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#103315 - 07/11/08 01:57 PM
MT...can you make a living?
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lilyfish
New Member
Registered: 04/08/08
Posts: 3
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I semi-recently posted,asking those here if it was still a good idea to get involved in MT. The majority of you said that yes, it is, even if doing SR editing.
Here is what I am asking: are you able to make a sustainable living off of MT? How many of you are maintaining a 2nd job because the market has changed?
I don't want to be rich -- I just want to be able to support my family (myself, my son, my boyfriend, his daughter). How has MT treated you? Do you feelthat it was worth it to get involved in this field?
Thanks in advance!
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#103327 - 07/11/08 03:58 PM
Re: MT...can you make a living?
[Re: lilyfish]
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MattsKat
Member
Registered: 11/28/04
Posts: 2901
Loc: Here and Now...USA
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I don't want to be rich -- I just want to be able to support my family (myself, my son, my boyfriend, his daughter).
Can you (UGU) make a living being an MT? Yes. Many of us on this board do just that -- as an employee, an SE, an IC, or as an MTSO -- and if you (UGU) have the necessary MT skills, I don't think it much matters if you (UGU) work with SR or straight transcription, via the internet or tapes or any other medium.
As a brand-new MT -- with the appropriate training, of course -- can you (UGU) make enough money to support two adults and two children? No, probably not -- not immediately, anyway. Have you considered suggesting that your BF look for a job, too? 
_________________________
Those who can laugh at themselves shall never cease to be amused.
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#103328 - 07/11/08 04:05 PM
Re: MT...can you make a living?
[Re: MattsKat]
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tropsicleAfter
Member
Registered: 10/30/06
Posts: 2725
Loc: Vicksburg, MS
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Have you considered suggesting that your BF look for a job, too?
bwahhahhahhahahahhaha
_________________________
tropsicle
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#103330 - 07/11/08 04:17 PM
Re: MT...can you make a living?
[Re: tropsicleAfter]
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bippy
Member
Registered: 11/01/06
Posts: 460
Loc: Summerland.
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I think it depends on if you live in a low cost of living area or not, how much debt you have.
Fuzz, you make me want to change my screen name to UGU just to confuse everyone.
_________________________
Love my new house!
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#103346 - 07/11/08 05:59 PM
Re: MT...can you make a living?
[Re: bippy]
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eschar
New Member
Registered: 11/08/07
Posts: 7
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MTs (especially those on production pay) make vastly different amounts of money. Some earn minimum wage (and possibly worse if you're working with a disreputable company or really struggling to produce), and some are paid like college professors or other professionals. It really depends on how good you end up being at churning out large volumes of top-notch work and how good the rates are of the company that hires you.
I make a great living. It works for me. I'm supporting my husband while he goes to school, and that feels great to be able to return the favor from when I went to school for MT. Cost of living is low where I live, too, which certainly helps things. On the other hand, a friend worked for the same company that I did and started at the same time (with more experience in the MT field even) and couldn't make enough to live on.
So your mileage definitely varies -- and everyone else's, too.
Edited by eschar (07/11/08 06:01 PM)
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#103349 - 07/11/08 06:10 PM
Re: MT...can you make a living?
[Re: eschar]
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Kimmyie
Junior Member
Registered: 05/29/08
Posts: 78
Loc: Minnesota
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I work in a hospital for an hourly wage and I get paid very well. I am supporting myself and two sons (husband died in January). I am one of the lucky ones though, most hospitals/clinics are now outsourcing their transcription to independent contractors (which I think is what most of the people on the board are doing now). While working for an independent contractor allows you to make more money the more you produce, it also is not a guaranteed wage. Working for an hourly wage I get the same amount whether there is work or no work, they just have me help in another area.
It is right now a good field, but with technology improving so much on voice recognition, I know several clinics have done away with their transcription department, so if there is job security in the future is very questionable.
If I were to have to start now, I would go to school for a lab tech or x-ray tech. I know you can't do it at home, but someone has to line the patient up and shoot the picture!
Good Luck!
