Using a Nursing Job Overseas to Fund Your Overseas Experience

Working as a nurse overseas is an economical and sustainable way to fund your overseas experience

Nursing is a transferable skill, especially if you are a fluent English speaker because Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the UK and the USA are all experiencing an acute shortage of qualified nurses. This has resulted in an immediate opportunity for English speaking nurses to travel and nurse overseas.

Securing yourself a nursing job overseas will allow you to base yourself in a different region of the world and travel abroad from there. If you get a nursing job in the UK you will be able to easily explore Europe using the network of budget airlines that fly between the major European cities. If you base yourself nursing in Australia you can easily explore the South Pacific and Asia. I have done this successfully in the UK and am now based in Asia.

Working while you travel enables you to spend an extended time away from home and gives you a way to replenish your funds when you are running short.

Nursing Jobs Abroad and Disposable Income

Many factors affect your disposable income, and you need to consider them all when you are assessing a nursing employment contract.

Firstly, and probably most importantly, the cost of housing in the area where you will be nursing will have serious impact on how much money you have left at the end of the month. To find out how much accommodation will cost you - use the power of the internet. You can Google something like ‘1 bedroom apartment Albany New York’. And take a look at what is on offer with the letting agents that come up. Alternatively you can try to find the name of a local newspaper and check the classified section for ‘Apartments for Rent’.

You may find that accepting a nursing job in an area which has a low cost of housing, or one where housing is included will result in you having a higher disposable income, even if the salary figure is lower than you are being offered in other places.

The second highest expense would probably be your food bill, and the cost of food can vary drastically, even within a country. The cost of food includes your groceries that you bring home and cook for yourself, and also the food and drink that you purchase while you are out. To find out how the cost of food will affect your budget you can again use the power of the internet. Many restaurants now have internet sites and you can even check out their menu and the cost of things like their set meal.

Of course there are some exceptions to this rule. If you are only going to shop at large chain stores and eat at restaurants like McDonalds then your cost of living will be largely unaffected by your food purchases because these companies generally set one price for across the country.

Now, between countries, that’s different. You can actually use McDonalds to help you compare the cost of living between two countries. Each year economists work out the Big Mac Index which compares the cost of living in a number of countries and shows the information as how much a Big Mac costs. So the USA has a Big Mac cost of a dollar and places like Sweden have a higher Big Mac cost, but countries where it is cheap to live, like Indonesia, have a Big Mac cost of less than a dollar. It is a very rough guide to the cost of living in different countries.

Lastly, when working out your disposable income remember to use your take home pay when you work it out rather than your salary pre-tax. Unless you are nursing in the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia you probably will not receive a tax free income.