Some of this post will be specific to travel nursing, but a lot of it is just some insights into how we budget in general. Dan and I are both a bit type A so once both of us started our first regular jobs many moons ago, we both started budgeting. It still surprises me to hear about how many people don’t budget, or at least not in any structured way. We both really believe in the importance of tracking your spending and finances, and have found that it makes a huge difference for us when we do.

For us, our budget is something we create and manage together, but Dan does take on the majority of the work when it comes to tracking our spending. Every month he goes through our bank accounts and records all of our purchases, checking to make sure that everything looks correct and balances out. We also look it over monthly together and make any adjustments that need to be made. Sometimes we overspend our budget and have to decide what savings categories to pull from and sometimes we underspend and get to decide where we want to put the excess.

our budget categories

Within our budget, we separate it into categories each with a goal or limit as to how much we plan to spend in that category each month. Each of our purchases gets categorized into these different types of expenses. Thanks to the handy spreadsheet that Dan made us, we don’t even have to do the math to see the positive or negative difference in each category (planned vs. actual). Some of our categories are spending categories which vary month to month, and some are saving which do not. For our savings categories we just automatically transfer the set amount into our savings or investment accounts each month.

I’m not going to share amounts, but these are the categories that we split our budget into:

Some of the categories are a little vague, like “Everyday” or “Other,” but we have our own definitions for these that help us organize our budget and spending. You may have more or less categories, but if you’re just starting out with budgeting a good first step is to look at your spending and categorize it!

tracking spending

Like I said before, each month we make sure we have a running list of all of our purchases so that they can be properly categorized and so we can make sure our accounts are balancing properly. When it comes to cash purchases we don’t keep track as much, but we rarely use cash at this point so it’s not an issue for us. If you’re wanting to start a budget, tracking your spending is a good way to start. From there you can categorize it and see if there are any areas where you seem to be spending quite a lot that maybe you’d like to change.

Build your category goals from there while obviously keeping in mind your income. We use credit cards for most of our purchases to benefit from the rewards programs and to keep our credit scores strong. That said, if you have a problem with overspending every or most months, maybe take a break from the credit card for a while and see if you can get your spending back down that way. At times we do overspend our budget, especially during moving months while travel nursing when our income is much lower than normal. For us, we have savings set aside in many different categories that we can pull from in these circumstances to make up the difference. Obviously it’s not ideal to spend more than you make in any given month, but if you have to pull from savings that’s better than racking up a credit card bill.

making a budget buffer

Part of how we manage overspending the budget is by actually budgeting for that. During months that Dan finishes a contract and we take some time off to travel to our next location, we typically spend more than we make. That’s because our expenses are often higher than normal those months and of course our income is lower…not an ideal situation. To help counteract that, we budget for more in certain categories than our bills actually cost. Housing is a big one that we over budget for so we have some extra for the time in between contracts. When we have excess like this in a budget category, it gets moved to a savings category that we build up over time. We do place caps on these savings categories, but most of the time we don’t hit the cap before we have to use some of it.

The other buffer that we work into our budget is in our monthly expenses as a whole. We don’t actually set our budget cap (how much we have to spend each month) at exactly what we expect our income to be. We typically like to budget assuming our income is actually about 10% or so less than what it should be. This varies from contract to contract for us as we change up our numbers with each travel nursing contract.

For example, Dan’s last contract stated that he could be called off one shift per week which would mean he could potentially end up making 2/3 of what he was technically contracted to make. So for that contract we built in a larger buffer of about 30% assuming the worst case scenario. You want to be smart with your budgeting and account for issues like this, especially if you’re travel nursing.

where we’ve struggled

As I said earlier, we’ve consistently overspent in the transition months between contracts when our income is at it’s lowest and our expenses at their highest. We’ve come to realize that with having furnished housing and limited space in our car for moves, we always overspend our grocery budget that first month in a new place. Because we track our budget and expenses so closely we can easily see trends like this and start planning for them.

It also helps us to cut back on our spending when we see that we’ve already maxed out a category half way through the month or come close to it. Realistically, Dan tries to update the budget more like weekly when it comes to inputting and categorizing our spending which makes it possible to track things like that. It’s definitely a lot of work upfront and throughout the month, but it’s so worth it. We are so much better about keeping up with savings goals and being more aware of our spending habits because we are so intentional with our budget.

Travel nursing is such a tumultuous time in all areas of life including finances. Bringing some kind of structure to finances while travel nursing is really important if you want to make the most of it. Work on your travel nursing budget today! It’s never too late to start 🙂

do you have a travel nursing budget?