Edited by Kimmyie (07/11/08 06:11 PM)
_________________________
Kim
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#103357 - 07/11/08 06:24 PM
Re: MT...can you make a living?
[Re: bippy]
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MattsKat
Member
Registered: 11/28/04
Posts: 2901
Loc: Here and Now...USA
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Bips, you already know that I confuse easily, so don't change your screen name for my sake! 
Yes, personal debt and local cost-of-living make a difference, but I was basing my thinking on some figures I got from a quick Google search. According to Wikipedia, the "poverty level" for a family of four is $21,200 and below. If a new MT can make $10.60/hour, working 2000 hours/year, she would make $21,200. I think that's probably a reasonable first-year income estimate, but is it a good thing or a bad thing to support a family of four at poverty level? (That's a completely personal decision, of course.)
There's another website -- National Center for Children in Poverty -- that looks at "cost of living" from a more realistic point of view.
http://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_707.html
The U.S. measures poverty by a standard developed more than 40 years ago, when data indicated that families spent about one-third of their income on food. The official poverty level was set by multiplying food costs by three. Since then, the same figure has been updated annually for inflation but has otherwise remained unchanged. The federal poverty level is adjusted by family size but is the same across the continental U.S.
____
Food now comprises far less than a third of an average family's expenses, while the costs of housing, child care, health care, and transportation have grown disproportionately. Thus, the poverty level does not reflect the true cost of supporting a family. In addition, the current poverty measure is a national standard that does not adjust for the substantial variation in the cost of living from state to state and between urban and rural areas.
Defining the "poverty level" as food expenses x 3 is ridiculous! This is probably more realistic:
Across the country, families on average need an income of about twice the official poverty level, or roughly $40,000 for a family of four, to meet basic needs. In a high-cost city like New York, the figure is over $50,000, whereas in rural areas, the figure is in the low $30,000s.
The bolding is mine. That more realistic $40,000 figure means the new MT will have to make $20/hour, working 2000 hours a year, to singlehandedly meet the basic needs of her family of four. While I don't doubt for one minute that many members of this board are making $20 an hour and more, the "curve" to get to that point is steep. New MTs really need to keep in mind that MT is basically piecework and absolutely nothing steady is guaranteed: Your employer loses a big account, the docs take a month-long vacation, the server crashes, etc, etc, and your paycheck takes the hit.
Yes, I worked as a single mom/at-home MT for 10 years until my daughter turned 18, but -- and this is a big "but"! -- I had an arrangement called child support. I truly don't think I could have done it all on my own without some kind of financial safety net, and I'm being completely honest.
_________________________
Those who can laugh at themselves shall never cease to be amused.
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#103408 - 07/12/08 12:22 PM
Re: MT...can you make a living?
[Re: MattsKat]
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clbarrett76
New Member
Registered: 12/17/05
Posts: 9
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Myself, I make about $1,600 monthly working part-time doing MT. Since we have 4 children, my husband also works part-time, and we are able to maintain a decent standard of living. We don't have a lot of debt, just one car payment and our rent,utilities, and normal costs of living (food, gas, soap, etc). If I were to work full-time, I could potentially earn enough to support us completely in our current lifestyle. I think a lot depends on what standard of living you try to maintain, your priorities, how good you are at your work (and how experienced, since with experience you will get through reports faster), and what company/account you work on. All of these factors influence your earning potential as an MT. The line rate is actually not as influential as the account you work on, as I have had some where 500 lines a day is like pulling teeth and takes 6-8 hours, and others where 500 lines takes 3-4 hours or less. You may have to move around a little to find your niche. Hope that helps!
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#103410 - 07/12/08 01:14 PM
Re: MT...can you make a living?
