My Best Tips for Budgeting as a Travel Nurse

You GUYS! First of all, hi. Welcome to (or back to) the blog! For the last couple of months I’ve just felt like I have all this content stuck in my head that I want to get out into the world and I just haven’t taken the time to sit town and put it to paper. I recently left my work from home job to come back to travel nursing. I can’t say it was an easy decision, but the money was too good to pass up. Anyway, life has been busy AF and I’ve been neglecting the blog. Nonetheless, it’s getting chilly and I’m in the Northeast, so I’ll (hopefully) be spending lots of time cozied up with a coffee or a glass of wine just writing like crazy.

SO many of you have been emailing me lately asking for advice on managing finances as a travel nurse. If you’ve read my post on the pros and cons of travel nursing, you know that finances can be tricky as a traveler. Generally your time off is unpaid, you’re duplicating housing expenses, and you never know what the heck you’re going to run into on the way to your next assignment (coming from someone who has been in two car accidents on the way to a new state). Despite all of this, if you’re smart about how you manage your money, you can still reach some ambitious financial goals. During the end of 2020/beginning of 2021 I managed to pay off several thousand dollars in debt and save about $12k.

I honestly could probably write an entire book on this topic, but I neither of us has that kind of time let’s be honest. Instead I’ll sum up my best tips on budgeting and financial management. These are my tips from a travel nursing perspective, but honestly I think these things can work for anyone! I’ll also be sharing some of my favorite apps and things I use to help me save money, so if you’re interested in that be sure to sign up for my email list below!

Important Things To Remember

No PTO

While travel nursing is much more lucrative than staff nursing, you do need to keep a few things in mind. First, almost all of your time off is unpaid. While some companies are starting to give PTO accrual, I can pretty much promise you won’t accrue it at a fast enough rate to cover the amount of time you’ll want off. You need time in between contracts to move, get settled, etc. Realistically you’ll probably have at least a week off in between contracts. I usually take a minimum of two, but my ideal is four. I’m definitely not accruing PTO fast enough to cover for that. Your PTO accrual is more to cover for things like sick days on a contract, but you won’t have paid vacations or paid time off between assignments.

Housing Expenses

Short term, furnished housing is usually going to be more expensive for what you would pay for the same place in a long term lease/unfurnished. Be prepared to pay more than you might expect. You can get the cost down if you can rent a room or share a place, but if you’re like me and only do private housing it can get pricey.

Something Will Go Wrong

I’m not trying to be a pessimist here, but when I tell you there is ALWAYS something coming up, I’m serious. I’m currently on a contract without my car for the second time because I got into an accident on the way. One of the travelers I met on this contract has her car in the shop now too. Another traveler I know had to move three times in her first week because of issues with her housing. This job is amazing, but think about all the unexpected expenses that could come up with moving across the country. Now imagine that every three months… Which brings me to my first tip.

Budgeting Tips

Always Have a Financial Cushion

DO NOT start travel nursing if you’re broke as hell thinking that traveling will fix all of your problems. The money is good, but the lifestyle can be expensive. Between those “oh shit” moments, housing deposits, travel expenses, licensure applications, etc., it can be a lot of money you have to pay up front. Even if you’re getting reimbursed for things by your agency, that money won’t come until your first check which is a week after you’re moved in and working. You need to have money available up front to get you through to that first check.

Know Where Your Money Is Going

The very first thing you absolutely have to do is take an inventory of what you’re spending your money on. I know it can be cringey, but you gotta do it. If you don’t know what you’re regularly spending, it’s literally impossible to create a reasonable budget (more on that next) and stick to it. This step is probably the hardest, but I promise you’ll feel better once it’s done.

I recommend going through your bank/credit card statements for at least three months so you have a good idea of your spending over time. What worked well for me was creating a spreadsheet on Google Sheets to track all of my monthly subscriptions, bills, and other spending. Make sure you don’t forget things that may be on a less frequent schedule than monthly (quarterly subscription boxes, hair appointments, etc.).

Here’s a screenshot of my monthly budget spreadsheet so you have an example of what this looks like and some things to include. Notice how I have a column for plan to reduce monthly expenses. This is where I make notes about when I need to cancel plans by, plans for decreasing monthly subscriptions, etc. I recommend cutting monthly expenses as much as possible as soon as you do your monthly spending inventory. The longer you wait, the less likely you are to cancel and decrease those subscriptions.

I also have a due date column, but I don’t use it anymore because I added it all to my Google Calendar since I check that more regularly. Knowing your due dates will be helpful when I get to the part about how I recommend paying your bills, so make sure you take the extra two seconds to note that when you’re going through your accounts.

Also notice the spot at the top right where I include my total debts for each major account including credit cards and my car. If you have things like a mortgage payment that would go here as well. I include my interest rate for each so I know which I need to prioritize paying off quickly. Highest interest rates should be paid off first.

