DrunkInHeaven

Hello! I've been lurking on this forum for a couple of months now - thank you all for your advice and stories! :) It has helped me so much to get ready for my first travel assignment! I'm traveling with my boyfriend and our cat and our biggest source of anxiety is wondering what housing will be like. My boyfriend seems to think this is all too good to be true and wondering if the travel agency saves money by skimping on the housing. I'd like to think no one would want to work for a travel agency who set up nurses in bad housing so its got to be at least pretty decent! So we are wondering, what kind of housing have you been set up in during your travels? If it seems pertinent to your answer, we are planning on traveling to northern California. Thanks in advance! :)

Hi Irissage, I'm not a travel nurse (yet!) but I am a Med-Surg nurse working in SoCal. :) So for what it's worth I can tell you about my salary and rent for comparisons sake. I live in a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom apartment in San Diego and pay $1,500 in rent. So the housing stipend seems reasonable to me. I spend $50/week on groceries, not including eating out. The weekly wages seems awfully low to me though. Even as a new grad I was making $10/hr more! But housing in Southern California is so incredibly expensive, and if you are getting that covered by your travel agency then it seems to even out. If you really want to be living and working in Southern California it seems like a fair deal to me. Where are you moving from and where in Southern California is your contract?