Feasible Way to Be an RN While Traveling?

NedRN · Jan 9, 2017

Focus here. It takes at least two years to become competent in a specialty (you have to solid skills to travel) post graduation. So he will be a staff nurse while you are in school. At some point, you will either graduate or start a family. So you have several years to figure this out, and then you may have completely different goals and dreams.

But yes, if you both become competent in your specialty, you can alternate assignments. If your skills were solid, 13 weeks off will not impact them. You will still be current and considered to have recent experience.

Here is another suggestion. Once you are both competent, take travel assignments concurrently at the same hospital or city. You work three days, and he works a different three days each week. Two incomes, full time child care, and one day a week off together as a family.

Swimming-duck · Jan 9, 2017

LOL. I AM focused. That's why I'm asking. This is what we think the future may hold for us. So it's important to me to figure out whether some of the options I'm considering are feasible. In other words, family time and homeschooling my children (we already have them - family started nine years ago, three boys and a baby on the way) are my FIRST priority. IF having a nursing career in L&D alongside my hubby as we travel the country will work without sacrificing my first priority, then that would be fantastic! I'd just hate to jump through all of the very difficult hoops to get that RN after my name only to find out that I can't do what I need to do. We won't be putting our kids in full-time child care. That's not an option. I know there are couples that juggle days off with contracts and the right travel agency WILL help couples do that. But I think I'd rather not work full-time while hubby is doing a full-time contract - one day a week as a family is just not enough for us! In a pinch, I wouldn't mind once in a great while doing that if we needed to replace money in savings from a huge RV repair or save for international travel or something. But as a general rule, it's not what I plan to do. So I'm trying to find out if local agencies that hire PRN/per diem will hire someone for that sort of RN work who is going to skip town once hubby's 13 week travel contract is up! I don't want to be blindsided and find out as we're hitting the road or once we're there that's not a workable option. And then what would I be left with? Taking on more hours than I wanted to do so while traveling with my family and not getting the family time that is our priority or risk not getting enough work to maintain my license (and I so wouldn't want to let that lapse given all the work that goes into getting it). That would be awful! And yes, we will of course work long enough to get our requisite experience for travel nursing prior to attempting to hit the road!

NedRN · Jan 10, 2017

What is your residence status? Rent or own? I ask because it appears you plan on travel by RV. That is amazing in of itself, I've never heard of a family of 6 full timing it in an RV. But to the point, taking full advantage of the tax breaks of travel requires maintaining a permanent tax home residence. Your RV is eligible for second home tax breaks, but cannot be your primary home. Well, it can, but then you would be itinerant and all income, including housing stipends would have to be taxed as ordinary income. Something else to research in the next 4 plus years while you go to school and gain required experience.

Swimming-duck · Jan 10, 2017

We're going to sell our home when we're ready to go. I realize in terms of travel nursing that means we won't be eligible for the tax-free housing stipend. That is of course a bummer, but I don't think it's one worth the hassle of maintaining a home that we don't intend to live in again or return to. Even if/when we're ready to settle someday, it won't be in our current location. That being said, if I understand travel nursing and contract negotiation correctly (and I may not as I've only done basic research at this point), I should be able to negotiate higher take home pay or other benefits in lieu of the housing stipend. Or then would we just get a housing stipend (or one of us) and just know that we have to pay tax on it?

NedRN · Jan 10, 2017

The housing stipend, per diems, and travel pay can be 40% of your entire compensation. If eligible, the tax savings can be substantial, in fact can be much more than the cost of maintaining an inexpensive and well set up tax home. It is a loophole that is not going away, and a big advantage. However, you do have a lot of dependent tax breaks.

Nevertheless, feeding a family of 6 and a very large and expensive RV is not going to be easy on a single income. I think you may find with a thorough crunch of the numbers that you will do better financially not traveling. Consider the retail price of family health insurance (perhaps close to $2,000 a month), and other staff benefits you will be giving up to travel like holiday pay, vacations, and sick leave. Without a serious financial cushion, you are placing your family in jeopardy.

Without the ability to accept tax free compensation, that is a big no on negotiating any increase in take home pay. Nor does your itinerant tax status represent any reason for an agency to increase pre-tax pay either.