[Re: MattsKat]
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14tonks
Member
Registered: 10/25/01
Posts: 7170
Loc: Only 3rd world country in US
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Since I live in NYC, I know how messed up the whole "we don't adjust anything for where you live" federal standards are. A single person making minimum wage in this city probably can't find a roof they can afford to put over their heads unless they share it with a dozen other people, which explains the rent-a-bunk-bed-and-locker places in Chinatown and Queens that your favorite ethnic restaurant staff and delivery guys probably live in, never mind where someone with a family of four making minimum wage would need to live if they couldn't get into nearly totally subsidized housing (long, long waiting list, arbitrary requirements, less-than-desirable neighbors housing projects). It's just crazy. For a young person moving to Manhattan this year, that low $30,000s income would cover just the average rent on a very small one-bedroom apartment--which explains why young people tend to have at least a couple of roommates, not just one, put up extra dividers in small apartment rooms, assign living rooms as bedrooms, and gravitate to the outer boroughs or the Jersey cities across the river on the PATH lines. Those apartments on Friends? The only thing realistic about that was the episode where they explained one of the friends had inherited the rights to the place through her grandmother, LOL. I never did hear any explanation of how Seinfeld and company could afford the kind of places they had, which could ordinarily only afford to be rented by young doctors, lawyers, or Wall Street executives--and they'dprobably have a roommate the first couple of years. Food? The good news, or bad news depending on how you look at it, is that it can be cheaper to order bulk food delivered by UPS than to buy it in the local supermarkets. The trick, of course, is finding somewhere to put the bulk purchases in no-closets, studio-kitchen apartments, LOL. (Yes, I've actually seen apartments for rent with no closets--why would you want a closet? you're Shaker, right?--and a total of 5 to 6 feet of closet space anywhere in the apartment is considered average for a 1 bedroom.) Sure delivery charges are expensive--but so is per-square-foot store rental in Manhattan, and that cost has to get added into the price of anything bought in those stores.
Okay, that's just the long way around of saying that I long ago figured out that government poverty levels and all other government economic indicators and estimates were a bad joke.
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#103418 - 07/12/08 01:58 PM
Re: MT...can you make a living?
[Re: lilyfish]
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Glory1863
Member
Registered: 03/27/08
Posts: 440
Loc: Beyond Antares
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Here is some salary information for medical transcription from the Department of Labor.
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes319094.htm
In my area, the rent on an average 1 bedroom apartment requires a wage of at least $20/hour if one follows what used to be the rules for getting a mortgage (25% to 33% of income for housing). While apartments here are, for the most part, not tiny like the ones Tonks described in NYC, it would be easier for you to manage if your children were the same gender. I can't see teenagers (or even 'tweens) of the opposite sex being thrilled about sharing the living room as their bedroom. Gas heat is common. The two main gas companies are already warning that bills this winter will be substantially higher. I'm sure ComEd will have a reason to raise electric rates, too, even though 90% of the power is nuclear. A car is a must, and of course petrol just keeps going up and up. There is mass transit, but it is geared toward getting people to and from downtown Chicago, not suburb to suburb.
Yes, I work more than one transcription job. Yes, I'd like to find something else. Yes, I'd like to have a life. Yes, so far I'm paying the bills, and have for 32 years in the business, but it's getting harder and harder and it's not fun anymore. Guess that's why they call it work.
_________________________
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. Abraham Lincoln
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#103428 - 07/12/08 02:26 PM
Re: MT...can you make a living?
[Re: Glory1863]
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14tonks
Member
Registered: 10/25/01
Posts: 7170
Loc: Only 3rd world country in US
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In my area, the rent on an average 1 bedroom apartment requires a wage of at least $20/hour if one follows what used to be the rules for getting a mortgage (25% to 33% of income for housing). While apartments here are, for the most part, not tiny like the ones Tonks described in NYC, it would be easier for you to manage if your children were the same gender. I can't see teenagers (or even 'tweens) of the opposite sex being thrilled about sharing the living room as their bedroom.
That long ago was adjusted upward to 33% to 50% of income for rent to live in this city.
