Maximize Your Pay Package as a Traveler

As a travel nurse or allied traveler, you have a unique way of getting paid, and starting off, it can be confusing. Understanding your pay package and what it means is essential; if you don’t understand your pay package, how can you know if you can take the assignment and make money?

Before we get started, here is a video explaining a lot of the stuff I am going to explain below. Its from a few years ago but all of the information is still the same. The video is geared towards traveling surgical tech rates but all of the information transfers to traveling nurses and other allied specialties as well.

Taxable wage vs Stipend

Being a traveling nurse or allied healthcare professional allows you to qualify for 2 different types of wages.

• Taxable- this is a wage where you are taxed for the hours you work, and generally, a minimum dollar amount is set by the IRS and the agency where you work. This is similar to the wage you earned as a staff nurse but also different. We will explain more below.
• Stipend part 1– this is the money you get for duplicating expenses and being away from home, this is my favorite category for our travelers to receive money, and being a former traveler I always asked my travel nurse agency to put as much money here as possible because as the traveler, you want to pay as little in taxes as legally possible.
• Stipends part 2– There are 2 different stipends, Meals/ Incidentals and housing. This isn’t a hard and fast rule but generally we like to see housing maxed out first then your M&I or a 60/40 split a majority of your stipends going into housing then M&I.
• Recommendation- you want to make sure you have a decent taxable wage. For nursing, we look at $20+/hr, and the allied travelers, we look at $15+/hr; this allows for us to put as much money into your stipends as possible. The reason we want to put as much money as we can into your stipends is so you do not have to pay taxes on them and you will bring home more money at the end of the year. Talk to your recruiter at Junxion Med about this and see how we can maximize your stipends as much as possible.

Negotiating your assignment

One of the reasons Junxion Med was started was because of this, I wont bore you with any details I don’t have to but long story short… I was on my first assignment in Columbus Ohio as a traveling Surgical Tech and I started my assignment with 3 other travelers who all had experience. Long story short, one day we were all talking about our pay and come to find out they were all making $200 more/ week than I was, come to find out we had the same agency and THE SAME RECRUITER. Our goal at Junxion is for this to never happen, it was a terrible feeling as a traveler doing the same work as the other travelers and getting paid a lot less.

With that being said, unfortunately rates do fluctuate sometimes week by week and day by day but our goal at Junxion is to get our travelers paid as much as possible up front where our travelers don’t feel like they have to negotiate their pay. I even had a traveler in the past refuse to work with us because we wouldn’t negotiate, and that was after she said we were the highest paying agency for that assignment but chose another agency even though we got her the best rate we could upfront. In my opinion, traveling healthcare professionals shouldn’t have to negotiate their pay packages; agencies should pay the travel nurse or allied healthcare professional as much as they can upfront.

How do we come up with the pay package for our travelers?

We take the minimum taxable wage we feel can be given for your profession and then look at the GSA calculation based on the metro area you are going to and the time of year you are going and put the rest of your money into tax free stipends. This is the best way for you to get the pay package you need for the area you are going.

Example for 40 hr assignment

• $2,000/ wk pay package
• $20/hr taxable
• $1,200 in stipends (broken out to Meals/Incidental and housing)
• $720 roughly would go to housing stipend
• $480 roughly would go to M&I stipend

You can got to GSA.gov, use this link to find out what your max stipend rate can be. Note, this is the max and does not include taking into account what the facility is paying so odds are, you will not be able to max out your stipends but if the pay from the facility allows it, then that’s amazing.

https://www.gsa.gov/travel/plan-book/per-diem-rates

One other thing that is important to talk about under traveler pay is pay packages the facilities offer can vary greatly between them. Here are some of the variables facilities look at when they decide how much they want to pay a traveler

• Urgency- how short-staffed are they, how long has the assignment been open, do they know someone is about to leave whether it’s a short-term absence or they are terminating someone
• Budget- departmental and hospital budgets play a large role in how much a traveler gets paid
• Location- if the facility is in Florida the assignment will more than likely pay less than a rural assignment in the middle of Kansas. Why? Because everyone wants to go to Florida, it’s a destination assignment.
• Season- facilities in the north where they get snow and bad weather will generally pay more in the winter than states in the south

Location and Cost of Living

Choosing the location of your assignment is one of the most important choices you will make as a traveler. It is important to look at the cost of living when choosing your assignment. I know, as a former traveler myself we want to be in the cool cities where everything is happening but how much are we actually going to go out and do things. Realistically maybe 1-2 days/ week max but if we take an assignment within 1.5-3 hours of where we really want to be, we generally will make more money as cost of living will be a lot lower. But this is also the reason we travel is to see the US and explore while making money. It’s a hard decision to make, and it really boils down to “Why did you start traveling?” if it’s to make money… I’d stay 1.5-3 hours away from the major city I really want to explore and try to block schedule or schedule a few days off to go see the area I really want to be in. But if your reason for being a traveler is location, then know you are potentially going to have to watch your budget a little tighter and plan.

Tip- Start looking for housing before you submit to an assignment. You don’t want to get that call and think you’re going to make enough money to live there only to turn it down because housing is too expensive.

Here are some places I like to look for housing. Also, as a traveler I would heavily consider shared housing. Its how I kept a lot more money as a traveler vs renting the entire place to myself.

• Airbnb
• Furnished finders
• Vrbo
• Craigslist – I always used Craigslist; make sure you meet the person in public first, then go to the house, and never send money before getting there. Even if they say it could be gone, or I won’t hold it. And never send personal information.

Be open to location

You will be amazed what will open up for you when you are more open to location and build your relationship with your recruiter; we are here to help guide you and be a partner to your career as a traveling nurse and healthcare professional. Our goal is to find you the best matching assignment we can so you can have a great experience. My favorite assignment I took was in Odessa, TX, and to be honest, there isn’t a lot out there, but the people and food were terrific; I ended up staying a whole year there and just flew wherever I wanted to go because they had an airport that would take you almost anywhere. Keep your options open as much as possible, and you will be a lot less stressed and enjoy traveling more if you are willing to keep a more open mind about location.