TravelingbeebryantRN & Flicks_withNick

Today is our longest drive from Lexington, Nebraska to Provo, Utah. Our route changed a few days ago when my husband was looking at maps, and realized I-80 in Wyoming had a lot of issues. We are now traveling through Colorado. This alternate route tacked on another two hours to our drive. During our drive, they had a huge car pile up causing a bunch of road closures. Our 12 hour day turned into a 18 hour day. There were road closures in Colorado on I-70, due to an 18 wheeler flipping on a highway. We had to seek alternative routes. The joys of cross country road tripping in the winter of trying to figure out alternate roads, and making sure they’re safe to drive. Luckily it sounds like no injuries! We were originally going to Salt Lake City, but I finally convinced my husband that we should make dreams (cough cough my 

dreams) come true. We were supposed to go to the ice castles in Midway, Utah, but the world had different plans for us. The world has plans for us to sit in traffic, find a lot of different road closures, find 3 different routes, and work on our trivia. The ice castles will have to wait. Nick and I have beef with Colorado now, (just kidding it’s still beautiful). On the happy note, we will be exploring Salt Lake City before our drive tomorrow.

Instead of an interesting fact about myself, I need to talk about an interesting fact I learned. I’ve done some research on this, cause this just confuses me. Chaining tires. Have you heard of chaining tires? If you have, where are you from? Today we watched dozens, and I mean dozens of 18 wheelers pull over to chain their trucks. This causes a bunch of traffic, and when someone doesn’t chain their tires, it can cause a huge accident and also they can be fined. Chaining your tires helps with traction and to get better control. 

My husband really didn’t want to give a fun fact about himself after today’s drive. He did most of the driving as I didn’t like the winding roads. My husband is funny in the way, where he tries to find the positive in every situation. Sometimes it drives me nuts, but honestly it’s one of his best qualities and one of the most interesting things about him. Today when all the roads are closed and everyone’s all pulled over, he said “ at least it’s not -8 degrees out and it’s 38 degrees out”. This was a crappy situation, and he could still find a positive note. He told me it could be worse. I laughed and said it definitely could. I have realized in situations like this you need someone like him. 

I thought today was a good day to talk about duplicating expenses, and how we find housing for short term living. Let’s start with duplicating expenses. Travel nurses must have a tax home. This is not always the same as your permanent residence. This may seem confusing, and we get asked this often. A typical tax home for an ordinary person on the street is easy. A travel nurse is a little more difficult. Most working individuals make their living in one state, and live in one state. Travel nurses like myself, work in many different states, temporarily live in many different states, but i permanently live at my home for more than 30 days a year. This makes a travel nurse an atypical individual. This makes tax season a little more difficult. You have to maintain your residence, like your driver’s license, car registration, and your mortgage or rent,  at your primary residence. The general rule of thumb is that you need to live at your primary residence for at least 30 days a year, you need to pay “rent” at your temporary and permanent residence, you can’t live at a temporary residence for more than one year, and your temporary residence needs to be 50 miles from your permanent residence. I know this seems complicated! People think you can be flexible on these things, unfortunately you cannot because people audit these things.

Now that we talked about duplicated expenses, let’s talk about travel nursing pay. The contract that’s presented at each contract breaks down the pay into sections. It allows you to understand how much you can afford to spend on housing. Let’s talk about them: 

Let’s talk a little bit more about a housing stipen. 

What exactly is a Housing Stipend? A housing stipend is a fixed amount of money that a travel agency gives nurses to offset their living expenses. The housing stipend may not fully cover the rent where you’re living, but it should help! There’s no formula of how much you should be spending on rent, but a lot of travel nurses look at it a few different ways. Let’s explore them together!

• One week’s pay or ¼ of your monthly pay should pay for your temporary housing and permanent living. 
• For example: paid $3,300 weekly should be divided between the two places of living.
• Take your weekly housing stipend, multiply it by four, and that’s what you have for allowance for the month for rent for temporary housing.
• For example: my housing stipen is $122.22 daily. I work four days a week, so weekly my housing  stipend should be approximately $488.88. $488.88 x 4 = 1,955.55 for rent allowance. 
• Others decide there’s no formula and there’s no price on comfort and convenience. 

