Travel Therapy and Finances Archives

Making $100,000 per year has long been a marker of success and something that is strived for in society. This is no different for physical therapists.

With tuition costs continually increasing, especially for graduate level programs, student loan debt becomes more of an issue for new grad physical therapists with each passing year. We communicate with thousands of PT students and new grad PTs every year, and student loans are a major point of anxiety for almost all of them. These days, it’s rare to talk to a new grad PT who has less than $100,000 in student loan debt, with the average seeming to be in the $150,000-$200,000 range currently. With that amount of debt, it’s no wonder that the desire to make at least $100,000 per year is higher than ever in this cohort. A high salary realistically offers the only chance of being able to pay off that amount of student debt.

When I graduated from physical therapy school in 2015, I had just over $92,000 in student loans (and my wife and fellow PT, Whitney, had over $140,000). Initially, we had no idea how to approach the situation. The student loan forgiveness options were still very new to me, and I didn’t know if they would be a good fit. I just knew that I needed to earn a lot of money to be able to achieve a positive net worth as quickly as possible.

Here are three options that I considered as a new grad physical therapist that I knew would allow me to earn at least $100,000 per year.

Starting a Cash Pay Outpatient Clinic

As a new graduate from PT school, I was confident in my clinical skills. I spent a lot of time reading research and taking advanced courses, along with my normal classroom education and clinical internships, which put me in a position to feel comfortable treating and communicating with patients. I wanted to put those skills to use in the outpatient setting, but after looking at what outpatient clinics were paying in my area, I just couldn’t go the traditional route. The thought of trying to pay off $92,000 of student loans on a $65,000/year salary was terrifying to me, especially knowing that many of the therapists in those positions were working 45 hours per week or more. This led me to start researching creating my own cash pay physical therapy clinic.

With a cash pay clinic, it would be possible to see less patients and make more money. Who wouldn’t want that, right? At the time though, I had no experience with starting or running a business, and the idea was intimidating. I also hadn’t seen any other new grads who had tried something like this, much less any that had done it successfully, with gave me pause.

Ultimately, I decided not to go this route, but over the past nine years since I graduated, there are a lot more resources available online that make the process less daunting to start your own cash pay PT clinic. There are also many new grad PTs starting and successfully running cash pay clinics making $100,000 per year or more that you can find on social media for encouragement. For any new grad who feels confident with their clinical skills and wants to work in the outpatient setting, starting your own cash pay practice is a clear, although not simple, path to earning $100,000 per year or more.

Working PRN Home Health

I had no experience with home health when I graduated from PT school, and in hindsight this was a mistake. In school I thought that I was sure I wanted to always be an outpatient physical therapist, so I never really considered trying to get one of my clinicals in the home health setting. When I graduated though, I quickly realized that working in home health would pay much better than outpatient, and that I should have given myself a chance to learn more about this setting while in school.

Depending on your state, there are some full time, permanent home health positions paying over $100,000 per year that are willing to assist and train new graduates. The need for physical therapists in the home health setting is very high, so there are often lots of options with great pay.

For home health, I think the biggest opportunity to earn the most money is in putting together multiple PRN positions to create your own full time job. Home health PRN positions will usually pay a flat rate per visit that varies based on the type of visit (start of care, evaluation, treatment, reassessment, or discharge), and the PRN rates are usually higher than what’s offered to the full time staff. The rates for these visits depend on the area and the need, but it’s not uncommon to be able to do five treatments per day and make $400-$500/day. Substitute in a couple evaluations or a start of care, and you can earn even more. Picking up 2-3 PRN home health jobs in your area and working full time hours can be an easy way to earn over $100,000/year as a new grad physical therapist.

Taking Travel Therapy Contracts

Last but not least is the decision that I ultimately made coming out of PT school, which is to take travel physical therapy contracts. A big reason that I chose Travel PT was to make as much money as possible as a new grad to put myself in a good financial position, but there were other things that drew me to it as well. I’d never lived more than an hour away from my hometown, and I had done little exploring more than a state or two away. Being able to try out different areas of the country to see if there was somewhere else that would be a better place for me to settle down long term was very enticing. Also getting to try out different settings to break up the monotony sounded better than being locked into the same clinic for multiple years.

In my first year as a travel therapist, I made almost $100,000 in TAKE HOME pay (after taxes)! That would be the equivalent of earning over $130,000/year (gross pay) in a salaried permanent position. If you’re unfamiliar with how travel therapy pay works, this article explains it in depth. This was way more than I had expected to make my first year out of school. The higher income allowed me to save $100,000 in my first year and a half after graduation, enough to pay off my student loans completely had I chosen to go that route (however I decided to take advantage of income driven repayment options and focus on my investments instead)! Currently, Travel PT pay rates are even higher than when I graduated in 2015, so it’s possible to make significantly more than I did my first year, especially with some leniency on location and/or setting.

