Taking time off

Let's talk about taking time off as a traveler. It only seems appropriate to discuss this considering we've been absent from the blog for nearly 3 months and have taken a bit of a hiatus ourselves this summer.

One of the grand advantages of being a travel is that you can have better control of your free time on a large enough scale. If you look at your entire year in advance, you can navigate your contracts around certain dates: holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, vacations, family reunions, etc. Whether you are on a contract or not, any event that is important enough to NEED time off, you can easily make it happen.

During a contract

Requesting days off during a contract is an acceptable practice to a certain extent. Obviously as travelers, we are here to work and help the facility with their staffing issues. While it isn't appropriate to ask for a 2- or 3-week vacation in the middle of a contract, you can ask for a few select days.

If you know the days in advance, be sure to tell the hiring manager during your initial interview. That way there is no surprise when you are on contract. Once the facility agrees upon those dates off, it's essential to get them in writing on your contract. That way there is no question about your request when the time-off approaches. If you've been with the agency long enough, you might even have some vacation or sick time that can be used towards these days.

Similarly, you can take time off between a contract extension. If the facility wants you to extend, you can ask for a week or two between the end of your first contract and the beginning of the next one. Many facilities will be happy to satisfy this request if you are in good standing with the hospital. Most agencies will still provide you with medical insurance during this break. Oftentimes this is unpaid time off. However, you may be able to use accrued PTO to cover this time, if its available.

Between Contracts

When taking off time between contracts, this is a great opportunity to go on vacation, visit family or spend the necessary time at your tax home to maintain your stipend eligibility status. Be sure to communicate with your recruiter that you're taking some time off and when you plan to start looking for your next contract. Many travelers take off the holidays and start their contracts back in the first two weeks of January. This can often lead to increased competition with other travelers in finding a new assignment and decreased rates. If you find yourself in this situation it may be beneficial to wait a few weeks until the right contract comes available.

Between contracts you might want to take off a longer duration of time, maybe a few weeks to a couple of months, or however long you would like. This is typically unpaid time off, so it is important to budget accordingly.

A major concern when taking a longer interval off of work is medical insurance. The length of time you remain covered by your insurance after the completion of a contract depends on your agency. Some agencies will only cover until your contract end date, while others will cover you until the end of the month. Be sure to ask your recruiter to verify how the agency's coverage works. Either way, if you are taking an extended time off, it may be prudent to purchase private medical insurance. This is often much less expensive than you might think and gives you the confidence of coverage wherever you travel.

What we do

Typically, we like to take a month off of work after every 6 to 9 months of working an assignment. This gives us time to make enough money to pay our yearly bills, save up for a trip, and invest the remainder. We will often spend the holidays with our family, travel back to our tax home, or go explore a new country. Over the last 5 years of traveling, we have been able to visit several countries on our time off between contracts including: Scotland, England, Japan, Italy, Peru, Croatia, Costa Rica, and Austria.

While we are in a contract, we try to keep our requested time off to a minimum. We have occasionally negotiated for time off during a contract so that we can attend special events like weddings and birthdays. But generally speaking, we try to keep those requests at a minimum. Too many time-off requests can make a bad first impression with the hiring manager. Oftentimes, the schedule can be moved to satisfy certain dates off, once you're working at the facility and have established a good rapport with the scheduler.

Towards the end of the contract, we will try to use or cash out on any accumulated PTO or sick time we may have accrued. If you don't use these earned hours, you will lose them after you take time off from your agency.

As travelers, we are fortunate to make a great living and be able to take time off of work beyond the standard 2 weeks per year. This opens up many opportunities to do the things you might not have been able to do while working at a permanent staff position. The traveling lifestyle allows you to "have your cake and eat it too".