Guidance needed!

You guys have no idea how many people I've talked to on the phone and when they see "NE" they think New England and not Nebraska. Sure do love living here but MAN are they taxing us to death! More to what the OP and another guy was talking about in terms of overtime... at my previous job, we basically refused to work any (it was time and a half, too) because the taxes pretty much ate away any profit. Inexcusable, in my book. I saw something the other day that Nebraska is one of the the top 5 most heavily taxed states now, or something like that. I'm so disappointed in our governor and legislators right now. He promised help and so far hasn't done much. He did get some property tax relief passed but it means less than a hundred bucks to a guy like me. Big land owners, like himself, will save a pretty good chunk, is my understanding. The tax relief doesn't matter anyway because the assessor has gone insane with property valuations anyway. Mine has doubled in the last two or three years. But...I'm just crying now...

More to the point of the original post... Whether you stay or go is totally up to you and you're really the only person that can answer that. That's the frustrating answer I always got out of people, anyway. I think I was in a similar situation, though. I was getting paid peanuts at a corporate company and I did sales, parts, service tech work occasionally, truck driving, service writing, dispatching, some management duties... The list goes on. I had a long list of credentials just like you have. Lucky for me, the insurance isn't an issue because my wife works and we could jump onto hers. Albeit, it's more expensive and we'll see what it covers, but my company was chipping away at our benefits so mine weren't so great anymore, either. One of the breaking points was last year when the CEO of the company got a $14million BONUS on top of his $1.2million salary... Yes, you read that correctly and I didn't miss a decimal point. Fourteen million! Meanwhile, all of us store level employees had to fill out a questionnaire about what we accomplished that year, did we meet our goals, what are our goals for the next year, blah, blah, blah. Corporate didn't like the answer that I provided about needing to work another 450+/- years to get my $14million at my current wage... Those guys have no sense of humor, honestly. Store level employees got up to a 4% increase that year while the company boasted a $4 or 5 BILLION profit, breaking all the records. Meanwhile, my entire paycheck was going to the kid's daycare and I watched our bank account slowly dwindle. I made the decision to buy my own truck and start my own company. I'm only about two months into officially being in business but I think it was a smart move so far. When I am running, it's lucrative. Just as long as I can keep the work coming and keep the customers current on their invoicing. I can make in a single day what it took me two weeks to do at my previous job, without the stress, the abuse, and the corporate nonsense.

I guess, what I'm getting at is no matter who you work for, you're going to get taken advantage of. It just depends how far you're willing to let it go and if it's mutually beneficial. I'm right at the age of the OP (38) with a young family to see to. One misconception people have about being self employed is that you can set your own hours and will have all this free time... That is not the case. I work longer hours than I did before but the payoff should be very nice. Just try to balance work/home life as best as you can. I don't know what it's like to work with/for a union but it sounds like it's nice to have someone have your back. One thing to watch out for though, if you're going to go to another place that pays a whole lot more, make sure that it doesn't put you in a different tax bracket because all that work will have been for nothing then. I totally get your motivation for wanting to make a move. You have to be very careful about it, though.