Tag: travel therapy contract

10 Lessons Learned in 10 Years as Travel Therapists

~ Travel Therapy Mentor ~ Leave a comment

May 2025 marks a decade since Whitney and I embarked on our first travel physical therapy contracts. What started as a five-year plan to pay off student loans and explore the country has evolved into ten years of incredible experiences, unexpected turns, and a deep dive into the travel therapy industry.

In our 10 years as travel therapists, we’ve worked in five different states, practiced in several different physical therapy settings, visited all 50 U.S. states and all 63 U.S. National Parks via trips during and between contracts, as well as traveled to over 55 countries and all 7 continents for fun in our free time! Throughout this journey, we achieved financial independence and semi-retired before the age of 30!

Along the way, we created Travel Therapy Mentor to educate and inspire current and aspiring travel therapists. Over the years in this role as mentors, we’ve worked closely with travel therapy companies, recruiters, and thousands of fellow travelers. This unique perspective as travelers ourselves and leaders within the industry has given us invaluable insights.

Whether you’re a seasoned travel therapist, new to the game, or just curious about this dynamic career path, here are 10 crucial lessons we’ve learned over the past ten years:

1. Your Plans WILL Change (and That’s Okay!)

We started with a five-year plan: pay off student loans, get into real estate investing, and slowly traverse the country in our RV from coast to coast, before settling down into perm jobs. Needless to say things didn’t go exactly as we planned! We stayed on the East Coast for longer, taking back to back contracts while focusing on savings rate and prioritizing our goal of achieving financial independence. We decided not to pay off our loans in favor of investing and utilizing income driven repayment plans. We then semi-retired and started traveling all over the world while working only 1-2 contracts per year. Our five years turned into ten, and we never took permanent jobs as originally planned. We unexpectedly became entrepreneurs and built a thriving mentorship business. We now have a family but continue to live a flexible lifestyle where we don’t work full time.

As a travel therapist, we learned it’s important to be flexible, embrace the unexpected, and allow life to open up opportunities you never envisioned.

2. There’s No One-Size-Fits-All Company

This is perhaps our most important lesson for aspiring travel therapists to help you have the best experience overall with your job searches. With over a hundred travel therapy companies out there, there’s no single “best” one. Each company has its pros, cons, and specializations. Which company is best for you depends on your discipline, preferred setting, desired locations, and what benefits you value. Working with the wrong company can lead to a frustrating experience, making you believe travel therapy isn’t for you, when in reality, you just haven’t found the right fit.

Your wants and needs dictate the best company for you.

3. Recruiters Change Over Time – And So Should Your Approach

Just like companies, travel therapy recruiters aren’t static. A fantastic recruiter today might become overwhelmed, change their focus, or have life circumstances that impact their responsiveness down the line. A recruiter who’s great for an experienced traveler who knows exactly what they want might not be the best fit for a new traveler needing more guidance.

Don’t be afraid to explore new recruiters or work with multiple ones as your needs and their circumstances evolve.

If you’d like help getting connected with travel therapy recruiters and companies that align with your own personal goals, you can fill out our Recruiter Recommendations form here and we will help point you in the right direction!

4. Housing is Never Perfect

We bought a fifth wheel thinking RVing would solve all our housing problems – easier moves, cheaper living. While there were some benefits, it wasn’t the “perfect solution” we imagined. We eventually sold it and have done short-term housing options for more recent contracts. Both housing options have their headaches. Overall, finding travel therapy housing options can be challenging no matter which route you go.

The “best” housing option for you depends entirely on your situation (i.e. traveling with pets/partner/family and your travel style). You’ll have to choose the “lesser of evils” that best aligns with your lifestyle.

5. Moderate Pay in Low Cost-of-Living Areas Can Be More Lucrative

It’s tempting to chase the highest-paying travel therapy contracts, but often these are in expensive metropolitan areas where your housing, food, and daily expenses will eat significantly into your take-home pay. We learned that taking a moderately-paying contract in a rural or lower cost-of-living area often allows you to save and keep more of your money at the end of the day.

When choosing contracts, always consider the net income after expenses, not just the gross pay package.

6. Traveling with Kids is Harder Than We Thought

Before having our daughter, we envisioned continuing our travel lifestyle with kids. Now, with a six-month-old who doesn’t consistently sleep through the night, we’ve had a humbling reality check. The logistics of finding suitable housing, childcare away from family support, and managing sleep deprivation on the road are immense. Not to mention packing and all the extra things you need!

While many families successfully travel with children, it’s a far greater challenge than we anticipated. You’ll have to weigh the pros and cons of travel with a family if you’re considering it.