As far as the sharing a room--that takes me back to when I first arrived in NYC as a college student in the mid '60s. My first serious boyfriend was a native New Yorker, grad of Stuyvesant High School, whose parents acquired an apartment in Stuyvestant Town just after they married (Mitchell-Lama housing then, with great rents) and hung onto it tenaciously (and sensibly) in spite of their growing family and his father's prospering career as a psychologist. It was very comfortable living, Manhattan style, and my first chance to adjust my mental gears for housing to what was going to become my new hometown, LOL. There was a small living room with dining L, Pullman kitchen, two bedrooms, one bath. His parents had taken the smaller bedroom, originally conceived as a child's room, and put a 3/4 partition across the master bedroom to convert it into his and hers bedrooms for their two children. Need I say that my boyfriend's sister, still in high school, was ecstatic that her parents had decided to spring for a dorm room at college for her brother in spite of the fact he could have commuted, LOL? Of course, with what they'd saved on rent staying put in that small Stuy Town 2-bedroom for 2 decades, they could afford to indulge him in on-campus living (plus a lot of other stuff--that boyfriend took some nifty Caribbean vacations and always had money for great dinners and theater tickets for dates. He was my first rich (by my lights at the time) boyfriend as well, LOL.)
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#103429 - 07/12/08 02:31 PM
Re: MT...can you make a living?
[Re: Glory1863]
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MattsKat
Member
Registered: 11/28/04
Posts: 2901
Loc: Here and Now...USA
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Here's another perspective, and probably the one that cuts directly to the reality of a new MT's income. And I apologize for not looking at it this way first, instead of getting myself sidetracked with COL and calculating the poverty level for a family of four. *head, meet desk*
Glory, from your Gov'mint link, above, the lowest MT pay is listed at $22,160 -- (eerily close to the Gov'mint's definition of poverty level!) -- or $10.65 per hour. Assuming that's a realistic figure for a first-year MT's wages, it works out like this:
$22,160 divided by 7 cpl = 316,572 lines per year
316,572 divided by 50 weeks = 6332 lines per week
6332 lines = divided by 5 days = 1266 lines per day (or 158 lines per 8-hour day)
Is it realistic for a newbie to maintain an average production of 158 lph during her/his first year in order to gross $22,160?
Sure, it's do-able but is it realistic? 
ETA: If I've made a glaring math error, please feel free to correct me! I suck at math, always have, always will.
And another ETA: I just corrected the above figures to reflect 50 (not 26) work-weeks in a year. Sorry about that first round of figures!
Edited by MattsKat (07/12/08 03:39 PM)
_________________________
Those who can laugh at themselves shall never cease to be amused.
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#103433 - 07/12/08 02:53 PM
Re: MT...can you make a living?
[Re: MattsKat]
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14tonks
Member
Registered: 10/25/01
Posts: 7170
Loc: Only 3rd world country in US
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I don't know if it's a math error exactly, but there are 52 weeks in a year, MattsKat, not 26. You can assume your MT is working at least 50 of them, so your new MT would need to do 158 lines per hour per 8-hour day to make lowest pay. Doable for most.
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#103436 - 07/12/08 03:23 PM
Re: MT...can you make a living?
[Re: MattsKat]
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Glory1863
Member
Registered: 03/27/08
Posts: 440
Loc: Beyond Antares
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Your math looks about right, but it's not my strong suit either or I'd be working in geographic information systems. The sense I got from the government link was that most of those jobs, except for the business services category, would likely be in-house hourly jobs as opposed to pay on production. They would probably still have to make a minimum line rate of some sort, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be 2500 a day. Plus, at a hospital, clinic, lab, etc., there is a limited pool of dictation talent to learn (granted, some pools are bigger than others) and only one set of rules.
In the business services category, all bets are off. Even experienced people won't make those kind of lines if they get 5 new accounts one week, 7 new accounts the next week, plus their usual accounts now and again. New voices, new names and all sorts of interesting requirements [i.e., follow BOS but don't fix grammar or expand any abbreviations, always leave a blank if the doc says "shaved" (no idea!), make copies for half a dozen people even if the doc doesn't mention it, and on and on it goes]. There's no way to keep it all straight.
I know, people say don't work for the big nationals, but in my experience the big nationals more reliably have the work. My experience with smaller services is that they don't, so you work for several of them at once and the result is the same. Lots of accounts that come and go and lots and lots of rules, not to mention the fun of trying to schedule your time.
