was like at their table and with other students from
you know, a first or second year or whatever. And I remember the one, my, my professor for the, I think she was the, the aging, was aging medical social work, whatever, but she stands up, introduced herself and she was like, and medical social workers make, make them make a lot of money, make, you know, are one of the higher paid salaries social workers, know? And I was just like,
fascinating first of all I think when I think back that's probably one of the only kind of like conversations that I had that I heard or just like statements about social workers making a lot of money for our entire program but I was just like huh that's cool I did end up going to that table not because of that but I had come in wanting to do hospice
⁓ social work. And so, you know, it just ended up aligning, but I was like, Ooh, I actually didn't know that. So that's cool. But yeah, hospital social work, 24.7 % of the salaries, ⁓ social workers working in hospitals. And, you know, I didn't really look deep into where do these hospital social workers work? Because I'm a medical social worker. live in Oregon.
I make over a hundred K and, ⁓ social workers, think just geographically on the West coast make more money, especially just in make more in general, but especially in hospital social work. ⁓ because they were living is significantly higher. Significant. Yeah, totally. So it's like, I know that there are other social workers, like I just brought up.
you know, the salary list, this social worker works in a hospital. lives in North care, they, they live in North Carolina. ⁓ and they make $65,000, one to three years of experience. So it's not all hospital social workers, but, yeah. And then the second one was federal government, which I feel like is kind of
I don't know. felt like it was kind of known. these, honestly, these fields that were the highest where it's hospital, federal therapy, private practice, and admin or management. And then there's 13 % that are other. I wasn't really surprised with that. I know. I'm like, hmm, I'd love to know what those others are. But I know that might be a lot to like put in a blog post. there's a significant amount of other. 75 % 75.
people and then that's 13 % or other. I know. And I was like, I'm, I'm kind of kicking myself now. Cause when I did put out the form initially, I just put other and I didn't like make a space for people to type in. I have it now. I added it, I don't know, a couple months ago. ⁓ so yeah, I definitely am curious about the other one thing that someone did message me about was, ⁓ they're like a business consulting.
you know, they're in like consulting and I don't think I had that down. ⁓ so I wonder if like, there's a good amount of people who in that section were, ⁓ we're consulting
I really feel like school social workers need to make a lot more money and
And not to be, this is not, I think teachers need to make a lot more money too, but social workers who are in schools have a master's degree. They are masters leveled, like they are trained at that level and teachers aren't always, some of them definitely are. And when they're a master's level teacher, they make more money. And I don't know if there's that kind of progression for social workers in schools. And I feel like there should be, if you have a master's in social work,
and you're in schools, like you should be making $80,000 to $90,000 a year. I know teachers that make that or specialize and have their masters. Why is it that some social workers, at least what I've seen even where I am, which is Colorado, is that they're making 50,000. They're making entry-level teacher salaries, which is that poor for teachers too. I'm all for like teachers need to make more money too. But like social workers.
I mean, and there'll be one social worker per school, one social worker per school. are, you know, there's a lot of risk in their job. There's a lot of risk with everything going on in schools. I used to work in schools. I'm like, yo, social workers in schools have a rough time. Yeah.
So the other thing that could be interesting that I thought about when I was reading through this is like, it seems like getting your clinical license is another, in addition to getting a master's degree.
maybe working in hospital settings. Those are things or in some sort of medical type of social work. It seems that that might lead to a higher salary. But then there's also this licensing, clinical licensure piece. And I just feel like there are so many barriers to getting licensed. Like you kind of briefly touched on them before. One being the amount of money you have to invest in clinical supervision. If you're going for- I remember when we were talking to Sam.
last week, she had said that she paid like $5,000 total to like her supervisor, you know, it's like, wow. I mean, that's over a period of, two to three years, but that's, that's quite a bit of money. It's financial barrier. And how are you going to pay that when you're making $30,000 a year? You're not. And so it's, it's kind of like we're getting some social workers are getting boxed out of like even having these
opportunities because they're starting with such a low salary that they can't even pay for clinical supervision unless it's offered through their agency, which sometimes it is. Those jobs are hard to get where they offer free supervision and all that. They're really competitive. So it's kind of like that barrier, just feel really keeps people from being able to access higher salaries. then also the, you've talked a lot about the exam.
