Life as a travel nurse can be challenging.
I'm away from my family.
I'm away from my dog.
I'm basically away from everything that I call home.
I'm way outside of my comfort zone, usually in different cities, different states.
You always have to be flexible, adjustable and just kind of willing to learn right then and there.
And if you don't know, I try to ask questions.
My name is Aspen Tucker.
I'm 29 years old.
I make $187,000 a year.
And I live in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
I'm a registered nurse who has transitioned into a travel nurse.
So I've been doing this about three years now.
And I was working at a staff job, local in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
My mom and stepdad were travel nurses, so I knew it's something I could do.
But my mom started traveling back in 2006, and I remember like she was making like
$3,000 a week at the time.
And like, it blew my mind.
My mom always was always in my ear, was like, "Aspen, you should pursue nursing.
You should do travel nursing like you like to travel.
And then you can see different places and still be a nurse and still help people."
So I knew then and there I was like, when my opportunity comes, I have to jump on this
opportunity. I cannot wait on it.
The time that I became a travel nurse was almost like the golden age because the money was
really high at that time.
Of course, it was smack dab in the in the mid of COVID.
So you needed nurses everywhere.
The demand was high.
It hasn't slowed down any.
The money has dropped some, in some aspects, when it comes to assignments, but
it's never going to be a dry spell.
Since I only try to work 8 or 9 months out of the year, I try to work as much as possible.
So usually I work a lot of overtime.
So normally I'm doing between 48 hours and 60 hours throughout the work week.
It essentially pays more to work more.
So of course, I try to work more.
What does help a lot of times is that I have a huge support system.
People that can look after my house, look after my cars, look after my dogs.
Another big help is that I have a supportive girlfriend who's also a travel nurse.
So sometimes we can take travel contracts together.
Sometimes we can take them separate.
But it just depends because she understands the lifestyle just as much, what comes with working all the
time and not being in a familiar environment.
I have four credit cards currently.
I have a Discover card.
I have a Bank of America card.
I have a Truist credit card, as well as a Capital One card.
The biggest thing that I usually put on my credit cards is the rental car, and I usually
use the truist credit card because I can transfer that from my checking and pay it
off interchangeably with that.
I've always been taught to any expense that I accrue on those to always
pay it off, even if it's a $13 or $23, $30 balance, I pay it off then
just to kind of try to stay away from the interest with those credit cards.
I like to try to have a good balance.
I like to try to live for the now.
I'm going to eat at nice restaurants, enjoy a good, decent quality of life and I'm going to travel a
lot, but also to investing in real estate.
The reason I have three cars is each one serves a purpose.
And then, my Ford Mustang is just a more pleasure convertible.
Sometimes when I'm home, I let the top down and unwind a little bit and relax and enjoy
it.
Travel nursing can be rough navigating health insurance.
As soon as your contract ends, you have like a grace period of maybe a week or two for
your health insurance to end.
So, I try to think smart and I try to get everything done while I'm under that contract.
Just an example of that recently, I had my wisdom teeth pulled.
They were hurting, hurting, hurting.
But I didn't want to do it when I didn't have a contract
. I was brought up on the ideology that debt is a part of society no matter
what. And I believe in good debt versus bad debt.
Education for me was a good debt.
Having $50,000 in student loans is a lot, but it was a necessity
to be a registered nurse.
I was able to go straight into ownership just because of living at home.
And my mom instilling that principle.
Save your money until you can buy a home.
What made buying real estate in Spartanburg attractive is just the low cost as well as
that, if something breaks down or something happens here, I have family here that
can help. I bought this place $93,000 and I put
down around $4,000, so I still had about $6,000, I believe, left after
that. I had saved $10,000.
So I had money left to kind of furnish the place a little, things like that.
I have two free bedrooms here that I will be Airbnbing out as well, just to kind of
help my monthly income as well as sustain it.
The way I look at it, if the places are going to be here, I might as well have them being paid
for.
I put down 20%, which is around $57,000.
I wanted to do that to keep my payments low.
I currently have someone moving in there and they're going to pay me $900 a month.
And the other side I plan on Airbnb, but currently my mortgage with the duplex is
$1,200 a month.
I do help out friends and family.
Sometimes people consider it too much, but I always followed my grandfather's
blueprint, like he helped everybody.
And I think that's the way I try to do it.
I have one friend that that is incarcerated that I try to give money to.
The reason I do that is because I know at the end of the day, that could
be me. I know at the end of the day, a lot of times when you come from our communities,
especially, you know, poor, being African-American in our community, you don't have a lot of
opportunities. So any way I can help, I'm always going to be willing to help because I know on the flip
side, if he could do it for me, he would do it for me as well.
When it comes to giving back, it's essential.
I could cut costs probably by not helping people as much, but that's not who I am.
Even the shirt I have on now and saying love will save the world.
I believe in giving back.
I don't believe in ever being selfish with money because money comes and goes, but the
relationships that you make lasts forever.
I don't ever want to be a person that that acts like I'm better than anybody, tries to be better than
anybody. My plan is always to help others around me, that look like me, that come from
similar backgrounds to me, to help them get on a better path so we all can be successful
together. When I'm
not working, I'm a leisure person and the first thing I'm doing is booking a
vacation. If I'm going to work hard, I try to play harder.
When I was younger, I wrote down a list of places that I always wanted to travel to.
So I try to knock out every every place on that list.
Traveling is essential to education.
You learn more when you travel more places.
It exposes you to different experiences.
But I do want to create more real estate opportunities for myself that I can work less and
less. I plan on, maybe, being married and starting a family,
but essentially, I don't know if I would if I'll ever fall in love with being in the same place, same
time, all the time.
I love nursing, so I will continue to do nursing, but I do want to come up with other streams
of income.