Paying $0 in Federal Taxes and $0 in Student Loans Payments as a Travel Therapist

Paying $0 in Federal taxes and $0 in student loan payments as a travel therapist

November 15, 2018 ~ Travel Therapy Mentor ~ 12 Comments

Written by: Jared Casazza, PT, DPT

Managing student loans as a new grad therapist, or even as a seasoned clinician, is one of the most common concerns that I’ve heard over the last few years. In addition, paying down student loans is also the most common reason that I’ve encountered for why new travelers choose to take travel contracts. Some of my most popular articles of all time on FifthWheelPT have to do with how I’ve chosen to manage my student loans, and this was also the topic of a recent post on this site, Travel Therapy: Paying Off Student Debt… or Not?

Today I want to talk about how it’s possible to pay $0 in federal taxes while also having a $0/month student loan payment while on an income driven repayment plan as a travel therapist. I will ignore state taxes, since this will differ for each individual based on the state in which they work and the state in which they have their tax home. I will also ignore FICA taxes since they are owed every dollar of income earned regardless of income level.

Some of the terminology and ideas in this post may get complex, so if you’re confused, check out the post linked above on Student Loans, as well as some of the links contained in that post for more background info.

Before I start, I do want to say that this is not meant to be personal advice for your individual situation, as I am not a financial advisor or accountant and have no formal training on these topics. This is information that I’ve learned from reading and researching over the past few years and implemented in my own situation, but everyone’s situation is different and tax laws change regularly. If you’re interested in doing anything similar, then do your own research or reach out to a licensed professional for help, as this post is meant for illustration and entertainment purposes only!

Alright, now with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s look at how I would plan to keep my federal taxes and student loan payments both at $0 for the foreseeable future as a full time travel therapist!

Example Situation Information

Let’s say that I’m a 26 year old new grad traveler, single tax filer, without any kids or dependents. I’m a DPT who’s home state and tax home is in Virginia. My primary goal as a travel therapist is to earn and save as much money as possible in order to increase my net worth as quickly as possible, to get to a point where I can transition into either part time work in a single location or taking fewer travel contracts each year to have more free time for family, other hobbies, or leisure travel. To do this, I invest heavily in tax deferred retirement accounts to decrease my tax burden and my student loan payment, which both allow me to save even more for the future. I have student loans of $100,000 with an average interest rate of 6%. After reading more about the various income driven repayment plans, I’ve decided that REPAYE will make the most sense for me financially, and that I plan to eventually qualify for student loan forgiveness. I also understand that half of my accumulated interest is subsidized each month while on the REPAYE plan, so the lower my monthly payment (ideally $0), the lower my effective interest rate will be!

Income, Taxes, and Student Loan Payment

As a traveler, I work about 48 weeks per year while spending a month at home each year as a vacation and to spend time with family and friends. My taxable pay on contract is $21/hour, with tax free stipends received for lodging, meals, and incidentals while on assignment traveling. In this situation, assuming I work 40 hours each week, my yearly taxable pay would equal $40,320. (21 x 40 x 48 = 40,320) The 40 hours a week is a safe assumption since I always make sure to have a 40 hour guarantee in my travel contracts (as we recommend that other travelers do)!

If I were to not try to optimize this situation at all, I would have a federal tax bill of approximately $3,208 for the tax year of 2018. I would also have a monthly student loan payment of $184, which is equal to $2,208 for the year. That’s definitely not bad but I want to do better. I’d rather keep that $5,416 in my own retirement accounts to grow and improve my net worth! Below are pictures of both the taxes and the student loan payment for this scenario. The student loan table was generated using the federal student loan website’s repayment estimator and the tax chart was generated using SmartAsset.com.

