I’ve written about navigating traveling healthcare insurance a few times now, with my most recent post breaking down common insurance questions I receive fairly often. So I think now is the time to finally share my insurance mistake that led to over a thousand dollars in out of pocket expenses… My Mistake My mistake occurred last summer after finishing up my first traveling assignment in Boston. I finished my assignment August 31st and I drove home (back to Wisconsin), immediately that next day. I arrived home early on September 2nd, and was immediately getting my material ready to begin my next local travel assignment in Minnesota that was coming up in a few weeks. …
-
-
Traveling and Health Insurance: Common Questions
I already have a blog post up about the benefits that traveling healthcare offers. These benefits are usually similar to that of a full time position and sometimes better. For example, my current traveling company offers a 5% 401k matching. Whereas one of my more recent contracts at a hospital only matched 2% to full time employees… In this past post, insurance is touched on, but in lieu of the many questions from readers, I think it would be beneficial to give a full post dedicated to deciphering the common myths about insurance with traveling healthcare. Common Questions This first one is is my favorite. Question: “Do travelers get insurance?” Answer: Yes. I…
-
Assignment #5: Boston x2
I guess that when you enjoy a location, it’s hard to keep you away from it. This is exactly how I felt as I signed up for my second traveling bout in Boston and how I still feel today as I sit here on a hot 105 degree day in Arizona writing this. (I could use a nice ocean breeze right now). Boston for me was an amazing place to work as a traveler. I’ve touched on this some in my first post about traveling in Boston. But, in regards to geographic location, it’s perfect. It has the ocean, it has mountains just to the north in NH, VT, and…
-
How Long Can I Work at One Traveling Assignment?
As mentioned prior, to maximize your income with traveling healthcare, you want to make sure that you qualify for the tax free stipends. You do this by making sure you are following the rules set in place by the IRS on maintaining a tax home. This is laid out in length in the “how to maintain your tax home while traveling” series. However, there is one more often forgot about piece of information that matters to making sure we don’t lose our tax home and that’s the length of time we spend in one location. The IRS Answer The IRS gives us a working definition of how long we are…
-
How To Maintain a Tax Home While Traveling: Part 3
Return to Part 2 How to Avoid Abandoning your Tax Home *Disclaimer: I am not a certified tax professional Finally, the last thing we need to be aware of when maintaining our tax homes is making sure we don’t abandon our already established tax home. You have put in the work to establish your tax home as shown in part 1 and part 2, so now, let’s make sure that we don’t abandon this tax home and again miss out on our valuable tax free stipends. As mentioned in part 2, the first step to not abandoning our tax homes is making sure we are using your tax home regularly…