Create A Monthly Budget

Once you’ve taken an inventory of your monthly expenses and cut back where you can, total up everything that’s left so you know the bare minimum that’s coming out of your pocket. For this part, I include minimum payments on all of my major monthly accounts like credit cards and car payment. I do recommend paying extra on these, but first you have to know the minimum that you owe. So for example, my minimum due each month is a total of everything in the lefthand column plus minimum payments on the major accounts in the upper right side of the sheet. For me that comes out to about $1600 a month for baseline expenses (bills, my tax home apartment, etc) plus whatever I’m paying in rent for my current travel contract. Everything I make on top of that $1600+/month is what I have to work with for debt repayment, savings, and spending money for all the ridiculous trips I go on.

Set a Goal For Your Budget

In my opinion, financial management is a little bit easier when you have something to work towards. Maybe it’s because I like to plan things because the structure helps me feel less anxious, but even if you’re not so neurotic, I think it’s a nice motivator. When I started my debt repayment journey, my goal was to be debt free by my 30th birthday. It was a really ambitious goal, but I chose it because I knew that if I set my sights high, the worst that could happen was I had significantly less debt than I did on my 29th birthday. I didn’t end up getting completely debt free by 30 because, you know, life. But I did pay off several thousand in credit card debt, save about 12k, and only have a teeny bit left to pay down on my car which has a really low interest rate, so I’m thrilled with the results.

Whether it’s a debt repayment goal (like paying back student loans or becoming debt free) or a savings goal (like investing 10k or saving for a down payment on a house), having something to look forward to will help you be successful. Setting a time frame on your goal is crucial, because it will help to guide your budget and how you spend that “extra” once your minimum expenses are paid.

Calculate What Achieving Your Goal Will Cost

In order to ensure your goal is realistic and to know how to guide your monthly spending, you need to figure out what the goal is going to require you to pay monthly to achieve it. For example, say you want to pay off your 10k student loans in the next year. You need to figure out how much you’d have to pay per month and if you have that in the budget. 10k/12 = $834/month. Similarly, if your goal was to invest $10k over the next year, you’d need to invest $834/mo for the next 12 months.

Once you know how much your goal will cost, you need to decide if that’s realistic for you. Can you reasonably pay your monthly minimums and dedicate an extra $834 (or whatever your number is) per month to bills and still keep your sanity? Does this leave you enough room for emergency spending plus a little money to spend on yourself? You shouldn’t go broke or feel like you’re in extreme financial strain while you’re trying to aggressively pay back your debt. If you do, you won’t stick to it. It’s like giving up carbs to lose weight for summer and then gaining it all back by June because you were so hangry and annoyed with dieting you just gave up entirely.

Pay Your Bills Weekly (or every time you get paid)

This is my favorite tip and the thing that helps me the most to stay on track. Most of us are in the habit of leaving our bills on auto pay and letting them come out of our account without having to think about it. Don’t get me wrong, I love auto pay as much as the next girl, but hear me out on this one.

I have a calendar event for all of my bills due each month on my Google calendar. I get paid on Fridays, so the first thing I do on either Friday or Saturday is to look to the week ahead, pay all of my bills that have due dates that week, and then pay whatever extra amount I’ve decided towards debt or savings (if you set a monthly amount, just divide it by 4 and pay that amount weekly). While it takes a little more work than letting everything auto pay, it’s done and out of the way ahead of time. Guess what that means – all the money left in your account from your paycheck is yours to do whatever you want with!

For me, this worked really well from a mindset perspective because it helped me avoid feeling like I was constantly worrying about spending or feeling like I had to restrict spending. When my expenses for the week are out of my account as soon as I get paid (including debt payment and paying yourself in savings/investments), I know that whatever money is leftover is fair game for “fun money.” This is what I use for things like happy hour with friends, pedicures, and random things I decide to buy for no reason. Whatever money is left in my account when the next paycheck hits goes into extra savings or investments. This strategy has helped me stay on top of managing my money and consistently saving since I started by debt free journey last year!

Be Patient and Flexible

Working towards big financial goals can be overwhelming. Once you get started, it’s so gratifying to watch your debt balances fall and your savings increase, but that doesn’t change the fact that things come up and life happens. Remember to give yourself grace and trust the process. There may be weeks when you just can’t make that extra payment towards your credit card balance because you had to replace a part in your car unexpectedly, your start date for your new contract got pushed back, whatever it is. I’m here to remind you that ITS OKAY! These things happen.

Try not to get too stressed out if you have an off week or something comes up that forces you to veer off course from your plan for a little while. Life happens. Of course the goal is to eventually have enough of a cushion in savings that these things won’t throw you off as much, but it takes time to get there. The important thing is to ensure that you don’t let these little hiccups totally derail you. As soon as you can, hop back on track! Always remember that anything you’re doing is better than where you were before. The nice thing about debt payment and saving is that even if you don’t reach the goal in the initial time frame you set, you’ll still be a hell of a lot closer than you were when you started.

I hope you found these tips helpful! Don’t forget, I’ll be sending out a list of my favorite apps and money saving tools to my email list, so be sure to sign up if you’re interested. If you have questions, you can always shoot me an email or message me on Instagram as well. I love talking to you guys!

@adventuresofarealgirl 👇🏻