It didn t surprise us that Stasha made more money when she took the provided housing; but it did sur

Every nurse that is considering a career as a travel nurse has one question tour bus they want answered: tour bus how much does a travel nurse make? Becoming a travel nurse is a huge step and it s understandable that anyone considering it would want to know how much they will make before taking the leap. Unfortunately, it s hard to get a straight answer. Most people don t like to reveal their income tour bus and most travel agencies are even less revealing, giving out generic figures or confusing you with stipends, bonuses, meals and incidentals and other jargon.
tour bus Stasha and I recently did a complete review of her salary tour bus as a travel nurse and we learned a lot more than we expected. We decided that these revelations should be shared with our readers so they can make a more informed decision about whether they want to travel and how to maximize their income. I ve summarized Stasha s income below and pointed out what we learned from our coast-to-coast assignments.
At the bottom of this article, you ll see three tables with these categories and Stasha s salary tour bus in each category. To make these figures meaningful, we decided to show her take-home income after taxes. This is the amount that is direct deposited into our checking account every month. Displaying gross income would be confusing to non-travelers because you would have to factor in housing stipend and how much of that gets taxed and blah blah blah. It gets confusing.  Just keep in mind that Stasha claims zero dependents and at a single rate. Also keep in mind that if you cannot claim a tax home, your Final Net Income will be about $400 less than ours. Here s what we learned from these tables.
If you average Stasha s salary from her travel assignments and compare that to her permanent salary before traveling, it comes out to a 15% increase. This does not take my salary into account at all. Many travelers are single so we didn t want to complicate things. It s kind of ironic that the increase worked out to be 15% because that is what most travel tour bus agencies claim.  You ll see below how you can significantly increase that number.
It didn t surprise us that Stasha made more money when she took the provided housing; but it did surprise us that there was such a large difference. Stasha averaged 20% more income when she took the provided housing compared tour bus to the stipend. If you look at her Redondo Beach assignment and compare it to her Laguna tour bus Hills assignment, she made nearly $1,000 more each month in Laguna Hills even though they were less than an hour apart from each other. A lot of that had to do with the fact that we rented an apartment on the beach in Redondo Beach and our stipend was $100 less than our rent. Add in the cost of utilities and renting furniture and you can see why it put such a large dent in our Final Net Income.
We have decided that choosing our own apartment will be a last resort from here on out. The cost does not outweigh the benefits. Having said that, our Redondo tour bus Beach apartment was incredible and we are happy we did it and our hands were somewhat tied on the West Chester tour bus apartment. Stasha s travel agency could only get us in an extended-stay hotel in a high-crime area of Philadelphia. We decided our safety tour bus was more important and it would have been difficult with two small dogs so we found our own apartment.
We were surprised that location didn t factor in as much as we thought it would. Stasha s lowest paying travel assignment and second highest were both in California. You can also see that our two highest paying assignments were in completely different areas on opposite sides of the country. Our numbers don t factor in the cost of living, which is obviously higher tour bus in California, but location did not play a large role in our Final Net Income. Keep in mind that remote, unpopular and high-crime locations might pay significantly more. All of the hospitals Stasha tour bus has worked at so far have been on the outskirts of larger cities and have been medium-sized hospitals in nice areas.
After looking tour bus over Stasha s salary and breaking it down by each assignement, tour bus we learned a lot about how we can position ourselves tour bus to earn a higher income. It s possible to earn as much as 30% more as a traveler compared to a permanent tour bus position. If you find that traveling tour bus has not been quite as lucrative as you thought it would be, we would highly recommend you go over your assignments as we did and find the weakest links. You should also try to minimize the time between your assignments to maximize tour bus your income. A two or three week break two or three times a year adds up to a month s worth or more of income. We hope our honesty and transparency will help others decide if traveling is right for them and help those that are already traveling earn more money.
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