Optimized Scenario

The key to paying less in taxes and having a lower monthly income driven student loan payments lies in reducing your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI). One of the easiest ways to do this is to contribute to tax deferred accounts such as a traditional 401k, a traditional IRA, or a Health Savings Account (HSA). These accounts are very advantageous because not only do they reduce your tax liability, they also benefit you in the future through the money growing in the accounts over time (provided the money is invested wisely). For my purposes, I want my AGI to be low enough that I don’t owe anything in federal taxes and I have a student loan payment of $0. However, the two numbers to achieve these goals are unlikely to be the same, so this takes some research on my part.

In 2018, the standard deduction is $12,000, which means that any income up to that amount is taxed at 0%. but you can actually go higher than this amount before owing any money in federal taxes. In my situation in this optimized scenario, by contributing to retirement accounts, I also qualify for the saver’s credit. This means that as long as I contribute at least $2,000 to a retirement account and have an AGI below $19,250. I get a $1,000 tax credit that will completely wipe out any federal taxes owed at that income level. As far as federal taxes for a single traveler without kids who contributes at least $2,000 to retirement accounts are concerned, $19,250 is the sweet spot to owe nothing. This is assuming that no other deductions or credits are available to be claimed, which in the scenario above would be true.

To have a student loan payment of $0, $19,250 is a little too high and will still lead to me having a $10/month payment. That definitely isn’t bad at all, but I can do better while only contributing a little more to the tax deferred accounts mentioned above. After playing around with the repayment estimator, I find that to have a $0 student loan payment on the REPAYE plan, the highest AGI that I can have is $18,809.

This means that if I’m able to reduce my AGI from $40,320 down to exactly $18,809, I will achieve my goal of paying $0 in federal income taxes while also having a $0 student loan payment!

Implementation

Reducing your AGI by almost $22,000 may sound difficult, or even crazy. For most people who make only $40,000/year, that would probably be the case. However, travelers are different.

Since we receive tax free stipends which usually cover most, if not all, of our living expenses, living on a taxable income of $18,809/year isn’t nearly as hard. In fact, my girlfriend Whitney and I have each lived on much less than this each year since we began traveling, and we have met and mentored dozens if not hundreds of others that do as well. If you live an expensive lifestyle in a high cost of living area, then this might not be possible for you. But if your primary goal is to keep as much of your money as possible, while saving and investing for the future by living a modest lifestyle to achieve financial independence as quickly as possible, then this is 100% doable!

Implementing this strategy is fairly straight forward. Utilizing the tax deferred accounts mentioned above, I would need to contribute $21,511 to reach the $18,809 AGI amount talked about above. Here’s the course of action that I would take:

Since an HSA is an extremely valuable account to save for future medical expenses, or even to use as an extra retirement account, that is the first account that I would want to contribute to. I choose to utilize a high deductible health insurance plan through my travel company specifically to have access to this amazing account! The contribution limit for a HSA for a single individual is $3,450 for 2018. So I would contribute the full $3,450. ($21,511 – $3,450 = $18,061 still to contribute).

The next $5,500 (the contribution limit for IRAs in 2018) would go into a traditional IRA account. I prefer maxing out an IRA before a 401k due to the increased number of investment options available in the IRA compared to a 401k. Having more options for where to put the money will ultimately mean lower fees paid and more money in retirement. ($18,061 – $5,500 = $12,561 still to contribute).

At this point, I would have $12,561 left that I would put into the 401k plan offered by my travel company. I refuse to work with any travel company that doesn’t offer a 401k because of how valuable I find being able to contribute to these tax deferred accounts to be. A 401k has the largest limit of the accounts talked about above at $18,500 for 2018. I wouldn’t even need to max out the 401k completely since contributing just the $12,561 would get me to my goal, but if my income happened to be higher for some reason (possibly working overtime on a contract, or having other sources of income) then there would still be some wiggle room to contribute more and still achieve the magic AGI amount of $18,809.

Conclusion

As a traveler, it’s possible to have both a $0 federal tax bill and simultaneously have a $0 income driven student loan payment. Subsequently, this will allow the traveler to utilize the money saved to invest for the future and possibly achieve financial independence more quickly.