the exam, the discrimination in the exam, also like exam prep courses. don't know. What do you think about all of that? yeah, I think definitely lots of barriers for the exam. I remember I put out a post on my Instagram of this is how much money I spent just for supervision and my exam prep course and scheduling the test and all of that stuff, you know, a couple thousand dollars. ⁓ and then the exam itself,
I'm someone personally who feels like a standardized test doesn't make or break you being a good social worker. I'm sorry. I know some social workers who was like, Ooh, I wouldn't want them taking care of me or my family, but they're licensed. You know what I mean? this is, I understand, you know, we have our boards of social work that are regulating us social workers to protect the community. in terms of
the licensure, I have, I have some mixed feelings on that because the test that I took, I'm like, I, when I was studying, I was studying so that I pass this test. wasn't necessarily answering in the way that I normally would practice per se. sometimes, yeah, some of the questions about diagnoses or whatever, but, so I mean, I know there's been a lot of conversations online about
the test needs to change in general? Do we need to even have a test? What does that look like? I know that there's a law that just, a bill that passed in Illinois like early this year where if a social worker tries to pass the exam and they fail, they can work 3,000, accrue 3,000 more work hours and then they can become licensed. However, they have to be...
They can only be licensed and work in Illinois. you can't, you know, transfer your license. I'm like, that's really, I love that because right now, right. We're not changed. No one's changing the exam. and there's reasons why we have a system that set up that we need these licensed clinical social workers, but this exam is all of the, all of the things negative. ⁓ and so.
How can we give like reprieve to social workers right now? I love it. I love it. That's a cool idea. didn't even, I didn't even know about that. I like that. I'm definitely not against clinical licensure. think we need to keep our profession rigorous. I think we definitely want to be able to say we are highly trained. We know what we're doing. So I'm absolutely for clinical licensure. I'm absolutely for supervision. I think I grew a lot as a-
Clinician being supervised and giving those clinical hours. So I'm not against any of that. It's just the processes and the financial investment and the lack of opportunities. good luck finding a supervisor who's willing to supervise you and put their license on the line. Cause if you don't, if you make a mistake as a trainee, like guess who gets called in front of the board? The person supervising you, which okay, kind of makes sense. But like there's a lot of like processes that
feel really complicated or there's a lot of money involved or like there isn't, like you mentioned the exam, there's like a lot of different things that I feel like could just make it smoother and easier for social workers. To then have higher salaries, to grow in the profession, to have different opportunities. And to get supervision too, like you were saying.
I did enjoy a lot of the supervisors that I had. I loved it. I learned a lot from them. I think, as a new social worker, it felt nice to just have someone to just like, I don't know, someone who's more experienced to talk to. Our work is so complex and there's so much to learn and we only really get to, we're only exposed to like...
two settings when we're in school, you know, and I remember when I got out of school, I did two medical social work internships and then my first job out of school, I was a therapist in a community mental health agency. didn't know what the hell I was doing. You know? Yeah. And it was like, I needed to have someone that I can like, that could guide me and I learned, I learned so much. So, ⁓ I think there's definitely,
you know, value in getting supervision and kind of going through that process. But definitely, definitely lots of barriers. Yeah, the last thing I want to talk about with all of this is where these social workers are living. I think we touched on it a little bit, but most of the people who filled this out live well, 21 of them who
make over a hundred K live in Oregon. I live in Oregon. So, you know, there's that 13 of them live in Arizona, ⁓ 10 in Colorado, five and, nine in North Carolina, which I was like, interesting because I see that as like one of the lower costs of living. Yeah. Like lower paying cost of living. Yeah. And then five people from California, five people from New York. I was like, right. North Carolina. That's, that's interesting.
so definitely, you know, ⁓ most of these salaries are West coast, Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, California. So, we some more. We need some more data here. So again, if you're interested link in the show notes and yeah, I feel like any final, I don't know any final thoughts about all this. Just that it would be really cool to have more.
social workers fill this out. And if you have suggestions on what would be interesting to add to the survey, like, Hey, I really found myself wanting to put in this information, but there was no space to put it in. obviously contact, contact us. So maybe we'll make updates to the forum as we go along here. But I really love this as a way to measure if you and I are kind of making our goals around this, like really bold kind of.
mission, is we want to see more social workers making a hundred thousand dollars. And it would be really cool to see this develop over time and see these charts change. I think that would be, or if they're not changing, like we need to, we need to figure that out. what do we need to be doing? how can we be mobilizing with other, other different partners or other different advocacy groups to make this more of an issue?
