Emulating the migratory birds

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

I love the Pacific Northwest, but I don’t like it much in the winter (I don’t mind the rain, just the short days and cold). I spend most of my winters in Arizona, but the summers here are brutal. I’d like to live someplace where the weather is decent year-round and they have trees and water and all that good stuff, but California is far out of my price range. I currently work for an ongoing parade of thieves and crooks on the internet (where everyone is fly-by-night and they want to call you an “independent contractor” just to evade paying taxes and then they treat you like a regular serf). It’s not a bad lifestyle, but I want to improve on it somehow.

Part of the problem is housing. I have to either sign short leases or break the long ones. Plus, I can’t move my furniture back and forth–the cost would be prohibitive–so I sell it or give it away, twice a year. I was even thinking of getting an RV, but you can’t live in one full-time unless it’s huge, and even those are smaller than a studio apartment inside. Plus, you still have to pay some clown $400 a month to park on a concrete slab–and then you have no transportation. And an RV gets 10 mpg or less.

I was wondering if anyone performs, has performed, or knows someone who has performed the nomadic lifestyle. I want to cut down on my expenses as well as the hassles attendant to moving. It seems to me that I’m overlooking some much better way to do what I do, but I don’t know what that might be. Cost is an issue since my work is so sporadic. I don’t have much in the bank at the moment. Any thoughts, suggestions, or tales of success, would be appreciated. I think there are more people out there trying to work from no fixed locale than we all suspect.

#2

No specific advice, but I have a friend who, along with her husband, are both traveling nurses. They work for some agency that places them in random small towns across the US, usually for a few months at a time. They’re big outdoors people, so they work for a while and entertain themselves with rockclimbing, skiing, and whatnot in the local area, then take some time off and go explore somewhere else until they’re short on money again. I think they spend quite a bit of their lives living in tents or in their pickup truck. But if you were to look up traveling nurses on the interwebs, you might be able to find sites with practical nomading advice.

#3

Since the OP is looking for advice, let’s move this to IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

#4

I believe you are the definition of “snowbird” - even though snow isn’t your problem.

My brother lives in Scottsdale, Arizona and most of the snowbirds there have perhaps a nice mobile home with minimum yearly taxes and upkeep, or a condo (if they are wealthier) or a house (if they have a lot of money) and simply head to Arizona in the winter and then back home in the spring.

So - two (cheaper) homes in two locations sounds like the best idea. However, if you are on a limited budget, this does get to be a bit tricky. Not sure if there is an answer to doing this on a tight budget.