If you travel for at least six months at a time. You want enough time to get a good feeling about the area, and to find a housing situation which “pays you to stay” enough to want to stay there. Yes, Corporate Housing is more expensive, in many cases, than the bottom price range of extended stay or two star hotels, but it has a comfort level those places cannot provide. (Unless, of course, you have a reasonably priced hotel bar and simply have to take an elevator “home” when hammered on Friday.) Greed, however, may force you to book your entire stay in the extended stay or two star hotel because those can have the highest payback.
Every traveling consultant needs to live and breath IRS Publication 1542. In this publication you find the per-diem rates allowed by the IRS. If you can live and eat cheaper, the difference is yours to keep tax free. If you choose to put that amount into your Keogh, you get to deduct it again! That’s more than 100% return!
Let’s say you take a contract in Columbus, OH. The maximum combined per-diem rate allowed by the IRS (according to the 2010 publication) is $154 per day (your first day and last day aren’t allowed to be full amounts usually.)
154 * 31 = 4774 for meals and lodging
What happens if you happen to get the previous lodging deal of $52/night? 4774 – 1610 = 3164 for meals. If you cook at home and eat cheap, most of the “meals” amount can go directly into your Keogh where it comes off the top again. This is a benefit provided by the IRS to people who spend a lot of time working away from home. If you spend enough time working away from home though, you won’t take advantage of it because you will be tired of living like a hermit on a grub and worm diet. Maybe you’ll decide you want that corporate housing unit with the amazing view which costs $5K per month? I’ve seen strange things happen. Generally, if you are working a lot of hours initially, you can easily tough it out for six months and fatten your retirement account. What you cannot do is develop a habit of eating at a $100 per plate steak house or getting drunk in a hotel bar each night which charges $12 for a glass of wine and $7 for a bottle of domestic beer. You will go broke as a traveling consultant doing that. Learn to keep a box of wine in your room and quit complaining when housekeeping helps themselves to some. Life will be happy all over.