_________________________
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. Abraham Lincoln
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#103439 - 07/12/08 03:50 PM
Re: MT...can you make a living?
[Re: Glory1863]
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MattsKat
Member
Registered: 11/28/04
Posts: 2901
Loc: Here and Now...USA
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Glory, yes, I noticed that, too -- "production-only" MTs weren't even mentioned in the Gov'mint link, and I'm going to guess that there are more of "us" who work on production in cyberspace (whether for an MTSO or as an IC) than there are salaried MTs who work in clinics. That's just my guess, though... (and I've already demonstrated my ditzy math skills, so consider the source.  )
The hospital in my town has a really terrific compensation plan for their full-time in-house MTs: An hourly salary PLUS a production incentive. It doesn't get more better than that, but I think those opportunities are few and far between and are probably not typical for salaried MT employees.
_________________________
Those who can laugh at themselves shall never cease to be amused.
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#103448 - 07/12/08 04:47 PM
Re: MT...can you make a living?
[Re: MattsKat]
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sheepshearinglady
Member
Registered: 03/26/04
Posts: 225
Loc: Nebraska
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The area of the country you live in and your lifestyle certainly have an impact on whether or not you can make a living doing MT work. The hourly rate for a transcriptionist at our local hospital is $7 per hour, and if there is not enough transcription, you do filing. With a 70-mile round trip, I don't think I will be applying anytime soon. On the other hand, rental for a decent house in the same town would usually be less than $400 per month. It is all relative.
Sue
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#103451 - 07/12/08 04:54 PM
Re: MT...can you make a living?
[Re: MattsKat]
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14tonks
Member
Registered: 10/25/01
Posts: 7170
Loc: Only 3rd world country in US
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158 lph is a LOT more do-able than 300 lph for a newbie! Still, correcting my math error, I think it's a realistic look at what it takes to make a minimum of $22,000 per year -- and I hope it's clear that MTing is NOT a "get rich while typing on your laptop with your feet up on the windowsill" scheme.
Nope, it definitely isn't these day. Since the minimum production requirements for both hourly and per-line work these days tend to be around 1000 to 1200 lines per 7- or 8-hour day, although the newbie will have a tough time hitting 158 lines at the very beginning, obviously everyone is either going to be cranking that much out in 3 months to a year, or they're going to be unemployable in the business. The problem is that those production requirements clearly show that many people won't make better than that on most days--if they did, you can bet your sweet bippy that minimum requirements would be higher. So most are going to find it very, very hard to do too much better than that $22,000 at 7 cpl, which is reflected in the fact average industry pay for everyone together is only about $28,000 a year these days.
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#103453 - 07/12/08 05:14 PM
Re: MT...can you make a living?
[Re: sheepshearinglady]
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14tonks
Member
Registered: 10/25/01
Posts: 7170
Loc: Only 3rd world country in US
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On the other hand, rental for a decent house in the same town would usually be less than $400 per month. It is all relative.
And here, that $400 would pay for parking your car in a covered garage space for a month with maybe a little change left over for an occasional cup of coffee.
It is all very relative. What would really, really be nice is if our governments, federal and state, could figure that out and take it into account in all their various calculations based on cost of living.
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#103484 - 07/12/08 11:23 PM
Re: MT...can you make a living?
[Re: MattsKat]
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DaisyDuke
Junior Member
Registered: 06/11/08
Posts: 95
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As you can see from all the responses to your question about making a living to support your family and boyfriend and his daughter (those two should pull their own weight),it's a pretty iffy proposition at best.
It's really a good job for someone who likes to keep busy with MT but is not in dire need of having to pay a lot of bills or pay off debt. When you are supporting a family, you need to have a predictable paycheck every week. Being paid by the line can be good sometimes but other times, it is not so good due to reasons listed above.
If you can find a MT job that pays like $15 to $20 per hour, you are home free and your paychecks will be predictable. Most places pay by the line and unless you really know what you are doing, you will end up being disappointed.
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Moderator: Annie
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... I got my "pay periods" confused with my "weeks in a year"... I'm really glad I put that disclaimer in about my math abilities. 
