Traveling to dallas and houston

I've actually been speaking to a few companies.. doing some comparing and the housing stipend for dallas and houston seems to be about $1000-$1300 depending on the company.

The houston area pays a little bit more but from what I have heard they dont really have a good nursing market right now due to relocation from evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. I have heard that the traffic is houston is horrible and all the hospitals (well the major ones) are located in one area called the medical center (maybe someone else can share some light on that, I have never personally been to the place). One agency told me that generally the pay in houston is about $26-$30 an hour but there was one hospital that was paying $34. With dallas one company told me that the pay is generally about $25 an hour while another quoted me $20.

I dont know where you are from but I live in NYC and I have been a nurse for a year... out of school I was making 68k a year which worked out to be a little more than $34 an hour so $20 is a huge difference. It's almost half my pay. The only difference for me is that Texas only does a federal tax while NY does state, city AND federal; so they get a pretty big chunk of my check.

The GOOD news is that I have been speaking to a realtor from dallas and just by chance he happened to be an LVN. He said that he works per diem at some of the hospitals in the dallas area and as an LVN he makes about $22+ an hour depending on the hospital. He said that one Hospital and I believe is baylor was paying $46 an hour per diem for experienced RN's. He said that he also have friends that are RNs that make $30-$34 an hour per diem.

So I am thinking th SMART thing to do is to probably move as a traveler and pick up some extra per diem shifts. If you are planning to relocated like I am you can just take a staff (the dreaded word) position and work per diem since most of the hospitals are offering relocation and sign on bonuses. I even personally saw an add where one hospital was offering a 15k sign on bonus because they are opening a new Critical Care area in the hospital.

If you really just want to travel make sure when you do your research you find out in detail about the medical benefits because a lot of the companies are shady when providing information about that. Some of them don't cover 100% of the insurance costs so you might have to pay something out of pocket for it.