Yeah, I just find this really fascinating. It would be really lovely if more people filled it out. And it's cool for us to see like, Hey, yeah, yeah, definitely. Are changing over time? Are they staying the same? Like, you know, ⁓
I agree. Yeah, I think also this is a call out to just programs and you know, MSW programs and stuff and we need to incorporate these conversations, you know, and even if they're like, we don't feel comfortable doing salary negotiation or whatever, but just like cultivating a space where we can address the
the narratives and the things that have been said to us about money as social workers, you know, because as people are graduating, I mean, like I experienced this, it's like, as people are graduating, they need to have some just like empowerment and some confidence of going into their first job, like, how do I navigate this? You know, I know we have career centers at our school, maybe there should be kind of like
salary, you know, don't know salary negotiation, workshop, or let's just talk about money or just just something, you know, to, to set, I don't know, graduates up for success because financial health and your, this is, it's just all so important for us being healthy social workers. And yeah, we talk about self care.
in school, how many freaking times did you hear the word self care in our grad program? too many to count And financial self care is, I'm ranking it close to the top if we're ranking top care, right? is some, this is a conversation. This is the conversation that we need to be having in school about money and social workers. And, ⁓ just like,
Yeah, our relationship to it because.
important. anyways, think that's a great point. I love everything you just said. I love it. No, I'm all in on it. And I think, I think there definitely needs to be more of that happening in grad school because I think when you leave grad school, you're, you're pretty, at least I was, I was like, I don't know what I'm doing still. I still felt very much like, don't know how to be a social worker. I felt very, very like imposter syndrome, and I think when you're feeling that way, you're going to take a low salary job.
you're just going to take a low salary job. you're more like, I don't deserve or I don't feel ready. I think you're not going to try to negotiate. Definitely not negotiate. You're like, okay, cool. Thank you. you. And I think maybe there's others who feel differently, but that definitely was my experience. And I think if I had gone to a workshop or I went to some sort of fair where they said, Hey, are you interested in starting private practice? Come to this workshop and we'll show you the basics. Or are you interested in doing,
salary negotiating, this is how you do it. These are the questions you ask. this is the bare minimum you should be making as a social worker out of grad school in these States. I feel like that would be really helpful so that when you see a $30,000 job or $40,000 job, you're like, nope, onto the next, onto the next. And you don't even apply. social workers shouldn't even apply for that low of a salary. So then hopefully the salaries will go up because they're not going to able to hire anybody at that price range. So, but if you don't,
I mean, if you don't know what's normal or you don't know what your expectations should be going into it. sure. if those are the only salaries in your area, what are you going to do? Yeah. Also teachers unionize and they are able to negotiate higher salaries. I don't know what social workers really can do at a collective level to be like, this isn't okay. And I'm not like,
unionized. I have no idea when it comes to unions. I have no theory about that or opinion on it. I'm just like, how can we as a group be like this in a, particular state, like, Whoa, actually no, you know, what are the avenues to advocate?
I would love to see a national licensing exam for social workers as opposed to per by state. know psychologists are doing that, the pact kind of thing. that it's...
you can work in multiple states, which increases your income potential. If you're a therapist and working online or whatever. But what I'm trying to say is how can we collectively be advocating for higher pay? I don't know. I want to talk more about that. Yeah, no, definitely. That would be yeah.
Maybe we can dive into that and maybe just put out an episode of just like, these are our ideas. This is how we would do it. don't know. This is how if Faith and I were running a union or starting a national union, this is what we're going to do. That'd be kind of fun. Yeah. mean, I'm up for it. Yeah, let's, maybe we'll just do that. know. And I'm just like, maybe there's something already out there.
Yeah. I always like to see, there something out there before I think I have the idea somebody else has probably thought of it potentially. know. So like definitely see a lot of conversations about, about social workers and unionizing and we need it. We need to advocate for ourselves. we have, we advocate for others and it's time to advocate for ourselves financially. And it's okay. You know, and that is self care and honest self care period. I love it. So.
Before we end our conversation, we're getting to our money moment,
so the, money moment is just like a financial moment or inside of the week or just, know, just where the point of this podcast, one of the points is to normalize conversations.
about money. And so this is one of the ways where we're just sharing little money things that come up throughout the our days, because I feel like I was, I was thinking about this other, I'm like, I wonder how many times I think about money a day. You what I mean? that would be kind of an interesting ex, I don't know, research experiment. I don't even know how you do that, but it's like, feel like money we
It's just so impactful in our lives. how many times do we worry about it? Or can I pay for this or whatever? anyways. Yeah, I would say a lot. right? So anyways, financial moment insight from the week. What do you got? So I'm never really like, I find myself not really believing in these.
of programs where it's if you refer, you'll make money off of, like you'll get an incentive for referring somebody to a specific thing. And so Alma, which is what I use for running my private practice, they have like a referral bonus that you can get if you refer another therapist. And so I had referred a therapist to Alma and they use like my code or whatever. Everybody gets a code and it worked. It worked and I 500 bucks. That's a lot of money. I know. was like,
Sweet. Okay. So it worked, which I was like, okay, maybe I'm being a little too, maybe I should be doing this more. I just didn't ever think it would actually pan out. You know, I feel it's kind of gimmicky or I'm getting baited into something. But yeah, I was talking to this person for a while about opening their own private practice and I mentioned Alma and then they started with Alma and they use, actually use the code. was like, you don't have to, but.
