Leaving NYC to become a Travel Nurse

NedRN · Oct 12, 2019

Those advertised numbers are total compensation. You will have to pay for housing and insurance. Higher paying assignments are usually where housing costs are the highest. Pretty hard to pencil out an advantage, but you have better reasons to travel than money in your post. Just do it! Ideally, don't worry about the money (other than shopping agencies) but pick ideal locations or clinical compatibility so you can enjoy travel.

You are right keeping your options open with per diem, and explore what maintaining your staff health insurance will cost you.

NedRN · Oct 12, 2019

One other financial thought for you: a good bit of the "great" compensation of travel nurses is the tax free portion for housing and meals. To qualify, you must be traveling for business away from an established tax home and residence. For you, that is NYC. Absent that, all your travel compensation is taxable (you would be an itinerant worker, where anywhere you are is home for tax purposes). Yet to get the favorable tax status, you have to maintain a residence in NYC, which is to say the least, far higher cost than most traveler's home residence costs.

Your recruiter may well tell you that you can "just use a relative's address", and indeed you can. But this is illegal and if you get audited, you will be responsible for back taxes, interest, and penalties. If you are just going to be doing this for a year, the risk may be worthwhile. More than that, definitely not!

So yes, travel is not going to be appealing on a financial perspective to anyone residing in high pay and high housing cost areas of the NE, or the West Coast (including Hawaii and Alaska). In over twenty years of travel, I've never met another traveler from those areas.

StacyAtheNurse, BSN, MSN, APRN, NP · Oct 13, 2019

40 minutes ago, NedRN said:
One other financial thought for you: a good bit of the "great" compensation of travel nurses is the tax free portion for housing and meals. To qualify, you must be traveling for business away from an established tax home and residence. For you, that is NYC. Absent that, all your travel compensation is taxable (you would be an itinerant worker, where anywhere you are is home for tax purposes). Yet to get the favorable tax status, you have to maintain a residence in NYC, which is to say the least, far higher cost than most traveler's home residence costs.
Your recruiter may well tell you that you can "just use a relative's address", and indeed you can. But this is illegal and if you get audited, you will be responsible for back taxes, interest, and penalties. If you are just going to be doing this for a year, the risk may be worthwhile. More than that, definitely not!
So yes, travel is not going to be appealing on a financial perspective to anyone residing in high pay and high housing cost areas of the NE, or the West Coast (including Hawaii and Alaska). In over twenty years of travel, I've never met another traveler from those areas.

Woah, 20 years, that’s very impressive.

I own a duplex in the city, thankfully it’s a multi family and currently my entire extended family lives there. We could air bnb my portion, but the home is still mortgaged in my name. I know a few coworkers that do this with their nyc homes and live up in Connecticut for their kids’ schools.

duplicating expenses is certainly a huge concern for me, which I hope temporary bnb could help. I could also host other travelers, and my uncle, who maintains (construction, plumbing etc) the house anyway, could act as a “property manager” while I am gone.

NedRN · Oct 13, 2019

I would try a free consult with TravelTax to check allowable rental use. The general rule is you must have a room that is exclusively yours you can return to at any time. Possible that AirBnB still meets that requirement. There is also a one time rental rule of which I don't know the details. I believe it helps those who exchange houses for some limited amount of time.