Travel Nursing with Spouse

[rb1105, BSN, RN]

I cannot seem to get travel nursing off my mind and my husband has agreed he thinks it would be something awesome for us to do since we do not have kids and love seeing as much as we can. I am registered with two travel companies and have operating room and NICU experience (level 3). I have done one travel assignment on my own between switching nursing specialties and LOVED it! Now that my husband is interested, I am wondering if anyone else has brought their spouse along with them (keep in mind he is not a nurse, so he’s coming for the journey and to potentially work temporarily wherever we are depending on circumstances and job availability) and what you find was hardest or the best thing about it?
Any and all advice is appreciated! Just want to have a better understanding of what we are getting in to.
Also, did you find the pay was affordable enough for the both of you?

Thanks!!

[tnbutterfly - Mary, BSN]

Moved to the Travel Nursing Forum where you will get more response.

[Swellz]

My husband traveled with me the entire two years I traveled. It was great! It helps to have that built in support. We got to explore random places we lived in and during road trips to and from contracts. He would find the housing for us and negotiate that while I negotiated the contract, so it was very much a team effort. He found jobs pretty easily, using Craigslist most of the time. It was great to take off whenever we wanted and not worry about schedules. We did well enough financially, but we had very controlled costs at our tax home, no kids/pets, and chose contracts with money in mind.

Couple considerations for you: How many vehicles are you bringing? Can you accommodate both of your work schedules with one vehicle? On one contract, we only brought one truck, but my husband's job let him keep the delivery van while we were there. On another he bought a cheap work truck with the intention of selling it later. Will you be on the same schedule? Keep that in mind when you are picking your housing out as well. Our worst housing set up we had was an apartment where you could only get to the bathroom via the bedroom, and we were on opposing sleep schedules. Not ideal.

Our biggest challenge was my husband adjusting to me being the breadwinner - he just wasn't used to making as little as he made at the temp jobs. We did well as a pair, because we chose contracts/locations that allowed me to make good money, but he had trouble wrapping his head around it, on top of pressure from our family who just didn't understand our situation. I'm still bitter that other people put that pressure on him, because I was raised by a single mom, as was he. But a female breadwinner within a couple? The horror! Anyway, we talked about this ahead of time, and he was fine with it in theory, but in practice, he struggled. Food for thought.

He also had more trouble getting a job when we settled back down. It could have been for any number of reasons, but we think the scattered resume was a factor. He addressed it in his cover letter, but once he got a job, he made sure to stay there a year to make himself look more stable on paper.

All that being said, we really enjoyed it and expect to go back out there in the future!