The Income No One Can Take From You
Series: The Better Bargain · Episode 1 · Pillar 2: Financial Growth
By Rod Gamble | Week 28, 2026 | Pillar 2: Financial Growth
I watched my mother lose everything she had worked for — her money, her career, her pension six months from the finish line. She was behind bars, her trial wrapping up the way everyone feared it would, and I was the one left to walk her bankruptcy through the courts from the outside. Her whole life, in that moment, was reduced to zero.
I had taken almost a year out of university to manage the wreckage. I had no job. I had no money, sometimes not even for food — it was the thinnest I have ever been as an adult. And somewhere in the middle of all that loss, a thought arrived that has shaped every financial decision I have made since. I needed things in my life that could never be taken away from me.
The Bargain You Were Sold
Most clinicians I coach have, without ever quite deciding to, accepted a bargain. You trade your time, your nights, and a fair slice of your health for one number on a contract — and you call that number security. One employer. One salary. One pension promise sitting somewhere at the end of it. The arrangement feels safe precisely because everyone around you has accepted exactly the same one.
But a single salary is a single point of failure. It is one decision, made by people you will never meet, away from changing completely. My mother had a career, a military pension, and a plan, and the whole structure evaporated because it all hung from one thread. Most clinicians are one restructure, one burnout, one life event away from discovering how thin their own thread is. The bargain only looks like the safe choice from the inside.
What My Mother’s Bankruptcy Taught Me
Standing in the rubble of her finances, I made myself look around for what I could actually carry out of it. The money was gone. The possessions were gone. The career and the pension were gone. But the bachelor’s degree in nursing was still in my head. So was the master’s in computer science. So was the hard-won, lived reality of doing real work across several countries. Nobody could repossess any of that. No court order, no employer, no downturn could take it from me — and it could be used to create material things again, and then again after that.
That is the whole difference between earning and owning. A salary is something you are granted, monthly, for as long as the arrangement holds. Expertise is something you own outright. One of those can be withdrawn. The other compounds. The better bargain — the one this series is about — is built entirely on the second.
The 2026 Numbers Behind the Better Bargain
Let me lay the picture out plainly, because most clinicians have never seen these figures side by side. In the United States in 2026, clinical informatics roles average around $88,000, nursing informatics has climbed to roughly $99,000, and an informatics consultant sits near $95,000 — with healthcare technology leadership reaching a median total package of about $320,000. Healthcare consultants broadly earn between $70,000 and $120,000. In the UK and Ireland, NHS digital and clinical informatics is now one of the fastest-growing areas in the entire service: entry roles begin around Band 6 (£37,000–£45,000) and senior roles move into Band 8 and beyond, with skills that transfer across the whole system.
The more interesting numbers are about shape, not size. The count of fractional and portfolio leaders roughly doubled from 60,000 in 2022 to 120,000 in 2024; over half of them earned more than $100,000 last year, and nearly three-quarters had fifteen-plus years of experience. That last figure matters: this is a market that pays a premium for seasoned clinical judgement, not for youth. And the demand underneath it is structural. The global digital health market is worth around $491 billion in 2026 and already employs close to 13.8 million people, while an estimated 6.5 million healthcare workers are expected to leave the workforce against only 1.9 million new entrants. The system needs experienced clinicians who can build, not just deliver.
Why Owned Earning Power Beats a Bigger Number
Here is the trap I want you to step around. It is tempting to think the better bargain is simply a higher salary — a bigger number from a better employer. But a bigger salary is still rented. It is still one thread. The better bargain is earning power you own: expertise priced as an asset rather than rented out by the hour, and sold to more than one buyer.
That is what consulting income, sensible self employment, and genuine multiple revenue streams actually are. They are not a hustle. They are career advancement that does not depend on a single ladder, a single manager, or a single organisation’s budget cycle. And none of it requires you to abandon clinical work. It requires only that you stop treating your expertise as something one employer is uniquely permitted to value.
Steps You Can Take Now
If this has set off a quiet alarm — a sense that you have been playing a more fragile financial game than you needed to — here is where to start. Not all at once. In order.
1. Inventory what cannot be taken from you. Write down your credentials, your clinical judgement, and every skill you have built that travels with you. That list, not your job title, is your real net worth.
2. Name one skill you currently give away for free. Mentoring, teaching, writing, public speaking, leading a system rollout, training a floor of staff on a new record. Pick the one people already come to you for.
3. Price it once, outside your employer. A single piece of paid consulting income, however small, proves something a payslip never can: that your expertise has a market beyond the people who currently sign your cheque.
4. Protect the base while you build. Do not quit anything. Add one durable second layer first — just one. Durability comes from the second stream simply existing, not from it being large on day one.
When you’re ready to talk, rodgamble.com is where to find me.
References
1. Coursera. “Health Informatics Salary: 2026 Guide.” https://www.coursera.org/articles/health-informatics-salary
2. Research.com. “2026 Nursing Informatics Salary by State.” https://research.com/careers/nursing-informatics-salary-by-state
3. Robert Half. “2026 Healthcare Salaries and Compensation Trends.” https://www.roberthalf.com/us/en/insights/salary-guide/healthcare
4. NHS Health Careers. “Clinical Informatics.” https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/digital-data-and-informatics/roles-digital-data-informatics/clinical-informatics
5. Consulting Success. “Fractional Consulting: The Comprehensive Guide for Consultants (2026).” https://www.consultingsuccess.com/what-is-fractional-consulting-a-comprehensive-guide-for-consultants
6. Column Content. “Fractional Work Statistics: 100+ Trends You Need to Know (2026).” https://columncontent.com/fractional-work-statistics/
7. Fortune Business Insights. “Digital Health Market Size, Trends, Growth, Analysis, 2026–2034.” https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/digital-health-market-100227
8. StartUs Insights. “Digital Health Market Report 2026.” https://www.startus-insights.com/innovators-guide/digital-health-market-report/
