Courtney El Refai
- Courtney El Refai moved to Sweden but still works at a nursing job in California.
- She said the travel is worth it because it gives her the freedom not to always be working.
- El Refai usually spends $450 on a round-trip plane ticket and gets paid more than $100 an hour.
Courtney El Refai, 32, regularly travels to a Swedish airport with her carry-on bag filled with the bare essentials to fly to San Francisco.
She’s not going on vacation. El Refai moved to Sweden with her husband in December, but has continued to work as a per diem nurse, or an as-needed nurse, in the Bay Area in California.
Supercommuting, or an especially long work commute, isn’t uncommon, even if El Refai travels farther than most. One commuter previously talked to Business Insider about what it’s been like spending $1,510 a month to supercommute from Delaware to New York. Another detailed supercommuting from Michigan to Chicago.
El Refai doesn’t go back and forth daily. Instead, she’s typically in California for 10 days because she has to do a minimum of four eight-hour shifts for every four-week schedule in the neonatal intensive care unit at a hospital in the San Francisco Bay Area. She tries to work the shifts at the end of one schedule and the start of the next. That allows her to cut down on commuting and gives her several weeks to be back in Sweden before doing it all over again.
El Refai said the commute is worth it because she gets to experience both Swedish and American cultures and keep her existing connections instead of fully moving away.
“Having my per diem job gives me a lot of flexibility, so I’m able to focus on other things rather than work when I’m here in Sweden, like learning the language or making friends, spending time with my daughter, and pursuing other hobbies,” she said.
El Refai and her husband, who moved to the States to be with her years ago, wanted to move when they were ready to grow their family. “Sweden is known for being a really happy country and also a really good place to raise a family,” she said.
But the “dual living” between the two countries does have its cons, including jet lag from a long commute. It’s also usually just her who flies out to California, so dealing with a nine-hour time difference from her family can be challenging.
“When I’m in Sweden, I find it sometimes difficult to keep up with friends and family in the States, and when I’m back in the States, sometimes it’s hard to keep up with what’s happening in Sweden,” she said.
What expenses and life are like in Sweden and the US
El Refai thinks it’s more affordable to live in Sweden. She said her family’s apartment rent in Sweden is less than $1,500 a month, and they don’t have a car there because they use public transportation. She said a train ticket to Stockholm from their apartment, which is just outside the city, is just a handful of dollars. Their Swedish phone bills are less than their American ones.
When she’s working in the San Francisco Bay Area, El Refai rents a room from another healthcare worker for $50 a night, or sometimes housesits for free through a platform.
El Refai said her first day in California tends to include stocking up on groceries and getting settled before work the next day. Her scrubs are already in the US, and she owns a car that she can use to get to work. While a typical shift is eight hours, overtime can add up to 12-hour shifts.
“Sometimes I end up going in at 3 o’clock in the morning just to get those extra four hours and turn my eight-hour shift into a 12-hour shift,” she said.
In a TikTok video, El Refai said the commute is worth it because “the salary in the Bay Area is just so high and the cost of living in Sweden is a lot less than the cost of living in the States.” She told Business Insider that an average round-trip flight between Sweden and California is usually around $450. She said she doesn’t get health benefits but instead gets “premium pay,” with a base of more than $100 an hour.
In the video, she added that the back-and-forth is also worth it because she can have a good work-life balance. “I know the commute is absolutely outrageous, but imagine having six weeks off after working 10 days on a repeated pattern.”
While her time is more structured when she’s in California, days in Sweden, where she doesn’t have a full-time job, vary. She hosts meet-up events in Stockholm for women, spends time with her family, and makes social media content about life in Sweden.
She said she thinks other nurses considering some kind of supercommute should give it a try because they can always change their minds if they don’t like it.
“We’re blessed to have such a secure job that I think it’s OK and comfortable enough to take some risks, like trying to live in a new place or be a supercommuter,” she said. “I think that there are a lot more people doing it than the average person realizes.”
Do you supercommute? Reach out to this reporter to share at [email protected].
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