Pay calculators, a license map, and a negotiation script — built by nurses who learned the hard way that gross pay and real take-home are not the same thing.
Recruiters quote gross package. You need taxable wages, tax-free housing, real housing costs, and IRS rules — all in one number. The only calculator that shows what you actually keep after taxes and rent.
A $95K salary in Dallas and $95K in San Francisco are not the same paycheck. Compare real purchasing power across any two cities after housing, taxes, and cost-index adjustments.
Pay · FLSAStandard 40-hour FLSA, hospital 8/80 rule, and blended travel rates. Differentials are included in your overtime base — exactly as the law requires. Know what every extra shift earns.
Pay · ShiftNight, weekend, holiday, and charge differentials — stacked and annualized. Build your exact weekly schedule and see the dollar value of every off-hours hour you work.
Career · NegotiationA word-for-word opening ask, justification sequence, and counter-offer responses — generated from your specialty, experience, and market data. Walk in with the exact words.
Licensing · Map40 active NLC states, 4 with pending implementation, and the rest non-compact — all in one interactive map. Real Census boundaries, click any state for board contact, endorsement fee, and timeline.
Every calculator on this page was built by Jayson Minagawa, BSN, RN — a Unit Manager and MDS Coordinator with 12+ years of clinical experience across ICU/critical care, psychiatric, correctional, and travel nursing. The math is sourced from primary documents (BLS OES wage data, BEA Regional Price Parities, GSA per-diem rates, NCSBN compact registry, DOL FLSA fact sheets) — not scraped from job-board averages or vague salary aggregators.
The goal is to put the same numbers a hospital CFO uses on the side of the bedside nurse. If your recruiter says "$3,200/week," you should be able to walk into the conversation knowing exactly how much of that is taxable wages, how much is tax-free stipend, what GSA per-diem ceiling applies in that city, and what your real take-home is after rent in that local market.
The Travel Nurse Stipend Calculator separates a contract's taxable wages from its tax-free housing and meal stipends — and applies IRS tax-home rules that determine whether the stipend portion stays tax-free at all. Pair it with the Salary Cost of Living Calculator, which uses BEA Regional Price Parities to convert any nominal salary into a real purchasing-power equivalent across cities. The Compact License Map tells you which states honor your existing license under the NLC and which require a separate endorsement application — critical input for travel-contract decisions.
For staff nurses, the Nurse Overtime Calculator models both the standard 40-hour FLSA framework and the hospital-specific 8/80 rule, with shift differentials properly included in the overtime base (an FLSA requirement that some hospitals quietly violate). The Shift Differential Calculator shows the annual dollar value of your off-hours commitment — useful when negotiating a base bump in exchange for moving to days. And the Salary Negotiation Script builds a word-for-word ask, justification sequence, and counter-offer responses based on your specialty, experience, and current market data.
No paywalls. No "freemium" bait. No selling your data to recruiters or agencies. No sponsored placement disguised as editorial. The tools work because the math is honest — and the math stays honest because nobody pays us to bend it.
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