Travel therapy is, without a doubt, the way to make the most money as a new grad physical therapist with the least amount of hassle. With that being said, it isn’t right for every new grad. You need to be confident in your evaluation and treatment skills, be a relatively quick learner, and be comfortable moving from place to place in order to succeed.

Which Will You Choose?

There are multiple ways to earn more than $100,000 per year as a new grad physical therapist but these are three of the best ways that don’t require working lots of extra hours. The right choice for you will ultimately depend on your own personal situation and circumstances. As a new grad, it’s important to make a decision that is a good fit and will allow you to grow both professionally and personally. No matter what decision you make, be sure to go in well informed and knowing what to expect to improve your odds of success.

If you choose to pursue travel therapy, we have a free Travel Therapy 101 series that will get you headed on the right track! We can also help get you connected with great Travel Therapy Recruiters who will work well with you as a new grad.

Written by Jared Casazza, PT, DPT – Jared has been a traveling physical therapist since 2015. He has become an expert in the field of travel healthcare through his experience, research, and networking over nearly a decade.

There’s no doubt that travel therapy can seem daunting when first starting out. One of the more confusing things for many new travelers is how travel therapy pay packages work and what’s a reasonable amount to make on a contract. Between taxable pay, stipends, tax homes, reimbursements, and various bonuses offered by companies for travel jobs, it’s certainly reasonable to feel confused by it all. Combine this with understanding how the pay packages relate to the bill rate and how much the travel company keeps of the bill rate, and it’s easy to understand how many new travelers can feel confused and be taken advantage of.

If you’re completely new to understanding travel therapy pay, then start with this comprehensive guide to travel therapy pay that breaks it all down.

In this article, I’ll be focusing specifically on the various bonuses that you might see offered in a travel contract, and if they really are just extra “free money” like some recruiters will claim.

Travel Therapy Bonuses as a Marketing Tactic

An important thing to understand is that there are hundreds of travel companies out there vying for your business as a therapist. There’s also not often all that much to make one stand out from another on the surface. Largely, the benefits of each travel therapy company are very similar. Of course, some have more jobs in certain areas, more direct clients, or specialize in certain settings or disciplines, but those are things that take a thorough interview to really discover. On a superficial marketing level, most things are pretty similar.

Some common things you’ll hear from almost every travel company if you contact them online or walk around and talk to them at a conference include: “We have travel jobs in all 50 states,” “We offer mentorship to new travel therapists,” “We offer day one health insurance,” and/or “We offer a 401k with matching.”

While nice to hear, none of that really makes a company stand out, especially when most are offering the same things. Travel healthcare companies know this and are always looking for ways to entice new travelers to work for them instead of the competition. Some of the intangible benefits of working with certain companies can definitely be enticing. One way they do this is offering a travel therapy bonus in a contract.

Let’s say you’re walking around a large conference and are at the booth of the fifth travel company of the day. All of the ones you’ve talked to have said the things above, and they have also reassured you that they have the best recruiters and will get you the highest possible pay. You feel like you’re still at square one and still have no idea which company you should work with. Then suddenly one of the booths you stop at, a recruiter tells you that they offer all of the above, but also $5,000 worth of student loan reimbursement after you work with them for four contracts!

To a naive prospective traveler, this is probably enough to sway them to work with that company. After all, they have everything the other companies have, but will also put $5,000 toward your student loans?

But not so fast, things aren’t always what they appear.

Where Do Travel Therapy Bonuses Come From?

You can see how offering a big bonus like that could be a persuasive marketing tactic for a traveler with very little else to differentiate one company from another. Unfortunately, that bonus isn’t just “free money,” and it’s often counterproductive for you to take it. Why you ask?

It all comes down to where the money for a travel contract comes from. The bill rate (an hourly amount for the time you’re on the clock at a travel assignment) in most cases is all that’s paid to the travel company from the facility. This means that everything about your pay, along with any taxes and fees, as well as the travel company’s expenses and profit have to be accounted for from the bill rate. There’s no extra “free money” to give you in a travel contract, but the money can be moved around in creative ways to create the illusion of free money.

What’s happening in the $5,000 student loan reimbursement example above is that the travel company is moving money from the bill rate around, and making a suboptimal situation sound more exciting. If they’re agreeing to give you $5,000 toward your student loans after working four contracts with them, what they’re doing behind the scenes is reducing your total weekly pay for each of those four contracts by $1,250, adding it all together in a separate basket, and then giving it back to you at the end of the four contracts in a $5,000 lump sum.

So essentially, for getting that $5,000 bonus after four contracts, you’re making $100 less each week on your pay. Remember, there’s no free money in a travel contract. It all comes from the same bill rate.

Suddenly, that bonus doesn’t seem so appealing.

Why Travel Therapy Bonuses Usually Aren’t Optimal

Okay, so the travel company is just keeping some money from you each week to then give that money to you all at once at the end of a specified timeframe, and calling it a bonus. That’s a little different than what you were thinking, but still not so bad, right? Sometimes it’s nice to get a big lump sum that feels like a windfall. But, it is actually bad for a couple of reasons.