I don't know. They said that I could get money if you do. And I was really transparent with them about it. And they're like, okay. And then I did. So that was cool. That is really cool. And I wonder like with, was there any benefit to them? do they get, do they get like a percentage off or anything? It was just like, ⁓ this person referred to me. think, no, I think it's just like this person referred me, use the code and then I get that kick back. But
I think that they had to be using the platform for a certain amount of time, like three months or something. Cause I remember we referred them a while ago and I was like, this didn't work. Like I didn't get anything. I didn't just left it. I didn't really follow up on it. And then I just thought the other, the other day I was like, where'd that come from? that's so cool. Yeah. So I have gotten, I've gotten money from, from referrals, which is like, you know, I, I took in a blogging course. have, I took an Etsy course.
that I absolutely love. And people bought it and yeah, I get a little commission. it's kind of cool. And you're doing their marketing. You're doing the marketing for them, which is why they're trying to pay. it's like, making a lot more by giving me 500. They're like, thank you very much. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Right. So that was kind of a cool thing where I was like, ⁓ it worked. Sweet. Totally. I love that. ⁓ my money moment.
So I just got back from Croatia. was there for two weeks. And last night I was just kind of like reconciling all the things that we paid for. put a lot of stuff on my card. went with my friend. So, you know, trying to figure out how much we owed each other and what we use this app. It's called Splitwise. I am obsessed with this app. seriously, I feel like
So what this app does is if you go on a trip, like I went on this trip with my friend, you both have to download it. You make an account and then you have essentially a little group. So we called it Croatia and you put in like anything that you buy, you put in and anything that anyone buys, they put in. And then you write, you can click a button of do you split it?
equally between you guys or are you paying a percentage or whatever. But I feel like it just really decreases the feelings of resentment in terms of well, I pay for that. I pay for this, you know, I've gone on trips where it's like, I'll get the Uber. I'll get this. I'll get this. And then at the end, you're just like, okay, I love you guys. You're my friends or you're my family or whatever. But
I need you to pay me back. How do I say this nicely? How do I say this money back? And it's so, it's so nice to I don't know, set the precedent in the beginning of Hey, we're going to use this app. It's super easy. And I love, there's a feature at the end where you can send people through Venmo, can pay them through Venmo cash app, whatever, you know, it's just like, it just makes it so seamless. And I really appreciated.
⁓ my friend, you know, when I had brought it up to her, she was like, my God, that's amazing downloading it now, you know, there was no problems. And I know that it's not always that easy talking with people about money and just getting them kind of on board with, ⁓ with something like that. But I highly recommend that I used it. And the first time I used it was when I went on a bachelor, Bachelorette trip. And there was probably like 10 of us. And so, you know, it's like, yeah, I'll put this on my card. 10 drinks.
I'll put dinner on my card, you know? And it's like, I need to get that money back. it's, just highly, highly, highly recommend Splitwise. will put, I don't know, a link in the show notes. There's no, I'm not going to get a referral, but I was just going say, we're not making any money on this, but Splitwise, you want to sponsor our podcast, I'm like, you just did a great promo for Splitwise, but honestly, I'm to make this argument. If you're a social worker,
Or if you're just a human who doesn't like having conversations about money because it's socially awkward, whatever split wise offers you an opportunity to not have to do that. Totally right. It's like, let's just quick. download this and then we don't have to talk about it again. Don't talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you just got to maybe financial tool remind that person Hey, you owe me money. But other than that, I'm just like obsessed, obsessed with it. Yeah. So great.
⁓ when I first started using it, the first time I used it last year, it was free for all the features. And then this time after I put in like five transactions, it was like, you have to pay. So it was like 5 99. ⁓ you know, so I just, we just bought a month for the whole app or is it the whole app prescription? It was monthly. No, it was monthly. It was like 5 99 per month. So I was like, okay, we'll buy it for a month. We're only going.
know, for two weeks and then we canceled it. so yeah, anyways, highly recommend. We'll put a link in the show notes. So thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you soon.