The key to achieving this is the traveler reducing his/her AGI by contributing to tax deferred accounts (401, traditional IRA, HSA). The magic AGI needed in the scenario above to reach this goal is $18,809, with anything below that amount being unnecessary. In the scenario above, using this strategy and putting the $21,511 needed into the tax deferred accounts would save the individual $5,416 between federal taxes and student loan payments, which is a 25% savings on the amount put into the accounts in the year contributed! Instead of that money being paid to the federal government and the student loan servicer, it would be invested and subsequently compounding tax-deferred over the years.

Being able to do this is relatively unique to travelers, since many of our expenses are reimbursed tax free while traveling, making living on the much lower AGI completely feasible; whereas, someone without the tax free stipends may struggle. Whitney, Travis, and I here at Travel Therapy Mentor have all taken advantage of tax deferred accounts to reduce our tax burdens while traveling, which we believe is a smart way to not only save money on taxes but also to set yourself up for a financially comfortable future!

Thanks for reading and making it through all of that! Do you take advantage of tax deferred accounts to reduce your income taxes and student loan payment while traveling? Let us know in the comments below! Reach out to us with any questions or for clarification on anything mentioned above. If you’re getting started with travel therapy and you need help finding a good recruiter/travel company, then send us a message to get our recommendations!

How Much Money Do Travel Therapists Make? The Comprehensive Guide to Travel Therapy Pay

man holding money with text "How much do travel therapists make?"

October 21, 2018April 4, 2023 ~ Travel Therapy Mentor ~ 42 Comments

Editor’s Note: This article was originally written in 2018 and recently updated in 2023 with more up to date information and numbers. Travel therapy pay rates have increased significantly especially over the past year due to an imbalance of supply and demand in favor of travel therapists. We aren’t sure how long these higher paying travel contracts will last or if they will increase even more in the future, but we’re hoping for the best. Right now is a great time to be a travel therapist! Contact us if you’re looking for help getting started with travel therapy, or fill out our recruiter recommendations form if you’re ready to start your travel therapy job search!

Often the reason that people choose to pursue a career as a travel therapist, or even just decide to work a few travel therapy contracts, is to make more money. They’ve heard that travel therapy pay can be much higher than pay at a permanent position. For therapists coming out of school with massive student loan debt, finding a way to deal with that debt is a primary concern, and travel therapy is a great way to make more money especially when starting out as a new grad. This leads to the most common question people have when first researching the pros and cons of travel therapy: How much money do travel therapists make?

Understanding Pay Differences for Travelers

Travel therapy pay is a little different from that of permanent full time positions, and therefore it commonly leads to some confusion for those first looking into pay differences between travel and permanent positions. Travel therapists’ compensation is made up of a combination of taxable pay and untaxed money (stipends for housing, meals, and incidentals) assuming that you meet the requirements for receiving the untaxed stipends. Since part of the money is untaxed, this leads to significantly higher net pay for a travel therapist. This is best illustrated through examples of each scenario.

Permanent Job Pay

First, let’s break down what a traditional pay package would look like at a permanent physical therapist job. This scenario would be comparable for an OT or SLP job as well. For PTA and COTA, the values would be lower, but the principle is the same.

Many new grads PTs accept jobs with hourly pay in the $30-$35/hour range, but of course this can vary depending on the setting and the area of the country, as well as your negotiating skills. I’ve talked to physical therapists that have taken permanent jobs as new grads making as low as $20/hour and others that have negotiated $40/hour or more, so the true range is massive, but around $30-$35 per hour seems to be the average. We’ll take the top of that average range and find the gross yearly pay for someone working a permanent full time job making $35/hour:

$35/hour X 40 hours per week X 52 weeks per year = $72,800 annual salary

Gross pay is pretty straight forward and simple to understand, but determining how much of that gross pay you actually get to keep (i.e. net pay) is harder to understand and often overlooked when therapists talk about their hourly compensation or salary. Let’s look at how much of that money is yours after Uncle Sam takes his hefty cut. The total percentage will depend on where you live, but on average across the country, a person making a $75k salary is going to have about 25% taken out for taxes. Click here for more information on tax rates in major cities across the country. Here’s a look at the permanent physical therapist’s net pay after taxes based on the average 25% tax rate:

$72,800 X .75= $54,600 annual salary after taxes
$54,600/52= $1,050/week after taxes (if divided out into weekly pay in order to better compare to travel jobs )

This is an approximate take home pay per week based on a $35 per hour job working 40 hours per week. If you have offers for higher salary positions than that, feel free to use the calculations above to estimate your pay. Note that all 401k (traditional) and HSA contributions, as well as all medical, dental, life, disability costs will come out of the gross salary.

For a more specific example, we’ll use Virginia’s state tax rate. Not only is this where Whitney and I live and maintain our tax home, but it’s also near the middle of the range as far as state income taxes go, which makes it closer to the average for everyone. Pay Check City has a great tool to use for your specific scenario and is the site I’ll use to calculate the take home pay below.

$1,024/week would be the weekly take home pay for a permanent physical therapist in the above scenario who lives in Virginia, which is pretty close to the $1,050/week using the 25% rule of thumb above. For quick calculations, multiplying your salary or hourly rate by .75 is a good way to get an estimate of how much of your gross pay you actually keep, but keep in mind that for lower incomes, the percentage kept will be higher and for higher incomes the percentage kept will be lower due to the progressive nature of the tax brackets.

Travel Job Pay

Now let’s take a look at how travel therapist pay differs. A travel therapy pay package consists of a few different parts:

Hourly Rate (taxable)
Housing allowance/stipend (not taxed)
Meal and incidental allowance/stipend (not taxed)
Sometimes, additional reimbursements (for state license, relocation costs, etc)

Travel pay will generally be presented in a total gross or net weekly amount. If a gross weekly pay number is presented, then that would include the hourly taxable rate x 40 hours, then adding in the housing, meals, and incidentals stipends. If the net pay number is given, then that is usually calculated using the 25% tax rule of thumb above, which as we saw with the specific example isn’t always accurate, but it’s a good estimate of what the traveler’s tax rate might be. This would be gross hourly pay x .75 then adding in the housing, meals, and incidentals stipends. If you know that your tax rate is different, for example if you have a family/dependents, then when a recruiter presents you with a gross and/or net weekly pay number, you need to be sure to run the numbers based on your own tax rate.

Because gross vs. net pay is a big difference, always make sure to clarify with the recruiter which one they are quoting you for your weekly pay number, to ensure you’re appropriately comparing pay across different offers.

Travel Therapy Pay Examples

Here are examples of two potential travel therapy pay packages that a traveler that we mentored recently received for two skilled nursing travel positions in North Carolina to further help illustrate how travel therapist pay actually works:

Position 1:

Hourly rate: $22/hour (taxed)
Housing stipend: $730/week (not taxed)
Meals and Incidentals stipend: $320/week (not taxed)

Total take home pay (net pay using 25% rule of thumb above for the hourly wage) per week before deductions for benefits: $1,710 per week

Position 2:

Hourly rate: $25/hour (taxed)
Housing allowance: $750/week (not taxed)
Meals and Incidentals allowance: $330/week (not taxed)

Total take home pay (net pay using 25% rule of thumb above for the hourly wage) per week before deductions for benefits: $1,830 per week

In addition to this weekly amount that’s composed of the hourly taxable pay + the stipend, the traveler may also receive reimbursements as part of their pay package for things like state license, relocation to the new area (paid as mileage), uniforms, etc. These are typically going to be one-time payments, often on your first or second paycheck. These reimbursements don’t factor directly into your weekly pay, but you should certainly take them into consideration when looking at your total compensation for the whole contract.