7. Job Boards Give a Skewed View of the Market

When we started, travel therapy job boards didn’t even exist. Now, they’re everywhere, and while they seem convenient, they don’t always represent the full reality of the market. Often, they highlight only the highest-paying jobs, which can be misleading regarding realistic take-home pay for most travel jobs. They also don’t show the full spectrum of available positions or the unique requirements of each. Relying solely on job boards can give you an inaccurate picture of opportunities, often overstating average pay or listing jobs that are no longer available.

Your recruiter is often a more reliable source for accurate, up-to-the-minute job information, which is why we recommend having solid relationships with 2-3 recruiters at different companies.

8. Working Internationally Doesn’t Make Sense for Most

The allure of working abroad as a travel therapist is strong, but we discovered it’s often not practical for most. International therapy jobs typically pay significantly less (50-70% of U.S. rates), come with complex visa and licensing hurdles, and lack the comprehensive staffing agencies found in the U.S. This is why we’ve never worked abroad as physical therapists. We only work in the U.S., then we use the flexibility of travel therapy careers to take time off and travel internationally for fun.

Our advice? Work in the U.S. as a travel therapist for 9 months, save aggressively, then take 3 months off to travel internationally for fun. This approach often yields more money and significantly less hassle, allowing you to see the world on your terms.

9. Be Selective to Avoid Bad Contracts

Travel therapy sometimes gets a bad rap, often from uninformed travelers. Some assume they must take whatever job a single recruiter offers, sometimes leading to miserable experiences in high-volume clinics or demanding settings. This is completely avoidable! You have to be selective. Research the ins and outs of travel therapy before starting, ask thorough interview questions, and have multiple options from different companies and recruiters.

By doing your homework, you can largely mitigate the risk of bad travel therapy contracts and genuinely enjoy your travel therapy career.

10. Your Ability to Negotiate Depends on the Job Market (and Your Leverage)

There’s a misconception that travel therapists can always demand top dollar. The reality is, your ability to negotiate pay and terms depends heavily on the current job market and your unique situation. If you’re a single traveler open to any setting in any location, your leverage is high. However, if you have specific criteria for setting and location, your options might be limited, reducing your negotiating power.

Negotiation isn’t about magic words; it’s about being in a position of strength. If a facility desperately needs your specific skills or immediate availability, and you have other attractive offers, you have leverage. If they have many qualified applicants and you have no other options, your power diminishes. Always work with multiple recruiters to create competitive offers and understand the dynamics of the situation.

Our journey as travel therapists has been full of learning, growth, and incredible experiences. While it’s not without its challenges, the freedom and opportunities that we’ve enjoyed from our travel therapy careers is unmatched. We hope that our insights have been helpful for you!

If you want help getting started as a travel therapist, check out the resources we have on our website and social media channels. You can start here with our Travel Therapy 101 Series and our Travel Therapy Recruiter Recommendations. Send us a message if you have any questions!

Additional Resources:

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.

How Far From Home Do You Need to be for a Travel Therapy Contract?

~ Travel Therapy Mentor ~ Leave a comment

With travel therapy becoming more popular for many physical therapists (PT), occupational therapists (OT), and speech language pathologists (SLP), prospective travel therapists often wonder how far away from home does a job need to be in order to be considered a travel therapy contract.

Often the people asking this question have a reason for not wanting to leave their home area, such as family ties or being locked into a mortgage or lease, but they still want the benefits that come along with travel therapy like higher pay and flexibility to take time off between contracts. They assume that living at home but taking travel therapy contracts within driving distance will give them the best of both worlds, but unfortunately it’s a little more complicated than that.

We hear from PTs, OTs, and SLPs who are in this situation all the time. Many of them want to take travel therapy jobs close to home, but don’t know how the process works or if that’s possible. If you’re in this boat as well, we’re here to help.

First let’s define some terms in regards to travel therapy to try to make things more understandable.

Travel Therapy Terminology

Tax free stipends: The tax free stipends are a big part of what makes travel therapy pay packages so lucrative. Travel therapists are eligible for tax free stipends for housing, meals, and incidentals when they travel away from home for work and meet certain rules for maintaining a tax home.

Tax Home: A travel therapist’s tax home is their place of permanent residence where they have expenses, business ties, and return to on a regular basis. If a traveler doesn’t have a tax home and does not maintain all the tax home rules, then they’re considered an itinerant worker and are ineligible for tax free stipends.

Itinerant worker: An itinerant worker is a travel therapist who chooses to take travel contracts without maintaining a tax home. They’re truly nomadic, moving from one temporary contract to the next, without any permanent residence where they return and at which they have expenses and business/family ties.

Local Travel: A local travel contract is a travel contract that a therapist takes close to their permanent residence. For a local travel contract, the therapist would be commuting to the job from their home. In this case, they would not be eligible for tax free stipends. This is because although they do have a tax home, they are not duplicating their housing expenses since they’re commuting, which is one of the IRS tax home rules required to be eligible for the tax free stipends.