Swimming-duck · Jan 10, 2017

Amazingly, there are actually quite a few larger families that full-time RV. There's several Facebook groups filled with much wisdom and even one dedicated specifically to those with large families. It's definitely not a lifestyle choice that is for everyone and we will certainly be going against the grain, but we're also very excited about the opportunities this will provide for our children. I'm so excited about all of the traveling we will be able to do, including international destinations.

Swimming-duck · Jan 10, 2017

The housing stipend, per diems, and travel pay can be 40% of your entire compensation. If eligible, the tax savings can be substantial, in fact can be much more than the cost of maintaining an inexpensive and well set up tax home. It is a loophole that is not going away, and a big advantage. However, you do have a lot of dependent tax breaks.
Nevertheless, feeding a family of 6 and a very large and expensive RV is not going to be easy on a single income. I think you may find with a thorough crunch of the numbers that you will do better financially not traveling. Consider the retail price of family health insurance (perhaps close to $2,000 a month), and other staff benefits you will be giving up to travel like holiday pay, vacations, and sick leave. Without a serious financial cushion, you are placing your family in jeopardy.
Without the ability to accept tax free compensation, that is a big no on negotiating any increase in take home pay. Nor does your itinerant tax status represent any reason for an agency to increase pre-tax pay either.

Good to know about the housing stipend. I know some full-timers who RV maintain a tax home. I do remember there being some travel RNs in the group, so I may have to see if they know any tricks as far as making up for that portion of compensation.

We won't leave town with an RV payment. We will buy our RV outright with the sale of our home and/or finance MOST of it so that it doesn't take long at all to pay it off - perhaps even look specifically for crisis rate travel RN jobs. So our campground fees won't be any more than what we currently pay in mortgage/ultities/etc...with our current horrible income level. So as far as that goes we'll be fine. We have little debt and it will all be paid before we leave town.

We are very frugal people, so the family of six thing for us isn't as expensive for us as many imagine. The nice thing about RV living is there will be no room for buying stuff. Our money will be spent on travel and experiences more than anything.

The family health insurance thing is going to suck, no matter how you slice it and I know rates have really skyrocketed listening to other people talk about it. We may end up doing a medical sharing plan instead as those meet the insurance requirements and may be sufficient for our needs. We could save TONS doing that.

I did I think get an answer to my big question on another forum (can I work PRN while hubby takes the full-time contracts) and it sounds like the answer to that is that local agencies are not going to want to hire someone for per diem/prn that is going to skip town after her husband's 13 week contract is up. So we may be looking at a situation of us juggling contracts, which would mean each of us working 3 12s and working with an agent who's great at helping couples traveling together negotiate their days on/off to manage childcare needs. So we will likely have only one day a week where we're together as an entire family, which admittedly is less than I would like. But if we're doubling our income by both of us taking contracts, then we should feasibly be able to take extra time off in-between contracts for family outings, travel, etc...

I'm definitely going to have to read up more on this tax stuff - like would we gain money by paying to maintain a small apartment as a permanent residence somewhere or would we ultimately pay more for the apartment than we would make in the housing?

NedRN · Jan 10, 2017

How do families of 6 live in a couple hundred square feet? Closely I guess. I do know of one family of four who live in an RV by choice - parked full time. That was with teenagers!

Ignore most of what you read on RV forums about residency. A mailbox may work for many residency requirements, but will not satisfy the IRS as a tax home if audited.

One possibility to consider is a housemate. You may not rent your entire house, but if you are able to return at anytime, it still meets tax home status. The housemate will be getting a heck of a deal (being alone in the house), you will (if you choose carefully) have someone responsible to look after your property and mail, and get help on your mortgage payments and maintenance. To put things in perspective, preserving the tax benefit is worth well over $10,000 a year in extra net income, double that if you both work. If your house is likely to appreciate over the next five years, you will be way ahead.

One IRS tax home requirement is to "return home regularly". This is very poorly defined, and is unlikely to come up in an audit. That said, depending on how your home location fits with various travel assignments, it shouldn't be difficult to swing by once a year, right?

