The stable node-based smoothed finite element method (SNS-FEM) is presented to analyze thermo-elastic equations with various boundary conditions. The node-based smoothing domains are constructed to implement numerical integrations and then, the smoothed Galerkin weak form is utilized to obtain the discretized system equations. In the formulation, both the smoothed strains and the strain variance items over the node-based smoothing domains are used to perform the integration. Several numerical examples are studied in detail to investigate the performance of the SNS-FEM by comparison with the original NS-FEM and traditional FEM. Results show that the present SNS-FEM can provide very high precision solution for thermo-elastic equations. In addition, the SNS-FEM is more efficient than original NS-FEM and the standard FEM.