How Far Do You Need to be Away from Home for a Travel Therapy Contract?

If you’re taking a travel therapy job as a local travel contract without tax free stipends, then there is no distance requirement at all. In this case, your pay package would just be structured differently than a typical travel therapy contract where you are traveling to a new location. Your pay package would be all taxed, more like an hourly rate at a permanent or PRN job. Although you won’t get the tax free stipends, the pay should still but quite a bit higher than a permanent job, and you don’t have to worry about finding housing or packing/moving like a traditional travel therapist. For some people, this is exactly what they want. Just keep in mind, there’s no guarantee that there will be an open travel therapy job in your home area in order for you to be able to make local travel therapy an option. Some areas are more well suited for local travel therapy than others, so it will depend on the availability of travel therapy job options in your region. If you’re curious about travel therapy job options in your region, it’s best to get connected with a travel therapy recruiter who can tell you what job options they have available and/or typically see for your area.

If you’d like to take a travel therapy contract as a traditional travel therapist in order to receive the tax free stipends and earn more money, but would like for it to be somewhat close to your home/region, then the distance that the job needs to be away from your home is whatever would be considered “beyond a reasonable commutable distance” from your home. This can vary significantly depending on where you live and if it’s urban or rural. That is why there is no exact guideline set by the IRS for exactly how far away from your home it needs to be. Some travel therapy staffing companies will use the “50 Mile Rule” as a rule of thumb to determine if the job is far enough from your home to be considered a true travel therapy job. But, again, this is just a rule of thumb and not an actual IRS rule. You will need to take into consideration what typical workers in your area would consider a normal commute for a permanent job. Then look outside of that radius. In addition to taking into account how far the job is away, if you would like to take the job as a traveler who is receiving tax free stipends, you must also meet all of the tax home rules. The biggest one to consider in this case is duplicating expenses. This means finding a place to stay and paying expenses at the location of job for the duration of the travel therapy assignment, while still maintaining your expenses at your place back home. Again, you cannot commute from your house to a job, no matter how far away it is, and be eligible per the IRS rules to receive tax free stipends.

Close to Home Travel Therapy Contract Example

A good example of this is the very first travel therapy contract that I took back in 2015 when Whitney and I started traveling as new grad physical therapists. We wanted to be fairly close to home for our first jobs to make sure that travel therapy was a good fit for us before we ventured too far away. I ended up accepting a job at a hospital that had an open Travel PT position about 70 miles from home. I kept the room I was renting back at home as my tax home, and we found a place to live closer to the new job where we also paid rent. Since the contract was outside of a commutable distance for our area, and I was duplicating housing expenses, as well as following the other tax home guidelines, I was eligible for tax free stipends and took the job as a traditional travel contract.

On the other hand, had the job been a little closer, and I commuted back and forth home each day, then I would have had to take the contract as a local traveler with a fully taxed pay package. I would have made about $300-$400 less each week in that case due to having to pay taxes on my full pay package, but I wouldn’t have had to pay for a place to stay closer to work. So as you can see, there are pros and cons in this situation.

Which Type of Travel Therapy is Best for You?

The great thing about travel therapy is that there are so many different options and ways to do things.

Maybe traveling away from home isn’t feasible for you due to family obligations, but there are travel therapy contracts open near you and you choose to take contracts as a local traveler. That’s wonderful!

Maybe you start traveling right after graduation and don’t have roots put down anywhere yet, so you decide to travel as a truly nomadic itinerant worker without maintaining a tax home. Or similarly, you decide to sell your home to cut down on expenses, and become truly nomadic. That’s great!

Or maybe, like us, you want to travel but aren’t yet sure how the lifestyle will fit you, so you decide to take a travel contract somewhat close to home, but still outside of a commutable distance to get your feet wet first, while meeting all the tax home rules and duplicating expenses. Smart move!

And of course there’s the traditional travel therapy route, where you maintain your tax home and meet all the tax home rules, while traveling all over the country taking travel therapy jobs in various places far away from home. The options are endless!

However you decide to travel, there’s almost certainly a way to make it work if you’re determined, do your research, and come up with a plan that works well for you.

If you need help getting started with travel therapy, our free Travel Therapy 101 series has helped thousands of new healthcare travelers learn the essentials to dive into travel therapy. If you need help getting in touch with some great travel companies and recruiters that will be a good fit for your situation, then fill out our recruiter recommendation form to get connected. Or if you want to just peruse some of the current travel therapy jobs available, then our hot jobs list is the place to go. Best of luck in your journey, and feel free to message us with any questions!

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.