Nomads Don’t Have To Be Hobos

December 18, 2015

For some reason that I can’t quite figure out, I’ve been getting a bit contemplative about my future lately. Maybe it’s because my daughter is about to turn 20 and she’s been reminding me that I’m very old and falling apart so I should think about my future while I am still lucid. Letting my mind wander a bit to what my life could look like when my youngest goes away to college and I’m officially an empty-nester (unless they move back in!), I realized that I have a lot of options on the table. For my job, all I really need is a telephone, a good Wi-Fi signal and an airport. Those three things are available virtually anywhere on the planet.

Reading this article about mobile millionaires helped me expand my thinking a bit. There are 10-15 cities in the US that I would love to call home for a brief period. I want to learn the city like a local, not like a tourist there for a three day weekend. With the advent of AirBnB and other similar sites, it’s relatively easy to find a place to call home for a short window of time. There are even some opportunities, although they are very limited, to get paid to housesit for someone while they are on a long term assignment in another country.

So when my youngest heads off to college in just under 5 years, I may become a nomad. I’d head to NYC for a few months and then come back home for a while, head to Boston and come back home for a while, and head to Chicago and then back home.  It is completely doable given my work schedule.

I’ve even had the chat with our operations team to make sure that it could fit with my work assignments. I’m looking forward to giving this a whirl.  If I hit all the US cities I want to, I can then make a plan for some international cities, although the air travel will be a limiting factor unless my role changes between now and then.

Not that long ago, someone who wanted to be a nomad was looked at like they were just a wee bit crazy. Now, it can be almost normal to have a home base but to set up shop at different places around the globe. One of my kids laughed when he heard my plan and said, “So, you basically want to be a hobo…but with a roof, a shower and a kitchen?” Yep!

The good news is that with this plan, my housing costs can be kept to a minimum if I rent my place out on a short term basis while I’m staying somewhere else. If I get paid to housesit while collecting a rent on my place, my net housing cost may actually be a positive item in my budget.  Having a low cost of housing can open up other possibilities to have some interesting adventures out there in the world.

My plan sounds fun to me, but what can someone reading this blog post take away from it? Ask yourself these questions. What is your long term plan? Do you have a list of adventures you want to have before you leave this planet? Take some time over this holiday season to sit back, relax and develop a list of realistic goals.

Then, figure out what it will take for you to reach them. Goals without a plan are nothing but whimsical dreams. Take a little bit of time to (without sounding too much like a cheesy motivational speaker from Saturday Night Live) develop your strategy to move your goals from dreams into realities.