First, you have to consider the time value of money. Money that you receive now is worth more than money you receive in the future. That should make sense, because you know that if you put that $100 that you could have been receiving each week toward your debt or into smart investments along the way, then it will be worth more than $100 a year from now. It will have earned you a return, or reduced the amount of interest you had to pay on your debt. This is the same reason that getting a big income tax return is suboptimal. It’s better to have that extra money throughout the year, instead of allowing the IRS (or travel company in this case) to collect interest on it instead.

Second, there’s a stipulation on the bonus. Imagine that you work three travel contracts with that company, and then decide to stay and take a permanent job at the third assignment location. You didn’t meet the requirement of working with the company for four contracts, so you don’t get the bonus! Even though they set some of the money you would have been making aside for three contracts to give you the bonus, they now get to keep it since you didn’t fulfill the terms.

There’s also an opportunity cost with this. If you have to commit to that company for four contracts to get the bonus, what if after your second contract, you talk to a different travel company that has the perfect job for you with high pay that your current company doesn’t have. Now you have to choose whether you want to take the good job with the other company and leave that bonus on the table, or stay with the current company and take a less than perfect job just to get that bonus after another couple of contracts. Staying with this company just to get the bonus at the end really has you locked in.

Types of Travel Therapy Bonuses

After interviewing more than a hundred recruiters and managers from over twenty travel companies, and talking to many more on a less formal basis, we’ve heard all sorts of different benefits, intangible benefits, and bonuses offered to try to attract the attention of potential travel therapists.

“Student loan reimbursement” and “contract completion” travel therapy bonuses are definitely the most common. There are also companies that offer vacations or trips as incentives for their travelers. While this is really creative and exciting, you always have to remember that what I talked about above still applies. A “free trip” doesn’t come from free money on top of your normal pay, it comes from a small percentage of all travelers’ pay each week being allocated to a fund to later pay for the trip.

As long as you understand where all of these incentives come from, then taking them isn’t always a bad thing. For example, say you find a company and recruiter you really like. They have lots of jobs all over the country with exactly what you’re looking for, and they also seem to pay higher on a weekly basis than other companies you’ve talked to. If they happen to offer a bonus or an incentive trip, then by all means, take it. The problem is really when travelers choose a subpar company and accept low pay packages with poor job options, just because they were enticed by a bonus that is nothing more than fancy marketing and moving money around in the pay package.

An Exception to the Rule

One exception to everything above is that in rare cases, a facility might offer a completion bonus directly.

There are two different types of completion bonuses. One is the travel company moving money around to give you a lump sum at the end of a contract instead of spreading it out through the contract in your weekly pay, suboptimal for the reasons above. (Time value of money, contract cancellations, etc.)

The other is a completion bonus offered directly by the facility. In this case, the facility will pay the normal bill rate to the travel company, and then at the end of a contract agree to pay an additional amount as a completion bonus that goes to the travel therapist. This is to attract travelers to that position and also deter travelers from cancelling their contract in the middle. In this case, the completion bonus essentially is free money, because nothing is being moved around in the pay package. While these types of completion bonuses are rare for therapists, your recruiter will be able to tell you if a job that you’re interested in is offering one.

Finding Good Travel Companies and Recruiters

Finding travel companies and recruiters that fit your individual wants and needs is difficult. So difficult that many prospective travelers just give up on it and pick one nearly at random or based on some marketing strategy that catches their eye. That is why various bonuses and incentives are so common. They can make one company stand out above the others in the mind of a new traveler who thinks they are getting something for free, when it’s really just often a suboptimal gimmick.

The things you really need to know about a recruiter and travel company to find the best ones for you are things you won’t learn without a more thorough interview, which is extremely time consuming with so many options out there. The traveler-recruiter relationship can make or break your experience with travel therapy. So can choosing a travel company that does or doesn’t have what you’re looking for in terms of job options or that pays very low or high for what you need.

If you’d like assistance with finding travel therapy companies and recruiters that should work well for your situation, fill out our recruiter recommendation form. After interviewing more than a hundred recruiters from over twenty companies since 2015, we’ve found ones that shine in all different types of situations. Finding a recruiter and company is certainly no one size fits all situation, so we do our best to take a look at your individual preferences and provide our best recommendations for you personally.

Other Great Travel Therapy Resources

If you’d like to see a sample of some of the best jobs currently available from the companies and recruiters we work with, check out our hot jobs page. If you have questions about travel therapy, join our Community Facebook group where we, along with thousands of other travel therapists, are eager to help. Maybe you’re new to travel and just want to get an overview of the basics: our free 101 series is best place to start. If you want more in-depth, step-by-step information on how to be a financially successful travel therapist, then check out our comprehensive travel therapy course.

Best of luck in your travel therapy adventures! Feel free to reach out to us with any questions!

Category: Travel Therapy and Finances

3 Ways to Make Over $100,000 Per Year as a New Grad Physical Therapist