Is Travel Nursing Still Worth It (financially)?

When I started travel nursing during the pandemic, contract rates were sky high. They have since dropped off significantly, and housing costs have increased. This leaves many travel healthcare professionals questioning whether or not travel nursing is still financially worth it. Below I’ll show you how to calculate if taking a travel contract would really make more money than working as permanent staff. As far as whether or not that’s worth it, well it’s up to you!

In italicized font below, I’ll also provide an example. In our example, we will compare realistic staff nurse pay in Texas (a fairly low paying state for nurses) to travel nurse pay in Texas and in California (a high paying state for nurses). The numbers shown are based on typical rates for an ER nurse with January start dates in 2023.  *keep in mind, while I aim to be realistic as possible with these examples, they are just estimates*

I’ll walk through the calculations in this article, but I also have a calculator tool to make the process a bit faster. I personally use the calculator to compare pay for different contracts as well as to compare travel pay to staff pay.  

Part 1: Calculate your true travel contract pay

Calculate your after tax weekly pay

Most contracts have 2 parts, your taxed rate (sometimes listed as your hourly) + stipends (housing plus meals and incidentals). Because tax-free stipends are a big part of the advantage of travel nursing, we need to go ahead and take out the taxes and compare net pay. This ensures we are comparing apples to apples so to speak. 

There are several resources available online to calculate net pay, but I like the paycheck calculator on smartasset.com. 

IMPORTANT- make sure you are only putting in the hourly portion of your pay. Your housing and meals & incidentals (M&I) stipends are tax free. You don’t want to accidentally remove taxes from them in your calculation. 

On smartasset.com, enter the hourly pay for the contract you are considering. Fill out the boxes on the left side of the screen with your marital status (this affects filing for your taxes), the state where your potential contract will be, and so on. Travel contracts typically pay weekly, so adjust the settings to weekly and 36 hours per week. The calculator will spit out your estimated weekly take home pay. 

Add the estimated weekly take home pay and your stipend pay to get your net weekly pay.

Estimated weekly take home pay from smartasset.com + stipends = net weekly pay

*Keep the smart asset calculator tab open, you’ll need it again for part 2 when we get to the staff pay comparison.

Subtract the costs of housing and health insurance (if applicable)

To the untrained eye, travel pay can look incredibly lucrative. Often people unfamiliar with the travel industry don’t understand the added expenses of duplicating housing and (sometimes) paying for benefits out of pocket.

Lets start with housing. 

Factor in the cost of duplicating expenses

In order to qualify for the stipend portion of your travel pay, you have to be paying for housing in the new location as well as your home location. For example, I have an apartment in Texas where I consider “home” (there’s more to having a “tax home”, but thats for another post). I took a contract in California. While in California, I had to pay for somewhere to live for my 13 week contract. I incurred living expenses in California plus my apartment in Texas. This is duplicating expenses, and it is why I am allowed to accept the stipends offered by my agency.

Anyway, back to our calculation…

First you need to figure out how much housing will cost on your assignment. I typically use furnishedfinder.com (prices usually include all utilities). Put in your criteria and find a few options that you would actually use for housing. I always filter for “pet friendly” and “entire unit” because I travel with my husband and two dogs, but everyone’s criteria and therefore expenses will be different. At this point, you just want to find a rough estimate of how much you would have to pay monthly for housing. 

Multiply your net weekly pay by 4 to get your net monthly pay, then subtract the estimated monthly pay you found on furnished finder to get your true monthly contract pay.

If you pay for health insurance separately, you’ll also want to subtract that monthly amount from the net weekly pay. If you plan to take health insurance from your agency, the price is already factored into your contract, so you can ignore it for this calculation.

Net weekly pay x4= net monthly pay

Net monthly pay – estimated contract housing cost – health insurance (if applicable)= true contract monthly pay

Part 2: Calculate your true monthly staff pay

Calculate your net staff pay

Take the hourly rate at your staff job that you want to compare, and plug that number into the smartasset.com. Make sure to change the location to the location of your staff job and adjust other settings appropriately. I adjusted my settings to biweekly pay and 72 hours per pay period. This will give you you bi-weekly net pay. Multiply your bi-weekly net pay by 2 to get your monthly net pay. If you pay extra from your paycheck for your health benefits at your staff job, then subtract that from your monthly net pay to get your true staff monthly pay. 

Biweekly net pay from smartasset.com x 2= monthly net pay

Monthly net pay- paycheck contribution to health insurance if applicable= true monthly staff pay

Compare travel pay to staff pay

As you can see from my real world examples, it would not make sense (financially, at least) for our example nurse to travel in Texas. If he/she can go to a higher paying area of the country, it would make financial sense. 

There is more to consider here that isn’t so easy to calculate. Let’s look at those factors next.  

Financial factors I did not include in my calculation

Travel to and from the assignment. It’s expensive to drive from Texas to California! Be sure to ask about travel reimbursement in your contract (the worst they can say is no). Agencies differ on how much they reimburse for this. To give you a ball park, I was reimbursed $500 each way for my most recent contract in California. A recent budget review showed that my costs (hotels + gas) were just slightly higher than the reimbursement I received (but they were pretty close). 

401k (or 403b) benefits. Some agencies offer this, some do not. Most hospitals offer it to their employees. A 401k not only helps reduce how much you pay in taxes, but the match is free money which could tip the “is travel nursing worth it” scales. Be sure to look into vesting periods for both hospitals and agencies that offer these plans or that “match” might not actually be yours to keep. 

Psssst… If you want more information on retirement savings options for travel nurses, I have an article on that.

Housing quality. In my examples, I tried to compare housing options that I would actually consider for each area. I filtered for pet friendly, private units as that is part of my personal housing criteria. Everyone differs in their wants and needs. When comparing for yourself, make sure you look at housing options that you would be happy with. 

Costs of goods in a higher cost of living area. It costs more to buy things like groceries and gas in California than it does in Texas. In my experience, this doesn’t make a significant enough difference to factor into the calculations.

Contract cancellations and mid-contract rate drops. At the time of writing this, I had a contract cancelled because the hospital found permanent staff instead. It’s a really frustrating part of travel nursing and travel healthcare. It can leave you unexpectedly jobless which can have a huge impact on your finances. 

Is travel nursing still worth it? -The Verdict

The answer to this question is totally dependent on your situation and needs. Hopefully I have given you the tools you need to to figure out the financial benefit (or loss) or doing so.

If you want a quicker way to run the numbers yourself (or if you want to compare several travel contracts at one time), check out my pay comparison calculator here. This is what I use for my own research when comparing travel contracts.

Are you thinking about becoming a travel nurse and wondering what it is really like? Consider some factors outside of just the pay. You can find more about the pros of travel nursing and the cons of travel nursing in the articles hyperlinked here 🙂