For example, if you receive a one time reimbursement of $300 for a license and $200 for relocation, that’s an extra $500 total. If you want to, you could divide that number by the number of weeks of your contract to see how it would affect your total pay. For example $500/13=$38. This would be like making an extra $38/wk on your weekly pay package.

How are Hourly Rates and Stipend Amounts Determined?

You may be looking at the travel pay package examples above and thinking, “If the stipends aren’t taxed, then why not make them as high as possible with a lower hourly wage to maximize net pay?” That’s a great question and something that I wondered when first starting out, which led to me doing a lot of research on the topic. There are a couple of reasons why specifically aiming to increase tax free stipends as much as possible through reducing the hourly taxable pay is illegal based on IRS tax laws.

The taxable hourly rate should be a reasonable amount for the job position in order to avoid “wage recharacterization.” To read the IRS definition of wage recharacterization, check out this link, but basically it means avoiding taxes by changing compensation from a taxable hourly wage to a nontaxed stipend. There is debate about what a reasonable wage is for various therapist positions, and it’s always best to consult a tax expert if you’re in doubt, but us here at Travel Therapy Mentor (both of us being travel physical therapists) choose to keep our taxable wages at $20/hour or above to be safe and not take any risks as far as wage recharacterization is concerned for a physical therapist. This number may be different based on your profession and comfort level with the IRS law interpretation.

Maximum Stipend Amounts

The other reason it isn’t possible to have massive stipends and a very low taxable wage is due to the GSA guidelines. The GSA determines the maximum allowable stipends for housing, meals, and incidentals in different areas throughout the country, and it applies to anyone traveling for work, including travel therapists. These numbers vary drastically depending on the area of the country you’ll be working in due to variance in the cost of living in each location.

Keep in mind that these are the maximum amounts and not necessarily how much you will receive in stipends for that area. Depending on how much the facility that you’ll be working at as a traveler is able to pay for the position, you may receive significantly less than the maximum amounts. We always consult the GSA website before accepting a job offer to make sure that the stipends we will be receiving are not above the maximum amounts for that particular area.

These guidelines exist to keep people honest and not allow people to take excessive advantage of the tax code, which is a good thing even though it’s a bummer that we can’t increase our pay more by paying even less in taxes as travel therapists. This leads to the next topic: what offers can you expect to receive as far as pay is concerned as a travel therapist?

Average Pay for Travel Therapists

Just as with permanent positions, travel pay can vary significantly depending on setting and location. We’ve spoken to and mentored thousands of other travel therapists that make as low as $1,500/week take home pay and others that make as much as $3,000/week take home. That’s quite the range! And again, this will vary based on your specialty (PT, OT, SLP, PTA, COTA).

In general, the highest paying contracts are seen with home health and lowest paying are skilled nursing facilities, in our experience. Also in general, jobs on the west coast pay more than jobs on the east coast, and jobs in rural areas pay more than cities and urban areas due to rural areas often being seen as less desirable for most travelers, causing a shift in supply/demand. These observations were a surprise to us when starting out, since this is often different than the factors affecting pay in permanent positions. Taking the above into account, it’s easy to see why someone working a home health job in a rural location in California would make a lot more than someone working a skilled nursing job in Boston, MA.

Another factor that affects pay significantly is how desperate the facility is to fill the position quickly. Whitney and I once found contracts on the east coast at a wonderful outpatient facility in a great location that paid us very well because they needed the positions filled very quickly and we were ready to start right away. They were willing to pay a premium to get us there quickly!

Travel Therapy Pay Variability

With the above factors in mind, an average pay range for a traveling therapist is usually between $1,700-$2,000/week after taxes as of the beginning of 2022, based on the US as a whole and all settings being considered. Again, if you’re willing to take home health contracts or work exclusively on the west coast (CA specifically) then you can pretty easily consistently make $2,000/week or more after taxes on your travel contracts. Whitney and I personally averaged around $1,650/week after taxes over our first three years while taking contracts exclusively on the east coast and almost always in quality outpatient facilities. The range for us has been mostly between $1,500/week to $1,900/week. Keep in mind that travel contracts paid much lower back in 2015 when we started traveling as new grads.