So the company gives you a housing allowance, do they find housing for you?  Generally speaking, a talent acquisition employee will call you with the travel company within 48 hours of signing a contract. They will give you information about the hospital including scrub colors, parking, and other various information. They will also talk about places to live and offer assistance. If they end up helping you find a place to live, it will most likely be more money. You’d be better off finding the place yourself. The only time I’d consider this option is if I couldn’t find another place to live, or if I signed a contract last minute. I haven’t had this issue yet! Finding housing is one of the most common questions we get asked. Let’s get into the dirty details. 

Sending money to a person you don’t know for a place you haven’t seen, is a daunting process. You have to be on high alert. I hope I can give you some good tips on this process. I wanted to discuss the different housing options for travel nurses and also discuss questions to ask future “landlords”. Let’s start with the different housing options! 

Furnished finders

First off, this has been Nick and I’s saving grace! We have found three great places through furnished finders. You can filter them to find rooms, hotels, and entire places. They are sorted by date available. It’s an easy site to navigate in terms of messaging the potential landlord. Pictures are listed with a property overview, general location, reviews, and description. Check out furnished finder: furnishedfinder.com

Airbnb

Airbnb is a really safe way to find living accommodations as a travel nurse. They usually come with a lot of reviews, pictures, and the site is easy to navigate. Airbnb does come with downsides, large service fees and cleaning fees (and no, we privately messaged people to do an internal contract. They typically say no). The monthly cleaning fee continues to be charged weekly or monthly, making this a expensive monthly rental. Check out airbnb at: Airbnb.com

Craigslist 

Craigslist is not monitored and is very hard to tell if something is credible. Honestly this is something that I would not recommend as a travel nurse. Check out Craigslist: craiglist.com

Facebook market/Facebook travel groups

Searching in the area for possible apartments on Facebook is a possibility. I have heard of other travel nurses having success with this. Travel nurses will often post reviews of places where they have lived and had a good experience. 

Now that we’ve gone into how to get a temporary place to live, let’s go into things to ask and things to look for. Nick and I have gotten better with this in the past year. Just this past week Nick said to me, “Remember that time we drove 42 hours from Portland Maine to Spokane, Washington with no place to live and found a place to live on the drive there? Let’s not do that again”. He’s probably right… that was a poor decision, but it worked out! 

Everyone’s really different, but personally we have criteria that we look for when we look at different apartments for our assignment. These are different things we look for:

• Distance from the hospital
• Safe and reliable location- near civilization 
• Parking
• Reliable internet for nick to work from home
• Month to month lease available 
• A decent space in the apartment for nick to work from home
• The apartment looks clean and it’s up to date. 
• Washer and dryer

After we find an apartment we are interested in, we message the possible landlord. We first introduce ourselves and explain our situation. We ask if they have the place available still, if a month to month lease with the possibility of extending till x date, and if they have reliable internet. If these things work out, we then ask for a zoom conference call. With a furnished finder apartment, if they have a starting date listed, ask for a date that you are interested in. A lot of times these people are flexible, and willing to work with you. When we set up a zoom call, we typically have a list of questions that we like to ask them. These are the questions and the things we look for during the zoom call.

• The apartment looks like the one that’s listed
• We talk about a month to month lease. We make sure that we communicate that we want to extend the lease for three months, but want to do month to month for the possibility of contract cancellation and also the apartment not working not working out for us. 
• If the washer and dryer is not listed on the ad, ask about the set up for the washer and dryer
• Parking is usually indicated on the ad. This would be a good opportunity to ask about where parking is, if it’s reliable and safe. 
• The zoom call would be a good time to check to see if the rent is negotiable.
• There are fees associated with possible furnished finders. Ask what their application and background check fees are. Before paying these fees, ask to see a lease to make sure you are interested in signing it and moving forward with the application process. 
• Ask what the preferred method of payment is. If they are indifferent, Venmo is actually a great option! There’s no fees, and it’s great for auditing as you get monthly statements. You can send the money immediately. ACH and wire transfers have more fees and take longer to process. 
• Ask what’s included in the rental. Some rentals do not include supplies to upkeep the rental for 12 weeks. It’s unrealistic to have someone bring a vacuum 46 hours away from home, or buy a vacuum for 12 weeks.

It’s midnight and we finally made it to Provo Utah. Miracles! We are beyond tired and can’t wait to go to bed. We are hoping tomorrow will be a better day.