I am faced with this issue quite a bit. It would be impossible to uproot the family every six months or a year for a new project.

Let the company get you a furnished apartment for the length of the project. They should actually be able to save money. If you work a few other clients here and there the 12 month issues do not apply. (It was really meant to nail corporate execs who had company paid penthouses in Manhattan but claimed they lived in Florida) At any rate you should not be responsible for the rent incase the project ends early..

I still prefer to go home on weekends but the apartment is darn nice! You can leave clothing there and not move everything home each week.

No family to uproot.

I would give up my current loft apartment and make the move to live on the clients dime and pocket my salary.

The whole tax situation need to be looked at.
I am glad a few of you pointed it out.

If you're young, no family, and you're living in a loft, then this is the perfect time in your life to relocate. You could probably move everything absolutely critical to you (photo albums, books, clothing, etc.) in a few large boxes. Either expense a u-haul and move it yourself, or ship it fed-ex, and arrange for the company to pay for a furnished place in detroit. Or, if you'd prefer, shell out for new living stuff (dinnerware, furniture, etc.).

Definitely pocket the client's allocated travel budget (ask for more than 60%.. 75 or even 80 isn't out of the question, considering how many extra hours of productivity they'd get out of you.)

You're never too early for a nest-egg; cash like that will come in handy when you want to put a down payment on a house, or go on that around the world cruise for your honeymoon..

I would consult a tax advisor. One of my relatives did consulting for 6-10 months at a time after his early retirement. He got "bored" playing golf, etc.

Though he was financially set, he got to experience living in different locations, etc. When his assignment was done, his wife & he would fly to someplace nice like Hawaii for vacation. ^

He would pick assignments that gave him maximum per diem & moderate wages. The "per diem" is not taxable & of course, his wages were. He would get say $200 per day (for the per diem) & he would rent a nice 1 bdr apt that was in a decent area & not overly expensive. He would buy used & inexpensive furniture. He would sell it at the end of his term. His rent would be approx $600-800/month but his per diem would be $4.2K (21 working days times $200 equals $4200 for the month). Say his rent/utilities/food would be $1000-1200 for the month. He could pocket the rest tax free. (He may have done a 30 day per diem & work for lower wages. I'm not clear on that point)

I am not a tax person so my info may/may not be correct for your situation. You could ask if can get all the expenses in a "per diem" package. The "per diem" money may be non taxable.

Per diem is limited by the IRS to a certain dollar amount per day that is determined by the area you are working in. Ex: When I contracted in Sacramento, CA, I was entitled to less per diem than when I worked in San Francisco.

If you go this route, you may need to explain it to your clients' HR department. I always negotiated a flat rate (say $75/hour), then asked for the first $150 - $200 day as per diem. When necessary, I explained that I worked all of my contracts this way and if they didn't want to play I would expect a larger per hour fee to compensate for the taxes.

Once they realized I was just using a tax break and it didn't actually cost them anything, I was never turned down.

On the other hand, if you get audited, you better have receipts to back up the $200 a day in expenses or expect to pay taxes!

Have you thought about a compromise between relo and weekly travel?

Here's what I did on my last gig where I knew in advance just how long it would be. I got a room at a Residence Inn for the duration. There's your Marriott Plat. I booked by calling the hotel and asking for the sales manager, and got a rate well below what a short stay rate would have been, plus, with the long term stay, there was no sales tax (this will vary by state). I stayed over most weekends, but flew home for about 3 nights every 3 weeks, to check my mail, water my plants, see my friends, etc. That's 15 or so R/T's for you, should get you pretty close to first tier status.

When I ran the numbers before proposing this to the client, 7 nights at the long-term rate was about the same as 4 nights+tax at the regular rate. The airfare savings more than covered the weekend's meal costs.

This all worked out as a win/win.

The client got to have me for the full work week most weeks at the same or less travel cost.

Keeping the hotel over the weekends made travel much easier when I did head home(no clothes to schlep). Choosing a RI meant I had a kitchen, so I had an option not to eat out when I didn't want to.

I'd make the move and pocket the $43K and not fly for a year, or fly on my own leisure bits. From the earnings on the $43K alone, you should be able to buy enough tickets to go on trips and earn status again, and you won't have to deal with the hassle of running two homes (or one plus a hotel all the time) and living out of a suitcase constantly.

Looking at it a different way, say you fly every week back and forth:

CVG-DTW = 500 miles
DTW-CVG = 500 miles
Status Bonus = 1000 miles

That's 2000 miles a week for 50 weeks, or 100,000 miles in your NW/DL/CO account and platinum for another year with 100 segments.

Plus you stay four nights a week at a hotel, at a corporate contract rate of $100/night for 50 weeks. Assuming that's a Starwood, then you'd have a hotel bill of $20,000 for the year, giving you 60,000 Starpoints.

While there's some rounding involved, would you rather have $43K or 100K miles, Plat status for a year, and 60K Starpoints? At assumed value of 2 cents per mile and 3 cents per starpoint, that means Platinum status is worth $39,200 (give or take a little bit). Even if you have to pay taxes on it, the numbers strongly point to moving and taking the $43K.

Unless I'm missing something, 100K worth of WP mileage will never buy you $39,200 worth of flights anywhere! $43k of salary is REAL money, while award miles is, well - funny money.

redjr...

Go for it!

I can't speak to the tax or career implications, but if those check out then I'd do it and see about working the status renewal on your own dime. I'm maintaining gold at about $1,500-1,800 all out of my own pocket on tickets (with occasional help from bump vouchers and $300 fare credits from my credit card's points program). Still, IMO it's only worth it if you can make the mileage-earning trips worthwhile and useful, so I don't go for "pure" MRs. OTOH, if you can put together some 3-day weekends or longer blocs then it could work. I especially like short dead-of-winter trips to places like AMS to run up the miles if the fare drops low enough. LAS (from ATL) also can be good, as it's car-optional and lodging deals abound.

I think you could maintain status affordably on your own dime and have lots left over.

Plan it right and get there in coach or on miles and you can do J class mileage runs ex-BKK for comparatively little money and in relatively little time. In fact, some of the MPMs BKK to Central America would get you to Platinum with two runs. You can keep your status. Hotel status might be harder to keep but you can always look for sale rates at your chain of choice and go 'check in' locally, then take off. So, you CAN have your cake, and your status too!

I don't think anyone has mentioned this yet ... but if Delta still doesn't drop anyone more than one level per year, you'd still be Gold. Granted, it's not quite as exalted as Platinum, but you get the same mileage bonus and some of the other benefits. So, if you take the money, it's not as if you'd go into total non-status exile.

And I agree that living there is worth more than 60 percent of what they would have spent on travel anyhow. They ought to be willing to give you more than they would have spent on travel, because they'll get more work out of you! With travel, you'd be on site for 12 days in a four-week (to simplify the numbers) month, plus whatever you can get done in eight days on the plane. Figure out what fraction of a day that is, add them up, subtract from 20, and they're getting that much more for free every month. If they don't think that's worth something, then the three-week month or the 60 percent plus a trip home every three weeks, as suggested by prior posters, can be win-wins.