Currently a Travel Nurse - feel free to ask me anything about it.

[TRVL.RN]

I am a PICU travel nurse, with many friends who also do travel nursing inside and outside of my specialty. ? here to answer any questions I can about being a travel nurse.

[NedRN]

Oh, stipends will be listed in your contract. They usually more than your out of pocket costs, but you are free to spend any amount higher or lower. You don’t need to account expenses to agencies. It is possible in some cases to negotiate amounts up to IRS limits but will generally come from other parts of your compensation package. 

[Samian Q]

If a travel nursing contract has 'allowance' and lists that for a weekly amount, what can you use that allowance for? And how do you get that money? Does it come to your paycheck automatically or do you have to have certain reasons to get it?

[NedRN]

You can use all your compensation for anything you want and don’t need to account to your agency or the IRS other than as I mentioned earlier. You will be filling out as agency housing questionnaire in which you effectively attest to working away from your legitimate tax home. This enables the whole process legally. All compensation including reimbursements and payroll taxes are almost always one lump sum weekly or biweekly, just like your staff payroll. 

[Samian Q]

On 9/11/2021 at 9:36 AM, NedRN said:

If you are paying rent in the assignment city for your entire assignment and mot just by the night you need it, you should be good. Save proof of arrangements and receipts or checks that show payment. It does not need to be similar to the stipend you actually receive. 

I'm sorry, I might need some more clarification on this.

Suppose a contract gives you an allowance of $400 every week.  They aren't just going to give you that money as they would post-tax salary. I would have to furnish receipts and file for everything I wanted and needed reimbursed. What is and isn't reimbursed? 

For instance, if I have to travel to and from work every day with a ridesharing app, would that be permissible to file for to get the allowance? 

[NedRN]

Third time. You can spend your compensation anyway you wish. You are not on an expense account. The money is yours. You do not need to submit receipts to your agency or the IRS.
 

Documentation of your tax home and proof you incurred housing expenses working away your tax home could prove useful should you be audited for any reason.  This is the basis of your agency paying you tax free stipends without receipts required. This is standard practice in the travel industry. 

[Samian Q]

If both the allowance and the hourly rate originates from the hospital, why is there a separate line for "allowance"? Why don't they just tack it on to the hourly rate?

[NedRN]

Your pay comes from your agency, not the hospital. There is an hourly bill rate charged by the agency to the hospital for your services - this is a business to business payment having nothing to do with employee taxes. The stipends are separated by the agency on your paycheck to separate the amounts that are not subject to payroll tax from your hourly pay which is subject to payroll tax.

[Samian Q]

Ah okay! That makes so much more sense! If only they just put an asterisk by all the items on the contract that are non-taxable, that would really help. It's nice of them to give an allowance because I thought they would just say, "Oh, just use the money you make from your hourly rate as the allowance"!

[NedRN]

I think the majority of agencies separate pay items on the pay report to make it more comprehensible. Generally, it is well known that only your hourly pay is taxable and the other stipends are non-taxable "reimbursements" for contract purposes. However the contract may not specify that as itinerant travelers (without a tax home) have a different treatment with all compensation taxable (other than professional reimbursements like licensure and certifications).

This tax scheme was invented by Cross Country in 1991 for travelers who was (as far as I know) the only agency to have it in 1995 when I started, and one of the reasons I chose them. I had previously worked travel construction jobs and was familiar with stipends.

Perhaps around 2000, most agencies (certainly all the smaller ones) were using this so-called Tax Advantage plan. It took that much time before agencies were confident that it followed tax code and would not be found liable for additional taxes if audited. However, back then it was not uncommon that they cut two checks, one for taxable income and the other for stipends. This they believed helped them with internal accounting should they be audited. Pretty sure that type of payment is obsolete now. I will say that CC never did that, but their paystubs (from real checks) were very hard to figure out and I remember calling them a couple times to clarify.

[Samian Q]

Wow, thank you so much!! That was incredibly informative! Coincidentally, I am doing my first travel assignment with Cross Country, too!

What I've found is that the recruiters totally vary in terms of engagement (I talked to a few of them on the phone). This one guy with Aya, that I spoke with, he was nice enough, but whenever I showed interest in a job he would never get back to me in a timely manner. And he would say via text that he was "working on it (the application)" but I never heard back on the status of the application. So I assume he didn't really do it, but was saying that to me as a lie. Anyway, I had called their main number to see if they could switch recruiters, and they said, "Sure but it might take a while". (They never did it.). So I just ignored them.

I also get a lot of near-daily emails from Fastaff, and I don't know how to unsubscribe, but I just have to manually delete them. Oh, well, it's not that big of a deal.

[Samian Q]

Okay, so I've got a new question for you: A lot of specialities in travel nursing say they want "recent experience" within that speciality. For instance, I used to work medical ICU as a new grad nurse, but that was four to five years back. Now, there's a lot of demand out there for ICU RNs specifically, but the travel companies say they want "recent experience" in ICU, meaning within the past two years. I get where they're coming from completely. And since I work in psych right now, I'm taking a psych travel gig. But does that mean I'm pigeonholed into the psych specialty as a traveler forever? Or can I change and do something else in traveling down the road, if I had wanted to?

[NedRN]

Recent experience means in the last 2 years. Outside of crisis assignments (usually with a company such as Fastaff who doesn't care - they will ship a profile to the hospital and the hospital decides), if you don't have "recent" experience, or relevant experience (say a PACU nurse filling an ICU position), the hospital won't even see your profile.

4-5 years out means you are completely pigeonholed! Which means you would have to hire on as a staff nurse to regain current experience. You could potentially do it as a contract nurse, but just as you might with a staff job, you would probably have to sign a 2+ year contract (and not have staff benefits). In any case, 2 years experience is what you need in a now (for you) new specialty.

You can travel in unrelated specialties, but you have to first be qualified, and then make sure you don't work too many assignments in a row in just one specialty. For example doing one ICU assignment per 2 years - optimally.at least one assignment a year. Regardless of the agency or facility criteria, you do have to consider what value you bring in competition with other travelers -  basically how do your market yourself to get assignments you want. For example right now, you have what, 4 years of experience in psych?, and are competing against nurses with 15 years of experience and 5 years of travel. Once you have a couple of successful assignments completed, you will be a lot more competitive as a traveler. That is why I always advise new travelers to have that as their goal at a traveler friendly facility rather than push for big money or a marquee location. With both of the latter, you always have to wonder why they chose you over more qualified traveler and if it is going to be a nightmare facility whose assignment you cannot complete. Seems less likely for that to be true in psych, certainly for big money which you can find in these troubled times in ICU.