How to Double Your SLP Salary

How I Doubled My Salary as a Speech-Language Pathologist

Alright underpaid, overworked, and burned out SLPs of the world. This one is for you. Yeah you, complaining in the SLP Facebook groups every day (or at least reading the comments and nodding your head in agreement).  I’m here to share with you a secret about how to double your salary.

That’s right I doubled my salary in less than ONE YEAR at age 27. Not over the course of a lifetime like most people experience if they’re lucky. Plus, as if the money wasn’t enough of an incentive, if you’re anything like me, you’ll end up feeling more fulfilled and less burned out than you do right now!

Sound too good to be true? Thankfully, it’s not! Although I’ll be honest, there is a bit of a catch. The secret? Taking advantage of supply and demand via travel therapy.

I know this isn’t possible for everyone, so if you know you could never uproot your life every few months or you have kids, a spouse, etc. that you aren’t willing to leave behind or can’t bring with you on the road, you probably won’t get much out of this.

But if maybe, just maybeeee there is a chance that your adventurous side is calling (or you have a mountain of student loans to pay off), keep reading.

What is Travel Therapy?

This is a basic explanation of travel therapy that is relevant to speech language pathologists, but also to travel physical therapist and occupational therapist. (Although as of this writing in March 2020, the OT travel market is pretty awful. Sorry guys.)

While there is some variability in the length of contracts, in general a travel therapy contract will last 13 weeks. There are some that are shorter or longer though. In fact, you can complete an entire school year as a travel therapist and NOT have to uproot your life so frequently if you’d rather have a bit more consistency while also raking in the money!

Travel therapist work to fill a short term need in difficult to fill positions. Now don’t freak out about “difficult to fill”. Sometimes the jobs are difficult to fill because they are in rural areas or maybe in large cities that SLPs can’t afford to live in easily otherwise.

Travel therapist may also provide coverage for maternity leaves. Since we are a predominately female profession, these opportunities definitely come up. And the cool thing is, you can get a travel therapy job in almost any setting. Although SNFs and schools tend to have the most jobs.

How Can Travelers Make so Much More Money?

There are a couple of ways/reasons that travelers make more money. For full transparency, my first travel therapy contract I was making around $1520 a WEEK AFTER all my taxes came out. That is a LOT of money. It was about the same on my second contract although I was actually only working 36 hours a week on that one.

My third contract which I start in about a week (eek! Getting excited) will be over $2100 a WEEK! (I mean, it is in Napa, CA so the cost of living is higher, but not THAT much higher compared to how much more I’m going to be getting paid).

This pay is substantially higher than the $1500 or so I was make bi-weekly after taxes at my permanent school job. Sometimes I literally can’t even believe how financially amazing traveling speech pathology is. Here’s how it works.

1. Traveling therapists fill hard to fill positions.

The places we work have an immediate need and are willing to pay a premium to not be without a therapist. We are providing them a big service by jumping in and hitting the ground running. We are compensated more for the “inconvenience” of having to change jobs every few months.

I say “inconvenience” in quotes because honestly switching jobs every few months has been totally amazing and fun for me. I love being on my toes and learning new things and travel therapy allows me to do that!

2. Travel Therapists receive tax-free stipends to help cover our living expenses on the road.

Now before you get toooooo excited about “tax free money” you do need to know that in order to qualify for these tax-free stipends you need to maintain a tax home and duplicate your living expenses. Aka pay for expenses on the road and at your permanent tax home.

If you have no idea what a tax home is, check out Travel Tax. Travel Tax offers tons of resources to travel therapists and they also specialize in filing taxes for travelers. In fact, I couldn’t bring myself to file my own taxes this first year of traveling so I am counting on them for that service this year!

The cool thing about tax-free stipends for housing and meals though is that if you can find housing and meals for cheaper than the federal rates for the area you are traveling in, you can save the rest!

Plus, because part of our income comes from these reimbursements, traveling speech-language pathologists (and other traveling therapists) are paid a lower hourly rate. Lower hourly rate means lower tax bracket which means more money in your pocket! (Or, if you’re on you’re a game, more money in your retirement accounts!)

3. There is a trade-off with a higher pay rate for traveling therapists at the expense of stability.

Being a traveling speech therapist, physical therapist, or occupational therapist means you are taking a risk. There is always a chance that your contract could be canceled. But if you are willing to take the risk, the benefits can be pretty significant.

Some people aren’t up for giving away their stability. There is still hope for you! Typically school travel therapy jobs are for an entire school year and are less likely to be canceled than a medical or skilled nursing contract.

So if getting a new job every 3 months or so seems like just too big of a jump for you. You could always consider a school job. I know some people will say they like to be a part of the district. I get that. I was in the same district for the first 2 years of my career. But honestly, the additional benefits of travel therapy (higher pay, ability to travel to awesome places, etc) were worth the trade-off for me.

SIGN ME UP! How can I start?

So I’ve convinced you eh? (Yes, I still say “eh”, because you can take the girl out of Minnesota but you can’t take Minnesota out of the girl).

I bet you are wondering what your next steps are. Check out my insights from the first travel therapy contract which detail my journey to where I am now.

And if you are serious about this and want to talk to a recruiter about open positions, I have several different recruiters I can get you in contact with! These people seriously ROCK. So shoot me an email ([email protected]) and we’ll get chatting about the best decision you could ever make (if you want my humble opinon!)