We don’t recommend any traveling PT’s, OT’s and SLP’s, even new grads, take pay packages less than about $1,600/week after taxes in any area with the current job market (or typical recommendation used to be no less than $1500). After an initial really tough time during the beginning of the pandemic for travel therapists, the travel therapy market has been very strong throughout the second half of 2021 and into 2022 with the number of open travel contracts up significantly and paying higher than in the past. Because of the supply/demand dynamics being in favor of the traveler, there’s no reason to take low paying offers right now.

Some companies and recruiters will do their best to take advantage of new travelers, new grads especially, by offering them very low pay, knowing that they don’t really have a baseline of what pay should be yet as a traveler. This is why having a mentor in your corner as a new traveler is vital to keep from getting taken advantage of when starting out! Reach out to us with questions and for recruiter/company recommendations and we will be happy to help you!

How to Accurately Compare Pay for Travel Jobs to Permanent Positions

When comparing pay from a travel job to a permanent job, I often find that people get confused by the weekly take home amounts quoted for travel contracts. An individual that has never taken a travel contract will see $1,650/week take home, multiply that by 52 (weeks in a year) and then compare that to their permanent job gross salary and determine that travel isn’t worth it.

As we talked about earlier, that is no where near an accurate comparison. You have to either convert the gross permanent pay into a weekly take home amount (using the 25% rule of thumb above or the PayCheckCity site) as we did above, or convert the weekly take home pay of a travel therapist into an equivalent amount if it was a permanent position. The second is a more difficult calculation with no easy rule of thumb since tax rates increase significantly as pay gets higher, but luckily PayCheckCity makes it much easier using their “Gross Up” calculator. Let’s see what gross pay you’d have to make at a permanent job to equal the $1,650/week after taxes that Whitney and I averaged early on while traveling.

We would have to make a staggering gross pay of $2,390/week at a permanent job to bring home the same $1,650/week take home pay that we have while traveling! That’s the equivalent of $60/hour or a salary of well over $120,000/year at a permanent job! When expressed in these terms, it’s easy to see how much more lucrative travel therapy is over a permanent job and how I was able to save over $100,000 in 1.5 years as a new grad travel therapist.

Based on our experiences and the thousands of others travel therapists that we have talked to and mentored, it’s not unrealistic for a new grad travel therapist to make 1.5-2 times as much as they would if they took a full time permanent job right out of school. In fact, right now there are travelers making even more than double what they would make at a permanent position by being very flexible on the setting and location they go to in order to specifically take only the highest paying contracts.

The Bottom Line on Permanent vs. Travel Jobs

It is important to remember that despite the significantly higher pay, there are some trade offs to traveling, which are outlined in this pros and cons article. The big downsides to remember in terms of pay are that travel therapists don’t get paid time off for vacations like permanent therapists do, and it can be difficult to move from place to place in only a weekend, meaning that sometimes unwanted time off between contracts is inevitable. These factors eat into the pay of travelers, but even so, it is still significantly higher with all things considered.

I hope this helps clarify the differences in pay for permanent vs travel jobs. Please contact us or ask questions in the comments below if we can help you further understand pay. And if you’re looking to get started on your own travel therapy journey, fill out our recruiter recommendations form and we can get you connected with travel therapy recruiters we know and trust!

What has your experience been as far as pay for permanent jobs or travel jobs? Do the numbers in the article match what you’ve seen? Let us know in the comments!

Jared is a Doctor of Physical Therapy who has been a Travel PT since 2015. He is also a finance enthusiast and has spent thousands of hours learning about personal finance. He used his career as a Travel PT combined with strategic financial choices to achieve financial independence by the age of 30.