Questions about travel nursing

Silverdragon102, BSN · Feb 18, 2015

Moved to the Travel Nursing Forum

NedRN · Feb 19, 2015

You should be making close to $30 an hour as a nurse in PA. That is around $1,200 a week plus full benefits. I think you may be over romanticizing your life as a waitress. No benefits and very likely not paying the taxes owed on your tips. Not a better life for the responsible mother when you have a better job with benefits.

I would expect you to make close to $40 an hour in a local contract including your housing stipend. Unless you actually need to rent an apartment, all of that would be taxable. If you do need to rent an apartment because it is too far to commute, you will get some tax advantages but of course would have the expense of a second apartment.

The pay for working per diem at local hospitals without benefits should be similar. This suggests several superior options if you are a sole caregiver for children at home. The best would be to work added shifts at your current hospital. This would be at an overtime rate higher than per diem or travel shifts.

Second would be working additional shifts as a waitress. Lets see if it really pays better!

Both those options would be more work, but more money, and no dislocation or continuity break for children at home.

Insurance is a cost to you. If your employer was not paying for it, they could pay you more per hour (which is why per diem pays better). I know that is difficult for most employees to grasp, but for travelers, this is very real. Insurance that covers you and your family is probably somewhere between $500 and $1,200 (or more). Go to your benefits office and ask them what it would cost you to COBRA your insurance. That is the real cost of your insurance. You might be able to shop for a better value if PA has their own healthcare exchange, or even privately, but at least you will have a starting point. It is very unlikely that an agency will have equivalent insurance to what you have now so you are better off to COBRA your existing insurance (your employer is required to do so for 18 months after you leave employment - but you have to pay the actual cost), or finding your own.

I could go on about what might happen with agency insurance between assignments, but I doubt it is necessary. You could make more at travel assignments in other parts of the country, but without an adult family member along, childcare and school become more difficult and along with travel, more expensive. Scheduling appropriate shifts that works with your family needs is much harder as a traveler.

There are travelers that go with family, but they almost always have an adult traveling with them. It can be done, but simply as a mechanism to increase your income it is likely to fail big.

Sorry to be so discouraging.

You also have the option to move somewhere where the ratio of pay to housing is more beneficial. That takes a bit of research but is more likely to fit your needs than travel. Generally you are looking for a city in a strong union area (for some reason the midwest has strong union traditions for manufacturing but less for hospitals) such as found on the West Coast or New England for high pay. Then look at nearby areas where the housing cost is less but the pay is still the same because of competition. This plays out in many urban areas and even entire states.

Moving is of course very disruptive, but I think you will still find it a better option than travel.