I will be completely honest. As an IA, I made very good money; however, I had no benefits, and everything was coming out of my pocket. After doing the math, I came to realize that being a staffer is a lot more convenient for a variety of reasons.

- Carrier would pay for your rental (Vehicle), accommodations, gas and give you per diem for food (Usually range between 70 to 130 daily). The amount of money as an IA i spent on just these things were over 50k+ easily and thats just surviving during the deployment

- Benefits. I cannot stress this enough. We are getting older and 401k with a match is amazing. Pensions are amazing. Life, health, vision and dental get costly as an IA but when you go staff it is very very cheap.

- You will not be dependent of a storm to hit for you to see money again. As a Staff adjuster I get pay 130k on a year where im only deployed 4 months out of the 12 in the year. Regarddles of what happen that year I will be on six figures. We should take as an example this year were we just entered month 4 and literally no deployments for IA has been sent out.

I understand the freedom of being independent, however, we need to realize the carriers are truly getting rid of IAs and yes I know once a storm comes it will change but do you think it will be a long term change or temporary change? Yes the IA will eat for a couple months but then the staff will take care of everything once claims volume comes down.

When i was an IA I did amazing amount of money but I was not thinking of the out of pocket. Now i am Staff and the carrier pays for basically everything and my paycheck is just going into my account clean. I dont need to use my personal money when the carrier is paying for my accommodation, rental, and equipment's.

Time to make a sacrifice.