Map My Pay
Bringing Clarity to Nurse Salaries
05/28/2026
ER nurses in Houston, TX take home $92,800 more a year than ER nurses in Sunnyvale, CA, on less than half the salary.
📊 Sunnyvale gross $208,404 vs Houston gross $97,810
🏠 Sunnyvale home $2.1M vs Houston home $262K
🏆 Houston keeps $52,188 a year after a mortgage
📉 Sunnyvale loses $40,605 a year on the same math
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💬 Comment 'MMP' to see what your city pays
05/26/2026
A San Francisco nurse takes home $53,000 more a year than a Nashville nurse. Even after California's higher taxes.
The myth is California's higher taxes cancel California's higher nurse pay.
The math is not even close.
🌙 SF RN: $188k base → $124k net
🌙 Nashville RN: $89k base → $71k net
🌙 Gap: $53,588 a year, California's way
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💬 Comment 'MMP' to see what your city pays
05/25/2026
I keep seeing nurses get excited about a $42,000 raise to move somewhere like NYC, and a year later they're wondering where the money went.
I ran the math on nurses in other cities making less than a NYC nurse making $115,000, and after taxes and rent nurses in these other cities kept more while the NYC nurse keeps less than 300 per month.
Comment "BLOG" for the full breakdown.
Comment "MMP" to do the comparison yourself.
54% of assaulted nurses actually file a report. Almost half just stay quiet
That's the part nobody talks about
They said reporting wasn't worth it because nothing changes, and they end up labeled a problem on their unit
The real assault rate is way higher than what's on paper
Go to mapmypay.com to compare pay and cost of living across 21,000 cities and apply for these high paying jobs. We curate every single one
Most nurses assume the Bay Area paycheck wins. I used to think the same thing.
But when I pulled the actual take-home pay after California taxes and compared the median home prices in San Francisco and Sacramento, the results were not what I expected. The SF nurse makes $19,000 more on paper, but the Sacramento nurse keeps $3,801 more every single month after housing. That works out to $45,612 a year more in disposable income for the nurse who supposedly makes less.
This is the first video in a 3-part series where I rank every Bay Area city for nurses and break down the commute math. The full video is on YouTube.
Run your own numbers at mapmypay.com
I ranked 12 nurse living scenarios across 6 California cities by one number: what actually ends up in your bank account after taxes and housing every month. Not gross salary. Not hourly rate. What you keep.
Two of the 12 scenarios are mathematically impossible on a single nurse salary.
A Stanford nurse trying to buy a home is looking at a $3.2 million median home price, an $18,831 monthly mortgage, and a take-home of only $11,324. That's negative $7,507 every month before you eat.
Mountain View is the same story. $2 million median home, $11,628 mortgage, and you're $1,682 in the hole every month.
If you want to live in either city, you're renting. Period. And that actually leads to one of the most surprising results in the full ranking.
The full breakdown of all 12 scenarios with every dollar is on my YouTube channel. And if you want to run the numbers on your own city, go to mapmypay.com. We cover 21,000 US cities for nurses and nine other healthcare roles.
If you are a nurse or nursing student trying to decide between the CRNA path and the physician anesthesiologist path, this clip from my interview with Jason Bolt CRNA breaks it down clearly.
A CRNA spends all 3 years of school focused entirely on anesthesia from day one. The ICU experience and nursing background already covers the generalist foundation, so you go straight into learning anesthesia when you start the program.
The physician anesthesiologist path is 4 years of medical school plus a 1 year general medicine internship before you even begin learning anesthesia, and then another 3 years of anesthesia residency after that.
Both end up doing the same job at the bedside with the same scope of practice.
See what nurses and CRNAs take home in your city at https://mapmypay.com
Full interview on my YouTube channel Nurses to Riches.
Stanford pays staff nurses more than any hospital in California, and it isn't even close when you factor in the full rate structure.
New grads start at $92.77/hr. That's $173,000 a year at 36 hours a week.
At 10 years base you're at $118.66/hr, which is $222,000 a year. No per diem. No night shift. Just base rate.
At 10 years per diem nights, you're making $155.02/hr. That's $290,000 a year.
At 30 years per diem nights, $163.60/hr. $306,000 a year.
And this is without overtime, without weekends, just picking the right position at the right hospital.
See what you'd take home after taxes and housing in any of 21,000 US cities at mapmypay.com. Full breakdown of all 5 top-paying California hospitals is on the YouTube channel ().
Here's how a staff RN actually hits $150/hr in California.
→ Step 1: Get your experience up. Every year moves you up a step on the union pay scale. Stanford goes from $92/hr new grad to $108/hr at 5 years.
→ Step 2: Go per diem. You give up benefits and PTO, but you gain 15-20% on top of your base.
→ Step 3: Work nights. Add another $8-$16/hr.
Go to mapmypay.com to compare pay and cost of living across 21,000 cities and apply for these high paying jobs. We curate every single one 👇
Most people have no idea CRNAs were the original anesthesia providers in this country. We were doing anesthesia all the way back to the Civil War, and we even helped train the first physicians who got into the field.
Then somewhere along the way, physicians took on the supervisor role and the story flipped. Now hospitals hire anesthesiologists to "supervise" CRNAs even when the law does not require it. I've talked to admins who genuinely believed supervision was legally required. It is not. Someone told them it was and they just ran with it.
A lot of this comes down to money, ego, and old medical culture.
See what nurses actually take home in your city at https://mapmypay.com
The full interview with Jason Bolt CRNA is on my YouTube channel Nurses to Riches.
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