Frequently Asked Questions about Nomad Life
As we get ready to launch our nomad life, we’ve gotten lots of questions from friends and followers about our logistics and decision making. If you’ve been following along, we are heading out in July for our full-time, nomad adventure. Are you getting ready to go nomadic? Become a full-time nomad? Sell it all? We hope these Frequently Asked Questions and Answers about going nomadic will help you get ready to be a nomad. If you’re still getting emotionally ready to become a nomad, read this post about the emotions of nomad life.
Keep reading for our number one question/answer below.
What Are You Doing?
We are selling our house and all of its possessions to get down to two carry-on suitcases and two small daypacks. Our plan is to travel the world for about two years, keeping an eye out for a possible place to live full time, internationally. Here is the timeline we developed to get us to this point; read this post about timelines.
Where Are You Going?
When we leave Denver, we’ll be driving to Texas to domicile there. We’re then doing a road trip to see family, eventually ending up in Newark to fly to Ireland. We’ll drop our daughter at college in Dublin, then we are foot loose and fancy free to go where ever we want to go. We hope to travel Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia, South America, Central America, and Mexico. But we may never leave Ireland.
Are You Selling Your House?
Yes. After doing the math on whether we should keep it or sell it, we ultimately decided to sell. We do not want to worry about the house or have an anchor in Denver we have to monitor. We are selling our house For Sale By Owner.
Why Are You Selling Your House For Sale By Owner (FSBO)?
Chris has sold and purchased several homes by owner and grew up in a real estate family. In addition, the housing market is super hot in Denver, and our house is highly sought after. We will post that it is for sale in various Facebook pages and through Zillow, sending people to an automatic tool to make appointments for showings. We are limiting the showings to one day and we anticipate we’ll have several offers in 24 hours. We’ll hire a Title Company to process the transaction.
Are You Getting a Storage Unit?
No. We are getting a safe deposit box.
How Are You Getting Rid of All Your Stuff?
We asked our grown children to come through the house and take whatever they wanted. They loaded up their cars with household goods, artwork, heirlooms, etc. But we still have an entire household of things which will go in an Estate Sale. The day after the Estate Sale, we’ll have a Free-for-All Open House where anyone can come and take anything that is left, for free. Whatever is left after the Free-for-All, we’ll put in the extra trash pickup. For more particular information about how to get rid of particular things, read this post about getting rid of your stuff when going nomadic.
Where Will You Live?
Although we won’t be owning or renting, we will live in Texas.
Why Are You Living in Texas?
As US Citizens, we still need to have a domicile address and a mailing address. The domicile address is where you claim as your residence; it’s where you have a drivers license, vote, and pay taxes. Your mailing address is where you receive your mail which may be different than your domicile. Texas makes sense for us because the taxes are low, it’s a state that doesn’t require you to own/rent in order to have a drivers license, and it could be a place we’ll live in the future.
How Will You Get Your Mail?
Most of our mail we have turned into email. But for those pieces of mail we need to receive, like new credit cards, checks, and the occasional odd piece we aren’t expecting, we’ll use a mail service. Our mail service happens to also be where we’ll domicile. Both are in Texas. Everyday we can look online to see what mail we received; we’ll direct the mail service to either shred, keep or send the mail.
Where Will You Stay?
Our goal is to stay at least a month at a time in the locations we pick. We want to follow 72 degrees, and we want to stay where we can housesit. We have signed up for a website called Trusted Housesitters. There, petowners/homeowners post that they are looking for someone to stay in their home to take care of their pets. There is no money exchanged. We love the arrangement because it’s mutually beneficial for all involved. Where we can’t get a housesit, we’ll stay in Airbnb/hotels. We don’t plan to stay in hostels.
How Will You Travel?
We want to slow travel, where we’ll pick boats/bikes/busses over planes. We might hike from spot to spot, hiring a porter to move our carry ons if necessary.
What Is Your Budget?
We have a $4000 a month budget, allocating $2000 a month for housing. We hope in most cases, we won’t need to spend the $2000 for housing and we can stay within a $2000/month spending limit for incidentals, transit, food, entertainment, etc.
What about COVID?
COVID is part of our life now and is going to be around for a while. We are both vaccinated, and we’ll follow the local guidelines about mask wearing, social distancing, and border crossing.
How Will You Exercise?
Where possible, we’ll buy monthly gym memberships. Otherwise, we’ll take advantage of parks and outdoor workout equipment combined with Beach Body Workouts, youtube hacking, and our own expertise in putting together HITT workouts.
What about Health Insurance?
This is the million dollar question we get the most. It’s actually not that complicated. We will buy either Travel Insurance with Medical (TIM) or a full Medical (FM) policy that covers the world but not the U.S. The TIM policies run about $200 a month for both of us and the FM policies run about $600 a month for both of us. We are still weighing the pros and cons of each and will update when we have settled on a policy. The rules change constantly on these policies and we can’t buy more than 30 days before we leave. They activate the day we leave. Until we leave, we’ll be on Steve’s employer’s policy.
What Will You Eat?
We will continue our goal of eating a Whole Food Plant Based No Oil (WFPBNO) diet while traveling. We understand we may need to pop into vegan and vegetarian eating. Steve swears he’ll want to try local delicacies like sea urchin (see this post about eating Cheap in China), and I’m sure I won’t be able to pass up cream-filled French pastries. But we’ll do our best and adjust along the way. Since we’ll have kitchens in most of the places we’ll stay, we’ll go to the local markets and cook as much as we can. For more details about how to eat vegan/vegetarian while traveling, read this post.
Need More Info about Nomad Life?
We’re posting and posting about it here. What questions do you have? Post below in the comments section.