Despite recent interest rate hikes, they are still historically cheap. It is great to be debt free (I've never had debt, even paid cash for my house), but if you look at the larger picture as I described it above, you may be far better off to finance the RV and keep your home. Your net worth will not change with the added debt. A home equity loan will be the cheapest way to go.

Don't buy a new RV, and pay extra for good insurance to help preserve your assets. Even used RVs in the size you need will be costly.

As far as family life goes with both working alternate days, it may be just one full day per week together. But the kids get a full time parent, and around three hours of waking time together daily (that is more than one full day per week in aggregate). If you are home schooling, you won't even care if your full day off is on the weekend or not. Typically travelers will work weekends, remember that the purpose of contingent staffing is to not only improve staffing, but to make work better for regular staff.

As far as local registry goes, it depends on demand. I've met energetic travelers who did a lot of per diem in the San Francisco Bay area and greater Los Angeles. Chicago, where per diem is just how it is done, may also be a good place.

Swimming-duck · Jan 11, 2017

Well, there are families of 10+ living full-time in an RV. It's amazing some of the setups many of these people have configured! And it is a different lifestyle that certainly isn't the right choice for everyone. We won't keep our house even though you bring up a good point on renting a portion of it. We never want to move back to this town and honestly this town is very very hard up financially, so finding a reliable renter would likely be a nightmare as people are either dirt poor in this town or already have their own house - not much in between. And the house is old enough that there are big things that will need to be done - more money than we want to pour into it in other words to upkeep. But by the time we leave we should have enough equity to put with what we can save to finance our RV. I think the better route for us to go would be to get an apartment. We could do that much more cheaply than we could with what we pay for our mortgage where we're at and we wouldn't have to worry about fixing things that break while we're gone. And I guess as an added bonus we'd have storage for anything we don't take that we absolutely don't want to get rid of. Getting rid of the house in favor of a cheaper rent payment gives us more in our pockets and more for savings and retirement. I did do a little reading up on the tax home for travel RNs after your other comments and that helped to clarify things, which led me to think an apartment would be an ideal set up for us. So thank you for pointing me in the right direction on that! Given that all of our family is here I think it's realistic that we would stop as we're passing by probably at least once a year to visit.

And yes, used RV is the way to go. Otherwise one may end up with the hassle of all the bugs coming directly from the factory. I'd rather the prior owner have dealt with all of that nonsense! Plus, we will likely rip stuff out and customize it to suit our needs and I'd have a hard time doing that if everything was new and shiny. We definitely plan to get great insurance for our RV and assets - a must I think when one's home and belongings are all on the road together.

You make a good point about the day off and the time we'd have even on the days worked. Getting this kind of feedback from others definitely helps me to think that this is feasible for us. And from what you're saying, I don't have to rule out per diem as an option depending on the location then? That's good to know. Although, I do NOT see us anywhere near Chicago...lol. We've been STUCK in Illinois and the first thing we will do is travel far far away...lol! San Francisco Bay area sounds wonderful though! :)

jobellestarr · Jan 12, 2017

One suggestion is to become a camp host. My husband and I did this when we were full timers. You could work as a camp host (we put in 8 hrs per week) and then we're able to get our lot rent, utilities for free. I worked full time as a nurse and it worked great. Park systems offer this from local to national :) good luck!

Swimming-duck · Jan 12, 2017

One suggestion is to become a camp host. My husband and I did this when we were full timers. You could work as a camp host (we put in 8 hrs per week) and then we're able to get our lot rent, utilities for free. I worked full time as a nurse and it worked great. Park systems offer this from local to national :) good luck!

I've heard of this and that could be a great option! I keep going back and forth on whether it'd be best for both of us to be full-time RNs or if that will feel like too much with the kids and it'd be better for me to find a less involved way to contribute financially while we're on the road. Having been involved in some full-time lifestyle RV forums, I know that there's a zillion and one different ways that people make money while on the road. As much as I think I'd like to get my RN, work L&D, and then eventually be a midwife, I'm trying to wrap my brain around whether or not this is the right season of my life for this or whether we'd enjoy the full-time, homeschooling, traveling life more if one of us could be home with the kids full-time! It's so hard to know the right answer on this. But all of these tidbits of information I get from others help me to file away information that I can sort through to try to make the best decision for our family! :)