This is How She Does it: This Toronto Midwife Makes $97,000/year

Occupation: Midwife

Age: 30

City: Toronto

Marital Status: Married

Salary: $97,000

Life changes: Giving birth to first child this summer!

Honestly, I was just looking through the university catalog and I saw a picture of a mom and a baby and I was like, that’s so cute. I want to do that. I did a degree in physics and chemistry and was considering medicine but I changed my mind. And then I did some traveling and learned a lot about women's health worldwide and just how dangerous pregnancy and birth are. So I thought that that was one way I could make a difference.

As midwives, we provide prenatal care, care during the birth and delivery and postpartum care as well. Our clinic does share care. We're on call 24 hours a day, seven days, for a week. Then we switch with our partners. A full caseload for a midwife is between 30 to 40 births a year. Which works out to be about three or four births a month. So sometimes you go a week where nobody calls you and sometimes there’s a week where there's five births.

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I think there's this idea that midwifery means you have to have a home birth and you don’t have an epidural. And I’m like ‘no-no’, midwives just offer you more options. I give you the information and you make those decisions.

We just did our taxes so I know that this past year I got paid $97,000 for the whole year. But the government doesn't take off taxes for us. We have to put money aside throughout the year and then during tax season, calculate how much we have to pay.

The way that it works is in Ontario we get paid for course of care. You don't get paid until you've discharged the woman from care. So it's possible you could be working for months as a midwife, but not discharge anybody. So you'd be working without getting paid and then you would get a lump sum of money at the end after you've discharged people.

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I think a lot of midwives start off with a loan. Banks are really good about that and then you catch up once they start getting paid. I've been really fortunate. My husband works full time and we can afford to live off of just his salary.

I was able to apply for OSAP (Ontario student loan program) even though I did my training abroad (in Scotland). We managed to pay that off. My husband had some savings and my inlaws help us as well and then we paid them back. It has been really helpful for us to think of it as ‘our money.’ My husband gets paid less than I do. Just because the world decides to pay us different in amounts doesn’t mean that I deserve more money than you deserve. So it's been helpful to say, ‘this is our money’ and we'll make sacrifices together when there's less money coming in.

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We have our own budgets and then have household budget as well. We each have our own allowance per month, which is really helpful because if you're somebody who likes to spend a lot of money, you’re able to say, yes, you can. Our tendency is not just spend more than we need to spend. Then we just budget things like house projects that we want to do, but those will get put on hold now that there's not the same amount of money coming in.

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Midwifery is really hard to go back to part time. If you're on call, you have to figure out what you're going to do with your kid right away. Whether you're on call for five people or two people and doesn't really make a difference at all for childcare. I think I'd have to figure out what works for us and our family at that point.

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I think we're both spenders. We just have different things that we want to spend on.

What are you saving for?

Retirement. Also, the people that I respect are just really generous with their money. So to save money, to support causes that we really believe in is something that we’re really passionate about. Then travel. It's a big deal for us as well. My parents live in South American so that's a big expense that we save up for.

My parents were missionaries, so it's not like there was a salary that they got every month. So when you get older you're like, ‘Hey, how are you guys planning for retirement?’ I think, ‘Wait, what's your savings plan?’ Or, ‘How did you budget if you didn't know how much money was coming in every month?’ Those questions come up now, when you're starting to have to answer them yourself.

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I think I’m pretty oblivious to what's going on with our money. Especially the way that midwives get paid, you do all this work but then I don't really pay attention when (money) is coming in. I'm not super aware. I think I can be wiser about how much money we have and what we are doing with it. My husband's pretty on top of it and we have a friend who is a savings broker. I know it's getting taken care of, I'm just not aware of what's going on and I think I should probably be more aware.

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